stroppyblog

A break from blogging

2011-03-06T19:28:00.003Z

I'm very aware I haven't blogged much of late. At the moment it is more a stress, a chore, than a pleasure . The blog has always been something I have enjoyed doing, but at the moment my focus is on finding work after the end of March, paying the mortgage and keeping my home and cats . That is where my energy has to go.

I'm not sure what to do with the blog. I don't really want to give it up for good, but I also know I need to put in work to get back the readership and more importantly the debates in the comments boxes. I'd love to get more women writing for it, but again that takes effort . I need to kickstart the blog before anyone would want to join.

There is some much going on in the world, but I don't get a chance to write . I then feel frustrated as I haven't posted and that then gets stressy .

I find at the moment that it I write a status update or do a link on Facebook, I get lots of comments and debate . Here though, more effort but less response . Is there a point anymore to this blog when I get more interaction with people on Facebook ?

I also need to tart up the design , its all very tired .

But, before all that I need to concentrate on financial survival. That is my priority .

I'll leave this post up for a while, then I will take the blog down while I decide what to do with it.

I feel very attached to this blog, which is why I hate seeing it just going downhill.

I'll give it some thought .

Article for Labour Briefing on London Transport workers' struggles

2011-02-21T10:17:00.000Z

I have written this short article for Labour Briefing:

On 6 February, despite strong opposition from trade unions and passengers, London Underground completed its cut of 800 jobs from its stations. It slashed ticket office opening hours and removed staff from around the stations, leaving safety and security compromised and passengers without the help they need. Private-sector-run upgrades are seeing repeated failures, and maintenance regimes are being slashed.

RMT and TSSA fought the job cuts, taking four separate days’ strike action between September and November. The two unions are now engaged in a review of the job cuts with LU management which may yet restore some of the cut jobs.

During the dispute, LU took hostages, sacking three RMT representatives in an attempt to weaken the union. LU has since reinstated stations rep Peter Hartshorn on appeal, as his Piccadilly line workmates prepared for strike action. But train driver RMT reps Eamonn Lynch and Arwyn Thomas remain sacked. Both have won ’interim relief’, as Employment Tribunal judges ruled that LU had sacked them unfairly due to their trade union activities. It is very rare for sacked union reps to win interim relief; the fact that Eamonn and Arwyn did so shows beyond doubt that their sackings were an anti-union act.

Eamonn’s and Arwyn’s workmates on the Bakerloo and Northern lines have taken two days’ strike action to demand their reinstatement. RMT is now preparing to escalate the dispute by balloting all our driver members for strikes. Rank-and-file reps and members understand that the sackings are not merely injustices against two members, but an attack on the union and on trade unionism in general.

Workers on the Docklands Light Railway voted in January by a big majority for strike action over several issues, including cuts in pension rights, imposed restructuring, and the sacking of two workmates. But the employer, Serco Docklands, ran to the High Court, which duly obliged them with an injunction against the strike. RMT had not broken any existing anti-union law, so the judge invented a new one and declared the union to have broken that!

The injunction extends Britain’s already highly-repressive anti-union legislation, by declaring that a union must give a far more detailed explanation of how it compiled the information it has to provide to the employer in its notices of ballots and industrial action. So RMT has appealed against the injunction; as I write, the appeal has been heard, but judgment may not be given until March.

Once again, democratic, effective trade union action has been thwarted by anti-democratic laws and judges, bent on serving the employers. It is telling indeed that when a court rules a strike unlawful on a flimsy pretext, the union has to obey and call off the strike; but when a court rules a sacking unlawful on good grounds, the employer does not have to obey and reinstate the sacked worker! David Cameron claims that Britain’s employment law is weighed too heavily in favour of the employer, but these latest cases prove the opposite.

It is easy enough to denounce anti-union laws and judges; it is now high time for a renewed campaign to defeat them. Our unions must mobilise members to fight for trade union rights, and those who claim to represent the labour movement in politics must make a stand against the anti-union laws, rather than staying away when they have a chance to do so, as when John McDonnell’s Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill was debated in Parliament.

Follow RMT in the London Transport region:
Website: www.rmtlondoncalling.org.uk
Twitter: @RMTLondon

By Janine Booth, London Transport region representative, RMT Council of Executives

Urgent appeal : Abortion Support Network to run out of funds by the end of the month

2011-02-16T13:48:00.003Z

Many support the right of women to have safe legal abortions when they need them. Well, now is the time to put your money where your principles are .

from the F-Word :

The Abortion Support Network, which helps women who have been forced to travel from Ireland to Britain for an abortion, is urgently in need of funds and is set to reach the end of its reserves by the end of February.

ASN’s director Mara Clarke sent a pleading email to supporters yesterday, explaining what has happened: in short, more women than before are coming forward as media coverage has made them aware of the organisation’s existence, and a number of expensive cases involving young women and women late in pregnancy.

So far in 2011, ASN has helped women including:

A 15 year old girl
A 20 week pregnant 16 year old
A 19 year old pregnant as the result of rape, who had to go through the added distress of having to find a way to provide DNA evidence to the police
A mother of two who had to reschedule her appointments due to snow, making her later term
A single mother of a young child, recently out of a rehabilitation facility,
A mother of four supporting her family with a part time job only able to come up with £800 towards her £1390 procedure
A single woman who wanted her baby - until she lost her job.
A woman who came to the UK for a 2-day procedure without realising she would need to find her own accommodation
Marta says:

By donating today, you can help break down the barriers preventing women from obtaining timely, cost-effective abortions and, in turn, help us to be able to serve a greater number of women. 100% of your donation will go DIRECTLY toward paying for a women’s abortion.

Right, this service is essential. Donate now .

Links: Workers' and Trade Union Involvement in Egyptian Uprising

2011-02-11T19:53:00.002Z

While the exciting events in Egypt make headline news, the mainstream media do not tell us much about workers' and trade union involvement. So I have compiled this selection of links:

Up-to-the-minute workers' movement news and reports about Egypt on LabourStart website
Center for Trade Union and Workers' Services (the site appears in Arabic; to see the English version, click the drop-down menu, top left)
February 8: the day for Egyptian workers
Article by TUC International Officer, Owen Tudor: New Egyptian Trade Unions Play Their Part
Press release announcing new trade union federation in Egypt
Founding declaration of new trade union federation
ITUC Supports General Strike Call and Welcomes New Independent Trade Union Federation (International Trade Union Confederation)
Egypt's workers strike for democracy and rights, from the AFL-CIO (US equivalent of the TUC) website
This 2009 survey of violations of trade union rights by the ITUCdetails the close relationship between the official unions and the regime, and the legal curtailing of the right to independent, effective trade unionism
Egyptian workers start to move, from Workers' Liberty website
Video: Striking Egyptian Workers Fuel the Uprising After 10 Years of Labor Organizing

Go now Mubarak

2011-02-10T21:06:00.007Z

So, what exactly did he say ?

Well, he isn't going . Not yet, not until September .

The speech that droned on about commissions blah blah , amendments blah blah , how he has listened , sons of Egypt (err, what about the daughters)and playing the nationalist card.

Oh and lots about bleeding heart and fake concern for those who died while protesting. He will make those responsible accountable . Well that shouldn't take long, look in the mirror.

Oh and its not about him he said. Well yes and no, but the people clearly are calling FOR HIM to go. No in that a bit of tinkering is not enough, real change is needed when he goes .

A very out of touch speech, sickly and repetitive . Bottom line , some bollocks about listening, transition and that he is going nowhere till September.

That was the second nauseating thing I have had to listen to today . Earlier was subjected to the torture that is Coldplay, while being put on hold by a bank. Still at least Chris Martin isn't in charge of a nation.

The response from the people, whose expectations have been dashed seems to be growing anger and a determination not to give up.

The protesters include young and old, men and women and different religions and none . Strikes are happening and building .My fear though is off increased violence by the state .

Time to go Mubarak.

Blogging and life

2011-02-08T19:56:00.003Z

I have been so busy recently my fingers have barely touched a keyboard apart from work. I have a few months work at the moment and that , realistically, is my priority if I want to keep my home and cats . I leave the house before 7am and get home after 7pm, zonked.

So much has been going on in Egypt and i haven't had a chance to report . So much else as well.

I hope to do some posts in the next few days ...watch this space !

Update on Brenda Namigadde

2011-02-06T20:02:00.002Z

On 28th January Brenda Namigadde was placed on a 9:20pm flight en route to Uganda, by UK border officials. Then, at the eleventh hour, an injunction stopping her deportation was granted, and Brenda was taken off the flight shortly before takeoff.

From an e-mail by AllOut:

Brenda is scheduled to attend a High Court hearing on Monday morning to review her case. We are hoping the judge finally grants her asylum, but unfortunately we have plenty of reason to be skeptical: the British government is currently refusing up to 99% of asylum claims made by LGBT people.2

Luckily Brenda’s Member of Parliament, Andy Slaughter, is advocating strongly on her behalf. At a time when the Ugandan parliament is debating a law to make homosexuality punishable by death - and with last week’s murder of LGBT activist David Kato - he understands the grave danger Brenda faces. Slaughter has put forward an Early Day Motion3 in Parliament to pressure UK Immigration Minister Damian Green and UK Home Secretary Theresa May to intervene in Brenda’s case in the event that the court does not rule in her favour.

Our contact in Andy Slaughter’s office has told us that if even just a few dozen MPs sign this motion in the next few days, it will send a powerful message to Theresa May and the Home Office that they must intervene on Brenda’s behalf. Will you take a moment to ring your MP and ask them to sign on and support Brenda? It only takes 2 minutes and will make a huge difference:

1. Find your MP's number:
http://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/

2. Ask them to support Brenda. Here's a quick script to help:
“Hello. My name is (YOUR NAME) and I’m one of (MP NAME)’s constituents. I’m calling today about the case of Brenda Namigadde, a lesbian who is in danger of being deported to Uganda where she faces grave danger.
Please urge (MP NAME) to sign onto Early Day Motion 1385, sponsored by MP Andy Slaughter. The motion calls on the Government to exercise its powers to allow Brenda Namigadde to remain in the United Kingdom.
I will continue to follow Brenda’s case closely and urge you to sign the motion today before her hearing at the High Court on Monday.”
3. If you make a call, please reply directly to this email and let us know your MP’s response, so we can pass this information on to Brenda and her lawyer. On Monday, we want Brenda to know she still has our support, and we want the court to know how many others in the UK and around the world are standing by her side.

All best and All Out,
Andre, Jeremy, Joseph, Tile, Wesley and the rest of the team at All Out
www.allout.org

More info here and here.

Galloway to make an electoral alliance with Solidarity ?

2011-02-02T18:45:00.004Z

Seems Galloway is hawking himself around to get a seat as a MSP.

Press TV not pay enough? Missing his old MP salary? Bit handy then that Sheridan got banged up, one ego departs and another takes his place .

So, will the SWP now have to start defending him when he stands with the Iranian regime rather than those oppressed by that reactionary state ? How will they twist themselves to defend his Kylie knickers moments in his Daily Record articles ?

Then of course there are the contortations needed to explain why one minute he finds Solidarity too left for his tastes and of course the question of independence.

Expect a bit of doublethink re writing by his supporters and those perhaps returning to trail in his wake .

Autism facts and statistics

2011-01-31T21:19:00.001Z

Some thought-provoking facts from the National Autistic Society:

Prevalance:

Autism affects 1 person in every 100. That’s over half a million people in the UK, and two million people if you include their families.
In the average local authority area there are likely to be 2,500 people with autism.
In the average Member of Parliaments’s constituency there are likely to be 3,000 people affected by autism (people with the condition and their family members).

Education:

Over 50% of children with autism are not in the kind of school their parents believe would best support them
There are more appeals to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal about schooling for children with autism than for children with any other type of special education need. 79% of parents who have appealed to the Tribunal won their case.
Over 70% of schools are dissatisfied with their teachers’ training in autism and 44% of teachers report they do not feel confident teaching children with autism.
27% of children with autism are excluded from school at least once, compared with 4% of other children.
34% of parents say that a delay in accessing the right support at school had a negative impact on their child’s mental health.
42% of children with autism have no friends (compared to 1% of other children).

Adult services:

Two thirds of adults with autism do not have enough support to meet their needs.
A third of adults with autism have experienced severe mental health problems because of a lack of support.
60% of parents say that a lack of timely support has resulted in their son or daughter having higher support needs in the long term.
If local services identified and supported just 4% of adults with high functioning autism and Asperger syndrome the outlay would become cost neutral over time.
If they did the same for just 8% it could save the Government £67 million per year.

Employment:

Adults with autism say that finding a suitable job would improve their lives more than anything else, yet only 15% are in paid employment.
79% of adults with autism who are currently on Incapacity Benefit want to work.
One third of adults with autism, over 100,000 people, are currently without a job or benefits.
Over half have spent some time without either work of benefits, some for more than ten years.

Carers:

In a 2009 survey, 68% of carers said they were caring for over 71 hours a week.
69% of respondents of those carers who were not working had had to give up work because of their caring responsibilities.
76% of parents and carers of adults with autism are not currently receiving any support from their local authority.

Health (including mental health):

71% of children with autism have at least one mental health problem, such as anxiety disorders, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder, and 40% have two or more.
1 in every 10 children who use child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) has autism, that’s over 10,000 children every year.
In a survey of parents whose children had accessed CAMHS, two thirds said that CAMHS had failed to improve their child’s mental health.
Parents are twice as likely to say that CAMHS has improved their child’s mental health where they have had support from a professional who specialises in autism.
80% of GPs feel they need additional guidance and training to manage patients with autism more effectively.

Women of Egypt

2011-01-30T12:45:00.001Z

Tunisia and Egypt: "l'héroïsme ordinaire des femmes"

2011-01-30T09:14:00.002Z

Click here for photos on Le Monde website of women in the Tunisian uprising.

If you are on Facebook, click here for women taking part in the mass protests in Egypt.

The Day of Anger ... The Egyptians' Day

2011-01-29T17:14:00.002Z

This article is from the website of the Centre for Trade Union and Workers' Services in Egypt. A small drop-down menu at the top left enables you to read the English version of the site if you need to.

The Day of Anger … the Egyptians’ Day
Freedom … Justice … Dignity

Center for Trade Union and Workers Services “CTUWS”, 26 January 2011: Egypt witnessed yesterday (Tuesday, 25 January) the biggest popular protests since the “Bread Protests” of 18 and 19 January 1977.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians in Cairo, Alexandria, Mehalla, Suez, Ismailia, Kafr el Sheikh, Giza, Port Said, Fayoum and other governorates protested against the deteriorating economic conditions represented by the widespread of poverty (as more than 42% of the Egyptians live under the poverty line according to the United Nations statistics), the rising rate of unemployment and the soaring prices. Protestors called for political reforms and for dissolving the People’s Assembly (the Parliament) which came as a result of fake elections last November.

A number of protest movements and political powers seeking change called the Egyptians to come out to the streets on 25 January which coincides with the Egyptian Police Day.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens responded to the call of the political movements in Cairo and in several Egyptian cities on the Day of Anger to send a warning message to the regime to conduct immediate political and economic changes.

The “CTUWS” condemns using force to disperse the protestors who expressed their fair demands in a peaceful manner. Four citizens were killed, tens of citizens were injured and several hundreds were arrested in several Egyptian cities. The “CTUWS” calls for prosecution of the officials responsible for killing the four citizens and causing injury to other protestors. Meanwhile, the CTUWS calls for releasing all the arrested protestors.

The “CTUWS” warns against ignoring the demands of the Egyptian people. Any negligence, procrastination or handling these protests as a foreign conspiracy will cause more congestion and will increase the complexity of the situation.

The national duty implies that the government should listen to the demands of the protestors and to conduct real social dialogue with all the political powers and the civil society organizations. The dialogue should reach obliging realistic steps to get out of the crisis and to secure real democratic transformation of the Egyptian political system.

Egypt

2011-01-28T22:07:00.002Z

Had a bit of trouble opening this, but seems to work now .Check out live coverage of the protests unfolding in Egypt.

Looks like it won't be long before Mubarak does a runner .

Urgent, petition to save Brenda Namigadde from deportation today

2011-01-28T09:12:00.001Z

Over at this website there is a petition :

STAND WITH BRENDA

Brenda Namigadde, a Ugandan lesbian in the UK, faces deportation TOMORROW back to the life-threatening persecution she fled eight years ago.

We just found out that one of the leading figures in the LGBT movement in Uganda, David Kato, was murdered yesterday in his home. This awful tragedy makes clear what's at stake for Brenda if she is forced to return.

Will you join more than 20,000 people in 85 countries and sign this urgent letter pressuring U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May to stop Brenda’s deportation?

David Kato - In Memoriam

2011-01-27T19:44:00.001Z

From Peter Tatchell:

Heroic campaigner for LGBTI freedom murdered in Uganda

Ugandan LGBTI rights activist David Kato was found murdered in his house on 26 January 2011. He had received homophobic death threats and had been pictured and named by Uganda's Rolling Stone magazine in an article that called for gay people to be killed.

British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said:

"My sincere condolences to Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and to the Ugandan LGBTI community concerning the tragic, brutal murder of David Kato.

"I salute David and his immense, brave contribution to LGBTI human rights in Uganda.

"He was an inspiring campaigner of long and great commitment.

"David will live on in our memories. He will also live on through the rights and equalities that LGBTI Ugandans will win eventually thanks to his many years of tireless groundwork and campaigning.
"I express my admiration and appreciation to all the members of SMUG who are battling for LGBTI freedom in conditions of great adversity and danger. Their courage and tenacity is awesome.

"This savage killing will, I hope, finally prompt Uganda's political, religious and media leaders to cease their homophobic witch-hunts. Their hatred helps create the bigoted atmosphere that leads to queer-bashing violence.

"I urge the government of Uganda to withdraw the 'kill the gays' Anti-Homosexuality Bill, decriminalise same-sex relations and legislate protection for LGBTI people against discrimination and hate crimes," said Mr Tatchell.

There will be a vigil :

Memorial Vigil for David Kato in London

Murdered Ugandan LGBTI activist honoured

Friday 28 January 10.30am, Ugandan High Commission

Friday 28 January 2011
10:30 - 12:30
Uganda High Commission
58-59 Trafalgar Square
London SW1, United Kingdom
(south side by the start of Pall Mall, nearest tube Charing Cross)

LGBTI activist David Kato was beaten to death in his home in Uganda on 26 January.

David's funeral will be held on Friday 28th January. To coincide, a memorial vigil is being held outside the Ugandan High Commission in London.

Please spread the word via your email lists and Facebooks - and join us at the vigil.

Men can’t comprehend the complex rules of television broadcasting, say women

2011-01-26T16:27:00.002Z

Women everywhere were overheard this morning claming that men clearly don’t have the capacity to understand the complex broadcasting guidelines for UK programmes, and that they have no place using words on television.

Most amusing. Read the rest here.

Urgent appeal: Jailed woman trade union leader in Bangladesh

2011-01-21T13:58:00.003Z

From LabourStart ...
It has now been more than five weeks since the illegal arrest of Moshrefa Mishu, President of the Garment Workers Unity Forum in Bangladesh (pictured).

There was no warrant for her arrest at the time that heavily-armed plainclothes officers took her off to jail, where she remains - in poor health and badly treated.

Her real crime was leading a protest campaign to demand the implementation of the legal minimum wage.

I'd like to ask you to take a moment to send off an urgent message of protest to the government of Bangladesh demanding her release.

Please click here - http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=846 - to do so.

If you're on Facebook, please also sign up to support the cause there.

And also please forward this message to your fellow union members - let's mobilize thousands of trade unionists around the world to demand Mishu's release now.

"Bankers " school keeps out the poor

2011-01-16T11:40:00.005Z

So much for Con Dems promises to raise educational standards for all kids:

A CONDEM flagship school set up by fatcat bankers is refusing to take poor kids.
Pupils from a council estate primary are banned from Bolingbroke Academy in Battersea, South London, although it will cost taxpayers £6million a year.

...

Pupils from a struggling primary that lies on a deprived council estate have been told there will be no place for them at a ConDem free school being set up with backing from City fatcats.
Yet those at four others in wealthier parts of the same area have been singled out as feeders for Bolingbroke Academy – dubbed the bankers’ school – when it opens next year.

...

Labour MP Lisa Nandy said: “This is a shocking indictment on the Government’s policy on free schools, transferring money from the poor to the rich.

“Labour and teaching unions warned about this when the legislation was passed.” Bolingbroke Academy, being built on the site of a former hospital in Battersea, is supported by leading City finance firms.
Among them are NM Rothschild, Credit Suisse, Citi Group, Barclays Capital, Coutts, Normura, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and RBS.
Tory-controlled Wandsworth council is spending £13million buying the site and more public cash will be needed to convert it into a school. Taxpayers face an estimated £6million yearly bill for running the academy.

The move has sparked fury among teachers and union chiefs. GMB spokesman Paul Maloney said bankers who had to be bailed out with billions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash had “acquired a taste for using public money to fund their pet projects”.

All in it together, I think not. Handouts for the rich .

Gay Scientists Isolate Christian gene!

2011-01-10T09:50:00.001Z

Never trust a Lib Dem

2011-01-07T21:17:00.000Z

Lib Dem support hits all time low and Clegg not at all popular - Good !

2011-01-05T11:31:00.003Z

The price of backtracking on manifesto commitments for power:

Support for the Liberal Democrats has slumped to its lowest level since the party was formed in 1988, according to The Independent's "poll of polls".

Nick Clegg is now the most unpopular third party leader since David Owen led the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1989. The Liberal Democrats' 11 per cent rating in the first poll of polls since last May's election highlights the dramatic slide in their fortunes since they entered the Coalition with the Conservatives.

The 57 Liberal Democrat MPs would be reduced to a rump of just 15 at the next election if this level of support were to be repeated then.

Labour is now on 40 per cent and the Tories on 38 per cent, giving Labour an overall majority of 14, according to the weighted average of the regular surveys by ComRes, ICM, Ipsos MORI and YouGov.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, who compiled the figures, said that the costs and benefits of the Coalition had been distributed very unevenly between the two parties in it.

"It is clear that the tone and direction of the Coalition Government has upset many people who voted Liberal Democrat in May, and before, while for the most part those who voted Conservative have been reasonably content with what has transpired," he said.

"Liberal Democrat support is now lower than at any time since the party's troubled years following the merger of the Liberals and SDP." Mr Clegg's party is as unpopular as when the third party propped up an ailing Labour government in a Lib-Lab pact before the 1978-79 "winter of discontent".

The parallel is not an encouraging one for Mr Clegg, since its number of MPs fell to 11 at the 1979 general election – its worst result at any election between February 1974 and 2010.

"It seems that history is repeating itself so far as public reaction towards the party's involvement in support for a government engaged in cutting public expenditure is concerned," said Professor Curtice. "It certainly should not be presumed that demonstrating an ability to take tough decisions in the national interest will eventually reap a reward in the ballot box."

...

"Mr Clegg has clearly taken a serious hit personally," said Professor Curtice. Only 38 per cent of people are satisfied with his performance as Deputy Prime Minister, while 50 per cent are dissatisfied. These are the worst ratings for a third party leader since Dr Owen's score in December 1989, when 24 per cent were happy with him and 52 per cent unhappy.

Enjoy the power while you can Clegg,propping up the Tories will damage you and the Lib Dems in the long term as well as short. Those naive enough to have voted for them believing they represented some sort of new shiny principled politics will not make the same mistake again in local elections . They have seen the broken promises ,the ease and enthusiasm with which Clegg has worked with the Tories.

I look forward to seeing them hammered in May .

Well done - Janine Booth elected onto RMT's national Council of Executives.

2011-01-04T18:59:00.005Z

Congrats to Janine , from Workers Liberty :

AWL member Janine Booth has become the first ever woman to be elected to the London Transport seat on the RMT's national Council of Executives.
In a landslide victory, Janine received more than double the amount of votes won by her opponents. The key focus of her campaign was increasing rank-and-file control in the union and developing assertive industrial strategies designed to win. With the jobs dispute on London Underground now at a key juncture, the presence of a rank-and-file socialist like Janine on the union's national leadership could make a real difference.

Oh and don't forget to keep blogging here on your experiences .

Pete Postlethwaite RIP

2011-01-03T19:55:00.001Z

Communist Manifestoon

2011-01-03T10:50:00.000Z

A clever and useful vid, I think, for studying - or looking again at - the Communist Manifesto. The cartoons help to illustrate the ideas and keep the watcher engaged. Love the final screen, too.

The only problem, for me, is that the narrator's voice is rather soporific. Although he speaks clearly, I'd like an awesome statement like "The proletarian movement is a self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority" to be delivered with a little more revolutionary fervour, and a phrase like "bourgeois claptrap" to be spat out with a little more contempt!

PROTEST SONG FOR 2011

2011-01-01T19:48:00.002Z

Alternative New Year Honours

2010-12-31T14:03:00.003Z

I think Stroppyblog should award our own NY honours and dishonours .

Hmm, while I ponder that, suggestions ? Categories, people ?

Jayaben Desai RIP

2010-12-29T17:44:00.005Z

"What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. But in a zoo there are many types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips, others are lions who can bite your head off. We are the lions, Mr. Manager."
Jayaben Desai, to her boss, at the start of the Grunwick dispute in 1976.

"When they talked of the power of the trade union movement I listened but I didn't really believe. Now I see that power."
Jayaben Besai, when thousands of workers from other industries joined the Grunwick mass pickets.

Mrs Desai was one of the highest-profile and most articulate of the strikers, who proved that workers' struggle takes place not just in its traditional bastions, that Asian women workers can fight the bosses as tenaciously as anyone.

Her example has inspired many women (and men) in the 30+ years since.

Mrs Desai died last week. Her death is a very sad loss.

SSP statement on Sheridan conviction for perjury

2010-12-23T19:03:00.002Z

From the SSP website :

SSP statement on Sheridan conviction for perjury
23-12-2010

Tommy Sheridan’s conviction today for perjury was inevitable.

Six years ago, as leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, he proposed to sue a tabloid newspaper over stories he knew to be true and demanded that our party went along with his lies. All his closest friends and political allies of 20 years urged him not to take such a reckless course of action.

He will now be dealt with by the judge. We have no desire for vengeance.

What is more important is that all those who have been falsely denounced by him and his allies as liars, plotters, perjurers and forgers have been cleared.

The idea that there was a conspiracy involving Rupert Murdoch, Lothian and Borders Police and the SSP is nonsense and yet this is the narrative that Tommy Sheridan’s supporters publicly promoted for the past 4 years.

By his actions over six years, Tommy Sheridan has disgraced himself and negated his political contribution to the socialist cause over 25 years. History will now record that he did more harm to the socialist cause in Scotland than any good he ever did it.

That astonishing conclusion would not have been thought possible at the height of the poll tax struggle he led so well, or during his early period in the Scottish Socialist Party and Scottish Parliament.

The SSP reaffirms that its aim is to defend the interests of working people, the millions against the millionaires and to fight for a socialist transformation of society in the interests of the majority.

We now draw a line under this sorry saga and move on. The Scottish Socialist Party has been tested to the limit over the past six years and has proven it is a party of principles and integrity.

In this time of savage attacks by the rich against the poor, Scotland more than ever needs a strong left wing socialist party that can be trusted.

The fall of Tommy Sheridan - cross post

2010-12-23T17:45:00.002Z

Cross posted from Dave's blog :

THAT Tommy Sheridan was the most charismatic and gifted revolutionary socialist politician of recent decades is beyond serious dispute, and I always used to admire him for that. I still do, I suppose.

In a period where leftwing ideas failed to find a widespread hearing, he alone proved capable of building a substantial electoral base for basic class struggle ideas. Without him, the Scottish Socialist Party would not have achieved the measure of success it did achieve, and the credit for this can never be taken away from him.

That he used the fame that inevitably ensued to his personal sexual advantage is not an issue that should be of pressing concern to anyone other than himself and those with whom he slept. No one should cast judgement on the consensual relationships or others, be they gay, straight, marital, adulterous, based on auto-erotic asphyxiation, or participated in by however many can squeeze into a bed in a cheap hotel room.

At the time the News of the World published details of his visits to a swingers’ club in Manchester, Sheridan had sufficient popularity North of the Border to take exactly that stance. A dignified ‘no comment’ or a rigid ‘none of your business’ line, and he would have rode out the publicity, in much the same way as any other married politician caught playing away by the red tops.

There are enough broadminded adults out there to ensure that nookie with someone other than the missus is not the automatic end of a political career, as figures from Shagger Norris to Paddy Pantsdown can testify.

I cannot imagine what drove Sheridan to sue for libel instead. In a country where religious feelings are more widespread than in England, perhaps he felt that the revelations were electorally damaging. Perhaps he saw a one-off opportunity to make some serious cash. One day his memoirs will presumably tell us.

But what was inadmissible right from the start was his expectation that his comrades were somehow duty bound to stand up in the dock and commit the criminal offence of perjury in his support.

Sheridan’s supporters have argued all along that it is the elementary responsibility of socialists to defend other socialists against the Murdoch press, at all times and in all circumstances, and at any degree of jeopardy. The reality is that everything depends on the political issues at stake. Where there is sufficient cause for such a risk, then the correct course would naturally be to take it.

But unlike, say, John Maclean or the leadership of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1926, Sheridan was not before the court on charges of sedition. Unlike Jock Haston, Roy Tearse, Heaton Lee and Ann Keen, he did not stand in front of a jury for his support for unofficial industrial action. Unlike Ricky Tomlinson, Des Warren or the Pentonville Five, the issue at hand was not his conduct on the picket line.

Sheridan’s conviction today flows entirely from his insane determination to lie about his inability to keep it in his trousers. As a result, he has destroyed everything he spent the first half of his life building up, just at a time when a party premised on militant opposition to coalition austerity could truly have hit the big time. However sorry one has to feel for the family, the biggest tragedy about what has happened is the setback this represents for the far left as a whole.

Agree wholeheartedly . I also want to send my support to all the SSP comrades who were put in a terrible position because of the ego and stupidity of Sheridan in pursuing this .

Another post to check out is this one , from Scottish Socialist Youth.

Catholic church renounces hospital over life-saving abortion

2010-12-22T18:17:00.003Z

The head of the Catholic church in Phoenix has stripped Arizona's largest hospital of its Catholic affiliation after he ruled that a decision to save the life of a mother by terminating her 11-week pregnancy was morally wrong.

What a disgrace. Mind you, perhaps the hospital will be better off without its Catholic affiliation. It didn't even come with any money!

Full story here.

Don't forget Bradley Manning

2010-12-20T19:34:00.002Z

Assange has had his high profile supporters , backing him with money and publicity, but what about Bradley Manning ?

Anyone seen Bianca Jagger or Jemina Khan speak up for him ? Has Assange said anything ? I may have missed it, and do please let me know in the comments if they have .

The Independent reports :

The harsh prison detention conditions endured by Bradley Manning – the US soldier who is alleged to have supplied classified government documents to WikiLeaks – have emerged.

For the last seven months, Private Manning, 23, has been kept in a cell six feet wide and 12 feet long, in solitary confinement at a maximum security military jail at Quantico, Virginia.

A typical day for Private Manning begins with being woken at 5am in the cell, which has a drinking fountain and a toilet. He is then allowed to put on his clothes, which he surrendered on going to bed the night before.

Under the rules, Private Manning is not allowed to sleep at any time between 5am and 8pm; if he does so, he is made to sit up or stand by the guards. He is allowed just one hour of exercise a day, even then not in the fresh air, but an empty room where he can walk in figures of eight. Any attempt by him to keep himself busy by, for example, doing press-ups, or sit-ups, is forbidden.

He is not allowed to associate with his fellow inmates and has never seen them, although he does occasionally hear their voices.

Private Manning is allowed to watch local television channels, for up to three hours on weekdays; sometimes more at weekends. But he does not have access to wider news coverage. He is allowed one book and one magazine at a time, from an approved list of 15, and is allowed approved visitors at prescribed times. Lt Col Coombes said the guards have, at all times, behaved correctly towards Private Manning. But, under the regulations, their conversations with him must be minimal.

While the left get all excited about their latest male hero, lets hope they do not forget Bradley .

Remembering Kirsty MacColl

2010-12-18T15:52:00.002Z

Here are a few you tubes to celebrate the life of Kirsty , who dies 10 years ago today :

Kirsty sang and wrote songs that covered love in a down to earth way, used humour and did social commentary without being dull and worthy. She is much needed today .

Oh and how could I forget, the only Xmas song that is bearable to listen to :

LibDem MP tells constituent to get a life and stop whinging

2010-12-13T19:49:00.003Z

Seems one Lib Dem doesn't seem to think he needs to court the voters , perhaps thinking fuck it, can't be much more unpopular. Or perhaps just getting a bit tetchy , I mean can't be much fun being the collective fall guys for the Tories . Thats the price of selling what principles you did have for a sniff of power.

Anyway, back to the delightful Bob Russell, MP for Colchester . The Telegragh publishes a letter where he writes to a constituent :

Ooh, don't hold back there .

"My dissertation is huge: " Trot on the pull

2010-12-12T12:14:00.004Z

American I know, but sadly many similarities as highlighted by Dave a while back, with British leftie men .

Anyone want to add some classic Trot chat up lines ?

Hat Tip John Gray .

"Off with their heads:" Charles and Camillia faced with rioting 'subjects '

2010-12-10T13:11:00.006Z

Seems one Police Chief took this very seriously. Yep, throwing paint, kicking a car and shouting slogans could have led to some students being shot. Gosh and they weren't even Johnny foreigner who looks like a terrorist .

The news has been bleating on about how dreadful it was to inconvenience the Royal benefit scroungers , to whom tuition fees is surely like small change , having to face a public that wasn't bowing ,scraping and bearing flowers .

The Mail (apologies for linking ) states in its usual huff and puffery :

Met chief Sir Paul Stephenson today mounted an extraordinary defence of armed protection officers after the worst Royal security blunder in a generation.

Sir Paul hailed the 'enormous restraint' of the team guarding Prince Charles and his wife the Duchess of Cornwall, implying the rioters were lucky not to have been shot.

Camilla was left terrified as their Rolls Royce came under fire from a snarling mob of student fees rioters as it made its way to the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium.

The car was kicked, rocked and hit with paint bombs as up to 20 demonstrators attacked it and chanted 'Off with their heads!' and 'Tory scum', leaving the couple visibly shaken.

The Prince and Duchess were not hurt but the potential risk to their safety raised worrying echoes of the 1974 kidnap attempt on Princess Anne.

Yep, they weren't hurt or kettled or hit with a truncheon and needing a brain op like Alfie Meadows.

So they saw a glimpse of the anger from those at the sharp end of this Government and then scuttled back to their cosseted lives. Tough .

Nick Clegg - "Say goodbye to broken promises ."

2010-12-09T20:19:00.002Z

Oh the irony , no more broken promises . Vote Lib Dem, get a Tory Govt .

Hat tip to Nick Cohen on Facebook.

Student protests

2010-12-09T19:57:00.003Z

I wasn't able to go on the demo today due to having to work on job applications that may lead to me earning enough to live on again. This had to take priority, alongside being available for any temp work that may come up. Dwindling redundancy money and a mortgage tends to focus the mind.

I do hope that the coming months will see an increase in action against cuts to public services , which has already started in some areas . This must be the start of building a united fight against all cuts .

I notice some Lib Dems and the odd Tory voted against the Fees increase ,including standing down from their Government positions. Clegg and Cable though were still defending the indefensible .Clegg may say he has nothing to be ashamed of, but it seems his colleagues are finding it harder to justify their actions , shying away from the real reason of power at any price . Hopefully they will get hammered at the local elections .

There was though cause for celebration.Watching BBC News 24 I was amused that there was much relief that although Prince Charles and Camilla got their car kicked, they still arrived unflustered to the Palladium and the show started on time. Phew, that makes up for the vote .

More squirming from the Lib Dems: Danny Alexander on QT

2010-12-05T14:50:00.001Z

Hat Tip Left Foot Forward

A very Brighton response to snow !

2010-12-05T14:34:00.001Z

Matt Whistler's Merry Christmas 2010 Southover Street Brighton from Convict Films on Vimeo.

I'm sure there aren't many delicate types read this blog, but just in case , this contains nudity !

Woolas and Chaytor , a disgrace to politics

2010-12-03T12:51:00.004Z

David Chaytor pleads guilty to expenses charges and Phil Woolas loses bid to overturn a court decision to strip him of his commons seat and bar him from politics. Not a good day for labour and politics in general, thoughI must say though hearing the Lib Dems call for clean politics show irony is not lost on them.

Woolas played a nasty campaign that fed into fears and prejudice of Muslims and yet Labour MPs voted him on to the Shadow Cabinet . Some backbenchers were 'rebellious' and defended him . Hmm, shame some of them don't have the same gumption when it comes to voting against the Iraq war and more recently for John McDonnell's Trade Union Bill. Seems they can get all worked up to defend the indefensible.

Some thoughts on all the protesting malarkey , positive ones as well !

2010-12-01T15:25:00.007Z

I have been a bit quiet with the blogging,doing temp work is very unpredictable. I tend to be rung up first thing and asked to go asap to a job. I have done some very long two day shifts recently and all in all found it hard to get my head into the right place to do a post.Lots have been going on and I wish I had been able to go on some of the demos, but paying the mortgage and bills comes first I'm afraid. Here though are some thoughts on the last week or so.

A little while back I did what was perhaps a bit of a jaded post re the students demos . My concern was that the protests around education should be part of a wider movement around the cuts to the public sector and should involve those who have or are at risk of losing their jobs as well as those who rely on the services they provide . With regard to the last group this needs to be done sensitively , not always a trait of the left . At the moment there is much anxiety and also expectations being dashed for them.

Over the last decade , people have been encouraged to be more independent and have more control over the support they receive. Older people have been helped to live in their own homes or extra care housing where they have a flat and not just a room . People with learning disabilities have moved out of long stay hospitals and many now live in their own flats , some of which are shared ownership or housing association, rather than large homes. Same with others , such as those with long term mental health issues .

The old ways of people being expected to be happy with day centres , separate from the rest of the community , have been being eroded . People with learning disabilities, for example, have been moving from only having the option of day centres to being more part of their community . Many have chosen to do training , voluntary work or paid work. In this climate that is becoming less likely. The cuts mean that these improvements , that people can live like the rest of us , could be coming to an end. I know of a number of areas that are looking backwards to residential care as a 'cheaper' option . The chances of people getting into the employment market is less likely now, the day centre beckons. Expectations raised are now dashed . Anxiety increases with all the uncertainty. Having choice, control and independence for people who need support will be seen as a 'luxury' when the cuts are made . It will be a return to the old ways and the cheapest .

OK, gone round the houses a bit here . My point though is cuts to public services are not just about jobs, they are about the day to day quality of life for people . That will diminish and we will start to go backwards . There are a number of strong advocacy groups nationally, as well as local ones. They need to be part of campaigns and that will mean the left listening to their concerns and experiences and not trying to lead .

As an old cynic I must now admit I am becoming more positive with recent developments . The energy and determination of the student and schoolchildren movement is encouraging and it seems quite infectious. As is so often the case in the NUS, and unions in general, the members have been more radical than the leadership. The actions and pressure of the students have forced the NUS President to back them and admit the NUS had been spineless and too cautious. TUC take note.

I haven't been on the blogs much, I hope to do a bit of a round up of reporting on the demos in the next day or two, but I did notice Phil has written about the storming of Lewisham Town hall against the Council making cuts . Very heartening to see the direct action being taken to the Town Halls and against the cuts in services. I have also seen that students joined the RMT picket lines this week, that's what is needed , united against all cuts . It also seems that the Coalition of Resistance conference was both well attended and not dull in the extreme , pretty good going when faced with many speakers and a long day. Liam , who lets just say can be a tad cynical as well, even went as far as to call it 'exhilarating.' High praise indeed .

Now I'm not naive enough to think this is 68 again, that the revolution is on its way or that the left will be united , but hey its not a bad start is it ?

Pic: Eddie and Cat's Dawg . Totally unrelated to the post, but couldn't resist!

Happy birthday MarshaJane !!!!!

2010-11-27T09:59:00.003Z

Today MJ turns 30, yep no more Socialist 'youth' groups for the now old bird :-)

I am sure she will follow my good example of growing old gracefully and demurely , yeah right .

Look forward to the party , I suspect a repeat of below, with snow !

(BTW, this isn't really MJ, but is a pretty good representation !)

UN vote against sexual orientation protection "shameful"

2010-11-19T18:21:00.005Z

Press release from Peter Tatchell :

Comfort to homophobes, green light to homophobic murder

The United Nations voted this week to remove sexual orientation from a resolution calling on countries to protect the life of all people and to investigate extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions that are motivated by prejudice and discrimination.

The UN:
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2010/gashc3997.doc.htm

IGLHRC & ARC:
http://www.iglhrc.org/cgi-bin/iowa/article/pressroom/pressrelease/1257.html

Commenting on the UN vote, gay rights and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said:

"This is a shameful day in United Nations history. It gives a de facto green light to the on-going murder of LGBT people by homophobic regimes, death squads and vigilantes. They will take comfort from the fact that the UN does not endorse the protection of LGBT people against hate-motivated murder.

"The UN vote is in direct defiance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees equal treatment, non-discrimination and the right to life. What is the point of the UN if it refuses to uphold its own humanitarian values and declarations?
"This vote is partly the result of a disturbing homophobic alliance between mostly African and Arab states, often inspired by religious fundamentalism. LGBT people in these countries frequently suffer severe persecution.

“Many of the nations that voted for this amendment want to ensure that their anti-gay policies are not scrutinised or condemned by the UN. Even if they don’t directly sanction the killing of LGBT people, they have lined up alongside nations that do.

"South Africa and Cuba claim to support LGBT human rights, yet they voted to remove sexual orientation. They can no longer be considered gay-friendly states. Both countries have allied themselves with tyrannical, violent, homophobic regimes, like Saudi Arabia and Iran. Presidents Raul Castro and Jacob Zuma should hang their heads in shame. They've betrayed the liberation ideals that they profess to uphold," said Mr Tatchell.

Also check out this post for a personal reflection .

How countries voted :

The votes to amend the resolution were as follows:

In favor of the amendment to remove sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (79):

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Brunei Dar-Sala, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Opposed to the amendment to remove sexual orientation from the resolution on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions (70):

Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Micronesia (FS), Monaco, Montenegro, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Samoa, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela

Abstain (17):

Antigua-Barbuda, Barbados, Belarus, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Colombia, Fiji, Mauritius, Mongolia, Papau New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Absent (26):

Albania, Bolivia, Central African Republic, Chad, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Marshall Island, Mauritania, Nauru, Nicaragua, Palau, Sao Tome Principe, Seychelles, Solomon Islands, Togo, Tonga, Turkey, Turkmenistan

The reinvention of Ann Widdecombe

2010-11-19T09:09:00.005Z

I don't actually watch Strictly Come Dancing, but from clips on news sites and reports I have looked at, it seems old Widders as she is affectionately known is coming across as a bit of a card . Willing to be pulled across the floor looking ridiculous, being a good sport and feisty with the judges seems to add up to being the latest 'national treasure.'

Well she may be willing to make a fool of herself, but she certainly isn't some nice eccentric old bird .

Well for those of you with short memories , Pickled Politics has a handy list and links to highlight why old Widders is actually an unpleasant reactionary piece of work . The post reminds us of her homophobic, sexist, anti abortion and more. The only plus point is she is against fox hunting .

The F-Word has a link to an Abortion Rights planned protest . Widdecombe is speaking at a fundraiser for an anti choice group , exploiting her new found image as a nice harmless old eccentric. Details here.

More on anti gay bullying in schools

2010-11-17T15:12:00.003Z

A little while back I posted about bullying of LGBT teenagers in the US and the rise of suicides .

Check out this clip of a gay teenager defending a teacher who was suspended for disciplining an anti gay student. A very eloquent and brave young man .

Paul O'Grady on student protests

2010-11-14T14:39:00.002Z

More from Paul O'Grady, this time on student protests :

Much prefer this to some of the more macho ego driven male leftie 'leaders .'

Note to lefties, sense of humour is a good way to get the message across !

Class and student protests

2010-11-11T17:22:00.005Z

I couldn't join the protest yesterday, I was sleeping off a 12 hour waking night shift in a care home . I was paid just over £7 an hour, yet I have a degree ,a masters and am a qualified social worker.

I am the only one in my family to have got a degree. I think I am pretty much the only one not to have left school at 16. I don't now have any family, certainly not a nice middle class one who could bail me out when I lost my nice well paid job this year.

I'm still not really sure how I did end up doing a degree, I certainly didn't have any roles models to follow. I sort of just kept going and my mother encouraged me as she saw it as the escape route from the council estate and poverty. It would have been a much easier option for her to have got me to get a job .

She had worked hard all her life, as had her mother , but two ill husbands meant money was not plentiful . One image that has always stuck with me was her wrapped in a duvet with a hot water bottle, to keep the heating bill down.

So I worked hard . I escaped . I looked after my mum, bought her stuff, took her abroad for holidays. The first time she left the country was at 60.

So why am I going on about this ?

Well I did work hard and pulled myself out of the gutter. There were even more obstacles than poverty but I'll leave those for another time, but the point is however far I came, I never really became middle class. Why not, I mean I bought a flat, got educated etc etc. Yep, but what I am learning now the hard way is that it slips away much easier when its not yours by birth . I never felt I fitted in and didn't want to anyway.

Many of the students today feel cheated , we older ones have it all. But we don't . Its not about age, but class. I didn't inherit when my parents died, I could never fall back on my mother to bail me out . I didn't think, oh well when I'm older I'll pay off my mortgage with my inheritance or mummy can give me a deposit for my flat . Instead I helped her out , made her life more comfortable . She gave up a lot to encourage me to study , I owed her that .

I feel pissed off that I was unemployed back in the 80s and am again now.

I do feel angry that students face fees and debt, that they won't have the jobs they perhaps expected they would. But lets also remember that some younger people will be hit harder than others . Some will be lucky to get a decent basic education and getting to university is as likely as getting to the moon.

I'd lay bets that my dads family, who I have not seen for nearly 20 years (long story), are still doing factory work , probably getting asbos and stuck on a crap estate .

I do hope the students remember them, their expectations have not been dashed, they had those beaten out of them long ago.

I hope that further action will be with workers , with those relying on public services, the unemployed and the left does not put all its hope in students . I have heard mutterings that some sections of the student protest were not wanting to broaden out the demands to no cuts AT ALL. We need unity, not cuts or fees for education, but no cuts also for public services.

The young are getting fucked over by this Government , but lets not get caught up by age . Some young people will be hit harder , some older people will be hit harder. The poor more than others .

Also, remember that losing your job when older is pretty crap as well. What are my expectations now, fuck knows .At 46 I am now back at square one . I am doing temp work for crap wages , I am facing potentially having to sell my flat . I don't have family money to fall back on. I was homeless as a kid, my flat is my security .

I do understand , and support, the students and their anger at an uncertain future . But lets make this a fight against all cuts, and please remember that.

Finally, what inspired this post was reading this post by Laurie on yesterday's demo:

This is about a political settlement that has broken its promises not once but repeatedly, and proven that it exists to represent the best interests of the business community, rather than to be accountable to the people. The students I speak to are not just angry about fees, although the Liberal Democrats' U-turn on that issue is manifestly an occasion of indignation: quite simply, they feel betrayed. They feel that their futures have been sold in order to pay for the financial failings of the rich, and they are correct in their suspicions. One tiny girl in animal-print leggings carries a sign that reads: "I've always wanted to be a bin man."

Two things. It is not just about making sure those who get to university get the nice well paid jobs they expect , its about making life better for ALL, not just those with degrees. They may feel betrayed, well many many people have felt like that for a long time and we need to listen to them and include them.

Plus what really pissed me off, the 'tiny girl in animal-print leggings.' Somehow I doubt she knows any bin men and her sign is pretty elitist and insulting . Sorry, poor thing, mummy and daddy I'm sure never brought her up to be a bin men. I wonder if there were no fees etc, would she actually ever give a damn about those who are bin men, who also face cuts in their work ? Or would she just walk on by to her life with fulfilled expectations ?

This should not be about making sure some young people have bright futures and ignore the 'bin men' of this world.

These are the students that ruined it for the rest ...

2010-11-11T16:41:00.001Z

Tossers .

Via Face Book

The left fails Muslim women

2010-11-09T08:51:00.002Z

To get some thinking and discussing going, and to liven up the blog in these trying times, I'm cross-posting an article from Workers' Liberty, the original of which is here.

Muslim women fighting for women’s rights have been largely abandoned by the left, by human rights organisations, and by anti-racist campaigners.

That sums up the basic argument put forward by Gita Sahgal at a meeting held in Glasgow on 28 October as part of Black History Month 2010.

Sahgal left her post of Head of Gender Unit at Amnesty International earlier this year after Amnesty had ignored her complaints about the organisation’s collaboration with Islamists (specifically, Moazamm Begg and his “Cageprisoners” organisation).

Sahgal began her talk with excerpts from a documentary which she had helped make about war crimes committed by the Islamic-fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami in Bangladesh during its war of independence in the early 1970s. Members of the organisation massacred hundreds of thousands and committed mass rape.

Bangladesh achieved its independence. As a result of the growing influence of Islamism, it falls well short of being a fully secular state. But there is now an ongoing popular campaign to secularise Bangladesh, spearheaded by women and youth.

It was therefore wrong, concluded Sahgal, to see secularism as something imposed on other countries by the West.

From Bangladesh in the early 1970s Sahgal moved on to Britain in the late 1980s, dealing with the attempts to ban Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, and the campaigning work undertaken by women in the Muslim community, such as Women Against Fundamentalism, in opposition to the increasing influence of Islamism.

Jamaat-e-Islami provided the link.

British Islamists who called for an extension of the blasphemy laws and for Satanic Verses to be banned included Bangladeshi Jamaat-e-Islami members who had migrated to Britain. The Islamist campaign against Satanic Verses also gave rise to the later emergence of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), in which Jamaat-e-Islami supporters continue to occupy leading positions.

Excerpts from documentaries which Sahgal had made at the time showed women from the Muslim community staging counter-demonstrations against the Islamist anti-Rushdie demonstrations, and also organising demonstrations in protest at domestic violence.

Their slogan was “Here to Doubt, Here to Fight”. This was an adaptation of the anti-racist slogan of the 1970s, “Here to Stay, Here to Fight”. It meant that women in the Muslim community were not prepared to surrender their right to question the social “orthodoxies” which the increasingly vociferous Islamists were wanting to impose on them.

But the excerpts from her documentaries also showed the start of a different political response to the reactionary Islamist mobilisation around Satanic Verses: a readiness by politicians to accept the Islamist leaders as genuine representatives of their communities, and a willingness to accommodate to their demands.

Both Labour and Tory MPs, for example, put their names to a Bill which sought to extend the blasphemy laws to cover Islam as well as Christianity. (By contrast, the late socialist Labour MP Eric Heffer was shown calling for the abolition of all blasphemy laws.)

This failure to confront Islamism and this accommodation to its political demands was described by Sahgal as “one of the most remarkable and saddest aspects of politics since the Rushdie Affair, or since 9/11 in 2001.”

Organisations like the MCB had been boosted and funded as government partners, supposedly providing a conduit into the Muslim community. As Sahgal pointed out, this was a continuation of an old colonial policy: to allow some self-appointed leaders to rule over their followers as they wished, provided that they kept them from rebelling against the colonial power itself.

In Afghanistan and Iraq the West had espoused the cause of women’s rights. But it had not hesitated to abandon the same cause by appeasing and forming alliances with Islamists. There could therefore be no reliance on Western governments to promote women’s rights.

On the left, organisations such as the Stop the War Coalition had boosted the Muslim Association of Britain (the British “section” of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood) while the political party “Respect” was effectively an alliance between sections of the left and Jamaat-e-Islami supporters.

The MCB was not even prepared to recognise Ahmaddiya Muslims as Muslims, still less represent them (or, Sahgal might have added, defend them against the murderous attacks of Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan).

The Islamic Human Rights Commission, another Islamist organisation popular with the left, was concerned only with what it defined as the breaches of human rights of Muslims committed by Western governments (and Turkey) but did not lift a finger to defend the human rights of those oppressed by Islamist regimes such as Iran.

And yet, in the name of “anti-racism”, the bulk of the left and the bulk of the anti-racist movement had shrunk back from confronting the threat posed by the rise of Islamism as a political movement.

Nor was there any reason to suppose that the situation was going to improve in the immediate future as more funding was being made available for “faith-based” groups to fill the gap left by cutbacks in local-authority social services.

This would provide an opportunity for Islamist organisations not only to secure more funding from the government but also — as the holders of the purse-strings for local social expenditure — to exercise a greater degree of influence and control in Muslim communities.

Some of what Sahgal said was open to criticism. But it was refreshing to hear a spirited denunciation of Islamism and the threat it poses to women’s rights in particular.

It would have been better to have heard such a denunciation in a socialist meeting or in a trade union meeting rather than in the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts.

But the venue for Sahgal’s talk underlined the point she was making: the bulk of the left, having accommodated to political Islam at the expense of women’s rights, would not be prepared to hold such a meeting.

Not blogging much as life is shite at the moment !

2010-11-08T16:15:00.005Z

Sorry. Too stressed, scared and depressed!

Doing very low paid bits of temp work. If that does not improve I won't be able to afford my mortgage . I'll have to rent flat out or sell, re home my old rescue cats that I have had for 10 years and move to Dave's (not suitable for them there ).

I don't have parents with money to bail me out.

I can't put my thoughts into words very well, so will be quiet from me .

Real life is getting in the way , and I'm trying desperately to get better paid work .

The only positive thing is lots of support from Dave .

So blogging may be quiet, or I may get inspired . Who knows .

Striking

2010-11-03T12:20:00.006Z

Today, I am striking again alongside thousands of my London Underground workmates - our third monthly one-day strike.

The reason? London Underground is planning to cut hundreds and hundreds of jobs, which will seriously reduce safety and services for passengers. I and my workmates do not share the company's view that the Tube can manage with up to 800 fewer staff on its stations, and 800 fewer 'support services' staff, many of whom are not paper-shufflers but play essential roles in maintenance, safety and other areas.

The threat to the Underground's standards is so severe that the TSSA trade union, known for its extreme reluctance to take industrial action, is out on strike alongside my union, RMT. Members of both unions spent months and months campaigning, lobbying and negotiating before resorting to strike action.

To read more about the issues, and reports on our campaign, please click on one of these two links:

The Carnival of Socialism is a tad delayed

2010-10-31T16:45:00.002Z

But I'll have it up here by Monday evening . Been busy demonstrating in Brighton and then Dave hogged the laptop . I am though trying to bring all my lovely readers , and Duff and anon, lots of good links and that all takes time to do properly . Patience .

UPDATE :

Apologies again. Been offered a few hours temp work, yesterday and today, so off working . Crap pay, but gets me outta the house.

Meanwhile a little musical interlude :

It's back, the Carnival of Socialism

2010-10-27T11:01:00.005+01:00

Yep, Mr Jepps is kick starting the carnival back to life and I have volunteered to do one this weekend .

Its been dormant for a while, but the aim is that lefty bloggers take turns in doing a Carnival .Basically pulling together posts of interest across the left blogosphere . It can be themed or general . In the past I have done both.

I enjoy it as it focuses me on looking wider than my usual blogs and hopefully introduces them to new readers .

Do please leave suggestions for posts in the comment box, it will be a general one this time, and if you are interested in doing one contact Jim over on the Carnival website . There are also links to past ones, that will give you a flavour of what they are like.

Paul OGrady on the cuts !

2010-10-24T12:05:00.000+01:00

Cuts and the CSR

2010-10-22T16:03:00.003+01:00

Been busy this week; trying to find work, not getting work and protesting . Feel a mix of anxiety, anger and general depression . But hey, gotta a blog to attend to .

Tomorrow I plan to do a round up of posts , and my thoughts on the CSR. I'll have a potter round the blogs and papers , but if anyone wants to highlight anything they have seen, let me know in the comments box.

RIP Ari Up

2010-10-21T18:47:00.000+01:00

Happy birthday Janine

2010-10-21T18:34:00.003+01:00

Week of action against Cuts and for trade union rights

2010-10-18T14:15:00.002+01:00

Right , for those readers who feel like taking some action against the cuts , see below. Duff, you're excused !

From the LRC:

Stop the Cuts! There is an Alternative

With the Comprehensive Spending Review, just days away – see our October 2010 events calendar for details of events against the cuts around the country. There is an LRC public meeting in Parliament on the night of the CSR statement, and another event a week later in Manchester:

Stop the Cuts! There is an Alternative – London meeting

Wednesday 20th October 2010
7:00pm to 9:00pm

Boothroyd Room, Portcullis House, House of Commons, Westminster

Speakers include: Manuel Cortes (TSSA), Bob Crow (RMT), Jeremy Dear (NUJ), Dot Gibson (National Pensioners Convention), Steve Gillan (POA), Jonathan Ledger (NAPO), John McDonnell MP (LRC Chair), Mick Shaw (FBU), Simon Weller (ASLEF)

Download the flyer

Stop the Cuts! There is an Alternative – Manchester meeting

Saturday 30th October 2010
12:30pm to 2:30pm

Friends Meeting House, Mount Street, Manchester

Speakers include: Cllr Matthew Brown (Preston), Jeremy Dear (NUJ), Steve Gillan (POA), Peter Keenlyside (CWU), Alice Mahon, Joe Marino (BFAWU), John McDonnell MP, Mick Shaw (FBU)

Download the flyer

Lobby your MP to back the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

John McDonnell’s Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill is being debated in Parliament this Friday, 22 October.

It needs 100 MPs to attend the debate. If you have not already done so, please lobby your MP to vote for the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill. You can lobby your MP by email using the e-action through the PCS website or download the model letter from the RMT website to print out. You can also download the briefing on the Bill, prepared by John Hendy QC.

The LRC Conference: Resist the Cuts, Rebuild the Party will take place on Saturday 15 January 2011 at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square – reserve the date in your diary now – more details soon

LGBT rights , battle not won

2010-10-17T14:35:00.004+01:00

Many think LGBT rights have been won, I mean look the poofs can have a civil partnership. There is the pink pound, now stop your griping and get back in the club rather than the closet .ON an aside that ignores the point that LGBT includes Trans people and bi-sexuals, often forgotten in the debates. One need only look at Stonewall to see how even Gay organisations happily ignore the issues of trans people by nominating candidates for awards with less than enlightened views . Then there is the attitude of some feminists to trans women, ignoring the very real violence that they face and excluding them from events , by omission or explicitly. I'll say more about trans issues and bisexuality as well , another time .

Back to the main point, people are still prejudiced against lesbian and gay people, and the battle is far from won . Sadly no one should sigh with relief and believe its all sorted , rights and acceptance can slip away . Even in very Gay friendly Brighton there is still violence and abuse . I want though to focus on worrying reports from the US . The Observer reports on this :

Liberal America has looked on aghast as virulent homophobic prejudice seems to have returned to its streets and cities. Most remarkable of all, much of it seems to be centred on the New York region, usually tolerant in its politics and not seen as hostile to homosexuals living openly. But it was just a few miles away from Bounville's protest in the Bronx that a group of suspected gang members brutally beat and tortured a 30-year-old gay man and several other youths who had been associated with him. The details of the assault, for which 10 people have been arrested, horrified New Yorkers. The gay victim was kidnapped, beaten, whipped and burned.

The shocking crime was just one of a series of incidents that have hit the city. Others have even occurred in the heart of New York's vibrant gay scene. In the Chelsea neighbourhood, which has a large gay population, a group of men hugging each other goodbye after a night out were punched and had a rubbish bin thrown at them. Meanwhile in the famous Stonewall Inn, where the modern gay rights movement was founded after a police raid in 1969, a customer was beaten and robbed by men who hurled homophobic insults at him.

For many observers the violence has been especially worrying as it has come at the same time as several leading Republicans have made anti-gay statements. South Carolina's Senator Jim DeMint, one of America's most powerful Republican politicians, has publicly said that gay people should not be allowed to become teachers.

Those sentiments were echoed by the Republican candidate in the New York governor race, Carl Paladino. In an astonishing piece of political theatre at a meeting of conservative Orthodox Jews, Paladino condemned gay pride parades and said gay people should not teach in schools. When the comments stirred outrage in the media, Paladino went on the talk show circuit in New York to complain about men "grinding" against each other at marches while wearing Speedos. "Is that normal?" he asked one TV interviewer.

The remarks were so bizarre some observers dismissed them as just another gaffe from a candidate dogged by allegations of infidelity and sending pornographic images by email. But gay rights activists say that is a mistake. There is a direct link, they say, between such public statements of homophobia and attacks. "These comments give licence to those who use violence. It is dangerous. It is tragic to think these hateful kinds of words have consequences," said Michael Cole, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, which campaigns for gay rights in America.

Such sentiments do not just encourage violent attacks; they can also spur people to suicide. Recently a student at Rutgers University committed suicide after his room-mate broadcast one of his gay sexual encounters over the internet. In Oklahoma recently a 19-year-old man killed himself after attending a local council meeting where members of the public had spoken out against celebrating the local gay community. The family of Zach Harrington, who committed suicide at home, told their local newspaper in the small town of Norman that they believed the "toxic" environment of the meeting had pushed him over the edge.

I remember friends who struggled at school , teased and bullied for being gay . Its depressing to read reports of this still happening , but it does. "Gay ' is an insult in the playground , kids are still bullied in the US and over here . Talk of gay people as unsuitable to be teachers sends a very clear message ; being lesbian or gay is not normal, don't tell anyone if you are and of course that most despicable of mud slinging, poofs are paedophiles after your children. Sickening . Add in faith schools teaching its a sin and its hardly a positive environment .

Playground bullying extends into adult violence , as Johann Hari points out :

In London, recorded homophobic attacks are up by 20 per cent. In Glasgow it's 32 per cent; in Liverpool it's 40 per cent; in Greater Manchester it's 63 per cent. James Parks is only the latest face to be kicked in by this trend: last week, the off-duty police officer left a club in Liverpool with his boyfriend and was lynched by a group of 20 teenagers who smashed his skull and left him close to death.

In a recession, violence always rises, and violence against minorities rises more. Attacks on Muslims, Jews, and black people are also spiking across Britain. But recorded violence against gay people has shown the most extreme rise. Last year, an 18 year-old hairdresser in Liverpool called Michael Causer was sleeping on a friend's sofa after a party when he was woken up. A witness testified that a group of teenagers yelled, "You little queer faggot!" They said they were going to cut out his body-piercings with a knife, and started burning his legs with a lighter. He was found bleeding to death later, dumped in the road outside, after having his head smashed in with a hardback book.

At the trial, one of the 19-year-olds tried for the murder said he was acting "in self-defence" – against a smaller, seven-and-a-half stone boy with no history of violent behaviour. A witness said that during the attack, he had yelled: "He's a little queer, he deserves it!" Yet the jury found him not guilty

Hari points out the culture in schools :

Almost all the new homophobic attacks have been carried out by teenagers who are in – or just out of – the education system. It is not a coincidence that our schools are the one place where homophobic violence is still absolutely mainstream. The official schools inspectorate, Ofsted, says that homophobia is "endemic" in our playgrounds and our classrooms. A study by Stonewall found 41 per cent of gay children are beaten up, and 17 per cent have been told they're going to be killed (it's 10 per cent higher still in faith schools). The young people who attacked PC James Parks were simply taking that culture out of the playground and onto the streets.

This doesn't have to happen. Michael Causer's mother, Marie, says: "This generation of infants needs to be educated. You hear youngsters as young as four and five saying 'Go away, you're gay.' It might be a word to them, but their parents need to pull them up and tell them that it's wrong. They need better education to let them know that gay people are no different."

When this is tried, it works. The Stonewall study found that in schools with a consistent policy of punishing homophobic language, gay children were 60 per cent less likely to be attacked. That fall in violence could ripple out from the school gates - but today, only 6 per cent of schools adopt this policy. The Government should immediately make it mandatory.

So my point is ? Well its that there is no room for complacency .It IS still an issue. Kids are still bullied, its still seen as an insult . People die, others still pretend or struggle . The left as well need to keep this in mind, many seem to minimise it when it happens in 'anti imperialist' countries, well it happens here as well . Wherever it happens , its bloody awful.

This still needs to be on our agenda , even if it doesn't build the party.

So if that has fired up anger at such horrific examples of violence, the only 'reason' for it being that someone loves or has sex with another of the same gender, then get along to this on the 23rd . It is the 2nd Vigil against hate crime.

Now to end on a more positive note, a very moving personal account alongside the stories and pictures of children who killed themselves due to homophobic bullying :

A very brave man, especially in Texas I suspect. Give that man a hug.

Nick Clegg on tuition fees ...when he wanted to get votes

2010-10-12T13:06:00.000+01:00

Claire Rayner : "Tell David Cameron that if he screws up my beloved NHS I'll come back and bloody haunt him."

2010-10-12T12:33:00.002+01:00

Those are apparently what Claire Rayner, who has died, wanted to be her last words.

I am sure she had her faults , but she was a strong woman who stood up for the NHS and spoke out about safe sex when it was not the done thing. A humanist, rationalist and defender of the rights of patients . She came from a generation that didn't talk about sex, but her approach as an agony aunt was non judgemental and open :

Her husband, who was also her agent and manager, paid tribute to her, saying: "Through her work she helped hundreds of thousands of people and doubtless, by talking frankly about the importance of safe sex in the 80s when almost nobody else would discuss it, helped to save thousands of lives.

"Through her own approach to life she enabled people to talk about their problems in a way that was unique.

I always remember the horror stories my mother, a similar age, told me about girls in particular not being told about sex , about the ignorance . It was good to have someone no nonsense, like Claire, talk about that openly to break down the embarrassment . Sadly many want to go back to the days of no sex education in schools, or pull their children out of it.

New Humanist reprint an interview, that gives a flavour of her forthright style .

We need more outspoken women like that !

Solomon Burke RIP

2010-10-10T18:37:00.001+01:00

Lobby your MP to back the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

2010-10-10T15:19:00.002+01:00

Via the LRC :

John McDonnell MP is sponsoring the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill as his private members Bill in Parliament. The Bill would tackle the increasing practice by employers of using minor technical errors in the balloting process - which have no material effect on the outcome - to take unions to court in order to prevent them from taking industrial action.

The Bill is being debated in Parliament on Friday 22 October, and requires 100 MPs to attend the debate and to vote for it. If you have a Labour MP, please lobby them to attend and vote for the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill. Come to the Lobby of Parliament and Rally on 13 October to tell your MP to back the Bill.

You can lobby your MP by email using the e-action through the PCS website or download the model letter from the RMT website to print out. You can also download the briefing on the Bill, prepared by John Hendy QC.

John McDonnell MP said:

“We have seen in the current BA Cabin Crew dispute and many other recent disputes, employers have been able to exploit loopholes in the existing law by using minor technical errors in a trade union ballot to thwart trade unionists from taking strike action.

“This resort to the courts by some ruthless employers is bringing current employment law into disrepute and undermining industrial relations in this country. This cannot be right and in the interests of good industrial relations needs to be addressed.”

Read Prof Keith Ewing’s article from the Morning Star (09/10/10), urging Labour MPs to back the Bill.

Dash it, my MP is now a Tory :-(

Is George Osborne squeezing the rich to help poor families? No!

2010-10-05T08:48:00.003+01:00

I posted earlier this year in defence of universal Child Benefit, when gossip was spreading that it could come under attack. I won't repeat here the arguments I made there in defence of universality, but I do want to make a few points about the specific policy that the Tories have just announced - to remove Child Benefit from families where one person earns more than £44k.

In doing so, I want to tackle the aspect that I find particularly annoying - the Tories' pretence that this is a pro-working-class policy, which will no doubt find cheerleaders in the tabloids and may even impair the ability of some on the 'left' to defend universal Child Benefit against this attack.

Despite its pretensions at squeezing the rich, George Osborne's announcement leaves rich people without kids well alone while those with kids have money taken from them. No-one is losing money for being rich, but for having kids.

There is a serious ideological point here about society's attitude to, and responsibility for, children. The attack on Child Benefit is based on an assumption that children are the private indulgence of their parents rather than the responsibility of society in general. Sometimes, it feels like people think that "the taxpayer" is being asked to pay towards people's cars or butlers, not towards their children.

Moreover, earning £44k and bit most definitely does NOT make you "rich". It may be well above the average wage, but it is the wage of, for example, some skilled manual workers. If you are one of these and, say, you live in London bringing up three kids on your own or with a partner on much lower earnings, then you may get by, but you hardly live the life of Riley.

The rich-poor divide is not between people on £25k and people on £45k, but between people on £25k and people on £100k+ and a stash of wealth. Let's target our anger against the genuine rich, not on working families who might earn more than other working families, but who certainly do not share in the full fruits of their labour, and are definitely not "rich".

Even so, the way to deal with the genuinely rich is not to take away their child benefit, but to tax them til the pips squeak, or better still, to legislate a maximum wage.

Pink stinks , or why not all little girls want to be princesses

2010-10-02T13:55:00.005+01:00

Now I don't have kids and until recently didn't really know any . I was more likely to be found camping it up with gay men or sitting with a load of old Trots at a meeting . Over the last few years though, I have spent time with Dave's girls, Rachel and Hannah. They are 10 and 7 respectively.

This has meant delving into the world of little girls, whether that be toys, books or clothes. Now when I was a kid I got mucky outdoors, rode a bike, played with 'boys' toys and I can't ever remember wanting to be a princess or wear pink. As I wandered through Hamleys looking for pressies a while back, argh a hell only equaled by a trip to Ikea, I found my self confronted by what looked like quite clearly stereotypes boys and girls toys. Now of course there is nothing to stop a girl having any of the toys, and in fact Hannah is partial to bug related books and games, but the shop does not so gently demarcate specific gender toys . It is not the only store that does this. Go in most toy shops and you'll be surrounded by barbies and bratz, all pink and princessy or wag wannabes. Toys are pink packaged. This must be what its like in Katie Price's world, an explosion of candyfloss.

Many of the games are quite domestic, others aimed at quite young girls include make up, glitter and kits to make jewellery.Head to the boys and it is all much more manly, with science kits,trucks and sport.

Clothes shopping is no better , ranging from the cheap Primark to the more yummy mummy approved Gap . I have been looking around for some pyjamas for Rachel and they are all pink or if not very very cutesy . Rachel does not like pink ! Over the summer she needed some t-shirts. All she wanted was plain and not pink, with long sleeves. Bloody nightmare to find . Rows of pink, cute or princess t-shirts , or if not some bordering on a bit too Wag and grown up.

I popped into a shop selling rock t-shirts as she likes these and has a few. The assistant was helpful , but assumed the ten year old was a boy. I said a girl, yes they do like rock music !, and was directed to some pink Blondie ones . I said she doesn't like pink . The assistant looked bemused .

Now I know there are good educational toy and clothes shops with more of a range . I know that no one needs to buy along gender lines. But a quick tour of the high street will show an assumption that little girls love love love pink, want to be princesses (so many books about that) or else want to be Wags or on X Factor . It is not choice when all pyjamas on the high street come in a range of pink . The boys had action figures, combat pant PJs and dark manly colours .I gave up and will get her black leggings and a t-shirt instead.

To avoid this, to try to push past the stereotypes and marketing, takes times and effort and often is the more expensive shop that caters . Many parents will not have time or will grab cheap clothes as kids grow fast. They may not have the cash for the more expensive shops catering for the educational toys , with less pink in them.

Girls are being offered little choice and to move away from that means them pushing the boundaries and going to the boys section, thus perhaps then not fitting in with their peers . It takes a strong minded girl to reject the overwhelming pink pressure . This also affects boys , yep they are being pushed towards manly pursuits from an early age. Brave is the boy who wears pink and buys a doll.

I am not talking about pushing Hannah and Rachel into politically correct gender neutral toys and clothes. They are saying what they want themselves. Hannah likes her bugs and Rachel hates pink and dresses . Luckily they are both pretty strong minded little girls and say what they want. It just means a lot more effort to get the stuff.

I'm not alone in my frustration, there is a website called Pink Stinks. Check it out !

Pic, one of the T-shirts for sale on the Pink Stinks website.

Not-So-Red Ed - cross post from Vicky

2010-09-30T16:24:00.003+01:00

Cross posted :

Last week, everyone had gone gooey for Diane Abbott. On Saturday, when it emerged that Abbott had failed to electrify trades union voters, the left placed its hope and aspirations on someone else’s shoulders. “Ed Miliband’s victory can open a gap”, said Socialist Worker, without elaborating further. “This is a change in the situation socialists can capitalise on,” argued Workers Power, after making noises about a return to old Labour. The Communist Party of Britain went even further, helpfully produced a “ten-point programme for Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet” that bears a remarkable resemblance to their beloved People’s Charter.

The centre ground has certainly shifted- but not to the left, like half of the press would have you think. There’s no greater evidence of this shift than the reaction to the election of Ed Miliband, Red Ed.

The only thing about the nickname that works is the rhyme.

Post-victory Ed Miliband himself could barely contain himself as he rushed to declare that there would be no “lurch to the left”. Well, of course not. A man on a leftward trajectory would not have received juicy campaign donations from Lawrence Staden, a multimillionaire hedge fund owner, who made millions in profit from the recession.

In his first article as Labour Leader – published in The Torygraph - Ed declares that his “aim is to show that our party is on the side of the squeezed middle in our country and everyone who has worked hard and wants to get on.” The squeezed middle? Try being part of that rather more squeezed socio-economic group right at the bottom of the ladder.

Ed Miliband is not left-wing. He’s the continuity candidate. Not a Blairite, certainly, but he did write the last Labour manifesto. Radical document it wasn’t. On Question Time, Miliband told a London fire fighter that she didn’t have the right to strike, despite being threatened with the sack if she didn’t back a contract change that will knock hours off the night shift, leaving the capital city vulnerable.

Today, Ed Miliband once again came out against the Unions, announcing that “The public won’t support [strikes]. I won’t support them and you shouldn’t support them either.”

Miliband voted for the anti-terrorism laws that undermine the civil liberties of us all. He voted for ID cards. He didn’t oppose the Iraq war at the time but he did oppose an investigation into its legality.

Even worse, Miliband’s sense of “justice” keeps being attributed to Marxist parent, Ralph Miliband. Really, stop blaming poor Ralph for his son.

Miliband, doom, gloom and general stroppiness

2010-09-27T21:06:00.003+01:00

Sorry not been posting of late. I have been trying to get a job. Unlike the tales of the Mail, I do not spend my time watching Jeremy Kyle on a plasma TV, whilst wearing a tracksuit. I get £64 a week, which hardly covers anything, certainly not a mortgage . I am using up my redundancy pay and when it is gone, well without a job then so is my home .

I keep looking and applying for jobs and getting nowhere fast. Jobs on much less than I earned, yet still can't get one. I can't even go back to unqualified support work , let alone social work, as they want people who have recently worked in that area. I haven't for a while .

So I am not really taking much notice of the Labour Leadership or the latest spats on the blogs. I'm sure I will eventually, but am generally too stressed and worried to give a toss at the moment.

In the meantime I have pinched a post from Dave .

Enjoy :

“Red Ed? Miliband may not even be a pinko”

ON THE one hand, sections of a jubilant Labour left are turning cartwheels across the floor. On the other, the rightwing press is rehashing the kind of low level McCarthyite headlines not seen in this country since the early 1980s.
Both immediate reactions to the election of Ed Miliband as Labour leader highlight the lack of balance or historical rigour that prevails in political commentary in Britain today.
To the extent that Ed is not his brother – who of course stood in apostolic succession to Blair – then those who do not favour the continuation of New Labourism in its most anachronistic variant will regard his success as the least bad possible outcome of an unnecessarily protracted contest .
But there is little point in coming to firm judgement until we see what Miliband does in his new capacity. While it is good to hear him declare that ‘the era of New Labour has passed’, he has yet to specify with what it will be replaced. If there is to be a Milibandism, we so far have no real indication of what the parameters will encompass.
Ed’s parliamentary career has so far been short, and he was not around for the crunch votes of the first and second term. But it is fair to observe that nothing he has done since 2005 marked him out as a natural born boat rocker.
Perhaps he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he has been hiding his social democratic light under a bushel, thus accounting for the accusation that he is some kind of crypto-Bennite.
But look under his bed, and the reds are strikingly hard to find. An examination of his concrete track record suggests that little stronger than reheated Hattersleyism is set to feature on the Miliband menu.
Opinions will vary as to how far that can viable be described as a good thing, but it certainly does not constitute a ‘lurch to the left’ in any meaningful employment of the left-right continuum as a working analytical tool.
A minimal grasp of twentieth century British political history should represent some kind of prerequisite for punditry. Yet how many columnists would be able to fit Miliband into the spectrum of Labour leaders of the past? Ironically, one of the best places to glean that information the book ‘Parliamentary Socialism’, penned by Ed’s late father Ralph.
In short, Ed Miliband does not want to be either a Blair or a Brown, which is to his credit. Neither is he likely to transmogrify into a Foot or an Attlee or a Lansbury. Callaghan? Kinnock? Let’s not go there. The question is how inspiring the public are going to find a Gaitskell or a Smith in the crucial years ahead.

Work Kills 20,000+ People Every Year in the UK

2010-09-25T12:03:00.001+01:00

This is from Thompson's Solicitors' e-bulletin ...

The TUC has published a report showing that more than 20,000 people in the UK are killed by injuries and health conditions contracted at work every year.

“The Case for Health and Safety” smashes the myth that Britain is one of the safest places to work and shows that health and safety is as relevant an issue today for workers and employees as it has ever been.

An analysis by the TUC of the most conservative official safety figures shows that at least 20,000 people - the equivalent of the entire population of the Orkney Islands - die every year as a result of conditions such as occupational cancers and lung diseases, exposure to fumes and chemicals, and fatal work-related traffic accidents.

The report finds that thousands of workplace injuries go unreported. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates that almost 250,000 workplace injuries happened last year but many were unreported or not reported correctly.

“The Case for Health and Safety” also reveals that 1.2 million working people in the UK believe they are suffering from a work-related illness. These include heart disease, stress, musculoskeletal disorders such as back, shoulder and neck pain, and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

And the report disputes claims, which have fed calls from business for health and safety deregulation, that the workplace is now much safer than it has ever been.

The TUC is calling on the Government to:

• ignore calls from the business lobby to reduce regulation and enforcement
• champion the issue and appoint a Government 'tsar' for health and safety
• use the UK network of 150,000 trained union health and safety reps to even greater effect
• support the work of the HSE and local authorities in protecting people at work.

You can download the report at: http://www.tuc.org.uk

Talking about Poplar and Cuts

2010-09-22T21:13:00.002+01:00

Janine Booth (c'est moi), author of 'Guilty and Proud of it', will be giving an illustrated talk on the Poplar Council rates rebellion of 1921, when socialist councillors went to prison in a successful fight against cuts imposed by a Tory-Liberal coalition government. Jon Rogers, Lambeth Unison, will also be speaking about the prospects for fighting local government cuts today.

This Saturday, 25 September, 5pm, Housman's bookshop, King's Cross.

Details here for details.

Jimi Hendrix

2010-09-18T19:24:00.004+01:00

Forty years ago today, Jimi Hendrix died of an overdoes in a Notting Hill Hotel . One of what is often called the 27 club , a great musician who died much too young .

Here are some you tubes :

Cross post - Benedict XVI: Antichrist, or just a bit confused?

2010-09-18T14:04:00.001+01:00

Cross post from Dave:

THE DESIGNATION Whore of Babylon does not refer to some mythical top notch super-dirty-in- bed Iraqi chick, but to a serious theological debate over the identity to the scarlet-clad woman described in chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation.

In the faith community in which I was raised, my poor old mum was always considered a hopeless cringing moderate because she did not automatically identify this figure with the Roman Catholic church, being alive to the exegetical possibility that the term could better be applied to the European Union instead.

I am put in mind of my upbringing after reading the remarks delivered by Benedict XVI before 125,000 admirers in Edinburgh yesterday, during which he launched into a tirade against the intolerance of something called ‘aggressive secularism’. Hello, your Holiness?

In the first place, it is a bit rich hearing homilies about the need for liberalism from a bloke who accuses gay people of possessing a ‘more or less strong tendency ordered towards an inherent moral evil’ and welcomes Holocaust deniers into the bosom of the mother Church. But let that pass.

I’m not even quite sure what ‘aggressive secularism’ is when it is at home, anyway. Does it differ from, say, passive-aggressive secularism, being one notch up on mere stridently assertive secularism but not quite such a bad thing as violent secularism? But let that pass, too. The whole line of reasoning at work here is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

The overwhelming majority of us secularists are actually laid back, live and let live-type dudes. We actively believe in, and argue for, freedom to propagate all religions and none. So if anybody freely chooses to go to mass on a Sunday morning, that’s fine with us. We’ll just stay in bed and nurse the hangover. Now sod off and leave us to suffer.

So it was that I found myself sticking up for a Christian guy handing out ‘turn or burn’ leaflets at the Brighton gay pride march, which could quite easily have seen him severely beaten had the assembled Muscle Marys taken umbrage at their content.

Precisely because I am a secularist, I am in favour of his right to tell people what they do not want to hear. Equally, I am in favour of the right of the Protest the Pope brigade to hit the streets on Saturday, even though I can’t be arsed to go along myself.

The very obvious historical truth is that the people most likely to be at the throats of members of any given religious group are members of other religious groups. They are, to paraphrase his Holiness, aggressive religionists.

In the playgrounds of western Scotland, competing gangs of kids slug it out under the banner of Papes and Prods. Well, they do in the unlikely event that they go to an integrated school in the first place, anyway

I presume that atheist and agnostic children consider themselves far above that sort of thing, and sensibly slope off behind the bikesheds for a quiet lunchtime fag instead.

And there’s more. In the afternoon, His Holiness was off to Glasgow, where a crowd of 65,000 were told: ‘Religion is in fact a guarantee of authentic liberty and respect, leading us to look upon every person as a brother or a sister.’

No it isn’t, and no it doesn’t. This stupid assertion is so readily refuted that I shall refrain from rehearsing the long, long list of repressive theocracies ideologically legitimated by Catholicism and sundry other creeds, both in history and in the present day.

In sum, Benedict XIV’s strange belief that religious viewpoints are in Britain systematically excluded from consideration in the market place for ideas is scarcely tenable. Indeed, they get a head start in the form of the compulsory ‘God slots’ on many broadcast outlets and a guaranteed place on the curriculum, when they should be slugging it out on the same terms as everybody else.

But if those viewpoints are to be taken seriously, it would help to come up with some arguments that are not quite so ludicrous as those the Pope has advanced so far on this trip.

More taking pops at the Pope !

2010-09-17T14:23:00.004+01:00

I note with interest it seems to be male straight lefties that seem to be tut tutting at the attacks on the Pope. Apparently us poofs and girlies, well, we are all a tad middle class and are attacking the working class . Hmm, don't remember hearing that when the left attack the BNP, who sadly have quite a few working class members and supporters .

What is interesting is that it is women, LGBT people and those who have suffered abuse from Priests that are getting upset and angry . And damn right . We are the ones who are affected when the Catholic Church is able to push its reactionary views and Governments enact it in law.

Now of course the Church and its members have every right to argue their views. I support that wholeheartedly . I though have the right to protest as well. And lets be clear, we are not fighting a poor downtrodden group, but a rich institution .

Back to the working class issue . Lets look at the impact of access to contraception and abortion on women and how class impacts it.

Pre the 1967 Act many women still had abortion, illegal or not. Desperate people find the means . Thing is women who were poor and working class had to resort to back street abortions or trying to induce themselves with very dodgy methods. Many died , others suffered long term harm to their fertility.

I always remember my mother (working class hairdresser married to a working class painter and decorator, see i''m not a soft bleeding heart liberal with uni lecturers for parents!) telling me about women she worked with having abortions. One woman came back after lunch and started bleeding heavily and was ill, but too scared to go to hospital. She was lucky, she lived.

My mother once worked in South Kensington where 'ladies' would pop in. It was known that they sometimes needed to see a nice doctor to sort out a personal problem. No backstreets for them, the finest Harley Street could offer.

Back to today. Many women have to travel here from Ireland for abortions . Now this costs , fares and accommodation . For some women they just don't have that money or it often takes a while to collect, resulting in a later termination. Those women with money , can hop over and get the procedure done quickly and with minimal stress.

Money has always allowed greater access to contraception and abortion, often essential when laws and religion stand in the way . So please, this is a class issue . It would be good to see leftie men supporting women and LGBT people, usually at the harsh end of these policies . The Catholic Church is rich and powerful enough to fight its own battles, but the left need to argue against its influence across the world. The personal is political, just for some men on the left they are not affected and can't grasp the anger and solidarity some of us feel .

Pope , not to keen on atheists and secularists

2010-09-16T18:31:00.002+01:00

Oh dear, here we go again with attacks on atheism and secularism .

Yep, the Pope has come out on the defensive . Not surprising , given in the last week we have had more scandal involving child abuse by priests and the third world neo atheist (??) jibe by Cardinal Kasper :

He told the magazine: "England today is a secularised, pluralistic country. When you land at Heathrow Airport, you sometimes think you'd landed in a Third World country."

Asked whether Christians were discriminated against in the UK, he said: "Particularly in England, an aggressive neo-atheism is widespread. For example, if you wear a cross with British Airways, you're discriminated against."

What exactly is wrong with a secular plural society ? It means all freedom of religion and freedom not to believe . No one belief has privilege or is at risk of persecution.

And what is with the Third World Country comment ?

Anyway , back to the Pope :

He added: "Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society. In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate."

The Pope also praised Britain's fight against Hitler's "atheist extremism", saying that "Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live".

Seems the Pope is not above twisting the meaning of secularism, painting it as a bad thing.

But he then goes on to equate Nazism = extreme atheism .

From my history, I don't recall the Nazis as fighting for an atheist society ,but when have facts got in the way of religious teaching . A church that can state that condoms spread Aids as they have tiny holes in them, can just as easily twist and smear secularism and atheism .

For the record , Hitler stated :

Hitler’s Mein Kampf, volume I, at the end of chapter 2: "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

Many who do not believe in God fought against Nazis, fight today against fascists and war in this world. Religious people do not by any stretch of the imagination have a monopoly on peace and doing good. Examples that immediately spring to mind are Bush and Blair , consulting their God, before going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How much concern for life does the Catholic Church have for women in places such as Nicaragua, where no abortion is allowed , even if their life is at risk. Doctors are too scared often to give treatment for cancer to pregnant women in case it causes the foetus to abort. My concern is with the woman who is a alive , not sacrificing her as some sort of incubator .

I am pretty sick of those of us who argue for a secular society, with freedom of speech and belief , being called extreme and the whole notion being misused. A secular society = freedom of belief and none for all. What is wrong with that ?

Dylan Moran on religion

2010-09-16T17:17:00.000+01:00

Bill Hicks on the Pope

2010-09-16T17:13:00.001+01:00

Henry honours the Pope!

2010-09-16T11:07:00.000+01:00

Henry .

All in it together ?

2010-09-13T14:45:00.003+01:00

Bonuses for some :

Executive bonuses are close to their level before the financial crisis, a survey by business advisory firm Deloitte says.

It found that the average bonuses for directors of FTSE 100 firms amounted to 100% of their basic salary, rising to 140% in the top 30 public companies.

For others, not time to break out the bollie :

Almost 45,000 town hall jobs are to be cut across the country as councils brace themselves for a savage government squeeze on their budgets.

Analysis by The Independent has identified tens of thousands of local authority posts that will be scrapped – with jobs working with the elderly and with unemployed young people particularly at risk.

Councils across the country are drawing up plans to trim their spending by between 25 and 30 per cent over the next four years, reductions that will lead to a huge number of redundancies among the two million local government workers.

In the past week alone, 1,500 redundancies have been announced at Somerset County Council and 200 at Bedford Borough Council, while unions have warned that 1,000 posts are about to be axed by Bristol City Council.

The leader of Oxfordshire County Council yesterday warned that it could have to shed 1,000 jobs.

The Independent has identified 50 councils, from the south coast of England to the north-east of Scotland, where more than 40,000 jobs are being cut. A further 3,500 posts in Connexions, a service run by local authorities to give careers advice to teenagers, are about to be scrapped.

With many of the country's 400 local authorities only beginning to draw up budget plans, between 100,000 and 200,000 jobs could eventually be lost in councils. Some losses will be achieved through voluntary redundancies and retirement, but widespread sackings are certain.

Emergency campaign video for Child M campaign

2010-09-12T19:44:00.002+01:00

Hat Tip Liam.

More info here , plus what you can do to help.

Islamophobia in America: Nine Years On from 9-11.Cross post from Tami Peterson

2010-09-11T13:16:00.002+01:00

Cross post from Tami :

I was commissioned to write this article for Counterfire but it will not be published there. This was after an edited version came back to me with important bits removed, specifically the section which notes the view that 9-11 was considered on the left by some as something that was not to be condemned and by some actually as an "anti-capitalist" act. I thought it was important to include this as it helped to shape my understanding of the event and reaction to it politically. Further, I was told that because I mentioned that the US idea of freedom of religion was losing its importance that I was being "patriotic" and "nostalgic". After responding that I had been commissioned to write this article with the full knowledge that I am not of the same political persuasion of the editors and that I would not allow the article to be printed edited in such a way, I was sent the following response: "Sorry about your decision... Obviously we won't run the article. I should clarify that Counterfire is the website of a particular membership organisation (also called Counterfire), which stands in a particular political tradition. We will sometimes publish writing by people outside that tradition, but nonethless it isn't meant to be a broad, pluralist site. Sorry about any misunderstanding over this."

I will let readers judge for themselves but certainly won't be writing for Counterfire again.

Islamophobia in America: Nine Years On from 9-11

In August of 2001 I got a job in lower Manhattan with a financial software company. I remember the awe I felt having moved to the Big Apple, the energy, the sheer excitement of living in the hustle and bustle of the if-you-can-make-it-there-you-can-make-it-anywhere New York. NYC is also a gathering place of sorts for those in the States who have grown up elsewhere. Huge numbers of artists, bohemians, queers, activists and liberal minded people move there every year, mixing with the multicultural beauty of the city from Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx and Brooklyn. Yet this is far too pretty a picture of NYC which carries such charm precisely because it is a city that is at the same time dangerous, human, alive, sordid and real.

I lived in Brooklyn with a native NYer, a Latino whose mother was Ecuadoran and father Puerto Rican. I remember feeling distinctly on top of the world in a city that I adored, a far cry from my upbringing as a Mormon in conservative Utah where knowing anyone who was non-Mormon or non-white was rather unique.

This romanticism of New York was short lived as the whole world changed on the 11th of September 2001. When one lives through such a dramatic event, it is difficult to separate the intimately personal horror one experienced with the dramatic political event itself. My experience was terrifying and I still find it incredibly difficult to talk about. I saw people falling to their deaths, heard horrific noises, saw horrendous things and was diagnosed, along with 20% of NYers who were in the vicinity, with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which unexpectedly manifested itself in me fully after the 7th of July, 2005 bombings in London. I am currently on the World Trade Center Health Registry along with 50,000 others who were there on the day so that they can monitor long term health effects of the event.

Nine years on, the images, the stories, the horror and the terror seem almost strangely blasé. Every year the photos reappear with some new political analysis whether Judith Butler in her Precarious Life, Slavoj Zizek in First As Tragedy, Then as Farce or Noam Chomsky in his 9-11. The left has rightly been determined to utilise and try to understand 9-11 for its political implications, meaning and ongoing relevance to politics.

Having moved to Britain in 2004 I was confronted with a variety of analyses of the event with which I was previously unfamiliar. Chief amongst these was the claim that 9-11 was not to be condemned because this would imply that US imperialism and Islamic terrorism were equal threats. In addition others had claimed that whether one liked it or not, this was an “anti-capitalist” act and therefore in some way progressive. What these views failed to fully understand was that far from being “anti-capitalist” the attacks helped to prop up the system, were used as a justification for war and undoubtedly prolonged the life of a Bush administration which was profoundly unpopular in the days before the attack. (And for the record I despise the so-called “9-11 Truthers” who spend more time on ridiculous conspiracy theories than having any real concern for the victims or those still dying from being first responders while breathing in the toxic dust.) The capitalist system is good at using reactionary events to its advantage and this has been borne out in a variety of ways as the attacks continue to be used to justify the deadly war in Afghanistan to the continued presence in Iraq to innumerable misuses of state terror from Russia to Israel to China.

This is further evidenced by the reactionary response to 9-11 that is feeding the current wave of Islamophobia in the United States. This is a tragedy lived twice over; yet one would be hard pressed to see the latest events as mere farce. Nearly sixty Muslims lost their lives in the attacks on 9-11, yet this alone is not reason enough to oppose the increasing Islamophobia in the US. On the24th of August, 21 year-old Michael Enright hailed a taxi near 24th street in Manhattan. He asked the 43 year-old Bangladeshi immigrant Ahmed Sharif “Are you a Muslim?” and when Sharif said “Yes” he pulled out a knife, cutting Ahmed’s throat, face and forearms. Luckily Sharif lived and Enright is facing 25 years in prison.

It is the reactionary politics of movements like the Tea Party that feed off of the victims of 9-11 to fuel hatred, racism and Islamophobia using ignorance, exaggeration and fear. Do a simple search on Facebook for “Ground Zero Mosque” and it becomes clear that the misinformation about Park51, a Muslim Community Centre which includes a prayer room, which is NOT being built on ground zero but a number of blocks away, is as misinformed as it is hateful. There are claims that President Obama is allowing a “victory monument” for terrorists at Ground Zero, that a “super mosque” is being built at Ground Zero, that Muslims are celebrating the triumph of their “hateful religion” due to “liberal communists, socialists and fascists” like Obama (yes, I am not sure how one can be all three of those either).

Lost is the American ideal that I and most others were taught from their youngest days, that we were a country founded because of the need for religious freedom, that our forefathers fought and died for that right and that immigration and the acceptance of others is at the very heart of what the United States is all about. Whether one chooses to believe this about the US, the fact that this once staple of teaching young school children across the country in conservative and liberal areas alike is fast being replaced by a fierce hatred of the “other” whether it be Mexican immigrants in Arizona or Muslim cab drivers in New York City, is a phenomena worth watching closely. It cuts across the very core of the country and reveals how the United States now sees itself; increasingly isolated, superior and always right. Lost is any kind of humility, a respect for knowledge and wisdom and promoted is an attack on all things secular and non-Christian.

It is this cynical use of a tragic event to subvert some of the most cherished values of the United States, a tragic event which occurred in one of the most alive, beautiful and multicultural cities, that is perhaps most galling. I can still remember the feeling I had when visiting my native Salt Lake City, Utah and seeing the innumerable bumper stickers vowing to never forget alongside another calling for supporting the war in Iraq. “What the hell do you know about it? What the hell do you know about beautiful, multicultural New York and those that died? Who are you to call for others to be killed for something you know nothing about?” I remember thinking.

Analysis is one thing, using such a tragedy to promote war and state terror is quite another. Yet this has been done since mere days after the attacks with George W. Bush standing on the smoldering pile at Ground Zero yelling into a megaphone about how “the people who did this” were going to pay. For many he meant Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden, yet nine years on it would appear that it is innocent Muslims that are the ones that are still paying for the horror of that day. The reality is that the Muslim victims of 9-11 far exceed the sixty from the day itself, they include the hundreds of thousands killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. They include Muslims tortured and killed in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. They include Muslim rescue workers who rushed to the scene on the day and who along with their brothers and sisters have been snubbed by a government which has refused to support those still sick and dying from the toxic smoke and dust. They include victims of Islamophobic hate crimes across the world and Muslim victims of state terror in the name of “security” and “freedom”.

The victims of 9-11 are continuing to die around the world every day because the victims of 9-11 are also the victims of the responses to 9-11. Yet the oldest victim is not a person at all but an idea. It is the idea that America is a country where people of all faiths are respected and welcome, an idea which is enshrined in the US Constitution. It is a tragic loss from which the United States will find it very difficult to recover

Chile, the other 9/11

2010-09-11T13:13:00.001+01:00

Wanky cool kids

2010-09-10T15:50:00.003+01:00

Slow blogging this week as head hurts from filling in job applications .

Meanwhile, some trivia . This makes me think of the wanky middle class kids that wander round Dalston, thinking it is oh so edgy. Love the bit at the end , the so called cool jobs that only those whose mummy and daddy help out could afford to piss about with.

Here it is :

In the footsteps of local rebels

2010-09-07T19:19:00.003+01:00

Plug for a walk by David Rosenberg this weekend . I have been on one of his others , and recommend him for an informative and enjoyable guide walk .

Here are details of his latest :

The dramatic history of struggles by matchgirls, dockers, suffragettes and rebel councillors, in London’s East End, will be retraced and celebrated in a new two-hour guided walk, taking place for the first time at 2.30pm on Sunday September 12^th.

“The Spark of Rebellion in Bow and Mile End” has been devised by writer and educationalist David Rosenberg, who currently leads two other successful historical tours, for adults and young people, around Spitalfields and Cable Street.

David says: “In 1888 and 1889 matchgirls, dockers, tailors and gasworkers in East London went on strike for a living wage and better conditions. In the early 20^th century, East London suffragettes campaigned very courageously, and in 1921 local councillors went to prison rather than levy unfair rates. On the walk I weave together the common threads of their struggles and highlight the inspiring individuals who played such an outstanding role in these events. There are many important stories that deserve to be told.”

The fee for the walk is £7 (£4 unwaged) and details of the meeting point are available on booking, which can be made online at www.eastendwalks.com

Check out the website for details of his other walks , “The Radical Jewish East End” and “Anti-Fascist Footprints”.

Public support for Tube strike

2010-09-06T08:54:00.003+01:00

LBC is polling on its website, asking people "Whose side are you on in the Tube dispute?", here:
The current score is: Unions - 75.55%
Transport for London - 24.45%

London TravelWatch (the official watchdog for transport users) is polling visitors to its website. If you vote in the poll on ticket office opening hours on the front page (in the left hand column), you are then invted to vote on several more: click here.
At the moment:
- around 70% of respondents want ticket offices open for the whole time that the station is open (ie. for longer than they are open now!)
- over 80% of respondents believe that public transport is at risk because of funding cuts
- around a quarter have had problems topping up their Oyster card

London radio station phone-ins: The Tube strikes will no doubt be a hot topic of conversation on London's radio stations. There is a list of phone and text numbers for radio stations here. You, your friends and family may like to express their views!

A majority of GLA members (Labour + LibDems + Greens = 13 out of 25) oppose the Tube job cuts. When they proposed a resolution several weeks ago, the Tories walked out of the meeting to make it inquorate. We look forward to the resolution being resubmitted and the Tories staying in the room and being defeated!

Several disability organisations support our fight against staffing cuts, as the people they represent need staff to help them around the Tube. One organisation, Transport for All, had a very supportive letter published in the Evening Standard, which you can see here.

Tube cuts impact on people with disabilities

2010-09-06T06:21:00.001+01:00

How cuts to tube staff will affect disabled people :

Open letter to TFL against Underground staff cuts

Open letter to TfL and the Mayor of London.

Dear Mr Johnson,

London Visual Impairment Forum (LVIF) Transport for All and Inclusion London are greatly concerned about the proposed staffing cuts for London Underground which, we believe, could seriously undermine the mobility of older and disabled people in the capital.

Introductions
LVIF comprises voluntary (not for profit) organisations working with, and on behalf of, blind and partially sighted people in Greater London. There are approximately thirty eight local, London wide and national organisations actively involved. There are 39,315 people registered as blind or partially sighted in London, with between 78600 and 117900 others that have low vision but who have not registered.

Transport for All (TfA) – is a pan London disabled and older persons organisation that provides advice, information and advocacy on accessible transport issues. It is recognized that there are approx 1.4 million disabled people in London and over 1 million people aged 60.

Inclusion London is a pan-London disability equality organisation. We provide policy, campaigning and capacity-building support for Deaf and disabled people’s organisations (DDPOs) in London. Inclusion London promotes equality for London’s Deaf and disabled people. Our work is rooted in the Social Model of Disability and the Cultural Model of Deafness. Inclusion London is a Community Interest Company. We receive funding from London Councils, Big Lottery and Capacity Builders.

We understand, from the RMT’s open letter to TfL and London Underground’s response to this, that cuts to London underground staff have been proposed. Whilst we understand that budgets are tight our concerns centre around the impact on the level of assistance that will then be available to older and disabled people. We are also concerned about the implications for personal security.

Many disabled people rely on assistance from staff in order to safely use and negotiate the system. The need for assistance arises both in normal operating conditions when passengers may need help to use ticket machines, negotiate barriers or access platforms, as well as during periods of disruption and emergencies, when the need for assistance is particularly critical. For example, when services are disrupted staff are needed to provide advice on alternative routes, physical assistance (e.g. escorting to an alternative line) and reassurance, especially when the disruption occurs midway through a journey.

The presence of staff is also important in terms of personal security. Passengers, particularly vulnerable passengers, feel safer if there are staff around on which they can call if needed. The presence of staff may also act as a deterrent to those who would otherwise cause problems on the system.

We believe that the loss of staff will have a significant impact on the lives of London’s residents and commuters. With the Olympics and Paralympics Games only two years away the impact will be even more acutely felt then when there will be many thousands of visitors, including disabled visitors, wishing to use the Underground. Staff cuts now are likely to undermine proposals to increase staff on the Underground during the Olympics and Paralympics.

LVIF, TfA & Inclusion London would therefore call on you and TfL to reconsider these proposals to ensure that disabled and older people can continue to use the London Underground in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Henrietta Doyle
(On behalf of LVIF, Transport for All and Inclusion London)

Cameron "pure and simple lies"

2010-09-01T11:53:00.003+01:00

Video from Political Scrapbook blog.

“We will keep the pension credit, we’ll keep the winter fuel allowance, we’ll keep the free bus pass. Those leaflets you have been getting from Labour, the letters you have been getting from Labour are pure and simple lies.” – David Cameron, 22 April

Who is lying now ?

Never trust a Tory, or a Lib Dem for that matter !

A message to Tube passengers from Tube staff

2010-08-30T08:26:00.002+01:00

WHY WE ARE STRIKING: TO DEFEND SERVICES, SAFETY AND JOBS

London Underground plans to:
•get rid of around 800 station staff posts
•reduce ticket office opening times by around 7,500 hours
•carry out essential maintenance checks on trains every four weeks instead of every two weeks
•cut the number of train drivers’ posts

Tube trade unions RMT and TSSA have tried for months to persuade London Underground to scrap these unnecessary and dangerous cuts. We have spent hours in talks, have lobbied politicians, and have won lots of support from passengers. But London Underground and the Mayor have not listened.

London Underground has left members of the two unions with no choice but to hold strikes and other industrial action. We are prepared to lose money by striking because we are not prepared to see London’s workers and passengers put at risk, left without help, or have vital services withdrawn. We are professional railway staff and we want to be able to do our jobs safely and properly.

We believe that people who live in, visit and work in London need:
•a safe, secure London Underground
•open ticket offices
•more Tube staff, not fewer
•job opportunities for unemployed people and school-leavers

We understand that strikes can cause disruption and distress. We want the staff cuts withdrawn so that we do not have to carry on striking. Please support our campaign.

=====

Fewer station staff means:
•a less safe London Underground
•less information and help during delays and disruptions
•it will be harder to evacuate stations quickly and safely in the event of an emergency eg. fire, crash, bombing
•less help for disabled, elderly and other vulnerable passengers
•less chance of you getting the help you need with directions, information, lost property, accidents or other issues
•less deterrent to assault, vandalism and other harmful behaviour
•you will feel less secure travelling around London Underground

Shorter ticket office opening hours means you will not be able to get a ticket seller’s help when:
•you have a problem with your ticket or Oyster
•the ticket machines are not working (which will happen more often with fewer staff to service them)
•you need to buy a ticket that is not available elsewhere
•you believe that the ticketing system has treated you unfairly
•your ticket or Oyster does not work
•you want the ‘personal touch’ in dealing with your issue

Less frequent train maintenance and fewer drivers means:
•trains potentially going into passenger service with defective brakes and other parts
•serious risk of accidents, injuries and even deaths
•trains more likely to be cancelled and therefore more delays to your journey

Support our campaign against staffing cuts:
•Visit our website: www.rmtplatform.org.uk/sos
•Send us an email: supportus@rmtlondoncalling.org.uk
•Contact your member of the Greater London Assembly. Find out their names and contact details at www.london.gov.uk/who-runs-london/the-london-assembly/members. Write to them at City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA.
•Tell London Underground and TfL your views by writing to Customer Service Centre, London Underground, 55 Broadway, London SW1H 0BD, or online at www.tfl.gov.uk/helpandcontact
•Email Mayor Boris Johnson: mayor@london.gov.uk

Pope and Blair to combine state visits- via NewsBiscuit

2010-08-29T10:03:00.006+01:00

Rather good spoof for a Sunday morning, from NewsBiscuit :

Britain is preparing to host a joint state visit in September from two religious men convinced of their own infallibility and who refuse to make a public apology for their actions, his holiness Tony Blair and Pope Benedict XVI.

‘Look, it just makes sense to combine the two visits,’ said Mr Blair, ‘we are both Catholics, we both have books to promote and we both need protecting from an angry public.’

‘The Holy Father is delighted to be sharing his visit to the UK with Mr Blair,’ said a Vatican representative, ‘It will make a pleasant change for him to travel with someone who manages to be even more unpopular than him.’

The state visit, already dubbed ‘The Guilt and Redemption Tour’, will see the holy duo travel the nation in a specially adapted Popemobile, waving at the crowds from behind the safety of bulletproof glass.

Mr Blair and Pope Benedict will appear at venues around the country preaching to their followers and promoting their books, A Journey and A Bible. Both works have been heavily panned by the critics who describe them as ‘a shameless rewriting of history,’ ‘self-serving twaddle’ and ‘little more than a made-up fairy tale’.

...

‘The combined visit will save the taxpayer millions in terms of police protection,’ said Home Secretary Theresa May, ‘it should also confuse protestors who won’t know who to hurl abuse at first.’

However some activists are looking forward to the visit. ‘This is a great opportunity,’ said professional protestor Peter Tatchell, ‘with a bit of luck I might get to make two citizen’s arrests in one day.’

The Pope-Blair visit will culminate in an open air mass in which each man will pray for the forgiveness of the other. ‘This is the nearest that people will ever get to see either man make a public apology,’ said tour press secretary Alastair Campbell, adding ‘we might do God but we don’t do sorry.’

Why the left shouldn't vote for Diane Abbott

2010-08-27T09:21:00.003+01:00

As we are on the subject of the Labour Leadership, here is a cross post from Workers' Liberty . The AWL called for a critical vote for Diane , but some members disagreed. Here is a response from Janine :

“A tick-list of policies is not enough”

The AWL’s decision appears to be premised on the idea that Diane Abbott is a “standard-issue Labour left MP”, or perhaps “similar to John McDonnell but not as good”. That might have been true over the years of, say, Jeremy Corbyn, or Alan Simpson, or Alice Mahon, or John Cryer, or others. We would be absolutely right to back someone like this. But I would argue that Diane Abbott is not of this order at all. She is something different: not left, but fake left.

Diane Abbott:

• is held in contempt in her own constituency (‘’standard-issue’’ Labour left MPs are usually well-liked)

• sent her son to a private school

• hosts a TV programme with Michael Portillo and is close friends with other Tories eg. Jonathan Aitken

•supported the privatisation of London Underground’s East London Line.

Diane Abbott is known as much for these things as for being any kind of left-winger. Even the extent to which she is seen as a left-winger is problematic. It relies on a definition of “left” that is based on single issues (supplemented by being black and female), not on siding with workers. Even those who perceive her as left-wing do not particularly associate her with trade unions or workers’ struggles, as she does not associate herself with them.

Our list of her leftiness — “She will be the one candidate who was against the Iraq invasion and is for trade union rights, for migrant rights, for expanded council housing, for taxing the rich, for scrapping British nuclear weapons, for fighting cuts, against privatisation, for free higher education” — could also apply to George Galloway. Diane Abbott is not the same as George Galloway, but this shows that a tick-list of policies is not enough to justify endorsing her. Sometimes, a candidate has other things on his/her record that cancel out a list of okay policies.

Moreover, she is not as left-wing, or rebellious, as you might imagine. In the last Parliament, Diane Abbott voted against the government in 68 votes out of 871 she attended (7.8%); John McDonnell did so in 205 votes out of 824 (24.9%). (Kate Hoey rebelled 153 times, more than twice as often as Abbott; and even Frank Field had a higher percentage rebellion, at 10.8%.)

The article (‘Vote Abbot but organise the left’... web reference above) argues that: “A critical vote for Diane Abbott will not cut across getting a hearing for our ideas.” I think that a critical vote for Diane Abbott would cut across us getting a hearing for our ideas from those people who see her for what she is. I am also not convinced that voting Abbott will “boost the broader left” as this assumes. If the left backs her and she gets a decent vote, then that may boost the perception of the strength of the left — but at the cost of politically endorsing Abbott as representative of the left, and therefore redefining what it is to be ‘’left’’ in a negative direction. So you can be “left” — indeed a representative, a champion of the left — while supporting privatisation, sending your son to private school, hobnobbing with Tories and sitting out workers’ struggles?! Is that a definition of “left” that we want to boost?!

Finally, the decision to support Diane Abbott does not appear to even consider the role she has played in this leadership election, where her candidacy scuppered John McDonnell’s chances of getting on the ballot paper.

When socialists decide who to back in an election, we need to consider not just that candidate’s formal policies, but whether supporting his/her candidature would advance the cause of socialism and working-class representation. With Diane Abbott, I just don’t see how it does. She is not a credible socialist candidate, and socialists do ourselves no credit by supporting her.

Janine Booth

Cruddas backs David Miliband for leader

2010-08-25T17:37:00.004+01:00

Well as Owen Jones says on Twitter

'Cruddas backs DM' story is this:'ex-Blair adviser backs ex-Blair adviser'.No surprise if people look at JC's political record, not rhetoric .

Yep, check out some of my old posts for my views on this opportunistic chameleon of a Politician .

He backed 42 days detention, voted for the Iraq war and then changed his mind , supported Brown and backed a secret inquiry on Iraq.He praised the genius of Blair.

As Dave said :

Compass leaders like Jon Cruddas combine the ability to deliver speeches demanding that Trident be scrapped, council houses be built and the Post Office not be privatised, with the supine cowardice to vote for 42-day detention without trial, a measure he surely must know to be wrong.
On the one hand, Compass wants to present itself as pragmatic radicalism for the twenty-first century; on the other, it wants to keep New Labour sweet. Ultimately, it cannot do both.
It's politics offer too little, too late.

Anyway, seems he has kissed and made up with David Miliband after a little tiff when he was still brown nosing Gordon and Blair in the same interview , quite an achievement in hedging your bets with both New labour camps :

In an interview with The Times, Mr Cruddas said that none of those who claim to be Tony Blair’s allies come close to matching the former leader.

The Dagenham MP, who is one of David Miliband’s rivals to succeed Mr Brown, turned down a ministerial job last summer despite being most members’ first choice as deputy leader. He suggested to The Times that he was now willing to take a job under Mr Brown.

...

Mr Cruddas said that MPs had been reckless, irresponsible and divisive in calling for change without a candidate, timetable or alternative policy programme. “People will be watching with wide-open eyes unable to understand that . . . we should become preoccupied with electing another party leader. That’s what’s so wrong,” he said.

...

Mr Cruddas, who worked in No 10 under Mr Blair, sought to wrong-foot those who would dismiss him as a leftwinger, praising Mr Blair’s “genius” and making a barely coded attack on those such as Mr Miliband who were “acting under his banner”.

“Blair was a much more charismatic, sophisticated, inclusive and radical politician than any of those who claim adherence to Blairism now,” he said.

Mr Cruddas signalled that he was willing to shore up Mr Brown’s battered administration. “It’s all hands to the pump now,” he said. “A year ago I said my [deputy leadership] campaign wasn’t about a job in government and I felt you had to carry that through. My instinct is not oppositional. Whoever is leader, we’ve got to think how we put the band back together.”

He praised both Mr Miliband’s and Mr Purnell’s efforts in taking on the Conservatives. Labour had not laid a glove on the Tories for more than a year, he said. He criticised attempts to portray David Cameron as a “shallow salesman” and as a right-wing Tory posing as a moderniser. Instead, he urged his party to match Mr Cameron’s emotional literacy and expose the tensions between the Tory party’s liberal and authoritarian wings.

Now I know some say we need to be pragmatic , but there is a need for some sort of consistent principle in a politician ,surely? Either Cruddas is just a careerist, who says what he thinks will get him further or he is a ditzy indecisive guy who changes his mind as much as his underwear (hopefully !). Neither is grounds for some sections of the left seeing him as the sensible saviour of the soft left in Labour . Surely his backing of David Milliband will cause the naivety to disappear ?

So, who would you like to put in a wheelie bin ?

2010-08-25T16:22:00.002+01:00

Answers in the comments box please .

Hopi v LRC cricket fundraiser this weekend

2010-08-24T21:39:00.003+01:00

Yep, its that time of year again, the second annual Hopi v LRC cricket match. Now cricket bores me , sorry, but I still found it a fun day out. That may have been of course because Mark F made sure there was Jack Daniels available in the bar . Even with the rain , it was fun though and all in a good cause :

Sunday 29th August 2010
12:00pm to 5:00pm

From 12 noon in Victoria Park, Hackney, E9

The second annual solidarity cricket match between Hands Off the People of Iran (Hopi) and the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). The match is to raise money for Workers’ Fund Iran – a charity that is dedicated to raising much-needed funds for the inspiring struggles of the Iranian working class. These struggles have increased enormously in the recent period and been led by numerous sections of the workforce – from car workers to bus drivers, sugar cane workers to construction workers.

Last year we raised £1,500 and we are confident that we can get close to £2,000 this time around. These funds can certainly not match the funds raised for ‘regime change from above’ by the US and its allies, but they are absolutely crucial to our brothers and sisters in Iran and of great symbolic importance: their fight is our fight.

We have stepped up the plans for this year and are looking forward to more numbers, more fun and more funds being raised. But to take these steps forward we need your help! Can you:

• Play? Both male and female welcome players welcome so get in touch!
• Get your union branch/campaign/organisation to pass the draft motion (overleaf)?
• Help out on the day?
• Organise a stall for your union/campaign/organisation on the day?
• Provide a donation to help cover some of the costs we will incur during the day?
• Help to publicise the event amongst friends and on the internet or send a message of support for us to put up on our blog?

For more details see http://hopivslrc2010.wordpress.com/

Southall Black Sisters are fundraising for two Delhi-based sisters who sustained a horrific acid attack

2010-08-23T17:40:00.002+01:00

From their website :

Donations are desperately needed to finance the medical costs and rehabilitation of Samar (31) and Juwariya (25) Atique whose young lives and hopes were brutally crushed in October 2009 by two men who threw a jug of acid on their faces as the women were returning home from a day's work in a rickshaw. Their crime - Juwariya had turned down a marriage proposal from one of the men!

They sustained severe burns and injuries to their faces, their eyes and their upper bodies. In acid attack cases, the victims should be hosed down gently with a continuous stream of water immediately to stop the acid continuing to burn into their flesh. But they did not get treatment for five hours after the incident because the woman doctor was threatened with a similar attack by these men and their families. Their eyes were infected and continually pouring out pus. They may be blind for life. They will need to have reconstructive surgery on their noses and lips. Their eyelids were burnt away so they also suffer from itching and dryness in the eyes. Their first operation did not take place till 5 months after the event. To date they have had 3 operations and they will need many, many more. They live in Delhi but they have to travel to a hospital in Chennai, nearly one and a half thousand miles away, where they are getting subsidised treatment. One of the sisters is suicidal, they are both suffering from depression but neither of them has had any counselling sessions as yet. Post-operative care and rehabilitation will take years.

They were independent working women, whose incomes contributed to the expenses of a joint family of 11 people. Samar worked for an IT company and Juwariya, ironically ran her own beauty parlour. One other sister and brother have had to give up their jobs in order to look after them leading to a loss of four incomes. The reduced family income is less than the monthly cost of routine medical expenses like bandages, antibiotics and painkillers, let alone the cost of going to Chennai for surgery, let alone the costs of daily life. So far, they have managed with donations and loans from family and friends. Poverty has compounded the consequences of violence.

This case came to the attention of Southall Black Sisters earlier this year. Although we do not usually have the capacity to run international campaigns, we felt that the horrific nature of this particular attack served as a salutary reminder of the extreme violence that women round the world continue to face should they make the smallest strike for freedom and assert their most basic rights, in this case, the right to choose their own partner/spouse.

The immediate target for fundraising is £21,000 for microsurgery to be carried out on Samar's eyes. There is some hope that her sight may be saved although Juwariya's is irretrievable. Of this sum £11,000 has already been raised. However the very rough total estimated costs of all surgery, including longterm rehabilitation, are: £250,000. It is impossible to be precise partly because every decision for futher surgery depends on preceding operations. The following are some examples of costs:

Average monthly cost of care: £1350 (bandages, medicines, nursing, local hospital visits, nutritious food)

Each visit to the Chennai hospital: £12,000 (based on their previous trip)

Every return flight to Chennai costs: £985 (for 3 people)

Counselling: £30 per session

It is very easy (and secure) to donate online. Please click on the Justgiving link above and follow the instructions. If you are a UK taxpayer at the basic rate, they will even reclaim 28p for every £1 from the government, increasing the value of your donation by 30%. Please publicise this case as widely as possible.

Donate here.

There are pics of the women before and after the attack, really horrific. Click on the link to SBS to see the reality of what attacks like these by men mean for women.

'Middle Class Benefits' - My Arse!

2010-08-19T10:39:00.003+01:00

I am heartily sick of the use of the term 'middle-class benefits' to describe universal benefits, such as Child Benefit and Winter Fuel Allowance.

The ConDem coalition announced yesterday that it will be reviewing said benefits, and the media happily went along with the term 'middle-class benefits' on the spurious grounds that as they are universal, even better-off people can get them.

'Universal' in this context has a similar meaning to 'comprehensive' in the context of schools. So perhaps we should start referring to 'comprehensive schools' as 'middle-class schools'. No, didn't think so.

When the filthy rich remain filthy rich, when they are suffering a tiny fragment of the cuts which hit everyone else savagely, it also seems to me that turning fire on the so-called 'middle class' is aiming at the wrong target. Usually, when anyone gets down to specifics, they talk about excluding families with an income over, say, £40,000 from these benefits. But raising kids, or paying the bills, on a joint income of £40,001 is not exactly the life of Riley.

If people are really railing at the injustice of very rich people being entitled to benefits, fair enough. But rather than take the benefits away, make them pay for it through a more progressive taxation system.

Because if a universal benefit becomes a means-tested benefit, it is not just the 'middle class' who suffer - it is the working-class people who might still be entitled to the benefit but will stop actually getting it. As explained in my previous post here.

Chemical castration drug used to control kids on the autistic spectrum

2010-08-19T09:17:00.000+01:00

As regular readers will know, both myself and Janine have personal interests in the rights of people on the autistic spectrum , and feel strongly that more should be done to support and understand . Not cure or experiment on. I myself have learnt lots from my aspie partner and would not seek to change or 'cure' him, but I am aware that the world is not always a welcoming place .

Given that I was shocked to read this :

Controversial treatment comes to South Florida

A Maryland medical group has started treating autistic children in South Florida with shots of a drug used for chemical castration, a therapy widely panned by mainstream experts.
The group gives children the cancer drug Lupron to stop their bodies from making testosterone, saying the drug helps expel toxic mercury and quells aggressive or sexually explicit behavior by kids with excessive levels of the male hormone.

...

But numerous physicians, researchers and therapists insist there’s no proof mercury causes autism, that Lupron removes mercury or that autistic kids have excessive testosterone. What’s more, the drug carries a risk of bone damage, stunted growth and heart trouble, and can render children impotent.
These experts contend that Lupron, costing about $5,000 a month but seldom covered by insurance, is one of many treatments that cash in on the desperation of parents trying to cope with an incurable condition for which medicine has few good answers outside of painstaking behavioral therapy.
“Not only is there no scientific backing whatsoever for Lupron treatments, there are several major concerns for the children’s health,” said neurologist BethAnn McLaughlin, an adviser to the Dan Marino Foundation autism group in Weston and the mother of two developmentally disabled children.
“These people are preying on the fears of parents. We cannot be using these children who are so vulnerable as guinea pigs in a medical experiment.”
Untested autism treatments have flourished while science struggles to explain the disorder, which disrupts the abilities to speak, concentrate, connect with people and control impulses.

...

A vocal subset of parents and activists blame vaccines, especially those with the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, which has been banned from virtually all as a precaution. Numerous studies have found no connection between autism and vaccines or thimerosal.
Lupron therapy grew from the mercury camp. Baltimore researcher Dr. Mark Geier started using the drug in 2005 on the theory – disputed by mainsteam doctors – that testosterone binds mercury in the body and that many autistic kids have high levels of the hormone.
Lupron halts production of the female hormone estrogen, which the body uses to make testosterone. The drug mainly is used to treat endometrial cancer in women and prostate cancer in men, and sometimes to chemically castrate sex offenders.
Geier’s promotional materials said he has treated hundreds of children with Lupron and has launched nine ASD Centers in eight states. In his latest, he teams with Dr. David Clayman, a Boca Raton radiologist who has an autistic teen son and is opening an ASD office beside his MRI center in Tamarac.

...

Lupron critics said autism parents may not understand the dangers.
The drug is not approved for children – except a rare few with premature puberty – because it can impair bone development crucial to growth, said Dr. Gary Berkovitz, chief of pediatric endocrinology at the University of Miami medical school.
It’s not recommended for people with heart disease, kidney disease, asthma, depression or seizures because it can worsen those conditions. Autistic children are prone to seizures.
“It has not been tested so there’s no way to know if it has adverse effects in the long run,” Berkovitz said.
Said neurologist McLaughlin: “We have very significant concerns about irreversible damage to sexual function and the brain and sex organs of these children.”

...

McLaughlin said parents should stick with slow and difficult but proven therapies. Teens struggling with sex can benefit from counseling, rewards for positive behavior, jobs or activities to keep them focused and, if needed, drugs to treat anxiety or sleep issues, she said.
“What we know works is a rough course,” she said. “Yes, we can do better. But what we don’t want is for families to lose faith in science and go off with people who … are violating the first rule of being a doctor, which is ‘first do no harm.’”

This is absolutely appalling and I am shocked that this is allowed in the US. I can understand that parents may be frustrated and that there may not be enough support in place , but to do this to your child is abuse. The parents fears are being exploited for money and the young person has no say in what happens to their body. It is about control rather than looking at longer term ways to help someone adapt to a neurotypical world. And to perhaps question whether that world is necessarily the best way to do things . This is truly a scary way to treat people and does nothing to work with difference ,understand and learn. It is about a quick buck . Aspies have the same rights as anyone else and this is a breach of them.

Holiday Reading 1: Paul Mason - Meltdown

2010-08-15T13:40:00.005+01:00

You know that capitalism lurches into crises, you know this one is something to do with bankers making risky loans, you are familiar with terms like subprime, credit crunch, and you've heard of Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae - or was it Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac? But you would really like to understand it all a bit better.

My recommendation? Read this book.

Paul Mason's 'Meltdown' was published in February 2009, and provides a highly readable, indepth-yet-easy-to-understand account of the current economic crisis. His account is very much helped by lively descriptions of people and places, cultural references, and the personal touch of his own presence at press conferences and lurking in various places waiting for developments.

It is also helped by straightforward explanations and by regular mentions of the poor and working-class victims of the bankers' behaviour. Its style is much more journalistic than theoretical, but it feeds your theoretical understanding nonetheless.

Now a year-and-a-half old, the book can not provide up-to-date accounts of governments' slash-and-burn response to the crisis. These extraordinary-scale cuts, and the accompanying pathetic-scale curbs on the bankers, perhaps cast doubt on Paul's central argument: that this economic crisis has killed neo-liberalism. He contends that the 'age of greed' is at an end; capitalism has no choice but to reign in and regulate its financial mega-gamblers.

Even if the ConDems' savage attacks suggest otherwise, though, they do not prove that Paul is wrong, and I still find his argument very convincing. Obviously, it's an argument that I'd very much like to be convinced by, especially as he also argues that the organised labour movement will have a much bigger role from here on in.

That last bit is something that we do not have to wait on and observe, but that we can assist with our own efforts.

Pete Wylie "The Day That Margaret Thatcher Dies! "

2010-08-13T18:59:00.001+01:00

Hat tip Harry P and Lawrie C on Facebook.

Organising Against Sexism and Harrassment at Work

2010-08-12T15:55:00.001+01:00

I'm cross-posting this from the Workers' Liberty website because it seems like a Stroppy kind of thing ...

Author: Jean Lane

The following is an edited transcript of a speech given at an AWL North East London branch meeting in August 2010. The transcript covers both Jean's initial speech and her response to a subsequent discussion. For reasons of time, the questions and contributions from other attendees of the meeting have not been transcribed.

It's my 25th anniversary of doing a really shit job! Our organisation produced a pamphlet about it at the time. It was actually a series of articles that were printed in our paper; much later on we put them together and produced the pamphlet. The articles themselves were written some months after the event, because for a long time afterwards I couldn't even talk about it. It was awful. To try and talk to anyone about it was absolutely impossible because I was so emotionally effected by it.

Some time afterwards, there was a programme on TV which was about a woman firefighter. One of the episodes was about the woman suffering sexual harassment at the hands of her male colleagues, and I couldn't watch it. They were using the episode to say that harassment of women at work was unacceptable, but I still couldn't watch it. Emotionally the effect of my experience in this job was really quite hard.

After we produced the pamphlet, the organisation (which was at that time called Socialist Organiser) did a lot of meetings around the country, both in towns and on university campuses, about the issues. They were really big meetings. I don't know what it was, but something just touched a spark with people. It was about personal experience rather than the heavy-duty theory we usually do. It was obviously a personal experience that a lot of people related to. There wasn't a single meeting we did at that time which didn't bring up huge numbers of horror stories that women in the work were going to. I thought my experience was bad, but to be honest it was nothing compared to some of the experiences we heard in those meetings. These were women who'd never spoken out before and they had absolute horror stories. For instance, one of the meetings – which was at Lol Duffy's election campaign in Liverpool – had stories about women who worked in shops being physically abused away from the counter, women who worked in offices being abused... The actual level of abuse that those women were receiving was far worse than what I experienced in a job where you could reasonably expect the level of harassment, because of the nature of the job and the workforce, to be of its worst kind. I was shocked to find out the extent of it and to find out that it wasn't just about working in an all-male environment; it was about working anywhere at all.

I was working as a labourer on a building site. It was a one-year job, designed to get unemployed people off the dole for a short while. It was in Coventry, and there were lots of unemployed engineers and car-workers. It was designed to help those people get back into the habit of employment, and to give them a year's worth of wages and employment to kick them back into the world of work again. So the people I was working with were people who'd been in the industry for 25 or 30 years in some cases, and had become long-term unemployed without much hope of getting another job.

Because of the actions and behaviour of one man in particular, my experience of working there was absolutely dreadful. There was no physical harassment; it was all verbal, and all specifically designed to make you feel worthless and like you had no right to be working there. The intention behind it, quite explicitly in the end, was to drive me out. “This is a man's job.” It was constant. It was every day. It was relentless.

By the time I started that job I had already been a revolutionary socialist for quite a few years, and had been a feminist for all of that time. I thought I could handle most things, but I was crushed by that experience. The effects of it were to make me ill. I was on pills, unable to sleep, depressed. This went on for several months. So although it wasn't direct physical abuse, the effect of it – especially if you multiply it out across all the women it happened to – in terms of a woman's actual right to work is absolutely huge.

In the end the problem was dealt with by me persuading one of the men that what was happening was unacceptable, and then him persuading the other men of that, and them threatening to kick the shit out of the perpetrator if he didn't stop it. And that's what dealt with it. He left before I did, and at the point my whole working life changed for the better. Partly that was because he was gone, but partly it was because of the discussions I was able to have with the other men.

At the time this was happening to me and who knows how many other women workers, there was legislation in place against sexual harassment. The Sex Discrimination Act had been around for more than 10 years, although that act itself didn't deal directly with sexual harassment at work. It dealt with issues of discrimination in terms of having a job, getting training and getting promotion on the basis that you were a woman. It was amendments to the act that came out later than added paragraphs about sexual harassment at work – what it is, what it means, what you can do about it and the fact that it's illegal!

Although the sexual harassment side of things hadn't been particularly dealt with legally at the time I was going through my experience, the TUC already had guidelines for union activists and indeed employers about women's right to work and about sexual harassment at work. So there were already things that people could use. When I did eventually persuade one of the men in my workplace that sexual harassment was unacceptable, I was able to show him printed materials that showed that it wasn't just about me but was something was nationally recognised and widespread. One of the things that persuaded this man that was was happening to me was unacceptable was the fact that he had three daughters; when you looked at the statistics about what happened to women at work and in society generally, he worked out that there was a very good chance that one of his three daughters would suffer what I'd been going through and probably worse. He initially though it was a joke. But when I showed him written stuff from the unions and from government commissions, that legitimised it in his mind as a real issue.

On a personal level, it effects not only your immediate health but your ability to work. It effects your right to work, because people leave. They can't stand it for too long. The changes that have been made over the last 25 years have, I think, been genuine attempts to deal with the situation and put a proper definition of what sexual harassment is on the statute books. But of course if you're the woman in the workplace, unless you've got this lovely glossy policy wrapped round a brick when you're being given a hard time then it actually doesn't help you in an immediate sense. It does help you, and it helps the unions, in the sense that it highlights it as a problem and educates people. It changes perceptions and expectations about what's acceptable and what's not, and how they feel they should be treated at work. The fact that there's legislation gives the union a springboard to negotiate. On a certain level it's absolutely essential, but on an immediate personal level in the day-to-day workplace it doesn't help you.

The Sex Discrimination Act is only one of the acts that's changed the experience of women's employment over the last 30 years. That legislation has made a difference; they have been important developments for working women, and I think they're worth defending. Those are the very sorts of things that are going to be under threat when it comes to how the recession is going to effect women at work.

The workforce has changed since that legislation. Far more women are at work now than there were 30 years ago; that's a good development as far as socialists are concerned, because you can't fight a working-class revolution with only half the working class organised! You've got to organise the class as a whole to raise the consciousness to want to change society, and who better than those who've been worst treated by society to want to change it?

But there are problems too. Women are often working part-time, mainly because of childcare responsibilities and needing shorter hours. Of all women in the workplace, 45% are part-time compared to 11% of men. The wages of part-time jobs are far lower, largely because of where those jobs are concentrated: they're in cleaning, they're in catering, they're in care assistance, they're in shop-work. Those are the places were women employees predominate and where low-pay predominates.

The women who fought for and won a lot of that body of legislation were working-class women who were socialist-feminists, who took on the experiences of the Ford women whose strike was the basis of the Equal Pay Act. An awful lot of those women fought to get a voice for women in the unions; that was absolutely essential. The vast majority of them ended up becoming reformists with a few notable exceptions, Pat Longman being one of them.

Pat was part of all of those movements; she was around at the time strikes were going on for equal pay, at the time when the National Abortion Campaign was a huge organisation building massive conferences and demonstrations. It's because of those women that the labour movement got changed and legislation got changed. But largely they did become reformists. I remember going to Labour Party conferences when Labour had been in opposition for years, and those women were saying “we can't make any changes until we win power.” Those arguments were used to justify voting for right-wing women over left-wing men within the Labour Party. There were only a few notable exceptions who didn't get sucked into all of that. However the advances that were fought for were absolutely right; sexual harassment is one of the issues that effects women at work, and if we either only rely on legislation or allow it to be dismissed then it's only going to get worse.

The recession is going to effect the number of women at work. In the last recession it was men who were thrown out of work by manufacturing going down the drain – exactly the sort of men who ended up working tin-pot, part-time jobs on building sites because industry collapsed. In this recession huge numbers of women face redundancy because it's local government, healthcare and other areas with large numbers of women workers that are under attack.

I see it as a Unison rep for education workers on a very regular basis where school managements just decide “I'm not having part-time workers any more; full-time or nothing – take your pick.” For an awful lot of women that means “nothing”, because you can't afford to raise your kids on part-time wages and unfortunately the burden of domestic responsibility does still fall almost entirely on women. So an awful lot of things are going to start going backwards unless we organise. We have the experience of what's been done in the past, and what's not been enough. So – legislation yes, but beyond that we have to organise women workers to defend what we've got and take it further, because it's going to be under attack.

In the late 70s and early 80s, the labour movement was very male dominated, even in those industries with a lot of women workers. It wasn't that the leadership of the unions were overwhelmingly men – they were 100% men. The leaders were men, the reps were men, the organisers were men. They were men and they were white and they were bureaucrats. By and large they were right-wing, and they dominated Labour Party policy by wielding the bloc vote at Labour Party conference at a time when conference actually meant something before it was shut down by Kinnock and Blair.

We set up Women's Fightback, which was socialist-feminist in its politics but intended to be broad and open. The purpose of it was to build a bridge between the women's movement and the labour movement. It aimed to get those socialist-feminist ideas into the labour movement, because we recognised that if we want to change society then women must be organised and if we want women's liberation then society must be changed! And we knew that because only the working class can change society, we had to change the labour movement. That's how our organisation saw our task at that time.

The women's sections in the Labour Party in the 1970s were councillors' wives, and they made tea. They made tea while their men talked to constituents and did the “real” work. What happened in the late 70s was that women went in consciously, as groups, and there were big faction fights between old women and young women and took them over! We started voting for Benn in the leadership campaign, voting to support Bobby Sands, voting to ban the bomb... all these right-wing councillors' wives were horrified. They were big political battles.

There were battles going on all over the place at that time. My experience on the building site was just one experience. Before that I'd worked for the post office, and we had union activists sticking pornographic stuff up on the noticeboards! Their general behaviour towards women workers was not good. The battle was to be had within the union sometimes even more than with management. They were essential battles.

The Grunwick dispute was one of the first times when the whole labour movement rallied in solidarity with women workers. They were on strike for a year for union recognition and were almost 100% Asian. You could go on their picket line and see battalions of seamen, engineers and car-workers marching down the street to support them and you'd overhear white male workers saying things like “that Paki woman could never have attacked that copper!” That language was natural to them. Racism and sexism was absolutely accepted and unquestioned until, as a result of women and black people being in the workplace and organising, the contradictions got raised in people's minds.

There were very, very few women in the building industry when I was going through my experience. Of those that were, very few were unskilled, unqualified labourers like me. If they got in at all they went in with a specific skill, like an electrician for example. I'm sure their treatment was no better but they probably had slightly better standing because they had essential skills.

One of the most telling examples of women going into a male-dominated workforce and changing it for the better is American women miners. In the 70s and 80s women went to work in the mines in places like Kentucky and won massive campaigns around health and safety. Men had been putting up with really shoddy working conditions where people were maimed and killed and the women just said “we're not putting up with this.” They fought for some health and safety legislation and won it. They were changing minds and also changing people's direct working experience.

People have asked me whether I took the job with a specific intention of having a go politically. The reason I've ever taken any job has been to organise. All I've ever done in my workplaces has been to become the union rep, organise meetings and have political discussions. I would've done that on the site if I'd had the chance. There were other women who did the same; there was a woman in the IMG who took a job on the tube, and there was “Red Steph” in the car industry. She became nationally famous for a while for organising at Cowley.

On the pamphlet itself, I think there's always a place for literature that just says what it's like. We don't always have to have all the answers. Sometimes it's right to just describe and say what working-class people's live are like. That can be an education in itself. People recognise themselves, and that changes you. It's a good thing for socialists to do.

The unions today would deal with an issue like this as an individual question. They'd say “let's sue” rather than trying to collectivise the issue and use it to organise. That's as big a battle as we're facing today. As we were saying, legislation is good, but is it enough? The thing that's missing is the collective organisation and the action at a rank-and-file level. You might win an individual case in the courts but as long as the capitalist state exists then they can take whatever you win back off you again. All the glossy pamphlets and policy documents aren't going to help us win; we're only going to win with collective action.

Community campaign is victorious

2010-08-10T23:33:00.002+01:00

Evil caltongate, the wet dream of developers

After the community campaigned for years saying that the Caltongate was the wrong development. The council have admitted defeat! They have cancelled the land sales and giving back deposits. You can read more on the Independent republic of the Canongate about the history of the Save Our Old Town campaign.

See the news on STV

The reality is that charlatan developers scammed £70 million from HBOS and convinced the council to give their dystopia planning permission which meant knocking down listed building, chucking out tenants from the business properies and homes and demolishing the bus garage that was on the site causing the gap site.

You can read more on the Guardian's local blog here

Local people have set up a Community Development Trust in order to deal with this issue because we predicted this would happen hopefully we can get to work bringing back the blighted area into a vibrant place to be, the Waverley Valley deserves this

The gap site left behind by developers who were given permission to demolish buildings, they walk away owing the bank £70 million and we get left with a hole in the ground

Love Marmite, Hate the BNP

2010-08-10T17:14:00.003+01:00

Marmite may bankrupt the BNP:

Nick Griffin's racist BNP is facing financial ruin after featuring Marmite in an election broadcast.
The party was hit with a massive claim - estimated at up to £170,000 - over the TV stunt, in which leader Griffin was pictured beside a huge jar of the spread. The party then showed a jar of Marmite - slogan "Love it or hate it" - with its own motto "Love Britain Vote BNP".

Griffin claimed he intended the film as a humorous dig at Marmite, who he believed had mocked the BNP in their online and TV ads featuring a "Love Party" and their rivals the "Hate Party", whose leader appeared to be loosely based on Griffin.

But bosses at Marmite makers Unilever were furious at the BNP broadcast and began High Court proceedings for breach of copyright. BNP caved in and the amount claimed is put by insiders at between £70,000 and £170,000.

...

Former National Organiser Eddy Butler has said the BNP is "on the brink of bankruptcy".

Hat tip Matt on Facebook.

Respect homophobia, sexism and child abusers ???? Nope.

2010-08-09T09:16:00.008+01:00

Imagine...

There is a head of state visiting, socialists, LGBT people, feminists , what do you do?

He heads up a political party and state :

- Where the leader is elected by a small group of men.For life.
- No woman can hold office.
- LGBT people are seen as bad and made to feel shame. They often have to pretend to be heterosexual , marry or else risk censure.
- Members of the Party have abused children entrusted to their care. Years of cover up, where the interests of secrecy and the adults take precedence over victims , have ensued . Continual pressure from victims groups have eventually lead to an apology, but the Party likes to portray itself as the victim.
- To allow a woman to be an officer is seen as on a par with abuse, they are clearly second class citizens.
-The leader and his representatives go to Africa and push unscientific twaddle, that condoms can lead to aids, exasperating a bad situation.
- Representatives push in other countries, such as Nicaragua, for all abortion to be illegal, even if the mothers life is a risk. Woman then face backstreet abortions and death. Cancer treatment is even withheld in case the foetus is harmed. Woman again, second class citizens.
- In other countries, representatives push for divorce to be illegal , often trapping women in abusive marriages .

This Party is homophobic, has a very poor track record on the physical and sexual abuse of children and does not women to have control of their own bodies. It wants to have laws across the world that will impose its beliefs and make woman suffer.

So, what should the response of Socialists, LGBT people, feminists be ? Protest !!

Ahhhh, yep we do that when a nasty Head of State visits . BUT , change political party for religion . Hmm, what difference does that make I hear you ask? Well it seems rather a lot , for example we should welcome the pope .

We must respect their views .Not be strident .Not protest.

Ahh, but do they respect our views? Do they not consider women who have abortions as sinful and murderers ? What about their supporters who scream at women going into clinic?

I believe in a secular society, freedom of religion and none. Freedom of speech , both ways. Freedom to protest abhorrent views. I believe in solidarity with woman fighting to control their bodies, access to birth control , scientific sexual health education, equality of women and LGBT people.

A religious belief is a belief just like a political ,personal or ethical one, Why should a large wealthy organisation , run by men, be privileged , not be offended and be respected?

A religious belief is just that, one amongst many beliefs. All need to be argued for, all are open to criticism, mockery, argument, debate and offence . As a socialist and feminist I expect that of my views, I know I have to defend and argue and be accountable. same goes for religion.

I'm sure the Catholic Church can stand a bit of debate and protest. My views are open to debate,protest and argument, why not theirs?