Division of Labour.

Who does the Hoovering in your house? An emotive question if ever there was one. Whilst it all goes on behind the proverbial closed doors I am willing to bet that the household division of labour is the cause for many a domestic tiff. There are many hues of politics and most of them can be found in the microcosm of the domestic household. Perhaps your house is run as a socialist republic with everyone taking an equal share. Maybe it's a despotic dictatorship with you giving the orders, or possibly a democracy where you think you have a say but you don't really.

Our house runs roughly on the socialist republic model. We both do the housework and the shopping generally although my lovely wife does the greater percentage. We both do our own ironing. She normally does the washing although I have been known to put a load on from time to time and we sort of split the cooking. This socialist ideal falls apart here though as anything to do with decorating, the garden or the car fall very firmly into my camp. As a work colleague of mine once put it, 'there are pink jobs and there are blue jobs.' Strangely the pink jobs are mine as well.

Other people I know have a different system. A friend of mine lives in a dictatorship and it's not him giving the orders. My friend receives an allowance  from his partner who manages his money for him. She writes lists of jobs for him to do and has been known to text extra jobs as he is on his way home from work. It's not clear how much work she actually does, it's not really polite to ask but his jobs list includes both pink and blue varieties of tasks. My friend seems perfectly happy with this arrangement.

Alternatively, the wife of another friend of mine flatly refuses to do any housework at all thereby it falls to my friend to complete the chores. Unfortunately he's not very good at it either. They manage to bumble along although the place could do with a really good dust. It's not a political system, more like anarchy. My wife worked with a chap who also did all the cooking, cleaning and just about everything else, I trust his house was sparking and dust free unlike my friends.

I have other friends who live on their own and so have to do everything whether they like it or not. My Dad also lives on his own now since he was widowed and he confessed to me the other day that he had no idea how much effort went into basic housework. My stepmother was one of those domestic goddess types who could do needlepoint at the same time as cooking a Sunday roast, cleaning the house and entertaining guests. He has installed a water filtration system now because he is fed up cleaning the lime scale off the taps. He wouldn't have thought of it before. You can't have a political system with only one person in it and this is where my theory falls down but at least there is no one to argue with.

Then there are the Monarchies. Grown up singletons I know who still live with mum and dad. No doubt some help round the house but there are many who don't and carry on in their merry way oblivious while the serfs around them labour. Eventually the quiet grumbling of the peasants turns into bubbling resentment and then militancy... Then comes the revolution.