Fight for equal access to learning…

One of the first jobs I ever had was collecting and returning books to the library on behalf of elderly women resident in a care home. I would walk up this hill in Hove to pick-up the books and their lists. I enjoyed it as I found the women interesting to speak to and they were a friendly bunch. One would give her book list with the proviso that I find a ‘good juicy murder’ in large print . This was difficult as she had read all the crime fiction going. And she never got nightmares…

It was a good idea what the local library did, it gave the women access to book collections and it certainly helped me. The library, thankfully, is still there but the library I frequented as a kid, where I spent a lot of my time reading where I was able to lose myself in the written word, conjure up fantasises and develop my own imagination. It was my place to be creative and feel safe from the world outside. I have good memories of those times. It was a place where I started to understand the importance of knowledge, and  learning. I certainly gained more visiting the local library then my formative years at primary school. Libraries are an important function in this society, they are a collective means of reading and learning, and that access should be equal. To me they are a basic Socialist demand.

I have worked in many libraries during the past 20-odd years, mainly academic ones. The problem workers encounter is cuts to library budgets. And the number of times as a trade union activist I have been involved in fighting cuts.

It seems in many academic institutions library facilities are unimportant and usually first for the chop. Cuts also meant deskilling the workforce, and therefore changes in pay and conditions.

And public libraries are not immune to these cuts:

Meanwhile other libraries – small, much-loved local libraries – are closing. Wirral’s Labour/Liberal Democrat council has voted to close 11 of its 24 libraries, a process that will be complete by early July. Swindon’s Tory council has voted to close four libraries, a decision that it hopes will save it just £100,000 – though this process is now on hold for three months following complaints over the period of consultation (best-practice guidelines suggest a period of 12 weeks; Swindon consulted for four, if that). Other councils are likely to follow suit: Warwick, Somerset, Walsall and Richmond are in the frame to make cuts thus far. Since 2003, 82 libraries have closed nationwide, a figure that has not grown half so rapidly as some people – including me – predicted it might two years ago, but which we can only expect to rise pretty drastically now the financial weather has changed.

As Cooke maintains glitzy trendy library buildings are being built but what about the book stock? Indeed there have been a  number of local public libraries I have visited where the book stock is old and depleted. Lack of magazines, newspapers, CD collections and so on. Though in saying that one of the most well stocked reference and lending libraries I have ever been to was based in…. Kensington and Chelsea…in other words the richest borough in the country.

Again, libraries are a way to collectivise learning, finding out about the world, access to books, in an equal way. And when you look at how much of a budget is spent on libraries, well it is a drop in the financial ocean!

Expenditure on books in our libraries is below 8% of the total public library funds, and in inner London that figure is just 5.7% (across the country, councils spend just 1.6% of their funding on children’s books; several councils, Hackney and Doncaster among them, spend less than 1%).

Poet laureate, Andrew Motion, correctly describes closures of libraries as, extremely short-sighted and counter-productive.

Furthermore, At a time of recession, all these benefits are of greater importance. Good local libraries become more relevant to people’s needs, not less.

But never fear, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham is on the case:

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has today (Friday 3 April) intervened in the public dispute about proposed library closures in the Wirral, calling a local inquiry to test whether the Council’s plans are consistent with their statutory duty to provide all residents with a comprehensive public library service.

Why isn’t he intervening in all the areas where cuts have been made or will be made?

The cuts will have an immeasurable impact on learning. Libraries give equal access to education but the erosion due to cuts will create a society where the poor will not have the same access as people with money.

Police cover-ups: No justice, No peace…

It is coming up to the 20th anniversary regarding Hillsborough. A disaster  that could have and should have been avoided and the ensuing police cover-up where families and friends of the dead, the survivors, still want to know the truth about why this disaster happened. They want justice.

Police cover-up, spin and lies backed by the media. Sound familiar?

The Truth: some fans picked pockets of victims; some fans urinated on the brave cops; some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life (front page of The Sun, 19th April 1989)

POLICE were battered with beer bottles and cans as they desperately tried to save a dying man at the height of the G20 riots in London last night. (The Sun, 2nd April 2009)

In regards to the Sun’s headline in 1989, the quotes came from anonymous sources in the police or Police Fed.

And now Maria Eagle, junior justice minister, has said that South Yorkshire police should ‘come clean’ about what she described as a “conspiracy to cover up” the force’s culpability for the Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 Liverpool supporters died at an FA Cup semi-final, 20 years ago this week.

Margaret Aspinall, of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said this was still “a big issue” for the families. “It is quite obvious the police wanted to cover up and accuse everybody else. If they gave us the whole truth now, and are accountable for what they did, it might alleviate some of the pain and hurt we have gone through for 20 years.”

One practice that should be stopped is cops being allowed to confer together when making their statement as this is collusion. Even though the IPCC  called for the practice of  firearms officers comparing notes when writing statements should be ‘stamped out’  in wake of the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Another being the collusion between the cops and the media. And importantly, an actual independent police complaints commission that is totally separate from the police and the Home Office that doesn’t indulge in collusion and cover-ups. Simply, mea culpa.

I think the quote from Phil Scraton below in the introduction to his excellent book, Hillsborough, can equally be applied to any death(s) at the hands of the state:

It is a story of those in authority seek to cover their tracks to avoid blame and responsibility. It is a story of how the ‘law’ fails to provide appropriate means of discovery and redress for those who suffer through institutionalised neglect and personal negligence. It is a story of how ordinary people can be subjected to the insensitivity and hostility of agencies which place their professional priorities ahead of the personal needs and collective rights of the bereaved and survivors. (Hillsborough – Phil Scraton, 1999)

Why Jeremy Kyle is bad for the health…

I won’t get much sympathy for this and many will say what did I expect. But, dear readers, I made a fatal mistake this morning…. I watched Jeremy Kyle. Serves me right!

But what caused my blood pressure to increase significantly was his sneery contemptuous behaviour (whats new?!?!) towards a young woman who was on the show to determine, once and for all, whether her partner was the biological dad of her baby girl. So the climax of the show Kyle reading the DNA results.

The young woman’s child was conceived after she got drunk and in her own words was, ‘taken advantage of’. I took that to be a euphemism for rape. Kyle, instead, enjoyed lecturing her about ‘binge drinking’ and that her behaviour should be a ‘warning’ to everyone out there.

Not once did Kyle ask about what happened to her. Again, he made an outrageous and vile comment about bringing in the ’6 or 7 men who could be the father and taking their DNA’..

This is a very serious criminal offence yet Kyle downplays it, or rather indulges in woman blaming. Nor does he say anything about consent or who was involved (was this woman ganged raped?) he just speculates. She was drunk, shoulda known better, end of. The onus is put on her.

So not only is it about her fault, ‘cos she was drunk, she’s a slag as far as Kyle is concerned. Lets rip the woman’s sexual history apart along with her reputation. Lets trash it.

Again, he wasn’t concerned when she said she was ‘taken advantage of’ when she was drunk or to hear her side of the story. Instead it was about reverting to sexist double-standards, making assumptions and honing in on her behaviour.

So what, she was drunk, did she deserve to be sexually assaulted, raped? I suppose it is enjoyable for the likes of Kyle to make snap offensive moral judgements about people, to sneer in that middle class manner and to wield power over people.

But these programmes aren’t about insight, awareness or understanding it is about demeaning people and moralising them.  Gee, that’s fun to hold court over people and pick through their fuck-ups, it is a spectator sport. Cruel and nasty.

Indeed why do people appear on the show? I don’t know the motivations of the young couple this morning other they wanted to know who was the dad of the baby. But I really felt sorry for the young woman, as she was scared and you could tell. Kyle wasn’t interested in getting to the truth or even suggesting she should speak to the police or Rape Crisis.

He’d rather pour scorn on the fact she was drunk, in his eyes she had cheated on her partner. And indeed was utterly appallingly dismissive when she said, a couple of times, she had been taken advantage of.

Did he prefer to view that as a convenient excuse, clouded by his own misogyny and moralism? Or does he think it makes good telly to make assumptions, moralise and lecture a woman about her so-called binge drinking and sexual ‘misconduct’ as opposed to listening to her when she is trying to say she was raped…? And they wonder why women don’t come forward to report rape….

This is car crash telly at its worse, real psychodrama. Why do people go on to tell the world their most intimate and heartbreaking stories about fuck-ups in their lives, do they think they will get resolution? Will it help this couple to know now that the baby isn’t the man’s biological daughter? Does it matter? Shouldn’t the partner be for more concerned about what happened to his partner when she got drunk? Instead he seemed more concerned about his DNA and biological status.

This specific programme really exposed the interplay and dynamics  between traditional gender roles, misogyny and power relationships between men and women. The two men ganging up on the woman was horrible to witness. She was the ‘baddie’ and she needed to be exposed for it, in their eyes.

She was left utterly powerless and in pieces yet bully Kyle had the gall to put his arm around the woman and say, ‘we are here to support you’…

If that’s support then who needs it! Then again, maybe Jeremy Kyle should hook up with Derek Draper. They would make a fine upstanding team…..