Abortion and the north of Ireland

Unfortunately the amendment tabled by Diane Abbott for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology legislation regards to extending abortion rights to the north of Ireland failed last year.

http://www.dianeabbott.org.uk/campaigns/abortion.aspx

 

  I remember chatting to a woman from Alliance for Choice at an abortion rights meeting last year in Parliament.  She was over here, as part of a 40 woman team to support the amendment to extend the abortion rights to the north of Ireland. Forty being politically symbolic as 40 women each week leave the north to obtain an abortion elsewhere.

 

And that costs between £600 to £2,000. Access to abortion is very much a class issue and if you can’t get the money then a woman is pushed into a desperate situation that include backstreet abortions. Women also end up buying RU486 aka abortion pill over the web, taking pot luck as they don’t know what they are buying. Desperate circumstances bring desperate measures.

 

At the meeting a speaker from Family Planning Association NI spoke about the constant anti-abortion protesters outside clinics were screams of “murderer” is common and so is harassment. And yet during the past 40 years around 80,000 Irish women have travelled to obtain an abortion. It is not God’s law (or whatever the latest reactionary nonsense from Iris Robinson and the rest of the unholy alliance) but a woman’s right to control her own body. Where she does not have to travel abroad to fulfill that right. Where she isn’t judged, moralised, lectured, undermined and pressured by religious doctrine but her right to choose.

 

fpa’s Discrimination and Denial: Abortion Law in Northern Ireland is a short hard hitting film that exposes the realities women face when denied free safe legal abortion.

It has premiered in Belfast (http://www.fpa.org.uk/News/Press/Pressreleases2009/15June2009).

 

Please see as well Martin Salter’s EDM 

 

From Abortion Rights http://www.abortionrights.org.uk/content/view/308/1/

Getting my act and notes together…

I have been putting my trade union history talk together on women’s suffrage and trade unionism so have been up keeping my head down, scribbling notes, reading and therefore far far too many late nights tap tap tapping away at the keyboard. So much information so little time….. to condense in a 20-30 mins talk.

Anyway, the gig is tomorrow. I will put my notes on here.

So in the meantime..here is some Florence and the Machine, Rabbit Heart (I really disliked the earlier Kiss With a Fist as the lyrics unnerved me).

Caught the late minute or so of this when they were on Jonathan Ross the other week, what struck me is how she’s a tad Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – Lizzie Siddal/Jane Burden look-a-like…. Well, that’s what I first thought.

But I really like this one, her incredibly beautiful voice and the piano section in the middle of the song.

Policing of the G20 protests report: yada ..inadequate policing…yada yada

There should be a national overhaul of the policing of protests that reasserts the state’s obligation to allow lawful demonstrations, a scathing report into how the Metropolitan police handled the G20 protests recommended today.

Advocating major reforms in the way such marches are handled, Denis O’Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, said national tactics for policing protest were “inadequate” and belonged to a “different era”.

“What the review [of policing protest] identifies is that the world is changing and the police need to think about changing their approach to protest,” O’Connor said.

So says Denis O’connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, in his report on the policing of the G20 protests.

Furthermore: Commanders appeared not to properly understand basic human rights laws or the legal requirements surrounding the use of kettling, the report said. However, O’Connor said this was the case for only some senior officers, and refused to identify those at fault.

Human rights? Legal requirements? I bet this is causing tensions and punch-ups within the elite of the police force.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/07/police-protests-g20-review

Torchwood…

Captain Jack Harkness is rather like Rasputin (as in the historical accurate lyrics of Boney M), you shoot him, shoot him again, and again, and again….. but he keeps on gettin’ up….

So for a different method of assassination blow him up. And that’s how it was left last night…. Gwen sprinting away like her life depended on it, which it did along with Ianto who has just got used to being in a couple with Jack.

I think the 5 episodes will be shown over 5 nights (a bit of a swizz really as I suppose with the credit crunch the series length has been reduced).

Anyways, quick briefing about the plot.. Some, as always is happening in Cardiff, alien force has gripped the child population where they stand still, scream and chant, ‘we are coming’ in unison. Bit like Edvard Munch’s The Scream meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either film) meets Wyndham’s Midwich Cuckoos… All strange, spooky and something…

And that something as we move on swiftly to the Big Smoke where Malcolm Tucker …  slip of the keyboard there…  I meant, civil servant John Frobisher (Peter Capaldi sans imaginative sweary ‘In the Loop’ persona…. Darnit!!). There’s something happening regarding the 456… (nah, it aint a bus route) and some bloke in a psychiatric hospital who claimed he was abducted by aliens so is experiencing the loony bin trip (great storyline… Russell) and has a brilliant sense of smell… Lassie meets Hannibal Lecter but without the cannibalism,  fava beans and chianti.

Anyways, Ianto got the car nicked, Jack was shot a few times but was resurrected and Gwen found out she was pregnant. Thre final minutes teetered on a knife edge between calmness and calamity. Final shot is kabooooom……….

So….outstanding issues that will surely be cleared up… Who wants to assassinate the Torchwood posse and why? How does Lois, the new ‘puter techie, fit in to the storyline…will she save our Torchwood heroes..?

Oh, and I suppose it is all to do with the rift in the space time continuum thingy thing….

 

Robert McNamara: war criminal dies

We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country. But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong.

Former Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, to Kennedy and Johnson has died aged 93 years. He will be remembered as the architect for the Vietnam War. Years later he had an attack of the mea culpa (see Oscar winning documentary, Fog of War).

McNamara’s Vietnam strategy killed millions of people, similar to war criminal Henry Kissinger. Kissinger, the imperialist enforcer, who intellectualises about the necessity of war mongering. Though I don’t think Kissinger has been plagued by a guilty conscience.

McNamara was maybe a complex flawed man riddled with guilt but he took his time in becoming public about his doubts and condemnation. And witnessing the repeating farce and tragedy of history, he opposed the Iraq War (”It’s just wrong what we’re doing. It’s morally wrong, it’s politically wrong, it’s economically wrong.”).

Though McNamara recanted he was still part of a war mongering cabal. I suspect that the likes of Kissinger, Blair, Thatcher, Bush (both senior and junior) will probably all die in their beds unpunished for their war crimes and global terrorism.

Justice doesn’t prevail.

What Sarah Palin will do next..?!?!

Sarah ‘little shop of horrors’ Palin has resigned as Alaska’s governor. I know this happened last Friday but I am still trying to get my head around her resignation speech, which, to sum up, is about ethics, dead fish and quotes from General MacArthur.

What is about about Republicans and their ability to speak total utter surreal nonsense…!

So farewell to the hockey mum Republican who relentlessly pushed the corporate interest (’Drill’, ‘Drill’, ‘Drill’) while using the usual dog whistle politics of anti-choice, pro-gun creationism of the religious minority in the US.

I am waiting for the ‘Tina Fey’ treatment. And am still wondering if Palin ever got back to Katie Couric about what magazines and newspapers she read….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/30/palin-a-journalism-major_n_130707.html

http://www.gov.state.ak.us/exec-column.php

But to misquote that fine Hollywood actor, ‘She’ll be back’…. Probably sometimes around 2012…

Gosh darnit!

Btw: The latest Vanity Fair has an article on Palin and McCain. Interesting read….

Oh, and if you are sad to see her go then you can get yourself a scantily-clad Palin action figure (with a scary inane grin). 

Hat-tip: Jim Jay

http://jimjay.blogspot.com/2009/07/ex-governor-palin.html

Now that’s what I don’t call vetting…

Well, it seems like the cop who attacked Ian Tomlinson had an outstanding disciplinary for ‘unnecessary force’. He took early retirement before the disciplinary convened. And when he rejoined the cops the disciplinary didn’t emerge during the vetting process.

Details of the past of the officer at the centre of the IPCC inquiry into Tomlinson’s death emerged yesterday. He had been on a disciplinary charge and facing a misconduct hearing earlier in his Met career.

 The charge related to an incident while he was on sick leave with a shoulder injury when the officer became involved in a road rage incident. It is understood he tried to arrest the other driver involved in the incident, who later complained that the officer had used unnecessary force.

 Before the discipline board convened, however, the officer took early retirement from the Met on medical grounds, and was awarded a medical pension.

Some years later he rejoined the Met as a civilian. He then applied to join Surrey police as an officer.

When he was vetted the unresolved disciplinary matter should have shown up but does not appear to have done so. The officer was recruited to Surrey police with no blot on his disciplinary record. He later applied for a transfer to the Met, which again did not reveal the unresolved disciplinary charge.

Anyway I assumed ‘unnecessary force’ etc. would be an essential part of the job description/ person spec. when it comes to getting a job in the TSG. No?

SSAC want your views on benefit sanctions

The Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) has launched a consultation on new regulations that include provision for benefit sanctions for those who refuse to participate in skills training.

The main claimant groups for the pilot will be -

• those aged 18 and over who have claimed JSA continuously for 6 months – and who are therefore in Stage 3 (the ‘Supported Job Search’ stage) of the Flexible New Deal regime within the pilot period; and
• others who are fast-tracked to stage 3 – including those who have claimed JSA for 22 of the previous 24 months; and those in certain disadvantaged groups – for example ex-offenders, refugees, drug and alcohol misusers, and those claiming JSA having failed the Work Capability Assessment Test - who may volunteer for early access to Stage 3.

Four types of training, which will be full-time or part-time, will be included in the pilot -

• literacy, English language for speakers of other languages and numeracy;
• employability skills;
• short job-focused training of up to 8 weeks; and
• other job related provision available through Further Education and other LSC providers, learndirect and DWP support contract provision which is longer-term in nature.

Sanctions will however be applied where a person, without good cause, does not attend a pre-entry interview; gives up a training place; refuses or fail to apply for or accept a place on training; neglects to avail themselves of a reasonable opportunity of a training place; or loses a training place due to misconduct.

Before the SSAC considers and reports on the proposals, it would like to hear from organisations and individuals who have views, especially in relation to the use and impact of benefit sanctions, and the role of mandatory training in supporting benefit claimants into work.

The deadline for submissions to SSAC is 3 August 2009.

So please please contact SSAC telling them what you think about sanctions, and what impact they will have on people. Now is the time to tell these people why sanctions won’t work in relation to mandatory training and whether that will ’support’ people back into work….

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2009/july-2009/ssac-060709.shtml

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/jsa-skills-conditionality-consultation.pdf

Public Enemies

 

I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars… and you. What else you need to know? (John Dillinger to Billie Frechette on first meeting)

1930s America gripped by the depression and poverty. Outlaws like Ma Baker, Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Babyface Nelson…and of course John Dillinger zig-zagging the length and breadthof the USA trying to out-smart and out wit the G-men, part of the fledgling FBI headed by J. Edgar Hoover. Dillinger’s nemesis is young FBI agent Melvin Purvis.

Michael Mann’s film  immortalisesanti-hero John Dillinger in Public Enemies.  Johnny Depp plays the bank robbing legend in a 1930s Hollywood James Cagney style (Dillinger, legend has it, based many of his bank robbing moves on Cagney….. life imitating art!). The film is factual in it’s content, doesn’t deviate from that. Under instructions by J.Edgar Hoover, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) headed the hunt for Dillinger by using the new techniques in tracking criminals.

Mann, as always, incorporates the physical landscape with the film’s narrative. The cinematography is beautiful.  Along with the emphasis, with up close shots, on the two main characters (reminded me a bit of Pacino/De Niro in Heat). The film revolves around the final 2 years of Dillinger’s life. Bank robberies, hiding out, prison breaks and given his own iconic status by the newspapers.

The prison breaks are minutely executed similar to the bank robberies with the added dramatic tension, Dillinger literally leaping over the bank’s central desk holding his machine gun is deftly filmed. Escaping with hostages with the cops chasing them. One scene where Dillinger escapes from jail is very funny especially as he has thwarted both the cops and the G-Men and seeing the expression on J. Edgar Hoover’s face is priceless.

But…But…the film still plodded, it dragged. It lacked energy, a real dynamism, the ingredients were there (acting was superb especially Jason Clarke who played Dillinger’s best friend, John) but it was an anti-climax. The film didn’t pull you in because it lacked in-depth characterisation and dialogue, it did resemble a 1930s Jimmy Cagney film (I did half expect Babyface Nelson as he is surrounded by G-Men firing his machine gun to shout: Made it Ma! Top of the world…. Though White Heat was much later ). Indeed Cagney made a film in the early 30s, Public Enemy. But it lacked the noirish qualities.

Though criticism aside, the film thankfully doesn’t resort to moral equivocations, meaning FBI = good, bankrobbers= bad. Instead it blurs distinctions by giving a political context, framework to the period Dillinger was operating. The FBI resort to torture to extract information from one of Dillinger’s gang in a rather brutal excruciating scene to watch. And Billie Frechette, in another harrowing scene, is viciously beaten by an male agent over a period of two days (she ends up pissing herself as she is refused the toilet), again to force her to talk about Dillinger’s whereabouts. Indeed Dillinger and his gang resort to violence and murder but some of the FBI are depicted as nothing more than legalised thugs. And I did find myself championing Dillinger especially the daring and audacious prison breaks.

On the political context (Ronan Bennett wrote the screenplay with Mann), there’s a scene where they a leaving a house, hide-out after a bank robbery, the woman asks Dillinger, ‘take me with you’.. The barren landscape makes the powerful political point that words probably couldn’t. When explaining to the journalists Dillinger (when first captured) in the jailhouse his prison experiences, he mentions robbing the local store where he got 10 years. The way Johnny Depp emphaises the 12 years imprisonment for a $50 really highlights the politics of the gap between wealth and poverty.

Again, Dillinger the legend is played out when he is being driven by the police through a working class area where people stop to cheer and bang on the car windows.

I woulda have liked to have seen more of Billie Frechette (the excellent Marion Cotillard) but like most gangster type movies women are relegated to the back, reduced the moll. The scenes between Dillinger and Frechette are tender, moving but tinged with sadness.

Oh, I really enjoyed the soundtrack to the film.

New Labour: it’s about making the poor pay

So, a pain-free way of cutting public spending would be to freeze public sector pay, or at least impose severe pay restraint.

There’s an obsession with making severe cuts in public spending and to open up the welfare state to the free market. Indeed, this is selling off the family silver. While we are being distracted by the desire by NL and the Tories to make fundamental cuts the bankers are in line for gigantic big bonuses (Ah! so that’s where the Government bail-out went…..).

NL are gearing up for an attack on public services as this is part of their ideology. And John Denham made recently a rather explicit speech about …. shafting the poor. Or to put it more eloquently:

…different, more nuanced view of fairness and equality…

Yes, again, it’s about difficult truths and thinking the unthinkable.. the conclusion being to attack the most powerless in this society while the rich reap the benefits. Indeed that it one peverse and up-side-down understanding of ‘fairness and equality’ especially in this current economic climate where the recession will get deeper, and more severe. And of course, this is the ideal time to cut public spending!

NL is busily looking at Housing Benefit reform, and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) thinking about the savings they can make while the bankers are still making a financial killing.

And we are paying the price for a crisis of their making!