In the public eye

Oh dear! What an uproar about a member’s comments on the activities of the Shoreditch Sisters WI! Is this another occasion on which we should say “There is no such thing as bad publicity”? I can understand how some members could find its approach too forthright (displays on quilts of female parts not usually discussed at the dinner table and pictures of sanitary wear worked into posters) but it is a generational problem and the WI does pride itself on catering for all ages. What Shoreditch does for our WI campaigns is not all that different to the rest of us except they are more active publicly. It is more direct and aims to shake everyone up---which it is obviously very successful in doing. What shook me in the press articles was that it had come from a federation trustee which seemed a bit disloyal: I thought trustee members stood together at least in public. Someone must have leaked the blog entry to the media because I don’t believe the local press reads our WI blogs.
If my blog is to go more public I had better be a bit more circumspect about what I say---especially now that I see I have been given categories for people to click to find specific subjects in my ramblings. Have you noticed this re-arrangement? Nothing has disappeared from the website. More future events have been added and some items shuffled about a bit. Our federation website was one of the first and was a role model for quite a few years so we should be proud of it. I wish more Bucks members used it.
The local WI discussion group met to discuss tele -medicine which we had to have defined for us at the start but then discovered that our local surgery has been using the system for some time but we, the patients, hadn’t known its title. Several members were appreciative of booked phone calls to avoid attending the surgery and felt confident that if there had to be follow-up on the diagnosis they would be able to see the doctor or specialist more promptly. Others were insistent that they preferred to speak face-to-face. With today’s pressures on hospitals and doctors generally, this must be helpful like the triage systems in A&E departments. And what about operations being conducted on Skype from one continent to another or being performed by an AI robot being manipulated by a surgeon in another room?
In support of our WI’s charity MIND Buckinghamshire a coffee morning and jigsaw swap in a member’s house raised £75. This is a gesture towards the resolution on mental health going to the AGM in Cardiff in June. This resolution is another example of the WI not being afraid to tackle subjects that have been considered unsuitable for discussion in public. I wonder how the Shoreditch Sisters will handle this one.
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