COUNCIL for PARITY DEMOCRACY

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19 Mulready House Herrick Street Westminster London England SW1P 4JL

Tel & Fax + 44 20 7834 1309 Mobile + 44 7932 79 44 32 Email

http://groups.msn.com/shequality

Honorary Secretary

Raymond Lloyd

Newsletter 29 to Friends: 28 November 2003

Today I am 69 and yesterday was Thanksgiving. President Lincoln designated this Day in 1863 apparently at the instigation of readers of Godey's Lady's Book, who wanted a woman-friendly holiday to match the male-driven Independence Day. The chief cheerleader was Sarah Hale, a proponent of "women's place is the home", who allowed her own self out, to run a leading commercial magazine, on the grounds that she was a widow who had to feed her hungry children. Except that she retired only when her younger child was 55!

Research and Information. All this I learned from yesterday's New York Times, emailed free to me (or anyone) seven days a week. Indeed my forwarding articles from this and other sources is one way that some hundred friends around the world know that I am still alive and clicking. From the Times, I receive the international and arts news, but if I want the latest news in all fields, I click on news.google.com , which goes through some 4500 sources instantaneously to give the news in some ten languages. It is similarly surprising how good a search engine is the common-or-garden www.google.com . Last week, I learned that my ABC travel insurance of the last decade had been doubled to £150 for the over 65s. So I typed "travel insurance for over 65" into Google, and found Insure & Go, which provides multi-trip worldwide annual travel insurance for £87, and offers this for an additional five years to 75.

So now, when people ask me about my website, I tell them to type "shequality" into Google, and in a few seconds I am there smiling. I have posted some 240 letters, conference papers, tabulations, proposals and poems on the site: to read the 84th monthly issue of The Parity Democrat, click successively on Documents, The Parity Democrat, No 84 December 2003. Similarly, this annual letter, and those for recent years may be read, and printed in Word format, by clicking on Documents, Letters, Friends.

But few go beyond my title page. The main reason seems to be that my (Microsoft or MSN) site, as with the free New York Times, requires an email address and password, and it is assumed that providing these opens email users to abuse by spam. But as long as email and the web are free, there will be junk mail, by less responsible senders, and we have to learn to live with it. I would like to make my site as free and as accessible as Google News, but have yet to find a host which uploads files as effortlessly as MSN, or wouldbe web-designers who keep their promises. Meanwhile I email major papers and questions to interested friends and colleagues, and myself give thousands of pounds worth of free assistance to friends wanting to make better use of the internet's information, entertainment and research potential.

Work and Travel: In addition to the monthly Parity Democrat, I still use meetings and travel as deadlines to prepare papers and proposals. The papers prepared in 2003 are listed overleaf. My furthest destinations were Greece and Dubai, undertaken thanks to cheap advance bookings with British Airways, and I used Ryanair and EasyJet for nearer venues. However, it was too expensive to attend the European Bank's annual meetings in Tashkent, the only historic part of the world I have yet to visit, and there was no refund of tickets paid to meetings in Copenhagen or Lisbon, the first canceled because of illness, the other because the meeting itself was canceled.

The longest journeys planned for 2004 are to the US, to the G8 summit near Savannah in June, and to the World Bank meetings in Washington in October. For the first half of 2004 the presidency of the European Union will be held by Ireland, and for the second half by the Netherlands. All four annual European summits are now held in Brussels, but I look forward to going to various informal ministerial meetings in Dublin, Amsterdam and elsewhere, just as I have enjoyed traveling to Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome for informal meetings during the current Italian presidency.

Here in London I go to most press previews of major art exhibitions, and try to plan my absences not to coincide with the annual book, wine and travel fairs, for which I often prepare papers on upcoming anniversaries. In 2003 I have gone to an increasing number of openings and product launches, from clothes to restaurants, jewelry to kitchenware, often as much to see the historic, converted or new buildings in which the products are shown, as for the products themselves. Again, these are good occasions for me to get out and about, for someone who might otherwise spend days or weeks on end writing and researching.

In 2003 the places I have visited to honour persons who gave up their lives for the good, or who were victims of public evil, include Thermopylae, where a small Greek force under Leonidas held out in 480 BC until betrayed by Ephialtes, a place I have always wanted to see since reading Cavafy's beautiful poem forty years ago; the Square to the Victims of the Gestapo in Rheims; the new memorial in London to the 67 British citizens massacred in New York on 9/11; and, also in London, the new memorial to the Australians who gave their lives for British, European and Asian freedom in two world wars.

Health: On my last birthday, hardly had I emailed out Newsletter 28 when I suffered another deep vein thrombosis, the first DVT being that in 1992. This time it did not develop into a pulmonary embolism, but I am on the anti-coagulant warfarin for life. Even now, I have not quite left the war zone, because on 13 November I tripped and dislocated my left shoulder, which happily popped back in again immediately, but which still feels quite bruised. Also I have had a pain in my right side for two months and, while my blood screens were fine, I have to wait to 30 December for an ultra-sound scan.

This is also my fourth year as a vegetarian, a regime I began again on 8 March 2000, after six years practice from 15 to 21. There are health, moral, aesthetic, ecological and economic reasons for being a vegetarian, but I do not feel strongly about any of them to try to convert others. Rather for me, it was a question of personal sacrifice. Twenty years earlier, on 8 March 1980, I had given up my UN career, salary, and a flourishing programme, in order to work more comprehensively for women's advancement and, less restrictively, for the democratic regeneration of the international community.

But after twenty years, I had got used to what turned out to be genuine enough sacrifices, and so I decided to give up something else, in an effort to remind myself of the third explicit reason for my 1980 resignation, that of lessening the gap between myself and the hungry for whom I work. Of course, the main objective of my work is for everyone to enjoy as full a life as I do, but, while they are getting there, it is good to maintain empathy for their struggle. It is much easier to be a vegetarian now than it was in the 1950s, but at all public conferences and other occasions when food is served, it is a mini-reminder of the empathy needed for those about whose less privileged condition the conference has often been called.

Finances: In July I received an official letter from the Spanish State Lottery, by snail-mail from Madrid, informing me that I had won a prize of some $750 000. I still have £100 in UK Premium Bonds, and had long planned that, if ever I won the million monthly prize, I would give it all away to women's groups. Which is what I began to do with the Spanish prize. Only to learn that it was a scam. I have recounted the story in "An Ultimate Act of Goodness", emailed to friends on 3 August, and posted under "Reflections" on my website.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Britain's Minimum Income Guarantee has become a Pension Credit for all persons over 60, and has risen to £102.10 ($170) a week. I have now learned to live, work and travel on this amount, without expecting any return on the hundreds of documents, with thousands of hours of research and suggestions, which I give out free every year. But at least ten friends still appreciate my work, and I in turn appreciate their financial support, the £700 as totaled overleaf. The form below provides another opportunity for such welcome generosity.

This year I do not have a women's banknote to send out, but I have illustrated the new 50 pence coin released into circulation in 5 000 000 pieces in Britain last month, for the 100th anniversary of the suffrage-promoting Women's Social and Political Union, founded in Manchester on 10 October 1903. One of the groups, with whom I planned to share my Madrid prize, was the International Alliance of Women, which celebrates in 2004 the 100th anniversary of its founding in Berlin on 3 June 1904. They will at least receive 100 of my "Give Women the Vote" coins. Also in 2004, both Canada and Japan will issue women's notes in which I have had some input, of 50 dollars and 5000 yen respectively. But that is for next year's letter or, for those who cannot wait, the shequality website.

With all good wishes for 2004

Raymond Lloyd

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Enclosed is a gift of ...... made out to "Raymond Lloyd",

in support of work for political integrity and parity democracy

NAME...... Date......

ADDRESS…………………………………......

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