THE fantasy Alice in Wonderland world of the Palace of Westminster is evidenced by a real Alice: Alice Macdonald. She is the Labour and Cooperative Member of Parliament for Norwich North. Alice is very interested in fertility. (The italicised quotations are from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.)
In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream, Lingering in the golden gleam, Life, what is it but a dream?
On November 4 Alice Macdonald presented a Ten Minute Rule Bill to Parliament that would give people a statutory right to paid time off for fertility appointments.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
She said: ‘A change in the law is not just a moral imperative but an economic one, as research has shown that inadequate fertility policies cost UK businesses millions annually due to unplanned sick leave, lost productivity, and staff turnover.’
When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more, nor less.
She added: ‘My Bill aims to help build a fairer, more supportive system and workplaces that truly reflect the realities of modern life.’
Well, I never heard it before, but it sounds uncommon nonsense.
The GMB, Britain’s third largest union, has thrown its support behind Macdonald’s campaign calling for the legal right to paid time off for IVF treatment.
We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.
On June 17, fertility champion Alice Macdonald voted in favour of an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill proposed by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi to amend the criminal law to decriminalise abortion by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy.
Since 1967 there have been almost 11million abortions in Britain.
To keep the same population size without positive net migration, the total fertility rate for countries with low mortality needs to be around 2.1 children per woman. The rate has been lower than this in England and Wales since the 1970s. It is currently less than 1.5.
It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.
Alice Macdonald also supports the Assisted Dying Bill.
I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.
In support of her Ten Minute Rule Bill, she proclaimed: ‘We’re facing a global fertility decline, but failing to support those actively trying to start a family’.
Alice exists in the weird Westminster Wonderland where fertility is simultaneously championed and demonised.
And the moral of that is . . . Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
