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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 07932 79 44 32 Email raymond12 @ hotmail.com
Honorary Secretary
Raymond Lloyd
28 November 1998
Newsletter 24 to Friends
One more year has passed, and today I am 64. Several times in the past three months,
I thought, with good reason, that I would not make it through to today. More of that later.
1998 has been another good year. Every month I have brought out The Parity Democrat, with some 125 anniversaries of democracy and women’s advancement. Each entry takes on average one hour to imagine, research and check, or some 1500 hours of accumulated research in a year. Taking as a guide the payment of £7 an hour to a local parliamentary researcher, and adding £3 for supervision and evaluation, this amounts to £15 000 a year, all given away free. Or almost, because I now have two subscribers. With Newsletter 23 I enclosed the November 97 issue with that December’s anniversaries: now I enclose the November 98 issue with this month’s anniversaries. The December 98 and January 99 issues, Nos 24 & 25, are available on request.
Every two months I also issue a list of names of women government ministers and similar leaders throughout the world, 1064 names in List 45 of 21 November. With the 1000 different names in past lists, this represents another 2000 hours of research. I gave away some 200 copies in 1998, received acknowledgements for 10, and payment for two. I hope one day to put it on an Internet website. Meanwhile you can judge its quality and uniqueness from the extract of 38 current and past women heads of international bodies given on the first page of the enclosed Parity Democrat. You might also guess at the difficulty of research because, since March 1995, the UN has not published its Directory of Senior Officials, an internal document from which I obtained much of this information. It would be easier to draw up a list of the world’s women generals and admirals, which I have long promised myself to do, though so far in vain!
In the past year I have also drawn up some 13 papers of promotional research for conferences and exhibitions I have attended, as follows, the introduction to the first paper being given overleaf:
Venue & Date Title of Paper / Meeting Pages
London Distinguished Women of Europe: Living and Historical
19 November 1997 UK Woman of Europe Presentation Paper 2 6
Washington DC Parity Democracy & Money IMF/IBRD Annual Paper 5
6-8 October 1998 Annual Meetings of the World Bank / IMF Boards of Governors 10
Canterbury Women's Empowerment, Faith & History
18 July - 9 August Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops 10
London & Cambridge Parity Democracy in Central & Eastern Europe
27 June - 3 July Project Parity Planathon 12
Cardiff Democracy & Women's Empowerment in Europe European Council Paper 8
15-16 June European Council 14
Olympia London Women, Art, History & Money
4-14 June Fine Art & Antiques Fair 8
Islington London Major Anniversaries of German History 1998-2000
4 June German Travel Fair 4
Olympia London Naming Major Wines after Major Anniversaries 1998-2000
19-21 May London Wine Trade Fair 4
Birmingham England Political Rights, Civil Liberties & Women's Empowerment in the 1990s
15-17 May G8 Summit Paper 4 18
Windhoek Namibia Parity Democracy & Women's Empowerment in Modern Africa
5-11 April 99th Inter-Parliamentary Conference National Assembly 12
London 23-24 March ABANTU Seminar on Women's Leadership House of Commons
Pretoria S Africa Parity Democracy & Rural Women's Advancement 8
1-7 April Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW) 22nd Triennial Conference
Pretoria S Africa Women, Democracy, History & Money
23-26 March 20th Mint Directors Conference Mint Biennial Paper 2 10
Luxembourg Democracy & Women's Empowerment in Europe European Council Paper 7
12-13 December 1997 European Council 12
In 1998 this voluntary work took me to South Africa, my first visit since 1974 and 1976, when I stopped over on my way to Botswana and Swaziland to bring out the Food for All coins in those countries. In September 1976 I had paid a weekend visit to the Cape Peninsula, when the Soweto uprising had given new hope to the majority population. Now my bus journey throughout the country was as exhilarating as travelling in newly-liberated Central Europe, for I could meet and talk with anyone as freely as with my African and Indian friends in London.
I took time off to see three of the world’s wonders, the fourteenth century buildings of Great Zimbabwe, and the Fish River canyon and Spitzkoppe granite monolith in Namibia. Also, my annual pilgrimage in 1998, to a place of major human suffering, took place in South Africa, to Robben Island. The prisons were no wooden shacks, but built of solid stone, and could last as long as the pyramids in the opposite, north-east corner of Africa, but only if the African National Congress, now in government, does not corrupt the idealistic legacy of the many who suffered under apartheid.
My fast, or rigid diet, in 1998, this time of sixty days, from 1 August to 1 October, was also undertaken on behalf of people in Africa, for the 600 000 dying or threatened with famine in Southern Sudan. On 12 May, at the meeting of European Ministers of Agriculture in Newcastle,
I had asked the UK Minister:
At this meeting there have been ministers from 15 of the world's 20 or 25 richest agricultural democracies: while we have appreciated your hospitality, some 600 000 people are starving to death in the Southern Sudan and, inasmuch as it is a pastoral economy, most of the dying are girls, mothers and elderly women: during the past three days, have you had the opportunity to consider what more Europe can do to help keep the people of Southern Sudan alive?
The minister, Jack Cunningham, shut me up, so three days later, at the Birmingham G8 Summit, I asked Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spokesperson:
With the Summit being held in the last three days of Christian Aid Week, and eight of the nine heads of government here from Christian countries, will any Prime Minister propose a personalized G8 collection on behalf of fellow Christians starving in Southern Sudan?
On the sixteenth day of my fast, and quite independent of it , given that I had lost nearly a stone, I suffered the first of four successive TIAs, transient ischaemic attacks or short-duration strokes, happily without any incapacity, but with still continuing flushes on the left side of my head and slight numbness in my left arm and leg. I am now daily on a full 300-mg aspirin, arterial-clot blockers (dipyridamole) and blood pressure pills (nifedipine). Ideally, pressure should be 100/60, or at most 120/83, but my lower, diastolic had often risen into the (high) 90s.
In 1985 my examination at Mount Sion, the major hypertension clinic in New York, had given me a false sense of security, because I now appreciate that it is peaks in the diastolic, rather than a satisfactory 24-hour average, which gives rise to thromboses and embolisms (as I suffered in 1992), to TIAs and strokes (as now), or heart attacks (whenever). In one third of cases a TIA leads to a stroke, and one quarter of strokes are fatal, so pulses in the temple, or in the neck (though my carotid arteries are not unduly blocked), followed by numbness on the left side, are disconcerting, not least when living and working alone.
One such sensation occurred in Washington, on the first day of the World Bank meetings and, while the numbness had not completely gone by the following morning, I decided that, if I was to die, it had may as well be in the front line of work for parity democracy, so I went out and met another twenty delegations in the afternoon. Of course, I also thought it was my imagination, so I was relieved (!) when the consultant neurologist, at the end of September, confirmed the TIA by finding less reflex and muscle tone on my left side. In short just as, over the past 18 years, I have continued my work despite uncertain finance, so for the next 18 (!) I may have to carry on with uncertain health.
In 1998 again, my finances were helped out by loyal friends, only one third as much as in recent years, (see overleaf), which meant that I had to dig deep into my savings for the journey to South Africa, and to update my computer with a fax-printer and a 17 inch monitor. But at least
I was able to extract from my ex-wife Sandra, the apartment deposit of 13 000 000 lire (then
US $ 10 000) which I had provided in 1982 for my Cambodian friend Tho, after a lawyer had obliged her to admit that she had kept the money as repayment for 18 months board when Tho arrived in Pisa as an 18-year-old refugee. Tho is now a fully qualified microbiologist with a permanent hospital post in Biella in northwest Italy, and the money will help finance an apartment for his new Italian wife Tiziana and their expected baby.
In November 1999 I shall obtain a limited state pension - my UN pension was cashed in 1985 to finance a roof over my head and my subsequent work - so contributions from friends are still more than welcome, as provided for below. My only plans for work travel outside Europe in 1999 are to the annual World Bank meetings in Washington in September, and just possibly to my third Commonwealth conference in South Africa.
With all good wishes for 1999
Raymond Lloyd
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Enclosed is a 64th birthday gift of £ ..…. $…… made out to “Raymond Lloyd”, to support fulltime voluntary work for parity democracy
I would like my gift to be ….. anonymous …. . listed
I hope to make another contribution ..… in 1999 …… in 2000
NAME ……………………………….………………………… Date …………….
ADDRESS ………………………………………………………
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