Winter Essentials

Around this time last year I posted about some lovely winter products that would get my skin through the Skin Horror that is winter. This year I've tried different products as I'm more aware of what my skin does and doesn't like. Last year I posted mainly about Lush and The Body Shop's products, but this year I've tried many different products and these are my faves.

1 // 2 // 3

30 Before 30.

I thought I would do this as I'm a huge fan of setting myself things to do (especially when all the things are fun). I've written this list on paper and hung it on my wall as a reminder of things I want to achieve over the next 6 and a bit years - I think I've given myself plenty of time, ha. 

(Photo by +Nicola Jewell: http://www.nicolajewell.com/)

Winter/Dry Skin

I decided to write this post both as a help to anyone who suffers with the horrors of wintery dry skin and also as something for me to read back on when next winter rolls around and I'm panicking because I can't remember what I use to cure myself.

I don't just have dry skin, I also have eczema so winter is a complete bitch for me. I can often find my skin so dry that it causes me great amount of pain and I don't want to leave the house. Prescription creams from my doctor tend to do nothing for me as they never feel like they really get into my skin. This is where the Body Shop and Lush have been a great help.

Child Poverty and Low Pay.

Nine thousand and two hundred children in Blackpool are currently living in poverty. That's almost a quarter of the town's children.

Last week my local paper, The Gazette, posted an article about the council's aims to tackle child poverty, which you can see here. In this article there were six aims set by the council to tackle the increasing problem of child poverty.
Their six aims are:
1. To remove barriers to children achieving their full potential through education and employment.
2.  To provide appropriate support for vulnerable children.
3. To ensure children have a healthy start to life.
4. To build stable communities.
5. To improve the financial stability of families.
6. To embed tacking child poverty in all other areas of council work.

Deprivation and Blackpool

(Picture from this depressing article on Blackpool)

A couple of months ago I started a voluntary job with Oxfam. In my constant quest to eliminate poverty I figured they're a pretty good group to side with. I'm pretty obsessed with the whole tackling poverty thing mainly because of where I'm from and how I grew up.

I was brought up in South Shore, Blackpool. I lived here up until I went to university and my parents moved to the slightly wealthier (and older and more Toryish) Bispham.

The other day this news article was on the BBC and it stated that South Shore was one of the top 10 most deprived areas in the country. This does and doesn't surprise me, as South Shore is a really deprived area but I really didn't think it was top 10 worthy. I do think that part of the reason I don't really see the deprivation is because I'm desensitised to it. When I left home for uni I remember thinking THIS IS SO POSH and then I quickly figured out that I think anything that isn't a terraced house or a flat is posh. No joke, guys, I live in a 3 bedroomed semi-detached house now-a-days and I'm still getting used to the fact we have a garage. I mean, we don't use it properly or owt, BUT WE COULD, and that's fancy.

Work Harder

(picture from http://torympslookingsinister.tumblr.com/)

I got home from work the other day to hear that William Hague thinks people should work harder. I'd just got two buses home from my minimum wage job and it was half eleven at night. Nah. Soz.

Working. Unemployed.

I'm currently ill in bed and trying to fit this quick post in before Corrie.

Some of you may know that in an attempt to pay off my overdraft and get a life I've got a temporary waitressing job in a restaurant. The hours are long and it pays minimum wages and it's TIRING. The people I work with are all lovely and make it a gazillion times better than it otherwise would be.

I just have a few things I kind of wanted to say about it. Not because you all want to read it or anything as ridiculous as that, but occasionally I like to flick through this blog and remind myself of times when I've been happy/sad/angry and I felt I should probably note this whole temporary work fiasco down.

Working from 12pm until 11pm -and sometimes past midnight- is tiring and depressing. There's no time for anything else, I've not seen any friends in ages (except my best friend and that's because we coincidentally have had the same days off). I've cried more in the past two weeks than I probably have in the past 3 months. I've gone from one extreme (being unemployed with all the time in the world) to working all the hours ever. I'd never ever say I was work-shy, I've pretty much always been employed since I was 15 and it's never been desk jobs so it's not like I'm scared of being on my feet all day or anything as pathetic as that. It's just that this is not healthy, I don't know how anybody does it, but I do know that for many it's not a choice *serious face*. From speaking to the fab people that I work with there are cases of people that have debt to repay (nothing like the measly grand a half of overdraft that I have), haven't been able to get apprenticeships or have simply ended up there just as I have.

It feels weird to write, I haven't actually written a single thing in ages and I feel like I've forgotten how to do it. Apologies if this ramble is hard to read, I'm trying to make it at least a little coherent.

So yes, anyway. I was thinking about a lot of things today and I have a few points.

• I was watching that Dispatches episodes about rubbish collections and recycling and why the fuck did they not mention restaurants once? This is the second restaurant I've worked in and both have been  appalling for recycling. There's this massive focus on household waste and recycling but never a mention of the catering industry, especially in the mainstream media. Do we just ignore that? Is that the done thing? The amount of glass, cardboard and food waste that gets taken to landfill is just crazy. Well annoying.
• No-one who works 12 hours a day has any time for politics. Fucking lucky too, because if they did have the time to pay attention to it they'd be really angry at it all (well, angrier...). Even I -someone who <3s politics- has been plagued with a horrible bitterness towards people in politics in the space of a fortnight. Obviously when I'm unemployed again my bitterness shall be focused on a different aspect of politics (which can be summarised with the well known phrase "fucking Tories").
• I'll be unemployed again after the first week of November. I'm ridiculously lucky to have parents who aren't charging me any rent whilst I pay off my overdraft and such. However, there are some people who will be made unemployed when I will -because it's the end of Blackpool's season when the illuminations are turned off- and they have families to look after and rent to pay. The bus I get to work drives through one of the poorest wards in Blackpool and for many people living in that ward it'll only get worse at the end of the season. This isn't a "oh poor them in their poor situation" thing. I've lived in that, I'm not feeling sorry for them, I'm angry. Since I was a kid there's now more help in schools for poor kids and there is more help for parents, but towns like Blackpool still have nothing in the way of good, permanent employment. Masses of people are loaded onto the dole queue every November until late February and it's months of hard winters for all of them. I know Blackpool is undergoing a regeneration at the moment, and fair enough, it's looking nicer and the town attracted 13 million visitors this year, but where are the benefits to those of us who actually live here? Where are the proper jobs? Where is all this money that's being pumped into the local economy going? FOR REAL. So much anger at all of this.

Anyway. I think I'm done ranting now. If anyone made it this far then you're a bit weird but it's really appreciated. Corrie is on now, good timing.

Oh Hurricane

Hurricane

Blackpool was getting some sort of ex-Hurricane Katia blah*. 

It's very windy. 

Here are a few pictures I took when I walked back from the town centre.

*I have a Geography A-Level, I can assure you that's the proper terminology.

Sexuality nonsense

I know I get in a bit of a feminist hissy quite a lot, but I think today and yesterday I've had my sexualities hat on and have been watching out for any sexuality-related nonsense.

Firstly, scientists have proven that bisexuality is an actual thing. I know right. Who'd have known? I really like that bisexuals have a validated sexuality; they must be relieved to know they're no longer abnormal, thanks Science! It's a bit insulting, isn't it? There are loads of sexualities and if we're going to have to sit around and wait for scientists to decide that they exist* then we'll be waiting a very long time.