h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I remember from my history lessons (many years ago) being told that the liberal prime minister at the time, David Lloyd George said that he would be willing to support the aims of the Suffragettes, but it was impossible to do so whilst they carried out acts of civil disobedience.

Also, if you read in between the lines it becomes very apparent that the Suffragettes were a middle class movement. For instance, their aim for women to work was nothing new to women of lower social ranks. In fact laws had to be introduced to limit the number of hours women (and children) could work each day.

However the Suffragette Movement did attract a few working class women.

So after the first world war, society expected all the women who worked in the munitions factories, and replaced all the men in industrial jobs, who were fighting at the front, to go back to the way things were before the war?

I don't think so, and the same thing happened again in WW11, that changed a lot of things for women.

Smudger.

Yup. My mother-in-law was a welder in WWII. A skill she carried forward into her cooking.

Creme brulee with every meal?

Might have been, couldn't really tell.

How is metal welding used in cooking?

I really find it annoying when people seem to know about everything I'm doing through Facebook, I closed my account a couple of years ago 'cos I couldn't stand it, I was out with friends a little while ago and one of them was on Facebook telling people they were out with me! my sis in Canada called me to tell me someone had put a school photo of me on there, and lots of people had commented on it, I hardly know anybody anyway, ridiculous, it's all pervasive, I hate it!

I have a facebook account that I hardly use, so I'm unlikely to have that problem. What gets me with social media is the number of 'friends' people have. To me, a friend is somebody who has known me for a while, somebody I'm happy to invite round to my home. A friend is not somebody who only knows me from a social media profile.

I quite resent being used as a pawn in a competition to see who can have the most friends. Normally I get those sort of friend requests from people I was at school with but never talked to. If you didn't want to talk to me when I was in the same school, why would I accept a friend request now?

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Oh, just remembered a Petty Hate I was going to post last week. It's more than one Petty Hate, actually.

1. I'm on medication that has to be delivered every month. The company responsible for fulfilling the prescription is supposed to phone me about a week before I run out, to arrange the next delivery. Last week I had to phone them myself as I had less than a week's worth left.

2. People who call you on your mobile phone first, and only use your land line as an afterthought, even when you have told them that the mobile phone signal strength is patchy/intermittent.

3. Mobile phone companies that are so involved with the latest technology that they seem to stop caring about the customers who still have the old technology. Hubby and I have Orange Pay-as-you-go phones. We've been with Orange for years and had no problems until 4G came along. Since Orange became EE the signal strength in our area has deteriorated to the point where we're seriously considering switching provider.

This isn't so much a PH as an Eyebrow Raise; the cost of 'luxury camping' at festivals. For example, one option is £1,800 for two people to sleep in a big tent at the V festival; and yet most of these tent-options have sold out. And it hardly sounds like luxury, either:

"Sleeps 2 people in a double bed. Comes with a deluxe wooden bed with memory foam mattress, power socket for charging small electrical items, Egyptian cotton linen, duvets and pillows, bed throws and cushions, fully carpeted with Indian rugs, tea-light chandeliers, hand painted tables and lanterns, inflatable Chesterfield style sofa with cushions, dining table with chairs and LED old fashioned lanterns."

Luxury! We used to have to get out of memory foam mattressdouble bed at three o'clock in the morning, clean the Indian rug and Egyptian cotton linen, eat handful of hot gravel, go to V Festival at t' mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken tea-light chandelier, if we were LUCKY!

But you try and tell the young festival goers that today, and they won't believe ya.

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"If you didn't want to talk to me when I was in the same school, why would I accept a friend request now?"

My feelings exactly... Seems Quite bizarre that people should approach other people that way, but of course the competition is the reason behind it...

My petty hate is the e-mails FB send when you don't log in to FB every day - it told me I had x number of new "photo tags" or something, but when I logged in to see what it was, there was nothing there, so it was just an e-mail to suck me back in...

I'm annoyed with the e-mails I get from them saying 'Friend X has updated their status'

What's the point in that? If you tell me what they've updated their status to, then I'll know whether it will be worth logging into Facebook to comment on. If someone is saying something important, such as getting engaged, announcing pregnancy, other life changing event then it is worth me logging into Facebook to comment on. If they're just writing 'I fancy a cup of tea' then it isn't.

Either e-mail something useful or don't e-mail at all, but don't send an e-mail that doesn't tell me anything.

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at the risk of sounding like a facebook fangurl - I have a variety of different "friends" there. Some, a lot, I know IRL. Some are relations. Some people I used to go to school/be in the army/knew previously.

Some, however, are friends that I only know virtually, from h2g2 and other places.

Others are OU people, or people I've got chatting to on other friends' convos and have become virtual friends that way.

Still others are people I work with or know through work.

I don't have billions, or even many hundreds though. If you don't like it, don't allow people to tag you, lock down your profile (or can you delete it now?). And ask people not to mention you.

Some people like/get social media a lot, some not so much. But as they say out there in internetland: YMMV

BB go into your preferences and disable email notifications. Also, it's prudent to have a login email address for social media platforms that isn't your main email address :D

Thinking about it, I have two facebook accounts, a Twitter account and two Google+ accounts. One facebook account and one Google+ accounts are associated with my main email address, and I don't use those much, if at all. The other accounts are associated with an email address I don't check as often as I should, and I don't use them as much as I should.

I don't really see the point in logging into a different e-mail account just to see whether or not it is worth me logging into my Facebook account

Oh well..

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PH When you're with other visitors, calling at someone's door, and as the door opens you make eye-contact with that person; but before you can do all that smiling and saying hello stuff, they have to first greet the person in front of you, meaning that when it is your turn to perform the happy greeting thing, you've already seen each other for, say, 30 seconds; but you both have to act all excited and pleasantly surprised to see them, even though you both know it's all an act.

Is it just me?

FB sends those emails anyway, but it's easy to turn them off.

I have wholly embraced social media. It's great. I can stay in touch with people who live too far away for regular contact, I get notified of gigs so I don't miss them, I can organise group activities with only a few mouse clicks, I can share interesting articles and pictures, I can get to know potential partners before the idea of a 'first date' even comes up. Fantastic stuff. I have two FB accounts, one for general friends and family and one for the stuff I don't want my mother seeing.

I think people get stuck on the idea of 'anonymity', without realising that before social media we weren't anonoymous, we were obscure.