Rob Caiger ✝️🇬🇧🇮🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿✊🏻

Proud #WarriorTeacher, supporting women, children, LGB & single sex rights. All views my own. Proud my work is music production for the bands I grew up with.

[Rob Caiger ✝️🇬🇧🇮🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿✊🏻 @CaigerRob]

Privileged to know Dan Popplewell when he wrote this as part of @themagictheatre 'London Town' album. Featuring the gorgeous vocals of Sophia Churney, this is a classic. 10 years on, I'm living every word of 'Summer Sun' and finally happy... https://t.co/y9yRqcixF2 via @YouTube

[Rob Caiger ✝️🇬🇧🇮🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿✊🏻 @CaigerRob]

@QcWynter This is the wine critique I didn’t know I needed. Thank you, Colin. A stop off at Aldi on way back from studio tomorrow, I think..

[Lily Craven @TheAttagirls]

The Woman of the Day is the Anglo-Saxon noblewoman Godgifu of West Mercia, the only woman to remain a landholder in Britain after those robbing Normans swept in and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down (and quite a few things that were).

Of course you’ve heard of her. You’ve heard of the Godiva Procession which was instituted in 1678 by Coventry Fair to commemorate the legendary ride by the Lady.

Taking pity on the people of Coventry suffering grievously under her husband's oppressive taxation, she called his bluff that he would repeal the taxes if she would strip naked and ride through the streets of the town, clothed only in her long hair. She only agreed on the condition that everyone stayed indoors and shut their windows, but a tailor known ever afterwards as Peeping Tom disobeyed and was struck blind. Allegedly.

It was all bunkum. Absolute bunkum.

Lady Godiva’s real name was Godgifu. She married Leofric, Earl of Mercia, but both she and her husband were major philanthropists and among the most munificent of the Anglo-Saxon nobility until the Norman Conquest in 1066 (and those robbing Normans came along, etc).

In Anglo-Saxon times, in laws dated around 1008 AD, women enjoyed full property rights, from peasant to nobility. They could own land, farms, houses. Upon marriage, a husband was legally required to give his wife a Morgengifu (Morning Gift): land, money, or goods, which remained her independent property that she could sell, give away, or manage as she chose. Women wrote their own wills and left property to whomever they chose including children, servants, or religious institutions, and they didn’t need their husband's permission.

All that stopped after 1066. The new feudal system tied land ownership to military service, something women were barred from providing. Women became the chattels (property) of their husbands if they were married, or their fathers if they were not, a legal state known as coverture. Still, I’m sure the Normans thought they were being progressive and inclusive, two words I’ve come to loathe. But I digress.

Godgifu survived the death of her husband and was mentioned in the Domesday Book, one of the few Anglo-Saxons and the only woman to remain a major landholder after the Conquest.

Godgifu certainly would have ridden a horse but not in protest and certainly not minus her clothes. Still, the idea of it proved quite a crowd pleaser at Coventry Fair in 1678, even though the first fake Lady Godiva was actually a lad. Yes, I know. Some things just don’t change.

In the intervening years, the myth was spiced up by the Puritans to prove a moral point but dampened down by other Protestants to make it fit for delicate ears. Never forget: the objectification of women is eternal, along with its fraternal twin, misogyny. The two generally go hand in hand.

Despite several attempts to shut down the procession — in 1845, the Mayor got fed up with the crowds jostling to get a better view of her, expostulating, “It’s a disgrace”, and in 1854, the Bishop of Worcester protested against “a Birmingham whore being paraded through the streets as Lady Godiva” — it continued as a annual event until the 1960s.

Godgifu’s date of birth is unknown but she died in her mid-fifties in 1067 after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Domesday Book of 1086 notes that the lands formerly held by her had passed to others. Men of course. Chattels are property, and property cannot own property.

Married women finally achieved independent taxation in their own right in 1990. Prior to that, their husbands were responsible for paying tax on their income unless she obtained his signature and consent to claim her own single person's allowance and pay tax on her own earnings. Her unearned income — such as investment or savings interest — still legally belonged to him.

And of course, the "marital rape exemption" — the legal assumption that a wife could not withhold sexual consent from her husband under the marriage contract — was not formally abolished in English law until 1991.

935 years. It only took 935 years in this country to demolish the legal status and definition of Woman as Property, and despite the Supreme Court ruling, we still find ourselves having to dismantle the definition of Woman as a feeling — with political parties, Civil Service departments, with trade unions, charities, retailers, and with sporting bodies.

I know many of us are tired of fighting the same old battles but keep going, sisters.

“We woman suffragists have a great mission — the greatest mission the world has ever known. It is to free half the human race, and through that freedom to save the rest.”
Emmeline Pankhurst, 17 October 1912.

[Steven Barrett @SBarrettBar]

We were slaves.

We freed ourselves. Then we freed others.

♥️♥️♥️🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

[Steven Barrett @SBarrettBar]

We need to listen to our Muslim friends.

[Brian Chau @brianchau57]

Corrected scale.

Inspired by @cremieuxrecueil

[Lee Anderson MP @LeeAndersonMP_]

Waste Of Time...

Today I asked another Minister (No idea who she is) a very simple question.

Once again a Minister who does not know their brief.

Vote @reformparty_uk

[Adam Brooks AKA EssexPR 🇬🇧 @EssexPR]

The Government receives ten times as much from a pint of beer as the pub landlord.

How is that fair?

How is that sustainable?

🍺 💷

@andyburnham | @Sacha_Lord

[Orla Minihane @orlaminihane]

I love @JuliaHB1 the world would be a far better place with more women like this !!

[MummyisTired @MummyisT]

For all those self proclaimed defenders of democracy: The Palestinians have not held legislative or presidential elections since 2005-2006

[Steven Barrett @SBarrettBar]

Both migrants live in state funded flats in Westminster

Flats most of us can't afford.

Uk is a joke.

[Rob Caiger ✝️🇬🇧🇮🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿✊🏻 @CaigerRob]

Well said, Tony. I was very proud to serve as an Air Cadet in the seventies and early eighties. These excellent cadets remind me of my squadron comrades, all proud to serve the flag, Queen & country, going onto serve in the RAF or army. Those that didn’t were exemplary citizens with a love of country & its traditions.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

Labour manifesto, 2024. Couldn't have been clearer.

[MrBounceBack.com @Bounce_BackLoan]

Point of Order: @NeilDotObrien (MP) for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has made Dawn Butler's piss boil for telling her "to do one" over reparations.

[Paul Embery @PaulEmbery]

👀

[Rob Caiger ✝️🇬🇧🇮🇱🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿✊🏻 @CaigerRob]

@EJWoolf Have the best of birthdays & celebrate well, Emma. But not too well - we need your common sense no-nonsense voice out there terrifying the woke!

[Heidi Bachram @HeidiBachram]

I challenged pro-Pals trying to stop me buying Israeli products from my local supermarket in Brighton. Instead I bought a bagful and waved it triumphantly. The video I posted went VIRAL. That tells me there’s huge support to counter this hate. So let’s go BUY ISRAELI ⬇️

[Lord Mongrove @Bishop_Beesley]

@labourlewis @ProgIntl You do understand that you're the MP for Norwich South and not Hamas?

[Helen Day @LBFlyawayhome]

British Birds and their Nests ‘Goldfinch’ (1953)
Artist: Allen Seaby

[Bernie @Artemisfornow]

I don’t want to post the video. You’ve all seen it. But I do want to write a love letter…

Dear everyone in Britain, ( even you illegals)

Just so you understand. The poppy is for the boys who never got to grow old. For the boys who were still somebody’s baby, brother, uncle or father. More than 600,000 of them.

It doesn’t matter if you support war, hate your country, think you are a woman (even though you are a man). It doesn’t matter which God you pray to, or if you pray to none at all.

It doesn’t matter who you vote for, what climate narrative you believe, or whether you believe Israel should exist or not!

The poppy isn’t for you!

It’s for those who came before. Those who fought for your right to be weird, annoying or even foreign.

The poppy is how we say thank you. Thank you for giving us time, peace and choice.

And attempting to ban our poppy by declaring it politically divisive isn’t a move towards freedom. It is an act of suppression. Understand that.

The poppy is about love and loss. For you!

So stick your rainbow flags and every other flag where the sun doesn’t shine and just wear your poppy. Those boys did not die as symbols. They died for you!

Did you know that poppies grew across the battlefields where so many fell? As though even the land refused to forget the blood once given to defend it.

So the poppy is for them. For those who came before us and paid in youth, in hope, in breath, in blood, so that we might have the freedom to be arseholes.

So that we might even have the freedom to fight over the ridiculous, the inconsequential and the insane.

Revere it, celebrate it and wear it. The very least you can do is that.

Best
The ordinary people.

[June Slater @juneslater17]

♦️WHITE PRIVILEGE♦️

This is how our cotton mills and wool mills made their profits, which afforded them their fine stone-built mansions on the outskirts of mill towns.

It was dangerous work, fingers were often lost, eye injuries common, no comfort breaks, no health insurance and no factory nurse.

This work was done on empty bellies after a walk to work. Malnutrition was common place and discipline hard. A water barrel with a wooden ladle for dry dusty days as cotton dander filled the choking air.

There were no holidays to look forward to, no sick pay, and kids as young as 7 sent to work in the miserable conditions their parents stomached for a lifetime.

They didn't play much, they were too knackered for that. A cold hard bed was all they could hope for. Arthritis and joint pains kicked in early as crippled fingers in their middle years struggled with looms.

And our MPs talk about reparations for slavery, when every God damned nation was using slaves.

White privilege... you disgust me. There should be a plaque of remembrance dedicated to the entire working class!
#DawnButlerMP