In a world where it seems all the girls want to be thin
I was once the exception, so comfortable in my skin
And I had a LOT of boyfriends; quite the harlot in my day
"She's no better than she should be," a lot I knew would say.
But I was young and flirty and the boys all looked so good
And I really didn't give a **** for other people's "should"
Should be thinner, be less slutty, less confident, less free
Less inclined to boast, "He loved all fourteen stone of me."
Then I met the man who said, "I want that spare tyre gone"
That's when I started seeing flaws where once I had seen none
I asked him if he felt bad that he'd made me so unsure
So suddenly self conscious, so ashamed and insecure
He said losing weight was for me too, I could be proud of that
I said I always thought I looked good, till you told me I was fat.
Now I'm trying to remember how to love my curves again,
Remember how the beauty I see shining from my friends
Radiates from inside them and how sad it is to me
That they see flaws and cellulite; they can't see what I see
I'm trying to remember and reclaim that for myself
That the beauty that's inside me still shines through to someone else.
Please think twice before you're bitchy; don't jump to criticise
Consider that that person may be happy with their size
Would you want to be the one to plant the seed of shame
To start the toxic cycle of self loathing and self blame
That instead of teaching young girls how to be proud and walk tall
Says if you don't look a certain way, you're worth nothing at all.
Can we really not see that there's something so wrong
With a culture that can't compute different AND strong
That can't stand to see those that don't fit have self worth
And makes damn sure they tumble right back down to earth
That assassinates character based on a body
That says fat equals lazy, defective and shoddy
So I say to you all, boy or girl, fat or thin
The cliche is true: beauty comes from within
It comes from your strength and your heart and your mind
It comes from being loving; it comes from being kind
In a supermodel world where body shape is bought and sold
And if you've got the money, well, you need never get old
Let's unite: fat or thin, black or white, tutti or frutti
Gay or straight, trans or 'other': we are all FULL OF BEAUTY
Monday 24 December 2012
Sunday 23 December 2012
A quite depressing poem about poverty and austerity and the ConDems and shit with a bit of mental illness thrown in
The country's in pieces, and so is my mind
or maybe I'm just a particular kind
You'll have heard of my sort in the Sun and the Mail
An apparently simple morality tale
Of "parasite lifestyles faking depression"
So ok, here it is, signed and sealed, my confession.
Yet I ask, if you think you know all of our ways
Have you ever made ten pounds last for ten days?
Have you blinked back tears so the children don't see
And wondered just what you can buy with ten pee?
Have you ever dreaded the knock on the door
Demanding a payment due six months before?
Do you think I would choose to feel scared all my days?
Now it no longer matters what my doctor says
To have hostile strangers poke inside my head
And say yes she's mental, but quite far from dead
Perfectly able to work for no pay;
She better, or we'll take her money away.
I quite often think I'm not crazy at all
It's the natural frustration of that thousandth call
The thousandth dismissal, the thousandth same lie
It'll be in on Tuesday; and oh yeah, pigs fly
The natural anger that though we are poor
When all else is gone they will still take some more.
I am a person, just like any other
We're all someone's daughter, a friend, someone's mother
We live and we love and we try to survive
And I'm sick of the system that eats us alive
But what makes me burn is the lies and the slander
Please look past the labels, the cruel propaganda
To see the truth of the ConDem lie
And then just maybe you'll ask just why
Why punish the poor and the sick and the lame
As if we're just pawns in a rich boy's game
The truth is ugly, but still beats a lie
Don't blame the victims; hear our cry.
Don't give in to the impulse to turn on each other
We stand shoulder to shoulder and sister to brother
If the love in our hearts dies, that's when they have won.
But that day's not here for me, my fight's not done.
I won't call people scroungers, or workshy or skivers
I call them my people; I call us survivors.
or maybe I'm just a particular kind
You'll have heard of my sort in the Sun and the Mail
An apparently simple morality tale
Of "parasite lifestyles faking depression"
So ok, here it is, signed and sealed, my confession.
Yet I ask, if you think you know all of our ways
Have you ever made ten pounds last for ten days?
Have you blinked back tears so the children don't see
And wondered just what you can buy with ten pee?
Have you ever dreaded the knock on the door
Demanding a payment due six months before?
Do you think I would choose to feel scared all my days?
Now it no longer matters what my doctor says
To have hostile strangers poke inside my head
And say yes she's mental, but quite far from dead
Perfectly able to work for no pay;
She better, or we'll take her money away.
I quite often think I'm not crazy at all
It's the natural frustration of that thousandth call
The thousandth dismissal, the thousandth same lie
It'll be in on Tuesday; and oh yeah, pigs fly
The natural anger that though we are poor
When all else is gone they will still take some more.
I am a person, just like any other
We're all someone's daughter, a friend, someone's mother
We live and we love and we try to survive
And I'm sick of the system that eats us alive
But what makes me burn is the lies and the slander
Please look past the labels, the cruel propaganda
To see the truth of the ConDem lie
And then just maybe you'll ask just why
Why punish the poor and the sick and the lame
As if we're just pawns in a rich boy's game
The truth is ugly, but still beats a lie
Don't blame the victims; hear our cry.
Don't give in to the impulse to turn on each other
We stand shoulder to shoulder and sister to brother
If the love in our hearts dies, that's when they have won.
But that day's not here for me, my fight's not done.
I won't call people scroungers, or workshy or skivers
I call them my people; I call us survivors.
Sunday 21 October 2012
There's nothing fair about workfare
In Cameron, Osborne and co's campaign to restore class elites and polarise rich and poor still further, one of the most pernicious elements is the vaunted introduction of workfare. (And it is a project to restore upper class power, make no mistake. Even the head of the International Monetary Fund, a model free market institution and thus hardly a haven for reds (under the bed or elsewhere), has said that austerity measures are not working. Yet still they go on cutting from those who have nothing while giving tax breaks to the rich).
Workfare is promoted in the usual discourse of fecklessness, benefit dependency, scroungers and workshy earning their right to benefits rather than living in decadent indolence at taxpayer expense. The idea is to further extend the conditionality of benefits (JSA claimants already lose benefits if they turn down paid work, no matter how poorly paid, temporary or insecure) to include mandatory work in participating companies. Of course, the "workshy layabout" narrative is somewhat undermined at the moment by the explosion in unemployment (caused by the banks, let's remember, not benefit recipients) which means that for every job, however menial and lowly, there are tens or even hundreds of applicants. The vast majority of unemployed people right now are desperately trying to find work to alleviate poverty and debt, belying the "can't work, won't work" stereotype used to demonise people on benefits, in order to justify the measures which will exacerbate their poverty still further.
Think about this idea in any detail at all and it's not only the unfairness but the stupidity of workfare which becomes glaringly apparent. Of course it is slave labour, working a thirty - forty hour week for JSA (currently at £71/week for over-25s, still lower for younger people). But it's also free or heavily subsidised labour for employers, as the state continues to pay the benefit. What business is then going to advertise a real job, with a living wage and fair working conditions, when a supply of "workfare" participants is available? ( It's the same sort of disincentive as tax credits, which, while having a much more benign application (topping up the wages of low earners), means in practice employers know the exact threshold for tax credit payment and can thus continue to pay poverty wages). So in light of this, how exactly is this helping tackle unemployment or economic recovery? (Incidentally, there is wide consensus among academics that only spending can promote economic growth. Fat chance when everyone's skint, again begging the question: how exactly are austerity measures helping?)
To digress for a moment, as I mentioned adult JSA is currently paid at £71/w. Housing Benefit is set too low to pay even the cheapest rents and is set to be cut still further. So out of that £71/w, any JSA claimant has to top up the rent by 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds a month. Council Tax Benefit is also set to be cut by ten per cent, with Cameron telling local councils to pursue the shortfall any way they see fit, which of course will mean bailiffs and debt collectors. I take a moment to point all this out to show that the discourse of idle undeserving poor living in the lap of luxury laughing at the taxpayer and the government is bollocks. But it's useful bollocks to Cameron and co, because it justifies ever harsher and coercive measures. Incidentally, workfare would not be optional, but to do voluntary work off your own back would not be allowed, because the time should be spent jobseeking - or, for sick and disabled claimants, would be used against you to find you fit for work, even though with voluntary work you can choose the number of hours you can manage, and can stop if your condition worsens. The Big Society? We're all in this together? Don't make me laugh. Cameron and his cronies are no longer even bothering to pretend they're not throwing the poor to the wolves. But just as Thatcher, in her boundless arrogance, came undone with the Poll Tax riots, Cameron's days are numbered too. Crush people for long enough, they will crush you.
And if someone who has paid through the nose and gone thousands into debt for their education (because education, too, is now simply a commodity, with a rocketing price) and studied for years becomes unemployed, why should they be forced into factory work to keep their dole money? (Which would also take up most of their time, which they could have spent looking for work in their own fields. This is how people get trapped in demeaning, dead end jobs whilst barely keeping body and soul together. This is how the country is deprived of great young minds who could do great things). Cameron would never let that happen to his kids. The truth is, workfare is punitive, it is degrading, it is designed to show people their low place and never let them forget it. The sociologist Loic Wacquant also posits that it acts as a warning to those in working poverty, struggling in exploitative jobs with totally inadequate pay and conditions, that there is another level still to fall if you step out of line. Wacquant's searingly angry, disturbing book "Punishing the Poor: the Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity" - which I can't recommend enough - details how the so called left and right hands of the state, the welfare system and the prison system, together form an apparatus for the regulation and surveillance of deviant populations, those who can't or won't be part of the brave new world of neoliberalism. His analysis shows how neoliberal governments in the USA, UK and elsewhere increasingly criminalise poverty itself, calling benefit recipients "cultural similes of criminals". It's very interesting that the appeals of the sick and disabled found fit to work by Atos are actually held in court. (These appeals/trials are estimated to overturn between 40 - 70% of decisions, in one fell swoop resulting in months - sometimes over a year - of needless worry, distress and penury in the form of 40% benefit cuts pending appeal for victims, massive cost to the taxpayer of the appeal process belying the supposed purpose of the cuts, and proof to anyone without a hard right wing agenda or a midget brain that the benefit cuts are of no benefit whatsoever economically but are a purely ideological campaign). And we have already seen the increasing criminalisation of homelessness with the repeal of squatters' rights, as well as new legislation against "shanty towns" such as the camps of the Occupy movement, a further indicator of the increasing criminalisation of dissent. Look at the rabid tabloid discourse and we can see how benefit claimants are characterised in the most horrible, judgemental and dehumanising terms; and blaming the poor for their own poverty fulfils a useful function for government, obscuring the rotten mess of inequality and greed, conveniently ignoring the crimes of the powerful and justifying the dehumanising treatment of the "problem categories" chewed up and spat out by the market. This "invisibilisation of social problems" (Wacquant) serves the dual function of removing any obligation to do anything about them, and literally cleaning up the streets of the poor and dispossessed who ruin it for everyone else - after all, who wants a visible reminder of the human cost of their own wealth?
Workfare in the UK is also symptomatic of the overwhelmingly pervasive attitude that paid work is the only thing of value a person can do. To be out of work is to be nothing, to be less than human. Again - bollocks. No one can tell me that working in McDonald's has more meaning than bringing up children, caring for incapacitated family members, volunteering your time for free to help others. Of course, the demonisation of the unemployed is a big lie on another level too: smoke and mirrors to conceal the fact that the last thing neoliberal governments and corporations want is full employment. The very people they vilify and slander are the so called reserve army of capitalism: their existence keeps wages low, the spectre greedy bosses can invoke to keep their workers in line.
I'll conclude with a heartbreaking story cited by Michael Moore in his sobering film "Bowling for Columbine". In Flint, Michigan, a six year old boy went into school one day with a gun he found in his uncle's house, where he was staying because his mother was being evicted. This tiny child shot dead another tiny child, six year old Kayla Rowland. Flint, Michigan, Moore points out, is the grimy flipside of the American dream, with 87% of pupils at the school in question living below the official poverty line. Tamala Owens, the young boy's mother, to keep her entitlement to health care and food stamps, was on the workfare programme administrated by the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin (a company that can't be expected to have respect for human life, as a producer of weapons of mass murder). Ms Owens worked two jobs on the workfare programme, forced to take an 80 mile round trip with an hour and a half commute each way. A single parent, her boys rarely saw their mother who went out early and didn't come home till late (but work is God, right? Never mind who was parenting these poor children). The idea was that Ms Owens was "working off" the welfare payments she had taken from the state. Despite working seventy hours a week at these two jobs in Auburn Hills, one of the wealthiest districts in America, for companies who were given special tax breaks for employing welfare recipients (another disincentive to offer jobs at a living wage and another proof that this policy thus does nothing to tackle unemployment) Ms Owens couldn't afford her rent and so sent the boys to stay with their uncle while she tried to sort things out. And so the stage was set for an eminently needless, preventable tragedy, the violent ending of one young life and the permanent blighting of countless more in the form of both Kayla's family and the young perpetrator and his. Incidentally, the sheriff of Flint, Robert Pickell, openly tells Moore in the film that workfare has no merit and only compounds social problems. The District Attorney tells how the same right wingers who are the most enthusiastic proponents of workfare and the "blaming the poor" perspective wrote to him and demanded this six year old boy be hanged from the nearest tree.
Of course, in America policy is also highly racialised, much more so than here, but nonetheless workfare in Britain will hit the poorest and most vulnerable yet again. The poorest pay for the sins of the richest.
To fight back against workfare, see the campaign at http://www.boycottworkfare.org
Workfare is promoted in the usual discourse of fecklessness, benefit dependency, scroungers and workshy earning their right to benefits rather than living in decadent indolence at taxpayer expense. The idea is to further extend the conditionality of benefits (JSA claimants already lose benefits if they turn down paid work, no matter how poorly paid, temporary or insecure) to include mandatory work in participating companies. Of course, the "workshy layabout" narrative is somewhat undermined at the moment by the explosion in unemployment (caused by the banks, let's remember, not benefit recipients) which means that for every job, however menial and lowly, there are tens or even hundreds of applicants. The vast majority of unemployed people right now are desperately trying to find work to alleviate poverty and debt, belying the "can't work, won't work" stereotype used to demonise people on benefits, in order to justify the measures which will exacerbate their poverty still further.
Think about this idea in any detail at all and it's not only the unfairness but the stupidity of workfare which becomes glaringly apparent. Of course it is slave labour, working a thirty - forty hour week for JSA (currently at £71/week for over-25s, still lower for younger people). But it's also free or heavily subsidised labour for employers, as the state continues to pay the benefit. What business is then going to advertise a real job, with a living wage and fair working conditions, when a supply of "workfare" participants is available? ( It's the same sort of disincentive as tax credits, which, while having a much more benign application (topping up the wages of low earners), means in practice employers know the exact threshold for tax credit payment and can thus continue to pay poverty wages). So in light of this, how exactly is this helping tackle unemployment or economic recovery? (Incidentally, there is wide consensus among academics that only spending can promote economic growth. Fat chance when everyone's skint, again begging the question: how exactly are austerity measures helping?)
To digress for a moment, as I mentioned adult JSA is currently paid at £71/w. Housing Benefit is set too low to pay even the cheapest rents and is set to be cut still further. So out of that £71/w, any JSA claimant has to top up the rent by 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds a month. Council Tax Benefit is also set to be cut by ten per cent, with Cameron telling local councils to pursue the shortfall any way they see fit, which of course will mean bailiffs and debt collectors. I take a moment to point all this out to show that the discourse of idle undeserving poor living in the lap of luxury laughing at the taxpayer and the government is bollocks. But it's useful bollocks to Cameron and co, because it justifies ever harsher and coercive measures. Incidentally, workfare would not be optional, but to do voluntary work off your own back would not be allowed, because the time should be spent jobseeking - or, for sick and disabled claimants, would be used against you to find you fit for work, even though with voluntary work you can choose the number of hours you can manage, and can stop if your condition worsens. The Big Society? We're all in this together? Don't make me laugh. Cameron and his cronies are no longer even bothering to pretend they're not throwing the poor to the wolves. But just as Thatcher, in her boundless arrogance, came undone with the Poll Tax riots, Cameron's days are numbered too. Crush people for long enough, they will crush you.
And if someone who has paid through the nose and gone thousands into debt for their education (because education, too, is now simply a commodity, with a rocketing price) and studied for years becomes unemployed, why should they be forced into factory work to keep their dole money? (Which would also take up most of their time, which they could have spent looking for work in their own fields. This is how people get trapped in demeaning, dead end jobs whilst barely keeping body and soul together. This is how the country is deprived of great young minds who could do great things). Cameron would never let that happen to his kids. The truth is, workfare is punitive, it is degrading, it is designed to show people their low place and never let them forget it. The sociologist Loic Wacquant also posits that it acts as a warning to those in working poverty, struggling in exploitative jobs with totally inadequate pay and conditions, that there is another level still to fall if you step out of line. Wacquant's searingly angry, disturbing book "Punishing the Poor: the Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity" - which I can't recommend enough - details how the so called left and right hands of the state, the welfare system and the prison system, together form an apparatus for the regulation and surveillance of deviant populations, those who can't or won't be part of the brave new world of neoliberalism. His analysis shows how neoliberal governments in the USA, UK and elsewhere increasingly criminalise poverty itself, calling benefit recipients "cultural similes of criminals". It's very interesting that the appeals of the sick and disabled found fit to work by Atos are actually held in court. (These appeals/trials are estimated to overturn between 40 - 70% of decisions, in one fell swoop resulting in months - sometimes over a year - of needless worry, distress and penury in the form of 40% benefit cuts pending appeal for victims, massive cost to the taxpayer of the appeal process belying the supposed purpose of the cuts, and proof to anyone without a hard right wing agenda or a midget brain that the benefit cuts are of no benefit whatsoever economically but are a purely ideological campaign). And we have already seen the increasing criminalisation of homelessness with the repeal of squatters' rights, as well as new legislation against "shanty towns" such as the camps of the Occupy movement, a further indicator of the increasing criminalisation of dissent. Look at the rabid tabloid discourse and we can see how benefit claimants are characterised in the most horrible, judgemental and dehumanising terms; and blaming the poor for their own poverty fulfils a useful function for government, obscuring the rotten mess of inequality and greed, conveniently ignoring the crimes of the powerful and justifying the dehumanising treatment of the "problem categories" chewed up and spat out by the market. This "invisibilisation of social problems" (Wacquant) serves the dual function of removing any obligation to do anything about them, and literally cleaning up the streets of the poor and dispossessed who ruin it for everyone else - after all, who wants a visible reminder of the human cost of their own wealth?
Workfare in the UK is also symptomatic of the overwhelmingly pervasive attitude that paid work is the only thing of value a person can do. To be out of work is to be nothing, to be less than human. Again - bollocks. No one can tell me that working in McDonald's has more meaning than bringing up children, caring for incapacitated family members, volunteering your time for free to help others. Of course, the demonisation of the unemployed is a big lie on another level too: smoke and mirrors to conceal the fact that the last thing neoliberal governments and corporations want is full employment. The very people they vilify and slander are the so called reserve army of capitalism: their existence keeps wages low, the spectre greedy bosses can invoke to keep their workers in line.
I'll conclude with a heartbreaking story cited by Michael Moore in his sobering film "Bowling for Columbine". In Flint, Michigan, a six year old boy went into school one day with a gun he found in his uncle's house, where he was staying because his mother was being evicted. This tiny child shot dead another tiny child, six year old Kayla Rowland. Flint, Michigan, Moore points out, is the grimy flipside of the American dream, with 87% of pupils at the school in question living below the official poverty line. Tamala Owens, the young boy's mother, to keep her entitlement to health care and food stamps, was on the workfare programme administrated by the weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin (a company that can't be expected to have respect for human life, as a producer of weapons of mass murder). Ms Owens worked two jobs on the workfare programme, forced to take an 80 mile round trip with an hour and a half commute each way. A single parent, her boys rarely saw their mother who went out early and didn't come home till late (but work is God, right? Never mind who was parenting these poor children). The idea was that Ms Owens was "working off" the welfare payments she had taken from the state. Despite working seventy hours a week at these two jobs in Auburn Hills, one of the wealthiest districts in America, for companies who were given special tax breaks for employing welfare recipients (another disincentive to offer jobs at a living wage and another proof that this policy thus does nothing to tackle unemployment) Ms Owens couldn't afford her rent and so sent the boys to stay with their uncle while she tried to sort things out. And so the stage was set for an eminently needless, preventable tragedy, the violent ending of one young life and the permanent blighting of countless more in the form of both Kayla's family and the young perpetrator and his. Incidentally, the sheriff of Flint, Robert Pickell, openly tells Moore in the film that workfare has no merit and only compounds social problems. The District Attorney tells how the same right wingers who are the most enthusiastic proponents of workfare and the "blaming the poor" perspective wrote to him and demanded this six year old boy be hanged from the nearest tree.
Of course, in America policy is also highly racialised, much more so than here, but nonetheless workfare in Britain will hit the poorest and most vulnerable yet again. The poorest pay for the sins of the richest.
To fight back against workfare, see the campaign at http://www.boycottworkfare.org
Tuesday 24 July 2012
No justice, no peace
My heart goes out to the family of Ian Tomlinson, but it is no surprise to me that PC Simon Harwood was cleared.
The statistics are truly shocking: 1000 deaths in 42 years, 300 of those in the last ten, and not a single conviction. This is the stark reality of a police force drunk on power, that has lost all respect for human life.
I was at the G20 protests that fateful day in 2009, and whatever the tabloid apologists may tell you, the police were like animals. One man just in front of where we were standing was literally running with blood from multiple wounds. He had his hands raised in surrender, but they kept on beating him.
A girl in our party sustained a baton wound to the scalp. She is under five feet tall and did nothing wrong, simply had the misfortune to be in hitting range of a thug in uniform.
Time and again mob mentality takes over, and it's getting worse. The increasing criminalisation of dissent and the fact they know the toothless IPCC will let them get away with it means the police are literally getting away with murder.
And the deaths are only the most visible and appalling symptoms (not to mention the disgraceful character assassination of Tomlinson's family by Amanda Platell in the Mail, suggesting they were exaggerating their grief for money and "fifteen minutes of fame". The family, for the record, have refused all financial offers for their story.) Jean Charles de Menezes. Mark Duggan. Sean Rigg. No surprise that a disproportionate number in this ghastly parade had black or brown faces. Nor that the police tried to demonise these victims after the fact, in justification.
But the thuggery and inhumanity is demonstrated in a thousand smaller ways every day. For example, the notorious treatment of Pamela Somerville, dragged through the station by Mark Andrews and thrown so violently into a cell that her face poured blood. Pamela Somerville is fifty seven and tiny. Her "offence" was falling asleep in her car. Surprise, surprise, Andrews was acquitted on appeal.
Or the use of tasers at the eviction of Dale Farm, in direct contravention of rules which forbid their use in public order situations. I find this a particularly interesting example, as the Dale Farm situation involved travellers - arguably one of the police's unofficial categories of those who don't really count as human beings.
An example from my own experience at this juncture. Several years ago I was living in a squat in central Brighton. The building, an old church, had been empty for ten years before being squatted and we used it for workshops and social events and ran a soup kitchen, as well as it obviously being our home. We were well liked and supported in the local community, many of whom gave comments to the local press to this effect. Nonetheless we were evicted, and the police turned up mob handed. I saw them being rough with a couple of my friends, and tried to intervene (verbally, I hasten to add). At which point an officer twice my size picked me up and threw me out of the way, but not before grabbing and twisting my left nipple so hard it was bruised for a week. This is a clear example of a policeman doing something because we were just squatters, just the scum of the earth; and because he COULD, because he knew he'd get away with it.
I reported the incident, after being made to wait five hours (they clearly hoped I'd just go away). I was then told the officer's number, which I had carefully written down, didn't exist. I persisted in my complaint, but all that happened was that after six months I received a letter saying they could offer me an apology, without accepting any responsibility.
Clearly I am not comparing my experience to the death of Ian Tomlinson. I still have my life and health. Yet this was a sexual assault committed in the full knowledge of impunity. Acts huge and murderous or small and spiteful, the police are getting away with them all and laughing all the way to the barricades and picket lines.
As Nina Power in the Guardian comments, CCTV in the back of black Marias would be a good start. The rest of us have had to get used to constant surveillance and most of us aren't habitually violent. But it's the culture that's the problem, that protesters are fair game, that travellers and squatters and the homeless and the non white and on and on don't really count as real people, just animals who had it coming.
Until the police actually respect the public they are supposed to serve - and while they continue to be demonstrably unregulated and above the law - nothing will change. There will be more senseless violence and more senseless deaths.
(To sign the UFFC petition for full and transparent enquiry into suspicious deaths in custody, go to http://uffc-campaigncentral.net/about/uffc-no10-e-petition/).
The statistics are truly shocking: 1000 deaths in 42 years, 300 of those in the last ten, and not a single conviction. This is the stark reality of a police force drunk on power, that has lost all respect for human life.
I was at the G20 protests that fateful day in 2009, and whatever the tabloid apologists may tell you, the police were like animals. One man just in front of where we were standing was literally running with blood from multiple wounds. He had his hands raised in surrender, but they kept on beating him.
A girl in our party sustained a baton wound to the scalp. She is under five feet tall and did nothing wrong, simply had the misfortune to be in hitting range of a thug in uniform.
Time and again mob mentality takes over, and it's getting worse. The increasing criminalisation of dissent and the fact they know the toothless IPCC will let them get away with it means the police are literally getting away with murder.
And the deaths are only the most visible and appalling symptoms (not to mention the disgraceful character assassination of Tomlinson's family by Amanda Platell in the Mail, suggesting they were exaggerating their grief for money and "fifteen minutes of fame". The family, for the record, have refused all financial offers for their story.) Jean Charles de Menezes. Mark Duggan. Sean Rigg. No surprise that a disproportionate number in this ghastly parade had black or brown faces. Nor that the police tried to demonise these victims after the fact, in justification.
But the thuggery and inhumanity is demonstrated in a thousand smaller ways every day. For example, the notorious treatment of Pamela Somerville, dragged through the station by Mark Andrews and thrown so violently into a cell that her face poured blood. Pamela Somerville is fifty seven and tiny. Her "offence" was falling asleep in her car. Surprise, surprise, Andrews was acquitted on appeal.
Or the use of tasers at the eviction of Dale Farm, in direct contravention of rules which forbid their use in public order situations. I find this a particularly interesting example, as the Dale Farm situation involved travellers - arguably one of the police's unofficial categories of those who don't really count as human beings.
An example from my own experience at this juncture. Several years ago I was living in a squat in central Brighton. The building, an old church, had been empty for ten years before being squatted and we used it for workshops and social events and ran a soup kitchen, as well as it obviously being our home. We were well liked and supported in the local community, many of whom gave comments to the local press to this effect. Nonetheless we were evicted, and the police turned up mob handed. I saw them being rough with a couple of my friends, and tried to intervene (verbally, I hasten to add). At which point an officer twice my size picked me up and threw me out of the way, but not before grabbing and twisting my left nipple so hard it was bruised for a week. This is a clear example of a policeman doing something because we were just squatters, just the scum of the earth; and because he COULD, because he knew he'd get away with it.
I reported the incident, after being made to wait five hours (they clearly hoped I'd just go away). I was then told the officer's number, which I had carefully written down, didn't exist. I persisted in my complaint, but all that happened was that after six months I received a letter saying they could offer me an apology, without accepting any responsibility.
Clearly I am not comparing my experience to the death of Ian Tomlinson. I still have my life and health. Yet this was a sexual assault committed in the full knowledge of impunity. Acts huge and murderous or small and spiteful, the police are getting away with them all and laughing all the way to the barricades and picket lines.
As Nina Power in the Guardian comments, CCTV in the back of black Marias would be a good start. The rest of us have had to get used to constant surveillance and most of us aren't habitually violent. But it's the culture that's the problem, that protesters are fair game, that travellers and squatters and the homeless and the non white and on and on don't really count as real people, just animals who had it coming.
Until the police actually respect the public they are supposed to serve - and while they continue to be demonstrably unregulated and above the law - nothing will change. There will be more senseless violence and more senseless deaths.
(To sign the UFFC petition for full and transparent enquiry into suspicious deaths in custody, go to http://uffc-campaigncentral.net/about/uffc-no10-e-petition/).
Monday 25 June 2012
How to put an entire generation on the scrapheap, by David Cameron
Ok, I know I promised a detailed and entirely scientific analysis of why Thatcher, Bush, Blair, Cameron et al are almost certainly psychopathic, but that is going to have to wait, although the following may provide an evidentiary case study.
I actually cried today on hearing Cameron's proposals to abolish housing benefit for the under twenty fives. I'm not under twenty five. It won't affect me. So why the tears?
It's the callous, glib heartlessness of the man who is not even bothering to pretend to care any more about the "lower orders", as he undoubtedly thinks of us. Three quarters of the homeless are under twenty five and that figure is set to explode if this insane proposal comes to fruition. Cameron apparently thinks young people should continue to live with their parents. Well, that's all very well if mummy and daddy can afford to keep you for an extra ten years, and if all is well. But let's remember that many families are abusive and dysfunctional, and in these cases staying at home is not an option. And that's not to mention those already vulnerable and often sadly emotionally damaged youngsters who grow up in care homes - kicked out at eighteen? Where are they supposed to go for the seven years before they qualify? Our streets and prisons are already littered with the human detritus who have fallen through the cracks - the abused, the kids who have run away from care homes or unimaginable abuse at the hands of parents supposed to keep them safe, the mentally ill, the dispossessed. It's a depressing fact that these vulnerable legions who most need help and compassion are exactly those considered disposable and worthless by the Old Etonian millionaires club that makes up the current cabinet. (I also find it interesting that he has the gall to talk of a culture of something for nothing, when that is exactly what he is asking of already beleaguered parents - to extend indefinite care for adult children, with presumably no extra financial help on the table.)
Cameron is the living, breathing embodiment of a system which unashamedly extends laissez faire to those at the top, who create the inequality, but regulates and controls the poor by means of what the sociologist Loic Wacquant has called a carceral assistantial net - prison on the one hand, and the transformation of welfare on the other into a system where even the most miserable, minimal assistance comes with endless hoops to jump, surveillance and a complete stripping away of human dignity. Whatever you get, they'll make sure you know you're a worthless and inadequate specimen for needing it. The removal of housing benefit for under twenty fives is also another example of the cynical targeting and scapegoating of young people, who at the end of the day do not by virtue of being young somehow need food and shelter less.
It will also bring about an explosion in US style working poverty, as documented in Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant Nickel and Dimed. Ehrenreich went undercover to investigate life in low wage USA, and met many coworkers who were homeless, or just one paycheque away from homelessness - that is, if they met with an accident or unexpected illness or couldn't work, they would lose their accommodation. The US has no equivalent of housing benefit, and we should remember that Cameron's talk of a culture of entitlement obfuscates the fact that housing benefit is also there to help those on low incomes keep a roof over their head. But then a minimum wage people can actually live on without topups isn't "business friendly" and we can't have that of course.
I've said it before and I'll doubtless say it again, but the brazen hypocrisy of a government which appoints the billionaire Philip Green as an "efficiency advisor", a man reputed to have dodged a tax bill of £300m, is sickening. Again and again, the super rich get away with it and those at the sharp end get squeezed and squeezed until we can barely breathe. Young people especially are being left a legacy of no money, no jobs, no prospects, no hope. The riots may only have been the beginning - Michael Young's 1950s prophecy of a meritocratic elite, who justify their power by controlling what constitutes merit, and an underclass so disenfranchised they take to the streets is coming eerily, terrifyingly true.
As for supporting families who want to work, who is Cameron kidding? A friend of mine confided that to put her baby son in a creche while she worked would cost £36 a day. It simply makes no economic sense, she'd be no better off and so you can't blame her for wanting to spend the time with her son instead. The Tories also idolise the family and stay at home mothers - remember John Major's ill fated "Back to Basics" campaign? So are working mothers the agents of moral deterioration or do we support them now after all? Or is it more like they'll take any position that paints the poor as immoral, feckless and thus deserving of the constant attacks on them?
One final word. Feckless families? I don't know how he has the cheek. I know a lot of parents who are making ends meet on very little, but not one of them has ever left their child behind in a pub toilet.
I actually cried today on hearing Cameron's proposals to abolish housing benefit for the under twenty fives. I'm not under twenty five. It won't affect me. So why the tears?
It's the callous, glib heartlessness of the man who is not even bothering to pretend to care any more about the "lower orders", as he undoubtedly thinks of us. Three quarters of the homeless are under twenty five and that figure is set to explode if this insane proposal comes to fruition. Cameron apparently thinks young people should continue to live with their parents. Well, that's all very well if mummy and daddy can afford to keep you for an extra ten years, and if all is well. But let's remember that many families are abusive and dysfunctional, and in these cases staying at home is not an option. And that's not to mention those already vulnerable and often sadly emotionally damaged youngsters who grow up in care homes - kicked out at eighteen? Where are they supposed to go for the seven years before they qualify? Our streets and prisons are already littered with the human detritus who have fallen through the cracks - the abused, the kids who have run away from care homes or unimaginable abuse at the hands of parents supposed to keep them safe, the mentally ill, the dispossessed. It's a depressing fact that these vulnerable legions who most need help and compassion are exactly those considered disposable and worthless by the Old Etonian millionaires club that makes up the current cabinet. (I also find it interesting that he has the gall to talk of a culture of something for nothing, when that is exactly what he is asking of already beleaguered parents - to extend indefinite care for adult children, with presumably no extra financial help on the table.)
Cameron is the living, breathing embodiment of a system which unashamedly extends laissez faire to those at the top, who create the inequality, but regulates and controls the poor by means of what the sociologist Loic Wacquant has called a carceral assistantial net - prison on the one hand, and the transformation of welfare on the other into a system where even the most miserable, minimal assistance comes with endless hoops to jump, surveillance and a complete stripping away of human dignity. Whatever you get, they'll make sure you know you're a worthless and inadequate specimen for needing it. The removal of housing benefit for under twenty fives is also another example of the cynical targeting and scapegoating of young people, who at the end of the day do not by virtue of being young somehow need food and shelter less.
It will also bring about an explosion in US style working poverty, as documented in Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant Nickel and Dimed. Ehrenreich went undercover to investigate life in low wage USA, and met many coworkers who were homeless, or just one paycheque away from homelessness - that is, if they met with an accident or unexpected illness or couldn't work, they would lose their accommodation. The US has no equivalent of housing benefit, and we should remember that Cameron's talk of a culture of entitlement obfuscates the fact that housing benefit is also there to help those on low incomes keep a roof over their head. But then a minimum wage people can actually live on without topups isn't "business friendly" and we can't have that of course.
I've said it before and I'll doubtless say it again, but the brazen hypocrisy of a government which appoints the billionaire Philip Green as an "efficiency advisor", a man reputed to have dodged a tax bill of £300m, is sickening. Again and again, the super rich get away with it and those at the sharp end get squeezed and squeezed until we can barely breathe. Young people especially are being left a legacy of no money, no jobs, no prospects, no hope. The riots may only have been the beginning - Michael Young's 1950s prophecy of a meritocratic elite, who justify their power by controlling what constitutes merit, and an underclass so disenfranchised they take to the streets is coming eerily, terrifyingly true.
As for supporting families who want to work, who is Cameron kidding? A friend of mine confided that to put her baby son in a creche while she worked would cost £36 a day. It simply makes no economic sense, she'd be no better off and so you can't blame her for wanting to spend the time with her son instead. The Tories also idolise the family and stay at home mothers - remember John Major's ill fated "Back to Basics" campaign? So are working mothers the agents of moral deterioration or do we support them now after all? Or is it more like they'll take any position that paints the poor as immoral, feckless and thus deserving of the constant attacks on them?
One final word. Feckless families? I don't know how he has the cheek. I know a lot of parents who are making ends meet on very little, but not one of them has ever left their child behind in a pub toilet.
Wednesday 6 June 2012
National Pride? Or a sham and a shame?
Well, thank God that's over.
Was it only me who was rendered mildly nauseous and seized with the compulsion to remain indoors in a dark room until the madness had passed during jubilee weekend?
Is it only me who finds the whole thing in poor taste in a recession? A hollow spectacle of pomp and ceremony, hereditary privilege and the worst in British jingoism and triumphalism? Does it make me shamefully lacking in proper national pride that the union jacks attached to every possible consumer good - including, natch, a small one stuck in a flowerpot with a few dying twigs of lavender and flogged for a tenner as a "Jubilee Planter" - just made me want to swear?
I don't think so, and for several reasons. When people are going hungry, losing jobs and cripplingly in debt right left and centre - literally, the financial crisis was politically egalitarian and took no heed of political creed; only those so swaddled in personal and yes, often inherited, wealth could continue heedlessly living in their houses of gold and diamond studded toilets. I exaggerate, of course, but not by much, and certainly not in the case of the Royals - is a display whose subtext is, essentially, Look How Much Money We've Still Got appropriate? I have no personal beef with the Royals, although I strongly suspect we wouldn't get on. But the idea of hereditary privilege, of being born to rule, of the rest of us being mere commoners and subjects, is deeply morally offensive to me. The argument that the Queen is by now just a symbolic figurehead holds no water, either - with the vast personal fortune, supplemented by public money, property portfolio of palaces and country houses and, as a recent Facebook share that made me laugh out loud had it, a £1 million hat, I doubt that bothers her overmuch.
Some would accuse me of the politics of envy, but that is and always has been a spurious line trotted out to mask the astronomical gap between rich and poor and the ghettoisation and exclusion of the have nots - defective consumers, as Bauman has it, who are shut out of the brave new world and blamed for their own rejection again and again. Never mind that the recession has put brakes on the spending of many previously invited to the consumer party, the discourse of scroungers, layabouts and drains on resources is back with a vengeance now that cutting off aid to those who need it most requires justification.
Which brings me to my second jubilee related point. Just who are the parasites and scroungers here? I'm not a fan of those ugly, distasteful words but in the language of the tabloids, the civil list is a drain on decent taxpayers to the tune of millions - which puts the few weekly quid shaved off already paltry weekly allowances in perspective.
And maybe I'm a cynic or a horrible person, but I actually found the sheer numbers who did buy in, who did jump on the union jack waving band wagon, disheartening and depressing. How willing we are to participate in our own subjugation, whilst indulging our peculiarly British - to indulge momentarily in essentialism - superiority complex which finds its apotheosis in the lovely Royals, and didn't she look lovely, and wasn't she dignified, and on and on. What happened to all the left wing firebrands? Me, I spent the weekend wallowing in nostalgia for the days when I used to burn with pride for my Dad, who refused to stand for the national anthem at school events, who instilled me with principles that caused me, as a seven year old putative Brownie, to refuse the promise on the grounds that I categorically did not promise to serve the Queen as I was against the monarchy (and furthermore, how could I do my duty to a God I didn't believe in?) and who taught me we are NOT anyone's subjects.
I did burn with pride for my Mum, though, who informed her colleague in no uncertain terms that the only way she would be toasting the Queen was if she'd died. We're not beat yet, then. At least not round my manor.
Was it only me who was rendered mildly nauseous and seized with the compulsion to remain indoors in a dark room until the madness had passed during jubilee weekend?
Is it only me who finds the whole thing in poor taste in a recession? A hollow spectacle of pomp and ceremony, hereditary privilege and the worst in British jingoism and triumphalism? Does it make me shamefully lacking in proper national pride that the union jacks attached to every possible consumer good - including, natch, a small one stuck in a flowerpot with a few dying twigs of lavender and flogged for a tenner as a "Jubilee Planter" - just made me want to swear?
I don't think so, and for several reasons. When people are going hungry, losing jobs and cripplingly in debt right left and centre - literally, the financial crisis was politically egalitarian and took no heed of political creed; only those so swaddled in personal and yes, often inherited, wealth could continue heedlessly living in their houses of gold and diamond studded toilets. I exaggerate, of course, but not by much, and certainly not in the case of the Royals - is a display whose subtext is, essentially, Look How Much Money We've Still Got appropriate? I have no personal beef with the Royals, although I strongly suspect we wouldn't get on. But the idea of hereditary privilege, of being born to rule, of the rest of us being mere commoners and subjects, is deeply morally offensive to me. The argument that the Queen is by now just a symbolic figurehead holds no water, either - with the vast personal fortune, supplemented by public money, property portfolio of palaces and country houses and, as a recent Facebook share that made me laugh out loud had it, a £1 million hat, I doubt that bothers her overmuch.
Some would accuse me of the politics of envy, but that is and always has been a spurious line trotted out to mask the astronomical gap between rich and poor and the ghettoisation and exclusion of the have nots - defective consumers, as Bauman has it, who are shut out of the brave new world and blamed for their own rejection again and again. Never mind that the recession has put brakes on the spending of many previously invited to the consumer party, the discourse of scroungers, layabouts and drains on resources is back with a vengeance now that cutting off aid to those who need it most requires justification.
Which brings me to my second jubilee related point. Just who are the parasites and scroungers here? I'm not a fan of those ugly, distasteful words but in the language of the tabloids, the civil list is a drain on decent taxpayers to the tune of millions - which puts the few weekly quid shaved off already paltry weekly allowances in perspective.
And maybe I'm a cynic or a horrible person, but I actually found the sheer numbers who did buy in, who did jump on the union jack waving band wagon, disheartening and depressing. How willing we are to participate in our own subjugation, whilst indulging our peculiarly British - to indulge momentarily in essentialism - superiority complex which finds its apotheosis in the lovely Royals, and didn't she look lovely, and wasn't she dignified, and on and on. What happened to all the left wing firebrands? Me, I spent the weekend wallowing in nostalgia for the days when I used to burn with pride for my Dad, who refused to stand for the national anthem at school events, who instilled me with principles that caused me, as a seven year old putative Brownie, to refuse the promise on the grounds that I categorically did not promise to serve the Queen as I was against the monarchy (and furthermore, how could I do my duty to a God I didn't believe in?) and who taught me we are NOT anyone's subjects.
I did burn with pride for my Mum, though, who informed her colleague in no uncertain terms that the only way she would be toasting the Queen was if she'd died. We're not beat yet, then. At least not round my manor.
Tuesday 3 April 2012
the great tax swindle
It doesn't surprise me that the top rate of tax has been cut in the budget, funded by freezing pensioner allowances, at a time of national hardship. It makes me want to kick things, but it doesn't surprise me.
For one thing, there has never been a truer word spoken than the popular protest chant, same old Tory, same old story. For another, the cabinet is stuffed with white male millionaires who went to Eton and Oxbridge - of course they are going to look after their own.
I have heard it said, and by perfectly reasonable people whom I like very much, that this is justifiable because it is important to be business friendly and tax competitive. Personally I was brought up to think that if the last five thousand of a billionaire's wealth was taxed at ninety five pence in the pound, then good, because to the billionaire that's a drop in the ocean and we need public services. I am aware my politics are further to the left than most, but how, how can we justify squeezing the poorest and most vulnerable until they bleed whilst giving tax breaks to the richest?
The tax competitive argument also doesn't hold water, because the UK has always been business friendly. The banks have been bailed out and their top executives continue to rake in seven figure bonuses, consciences seemingly untroubled by the destruction and desperation they have wrought on others. Stockbrokers pay lower rates of tax than their office cleaners. And London is a beacon to the super rich, who flock there in droves thanks to our unique "domicile" rule - that is, that if you can prove a residency overseas to which you periodically return, your overseas income is untouchable. As John Lanchester, writing in the Guardian Weekend, wryly commented: "What this policy amounts to, in practice, is that the UK has a giant sign hanging over it saying, 'Rich People! Come and Live Here! You Won't Have to Pay Any Tax!"
Aha, some would argue, but you are forgetting about the trickle down effect, that wealth at the top benefits everyone. Well, I am afraid I have been forced to conclude that the trickle down effect is a myth. In the eighties, the yuppies in the South drove around in Ferraris whilst the North was systematically broken. That wealth didn't trickle down to anyone. If the trickle down effect really benefited everyone, why was the minimum wage so fiercely resisted for so long, and set so cautiously low when it did come in? The fact is that you don't get rich by sharing the wealth, you do it by using cheap labour and the lowest pay and shoddiest working conditions you can get away with. The rich hold all the cards, they always have, and down here at the sharp end we don't see any benefit. That's the simple truth of the matter.
This tax discourse also links in a rather disturbing way to Cameron's "Big Society". The idea of volunteering is laudable, of course. However, when it is being pushed to persuade people to do for free what is correctly a function of government, then you get a slippery slope. As soon as something is recoded as charity, it can be taken away. Consider the Health Lottery - at first glance, seems a nice idea, right, your pound going towards good causes? But health care is a RIGHT, it should not depend on the generosity of Good Samaritans, especially when we're all so broke that philanthropy is a nice idea but falls by the wayside due to the need to feed ourselves. When the needs of immediate family are barely being met, altruism is a luxury. And these things pave the way for more NHS cuts, for more erosion of the welfare state, more Americanisation. Remember, in America, if you can't afford medical treatment, you don't get it. And if you're ill enough, and you still can't afford it, you will be left to die. Volunteerism, therefore, is all well and good, but if we are going to continue to have our basic rights and needs met, we need to pay our taxes. We need the rich to pay their taxes.
Instead, and as ever, the haves can have more, and the have nots have no choice but to accept ever greater poverty and inequality.
For one thing, there has never been a truer word spoken than the popular protest chant, same old Tory, same old story. For another, the cabinet is stuffed with white male millionaires who went to Eton and Oxbridge - of course they are going to look after their own.
I have heard it said, and by perfectly reasonable people whom I like very much, that this is justifiable because it is important to be business friendly and tax competitive. Personally I was brought up to think that if the last five thousand of a billionaire's wealth was taxed at ninety five pence in the pound, then good, because to the billionaire that's a drop in the ocean and we need public services. I am aware my politics are further to the left than most, but how, how can we justify squeezing the poorest and most vulnerable until they bleed whilst giving tax breaks to the richest?
The tax competitive argument also doesn't hold water, because the UK has always been business friendly. The banks have been bailed out and their top executives continue to rake in seven figure bonuses, consciences seemingly untroubled by the destruction and desperation they have wrought on others. Stockbrokers pay lower rates of tax than their office cleaners. And London is a beacon to the super rich, who flock there in droves thanks to our unique "domicile" rule - that is, that if you can prove a residency overseas to which you periodically return, your overseas income is untouchable. As John Lanchester, writing in the Guardian Weekend, wryly commented: "What this policy amounts to, in practice, is that the UK has a giant sign hanging over it saying, 'Rich People! Come and Live Here! You Won't Have to Pay Any Tax!"
Aha, some would argue, but you are forgetting about the trickle down effect, that wealth at the top benefits everyone. Well, I am afraid I have been forced to conclude that the trickle down effect is a myth. In the eighties, the yuppies in the South drove around in Ferraris whilst the North was systematically broken. That wealth didn't trickle down to anyone. If the trickle down effect really benefited everyone, why was the minimum wage so fiercely resisted for so long, and set so cautiously low when it did come in? The fact is that you don't get rich by sharing the wealth, you do it by using cheap labour and the lowest pay and shoddiest working conditions you can get away with. The rich hold all the cards, they always have, and down here at the sharp end we don't see any benefit. That's the simple truth of the matter.
This tax discourse also links in a rather disturbing way to Cameron's "Big Society". The idea of volunteering is laudable, of course. However, when it is being pushed to persuade people to do for free what is correctly a function of government, then you get a slippery slope. As soon as something is recoded as charity, it can be taken away. Consider the Health Lottery - at first glance, seems a nice idea, right, your pound going towards good causes? But health care is a RIGHT, it should not depend on the generosity of Good Samaritans, especially when we're all so broke that philanthropy is a nice idea but falls by the wayside due to the need to feed ourselves. When the needs of immediate family are barely being met, altruism is a luxury. And these things pave the way for more NHS cuts, for more erosion of the welfare state, more Americanisation. Remember, in America, if you can't afford medical treatment, you don't get it. And if you're ill enough, and you still can't afford it, you will be left to die. Volunteerism, therefore, is all well and good, but if we are going to continue to have our basic rights and needs met, we need to pay our taxes. We need the rich to pay their taxes.
Instead, and as ever, the haves can have more, and the have nots have no choice but to accept ever greater poverty and inequality.
Thursday 15 March 2012
A lot of hot air
Doing my food shopping at Asda last week - yes, I am so rock n' roll it hurts - I witnessed a bizarre phenomenon which nonetheless did not really surprise me but rather induced a sort of weary, sardonic resignation.
The contents of the tobacco counter - yes, the tobacco, which you might surmise to be such a counter's raison d'etre - are now to be covered, presumably to shield us delicate souls from the deadly glamour of the evil weed. Further, if you request, say, Lambert and Butler, and they are out of stock, and you then enquire as to the availability of other brands, staff are not allowed to give you this information! To my mind, this conjures up images of a nightmarish mixture of bemused customer playing a considerably less fun version of deal or no deal - what's in the box, ten Mayfair or a disposable lighter? wow, the extra frisson it'll add to your shopping! - and staff trying the generation game conveyor belt as they attempt to remember what's behind the big fibreglass board. Of course, some staff will not remember and may thus lie, if they are not tempted to lie to start with to enliven the existential despair of their wage slave working day.
Now, the arguments about the smoking ban have all been done to death and it's not my purpose to rehash them, although astute readers may be able to hazard a guess as to which side I came down - particularly when the silly season opened and we were banned from smoking in our own homes for two hours before the arrival of a work person, presumably to allow for full clearance of the biohazard area, and such pearls of wisdom were heard on the radio as smoking not around your children, but when they have gone to bed, will induce childhood cancers despite your responsible actions, due to residual nicotine. (Because of course that's the only dangerous pollutant children are at risk from). Now as I say, I won't comment on my own stance, but here's a clue: last time I looked, an English man's home was still his castle.
Neither is it my purpose to repudiate medical evidence on the dangers of smoking. Seeing as it is plastered all over our cig packets and baccy pouches and putting us all off our breakfast, you'd have had to be living in a cave not to know this. What I do object to is the mass moral blackmail of small children on my TV, in my living room, in my home saying Mummy, please don't die. The hypocrisy sickens me, apart from anything else - war, pollution, mass poverty, I could go on and on and yet who gets scapegoated again, who gets the big finger of disapproval and exclusion?
However, I have been distracted from my main purpose here again, and it may be evident I find this an emotive issue. Those who think it is trivial are missing an important point. This attempted micromanagement of behaviour not only ignores the fact that adults who smoke are well aware of the risks, but choose to anyway - but it's also a timehonoured way for government to distract people from their wholesale incompetence, blame others, and look like they are at least doing something in one fell swoop. And it won't work. Here's why.
If the trajectory of my smoking career had gone something like this, then covering tobacco products might be a way forward: Growing up, from an early age I was seduced by the fatal and pernicious allure of the tobacco products seeming to call to me from the newsagent's shelf. I determined to experiment with them at the first opportunity. Clearly, seeing the products was the only factor in why I started smoking and the reason I continued, for every time I tried to stop, dammit! I'd go into a shop, and see the cigarettes on the shelves, and be reminded how much I loved smoking! Whereas if they had been hidden, I would have completely forgotten they existed and this would somehow have taken care of the nicotine withdrawals as well, and I'd have been a happy and fully reformed ex smoker!
On the other hand, here's how my smoking career, and that of everyone else I know, panned out in the real world. First, and importantly, I became a teenager. (Perhaps the only legislation which would actually stop people lighting up for the first time would be if the government somehow found a way to ban the teenage years. Which it would if it could, given that "feral youth" are another modern persecuted minority, and middle England's perennial obsession. But I better stop there, if I get started on the social construction of the hoodie menace I'll go wildly off topic and be typing all night to boot). I wanted to kick against the pricks and look cool, and all my mates were smoking. I started smoking and enjoyed it. I carried on. The smoking ban came along and merely annoyed me into smoking more, because the government is not the boss of me. The End.
This type of legislation is not only useless, but in these troubled times it also smacks unforgivably of fiddling whilst Rome burns.* Not to mention passing the buck, once again, to smokers, who have now been cast as the deviants responsible for all social ills, if you believe the legislation and the hype.
And just one more thing, on a related subject. Anyone else noticed that most adverts for house rentals these days contain the caveat, "No smokers, no DSS, no pets?" And anyone else reminded of the old, "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs" signs? Discrimination against society's poor and the excluded group du jour is alive and well, it seems. Plus ca change . . .
* I know "fiddling" in this saying refers to playing the violin, but I prefer to think of it as actual fiddling in times of disaster, for example rearranging the paperclip drawer whilst your whole family is drowning.
The contents of the tobacco counter - yes, the tobacco, which you might surmise to be such a counter's raison d'etre - are now to be covered, presumably to shield us delicate souls from the deadly glamour of the evil weed. Further, if you request, say, Lambert and Butler, and they are out of stock, and you then enquire as to the availability of other brands, staff are not allowed to give you this information! To my mind, this conjures up images of a nightmarish mixture of bemused customer playing a considerably less fun version of deal or no deal - what's in the box, ten Mayfair or a disposable lighter? wow, the extra frisson it'll add to your shopping! - and staff trying the generation game conveyor belt as they attempt to remember what's behind the big fibreglass board. Of course, some staff will not remember and may thus lie, if they are not tempted to lie to start with to enliven the existential despair of their wage slave working day.
Now, the arguments about the smoking ban have all been done to death and it's not my purpose to rehash them, although astute readers may be able to hazard a guess as to which side I came down - particularly when the silly season opened and we were banned from smoking in our own homes for two hours before the arrival of a work person, presumably to allow for full clearance of the biohazard area, and such pearls of wisdom were heard on the radio as smoking not around your children, but when they have gone to bed, will induce childhood cancers despite your responsible actions, due to residual nicotine. (Because of course that's the only dangerous pollutant children are at risk from). Now as I say, I won't comment on my own stance, but here's a clue: last time I looked, an English man's home was still his castle.
Neither is it my purpose to repudiate medical evidence on the dangers of smoking. Seeing as it is plastered all over our cig packets and baccy pouches and putting us all off our breakfast, you'd have had to be living in a cave not to know this. What I do object to is the mass moral blackmail of small children on my TV, in my living room, in my home saying Mummy, please don't die. The hypocrisy sickens me, apart from anything else - war, pollution, mass poverty, I could go on and on and yet who gets scapegoated again, who gets the big finger of disapproval and exclusion?
However, I have been distracted from my main purpose here again, and it may be evident I find this an emotive issue. Those who think it is trivial are missing an important point. This attempted micromanagement of behaviour not only ignores the fact that adults who smoke are well aware of the risks, but choose to anyway - but it's also a timehonoured way for government to distract people from their wholesale incompetence, blame others, and look like they are at least doing something in one fell swoop. And it won't work. Here's why.
If the trajectory of my smoking career had gone something like this, then covering tobacco products might be a way forward: Growing up, from an early age I was seduced by the fatal and pernicious allure of the tobacco products seeming to call to me from the newsagent's shelf. I determined to experiment with them at the first opportunity. Clearly, seeing the products was the only factor in why I started smoking and the reason I continued, for every time I tried to stop, dammit! I'd go into a shop, and see the cigarettes on the shelves, and be reminded how much I loved smoking! Whereas if they had been hidden, I would have completely forgotten they existed and this would somehow have taken care of the nicotine withdrawals as well, and I'd have been a happy and fully reformed ex smoker!
On the other hand, here's how my smoking career, and that of everyone else I know, panned out in the real world. First, and importantly, I became a teenager. (Perhaps the only legislation which would actually stop people lighting up for the first time would be if the government somehow found a way to ban the teenage years. Which it would if it could, given that "feral youth" are another modern persecuted minority, and middle England's perennial obsession. But I better stop there, if I get started on the social construction of the hoodie menace I'll go wildly off topic and be typing all night to boot). I wanted to kick against the pricks and look cool, and all my mates were smoking. I started smoking and enjoyed it. I carried on. The smoking ban came along and merely annoyed me into smoking more, because the government is not the boss of me. The End.
This type of legislation is not only useless, but in these troubled times it also smacks unforgivably of fiddling whilst Rome burns.* Not to mention passing the buck, once again, to smokers, who have now been cast as the deviants responsible for all social ills, if you believe the legislation and the hype.
And just one more thing, on a related subject. Anyone else noticed that most adverts for house rentals these days contain the caveat, "No smokers, no DSS, no pets?" And anyone else reminded of the old, "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs" signs? Discrimination against society's poor and the excluded group du jour is alive and well, it seems. Plus ca change . . .
* I know "fiddling" in this saying refers to playing the violin, but I prefer to think of it as actual fiddling in times of disaster, for example rearranging the paperclip drawer whilst your whole family is drowning.
Tuesday 6 March 2012
And another thing . . .
Just a short postscript to yesterday's piece . . .
I wholeheartedly believe that small acts, whether of kindness or defiance, have great power and value for their own sake. They keep us human, and they give us courage. But if you don't also believe that these small acts can move mountains, remember Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white person in racially segregated 50s America, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott and becoming an icon of the Civil Rights movement. Her act of courage fomented social revolution - you never know when yours could do the same.
I wholeheartedly believe that small acts, whether of kindness or defiance, have great power and value for their own sake. They keep us human, and they give us courage. But if you don't also believe that these small acts can move mountains, remember Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white person in racially segregated 50s America, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott and becoming an icon of the Civil Rights movement. Her act of courage fomented social revolution - you never know when yours could do the same.
Monday 5 March 2012
Keep the faith, we need it now more than ever
It's easy to think, looking around at all the horror and injustice in the world, that there's nothing we can do. So easy to feel bewildered, to feel frightened, to feel helpless in the face of the machinations of governments and individuals who seem omnipotent, backed by resources most of us can only dream of. I felt this way recently, reading Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" - a wonderfully honest, brave, angry account of disaster capitalism and the "Big Lie" - that is, that free markets and freedom go hand in hand. It's not the purpose of this piece to review that book, but very briefly, Klein exposes the way neoliberal ideologists have repeatedly exploited the chaos and confusion of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina to impose their vision by the back door, when the traumatised populace is still regrouping, not to mention US government funded adventures in torture and repression - notably the Pinochet regime in Chile, when the developmentalist policies of Latin American governments in the 1970s threatened to cut off profitable markets.
My point here is, in the face of overwhelming, David and Goliath style odds - militarism, wealth, surveillance, technology, power versus individuals - what can we do? What have we got, that will work, that will change things?
This blog was named in tribute to my dad, who died in 2000. By the time I was at primary school I hated Thatcher, the monarchy specifically and hereditary privilege generally, the death penalty and fox hunting (this is a representative but not exhaustive selection. Though it has to be said, mostly Thatcher) but not because I was mindlessly parroting his views. My dad told me what he thought, he told me why he thought it, and he let me make up my own mind. He didn't assume I wouldn't understand because I was a child, and he taught me to ask questions and to believe in social justice. I'm proud to say I'm still my father's daughter, and as his spirit lives on in me, true red really ain't dead.
It may seem like I just veered off on a wild tangent, but I wrote about my dad for a reason. Because the answer to what we can do lies, or so I believe, in our own hearts and those of our loved ones. The magnitude of evil and injustice in the world IS overwhelming. Yet if we keep asking those questions, keep talking, and above all keep our hearts open and loving in the face of those who have no respect for life, then who knows what the reverberations will be? Love can move the world, I truly believe that. So win the hearts and minds of people you love, encourage them when it seems the battle can't be won, tell your children the truth. You don't know who they'll tell, or what they'll go on to do - something you say to someone today could end up changing things in ways you can't even anticipate. We have to take care of each other, and we have to keep bearing witness. The day we all shut down inside because things seem so hopeless, the day we turn for good to the prozac of consumerism and stop caring, is the day the battle is lost. But that's not today, not for me and not for millions of others.
We have hearts, we have brains, and we have each other. And that's all we have. Against war and torture, against poverty and inequality, against abuse and rape, that may seem like nothing at all. And yet in the face of all that brutality, isn't continuing to care a miracle?
Keep loving each other. Keep talking. Keep doing what you can. Trust me, it means everything.
My point here is, in the face of overwhelming, David and Goliath style odds - militarism, wealth, surveillance, technology, power versus individuals - what can we do? What have we got, that will work, that will change things?
This blog was named in tribute to my dad, who died in 2000. By the time I was at primary school I hated Thatcher, the monarchy specifically and hereditary privilege generally, the death penalty and fox hunting (this is a representative but not exhaustive selection. Though it has to be said, mostly Thatcher) but not because I was mindlessly parroting his views. My dad told me what he thought, he told me why he thought it, and he let me make up my own mind. He didn't assume I wouldn't understand because I was a child, and he taught me to ask questions and to believe in social justice. I'm proud to say I'm still my father's daughter, and as his spirit lives on in me, true red really ain't dead.
It may seem like I just veered off on a wild tangent, but I wrote about my dad for a reason. Because the answer to what we can do lies, or so I believe, in our own hearts and those of our loved ones. The magnitude of evil and injustice in the world IS overwhelming. Yet if we keep asking those questions, keep talking, and above all keep our hearts open and loving in the face of those who have no respect for life, then who knows what the reverberations will be? Love can move the world, I truly believe that. So win the hearts and minds of people you love, encourage them when it seems the battle can't be won, tell your children the truth. You don't know who they'll tell, or what they'll go on to do - something you say to someone today could end up changing things in ways you can't even anticipate. We have to take care of each other, and we have to keep bearing witness. The day we all shut down inside because things seem so hopeless, the day we turn for good to the prozac of consumerism and stop caring, is the day the battle is lost. But that's not today, not for me and not for millions of others.
We have hearts, we have brains, and we have each other. And that's all we have. Against war and torture, against poverty and inequality, against abuse and rape, that may seem like nothing at all. And yet in the face of all that brutality, isn't continuing to care a miracle?
Keep loving each other. Keep talking. Keep doing what you can. Trust me, it means everything.
Sunday 4 March 2012
And now for something completely different . . .
This is a political blog, but we all need something to make us smile sometimes right? This makes me smile, and some of you that I hope are reading may remember hearing it when I first wrote it, which also makes me smile. Although, it is a little heteronormative - perhaps I should write a sequel where Tony plays with gender and becomes a dragon queen? Hahaha, see what I did there? I don't know about you, but I'm smiling already . . .
Some years ago, in days of yore
Onward, then, strode Geriwain
He said, “Dragon, I am your friend
THE KNIGHT, THE PRINCESS AND THE DRAGON
There lived the princess, Leonore
In her castle, remote and lonely
She dreamed of finding her one and only.
Yet not just any man would do
His heart must be bold, full of valour, and true
He must prove his love to the lady he sought
Only then would she give her heart, Leonore thought.
One day, a handsome knight came to call
But canny Leonore would not yet fall
in love; this knight must be put to the test
So she thought of a suitably difficult quest.
“Brave knight,” she said, “around my fair throat
hangs half of a heart; its twin lies in the moat
of the Castle of Darkness
guarded by a dragon; bring it back tomorrow.
Because I want my heart unbroken
Please accept my request, and bring back this token.”
The handsome knight (christened Geriwain)
Set out that night, in fierce wind and hard rain
His eye was clear, his heart noble and pure
He would bring back the trinket, and win Leonore.
In the forest of sorrow, he encountered a beast
It cackled: “Young knight, on your flesh I shall feast
The bones scattered all over this lonely track
Came from knights such as you; they’re my favourite snack.”
Said Geriwain, “You’re fearsome, that much is true
Yet I have slain scarier beasts than you
For Leonore, I will be happily tested
And sir, I’m a knight who’s not easily bested.”
The beast roared with anger, attacked Geriwain
Who thought of his princess and ignored the pain
From inside his jacket he drew a long spear
And slayed the beast calmly, without fuss or fear.
Toward the castle, toward his aim
Passing by the Devil’s Lake
He came upon a deadly snake
Who put to him this fiendish riddle,
“What’s in violin, and also in fiddle?
It’s in middle of the moon
And it cometh twice at noon
The answer means a crazy guy
Or type of bird with piercing cry
Answer, fool, and think of this
That I can do much more than hiss.”
The knight, sensibly, did not panic
Although his pacing grew quite manic
And just when he felt to fearfully swoon
The answer came; he cried, “A loon!”
The snake, denied his tasty prey
Drew back, but in a sulky way.
Next flew down a winged boar
Who said, “The liar, Leonore,
Consorts this night with Galahad
Your quest is all in vain, my lad
Better that you turn back now
Than risk your life for such a cow.”
Said Geriwain, “I know you lie
Your slanderous lips offend my eye
Shapeshifter, be gone from here!”
- and slayed him with his trusty spear.
(From the corpse rose axeman, hag and ghost
The shapes the glamour used the most.)
Weary, the knight spied dawn’s first light
The Castle of Darkness
The trees first thinned, then disappeared
And there was what he had most feared
A mighty dragon, fast asleep
Breathing fire before castle and keep.
The beast sensed his presence and opened its eyes
Geriwain blinked, feeling great surprise
The poor thing wasn’t fearsome; why, it looked sad!
And a cunning plan made the knight’s heart glad.
Your lonely life is at an end
Come live with me and my lady fair
For three are much better than a pair.”
The dragon seemed to understand
He bowed his head and licked Geriwain’s hand
While the knight dived the moat, the dragon stood guard
Till Geriwain surfaced with half a gold heart.
Then man and beast flew home together
To be with Leonore forever
“Knight, you have made my heart whole,
So now I give you my heart and soul
I am yours for ever more!”
So said the beauty, Leonore.
They kissed in raptures of delight
And were married at day’s first light
And of their life that was just the start
And the knight, Geriwain, never did break her heart
And the dragon, whose name was Tony
Never again felt sad or lonely
And he was their loyal friend and guard
And his jokes cheered them up when times got hard.
Knight, princess and dragon together grew older
But the love in their hearts never dimmed or got colder
And though she got fatter, and he got dafter
You guessed: they lived happily ever after.
Friday 2 March 2012
Why Cameron's looking fat: he's feasting on the blood of the poor
David Cameron’s government will have blood on their hands before this is over.
In a recession hate crime against the disabled rises. This has been proven since the Second World War when Adolf Hitler’s less publicised first victims were disabled and chronically sick people condemned to die in the gas chambers for being a burden.
This “burden” mentality continues to exist and always has, reinforced by such august providers of totally impartial news (yeah, right) as the Daily Mail and your soaraway Sun. Those who have committed no worse crime than being born with an impairment or developing a mental illness which renders them unable to work have repeatedly been constructed as scroungers, malingerers, a drain on the decent hardworking taxpayer. While such blue through and through publications have stopped short of advocating wholesale murder of our society’s sick and vulnerable (so far), is current government policy really so much more humane and progressive?
Consider. Those unable to work are now forced through a punitive means testing process, carrried out by doctors employed by the state, who receive a bonus for every person they unceremoniously throw off benefits. Yes, you read that right. Whither impartiality and the Hippocratic Oath, whose first article, lest we forget, is, “First, do no harm”? It doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to visualise the consequences. Some of the neediest and most vulnerable people in society already, many of whom have little or no support in place (and whose existing support is very likely to have been CUT) forced through a humiliating and frightening process which reduces human beings to collections of symptoms and strips away all dignity and compassion, with the very real possibility of being left unable to pay for even the basics of life? Existing mental health conditions will be exacerbated (although, of course, it’s a lot easier to demonise and dehumanise sufferers of conditions which can’t be visually seen – it’s a sad fact that certain sections of society have always found it difficult to make the empathic leap to understanding that people may show no visible signs but still be cripplingly disabled by conditions such as agoraphobia.) Desperation and fear will be everywhere, and for the most vulnerable and isolated, suicides are a real possibility.
Of course, if you are disabled and you fail your medical – which seem on the evidence I have seen to be a hollow performance reminiscent of show trials, something which must be seen to be done but whose meaninglessness resides in the fact the outcome is decided before you even step into the room – you can go on jobseeker’s allowance, and be given a pitiful amount in return for applying for a set number of jobs which you are unable to do. Or you can appeal – a hugely stressful and slow process during which you must accept a forty per cent cut in benefits. The cynical might suggest that this is so you will be so beaten down, exhausted and disheartened - with mounting debts and the inability to do the basic things, like eating, that we all take for granted – that you will give up in the face of heartless and faceless bureaucracy, an omnipotent system you will never beat. I wouldn’t dream of such a thing – nonetheless the process would seem to go against the basic tenet of innocent until proven guilty and turn it on its head. And guilty of what? Bringing me neatly back to my initial point – guilty of being a burden.
Then there is the issue of those in early recovery from addiction. Contrary to populist rhetoric casting addicts as granny-mugging demons in our midst, those who have successfully overcome addictions with the help of treatment are usually courageous individuals who have faced down huge socio-economic and personal barriers – empirical research shows a high correlation between childhood abuse and addiction in later life, for example – to turn their lives around. Now let’s say you are a bastion of true middle England conservatism and still can’t muster an ounce of compassion for such people, let alone the round of applause they deserve. Well then, there is still an economic argument to be made. What is the sense in investing thousands in costly treatment programmes only to then turf still vulnerable adults into penury, exacerbating the risk of relapse, depression, and a return to old and possibly criminal behaviours, all of which will cost the taxpayer far more in the long term? But don’t worry, Cameron’s got the answer – cut funding for drug treatment so drastically there won’t be any recovering addicts!
It’s the same kind of short-sighted false economy which saw the closure of Sure Start children’s centres, which have been shown in longitudinal studies following children in such programmes to adulthood to produce innumerable societal and economic benefits such as stable employment, lack of involvement in criminality, higher literacy, better health and so forth, saving the taxpayer countless sums for every pound spent – even without moral considerations, such a return on investment is a worthy enterprise, surely? The same holds true for cutting the benefits of the ill and disabled – health care costs in the long run will totally eclipse any short term savings of a paltry few pounds a week.
The poor, the vulnerable and the disabled didn’t cause this crisis. We all know who did, and the fact is that regardless, if the superrich who dodge their taxes, greedily hoarding what would be a drop in the ocean in terms of their billions, were all made to pay up, the country’s deficit would be paid and we’d still be £70 billion in credit! Tax evasion costs the country billions more than the benefits bill, but you won’t read about that in the Daily Mail.
For those of us who still believe that the mark of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members, we live in frightening times indeed.
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