Barm brack is very wet

[ailbhe]

Also, I wonder what the etymology is? Freckled barm seems obvious. What's a barm?

Now I need to wash and shred the kale. I've also done three loads of laundry so far today; it's good drying weather.

I see from the BBCs Have your say page that there is no gender pay gap.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=3755&edition=1&ttl=20071030135957

Well, I guess my blood pressure was already a little low. It's nice to know that I'm doing the moral thing by staying home minding my children, isn't it? Like a real woman or a proper mother ought to, not like all those fake women and lousy mothers who AGH HELP HED XPLOD WITH RAAAGE

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Ah, I came across this yesterday. Barm is apparently a type of raising agent, like yeast.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia says, "In Ireland it is sometimes called Báirín Breac." My guess is that the English comes from the Irish.

I'd never heard of it before reading the Wikipedia article, and now I want to make it.

[triskellian]

I read the first page of that Have Your Say before I managed to tear my brain away from the horror. Can't help wanting to track down some of the commenters and demand they justify their stupid unexamined assumptions :-(

[da-pol.livejournal.com]

Well - in Lancashire, Barm is a bread roll - I can see the derivation from the Yeast though, as in various other places I've been it refers to various bread products, but always leavened.

[pauamma]

/me iz putin ur hed bak toogather.

[ailbhe]

Petrol is cheaper than milk. Childcare is cheaper than computer care. Viagra rules ok and female sexual dysfunction is almost totally unexamined. KILL THEM ALL RAGE.

[ailbhe]

The pronunciation doesn't do that at all naturally, though -I mean, it does for breac (freckled/speckled) but not for Báirín. Hm, I don't actually know what that means, either, come to think of it.

OED says BARM

[k425.livejournal.com]

1. a. The froth that forms on the top of fermenting malt liquors, which is used to leaven bread, and to cause fermentation in other liquors; yeast, leaven.

In addition, the OED has barnbrack
An Irish cake or loaf containing seeds or fruit; = BARNBRACK.
Quots. 1855 prob. represent attempts to render Irish bairghean breac BARNBRACK.

So it may originally have been barnbrack but ease of pronunciation causes n to become m when it's with b, so it's evolved into barmbrack.

Any good?

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

One comment summed up my feelings.

"I have just read the entire report and the 17% quoted is based on 'types' of jobs 'usually' taken by different genders. So a nurse compared to a policeman, or a childminder compared to a mechanic (both comparisons made in the report). The report does acknowledge that male and female candidates for the same role tend to be paid equally.

So the figures show equal pay for the same jobs regardless of gender. It's actually saying the jobs women tend to do are paid less than the jobs men tend to do".

Male nurses get paid the same as female nurses. WPCs earn the same as PCs. There is no gap, only rabble-rousing.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

I stopped partway through the first page. This was because I was at work and people probably wouldn't have taken it very well if I'd started swearing at my computer and the world in general (or at least the particular subsection of the world that was Having Its Say).

[rmc28]

My life is much happier since I swore off Have Your Say.

[wingedkami.livejournal.com]

I realised a few months ago that the HYS pages are absolutely riddled with morons. I strongly recommend not reading them unless you really want to play a game of 'spot the logical fallacy'.

I really shouldn't read them myself. They only make me angry.

Re: OED says BARM

[sshi.livejournal.com]

Actually, 'bairghean breac' is not a hundred miles away from the 'barn brack', which is what I'm used to calling it, rather than 'barm'.

I had a poke around the dictionaries on the net and found a Scots Gaelic reference to baighearn as bread and 'baighearn breac' as bread with currants (presumably speckled with). Sounds like could be a root, no?

Also, I'm purposely not even engaging to the HYS, as my head is asplodey enough as it is, already. Aargh, is all I say.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I just want to give them all a hefty kick in the nadgers, actually.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

If there is really no issue about who does what kind of work, why am I going into a trade that is _still_, in the _21st century_, 95% male?

the gap

[liveotherwise.livejournal.com]

is in trying to work out why the work that women do is so undervalued, even if it is of greater complexity than that done by men. There's a useful article over here

http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/English/Nurses%20pay%20equity.htm

Hi Ailbhe - I've been reading for a bit, coming over from Alison and Layla, hope it's OK for me to comment too!

Re: OED says BARM

[k425.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's the actual root, but because English already had 'barm' the two pronunciations became conflated.

Re: the gap

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

Well, valuation is supposedly a market function. In other words, people who pay for childminding decide whether its worth more or less than getting their car fixed. Also, childminding is an ongoing expense where car-fixing is (hopefully) occassional and emergency based. I don't think this report has a leg to stand on from that point of view.

If you want to pay your childminder more, feel free. Alternatively, as Kylie has shown us, there's nothing to stop a woman from being a mechanic.

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should encourage women to take it up, rather than complain about it?

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should wonder why this is still the case, rather than telling me it's my problem?

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

Not really. I don't see many female famrworkers since it's hard, thankless and pays fuck all. Therefore, I have merely chosen to assume that this is a pattern. Equal access to jobs, but only the good ones?

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

And you don't think the traditionally female jobs (such as, oh, preschool teacher) are "hard, thankless and pay fuck all?"

I don't think there's anything more I can say to you on this topic.

[grumpyolddog.livejournal.com]

I agree that some "traditionally" female jobs meet that description. Would you say the two jobs were equivalent? Should we be encouraging young women to become farm workers, sewage engineers and oil-rig divers?

Or is this just more flag-waving from idiots who refuse to see that this battle was won years ago and aren't bright enough to either enjoy it or find a new dead horse to flog?