The Book Group read “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert this month which is a story of Emma who lives in a self-centred world of her own based on dreams which have been fed by reading romantic novels similar to modern day Mills &Boon. She wrecks the lives around her, runs into desperate debt and ends up taking the only way out by committing suicide; all in her search for passionate love preferably in some exotic far Middle-Eastern setting. I am glad to say that nearly everyone finished reading the novel in spite of the tragic storyline because there was dark humour at the expense of the heroine and the pomposity of the people living in a small French town in the 1850s and it was beautifully written. Flaubert commented on society in as great detail as any Chinese civil servant assessing his neighbours’ economic and social rating.
It is not often that I seek refuge indoors away from the temperature outside and am glad to sit down to write the blog. Now that I do, I find that it is over a fortnight since I wrote anything about what is happening in the WI in Bucks which is not, I am sure a true picture. Locally, our WI discussion group set the members a topic about which few of them knew anything at all so they were forced to do quite a lot of homework in advance. We talked about the Chinese social credit system. OK! So you all knew about that: well, we didn’t but we do now and this is why our meetings are so worthwhile and enjoyable. It is a national scheme where every citizen will have a credit rating assessed on his/her reputation in the community to include aspects of private and business life. In some pilot towns and cities the ratings are pinned up in public places for all to see and anyone can add or subtract points to the scores of others. If one plays the radio or TV too loud, if one is seen to jay-walk or jump a red light, or thought to be a bad parent or fail to pay a fine etc. one’s rating will suffer. This has the potential to have a mortgage refused or put an end to a job application. Couple this system with a register built on facial recognition and one’s life is no longer one’s own. Could this happen in the UK? We can check our credit ratings and sometimes these have been proved wrong. Amazon and big shopping stores keep records of what we buy and so do our computers. There are tax records and a national NHS data bank. CCTV and Neighbourhood Watch? Makes you think, doesn’t it? Name and shame---here we come.
The Book Group read “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert this month which is a story of Emma who lives in a self-centred world of her own based on dreams which have been fed by reading romantic novels similar to modern day Mills &Boon. She wrecks the lives around her, runs into desperate debt and ends up taking the only way out by committing suicide; all in her search for passionate love preferably in some exotic far Middle-Eastern setting. I am glad to say that nearly everyone finished reading the novel in spite of the tragic storyline because there was dark humour at the expense of the heroine and the pomposity of the people living in a small French town in the 1850s and it was beautifully written. Flaubert commented on society in as great detail as any Chinese civil servant assessing his neighbours’ economic and social rating.
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AuthorValerie Alsford has been a WI member for over 40 years. She has been writing a blog on the Buckinghamshire Federation Website for many years but we will put her posts on this site too! To see her historical thoughts please access the Bucks Website. Categories |