Another review?

I suppose it is better late than never regarding this but as Lisa Longstaff from Women Against Rape rightly points out:

We have had review after review, research project after research project and still women are not getting the protection of the law when they are raped or suffer domestic violence.

Action does indeed speak louder than words but my expectations are low especially as Harriet Harman and the whole NL shebang have had time to do so much but in reality have done so little…..

Here’s a post I made earlier

Pic of dramatic sky taken on station platform tonight...

The gym is a bit like Marmite, you either like it or loathe it. And I have to admit that I like it….. It is a place where I escape with my iPod earphones firmly stuck in my ears while I jog merrily away in my own world on the treadmill. Actually, it is a great place to think about ideas, deconstruct arguments and such like. I have always gravitated towards gyms for the past 20 odd years, and I have been kinda disciplined in my attendance. I hadn’t been to a gym for nearly 3 years when I decided to go back. Feels like years ago when I tentatively arranged my appointment with the personal trainer at 7:30am on a bleak January day ’09, and oh my…she put me through my paces. But with sheer grit, determination and an expensive pair of trainers I persevered….going 3 – 4 times a week. Even personal trainer marvelled (I had that warm glow of approval), she said that people usually gave up after a couple of months …yet I had been dogged in my attendance. And for me, the gym became the strapline of an episode of Cheers…where everyone knows your name…

Initially I chose the gym mainly due to proximity and because I was used to the places. When I was asked why I was doing this by the personal trainer, I said it was to get fit (I like running especially sprinting and I was good at it when I was at school eons ago) but mainly because I wanted to something to stabilise moods, where the endorphin rush kicks me into a positive mindset. And it has kinda improved, I still get anxious and depressed but the fog of depression doesn’t suck me into that abyss as much. I am not suggesting exercise magically erases your woes away….but it seems to a tad with me. Personal trainer keeps me on my toes by pushing me to my limits (she is evil but in a very nice way!) and getting me onto the next scary level….

Anyway, not sure why I am telling the cyberworld this probably because I am knackered, nice knackered with brain unable to function. Indeed there are times I want to lounge on the sofa, eating fancy schmancy cupcakes (damn you Waitrose and Patisserie Valerie…your clever marketing ploy has suckered me!)

I will at some point give my tuppence h’alfpenny thoughts on the Tories plans to streamline benefits (mainly proposals put forward by Iain Duncan Smith).

Want to big up this meeting about Unison and the witch hunt (and will try to attend myself).

Solidarity to the postal workers regarding the national ballot (including hardship fund details).

Oh, thanks to Kevin for telling me about this depressing, grim, dystopian article about what life will be like under the Tories….. very real, truthful and a scary prospect. Fasten your seatbelt ‘cos the welfare state is goin’ bye-bye….

Perusing London Student

Picked up a copy of London Student at the weekend. And there was some interesting pieces in there.

Kurdish politician Leyla Zana has been jailed for 15 months by a Turkish court because of a speech she made at SOAS.

The court ruled on Tuesday (28^th July) that she was guilty of disseminating “propaganda for a terrorist organization” because she is said to have called the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan “as important for the Kurdish people as the brain and the soul are for a human being.”

This really is a shocking attack on civil liberties and freedom of speech.

Oh, and the cleaning contractor ISS (remember them….?!) well they claim they received an anonymous text message in Feb 2009 which alleged that a some of SOAS cleaners held ‘fake passports’ and ‘prompted them to further check the documents’. Furthermore, they claim this, ‘and we encourage them to form unions’…

SOAS management have published a report on the deportation of the cleaners, it includes submissions by ISS and Unison.

And solidarity to Juan Carlos Piedra Benitez

A cleaner at UCL who says he was unfairly sacked because of his trade union activism today launched a campaign to be reinstated to his job.

Juan Carlos Piedra Benitez and his supporters held a rally in UCL’s main quad this afternoon (21/9/09) to draw attention to his claim that cleaning contractor Office and General (O&G), dismissed him for his activities with the trade union Unite.

Politics of bullying

Bullying represents the politics of conformity. The mechanism for coercion and control which enables power over someone, intertwined with other forms of oppression that include race, class, gender and sexuality. And it is reflected in all areas of life (and believe me, the Left isn’t immune to it either!) as it is about power and control.

They say school is the happiest days of your life. It was the most unhappiest times for me, unrelenting fucking misery. Reading this grim and tragic article today made me very sad and angry, what emanates from the piece is the teenager’s smile, hopeful.  How life can be one scary nightmare, unrelenting misery.

It reminded me of my own school days, pushed to the edge dangling over the precipice. I contemplated suicide like scores of young people. Like scores of kids and young people I tried to conform and be part of the in-crowd, yet I didn’t fit into their world. I didn’t look right, I was too fat (funny enough I starved myself when I was 13 to become that magical size 10… that was the popular size circa 1982 before Size Zero… but even then I wasn’t accepted into the in-crowd…and the jibes, put downs, and physical violence still continued).

It made me wonder what the hell was wrong me, there must be something wrong me….those thoughts constantly existed inside my head. I blamed myself for the bullying like countless other young people. And it didn’t help when my mum would say, ‘Why can’t you stick up for yourself’?…

And like most things in this fucked up alienated atomised dog-eat-dog wretched society it is easier to blame the victim, in whatever the situation, as a distraction. School bullying seemed to me a combination of that pack animal mentality, sniff out a victim, along with peer group pressure. I know some of the worst bullies were kids who were being bullied in their homes, therefore their way in dealing with that was to reclaim power by kicking someone more powerless than them.

I think I was only happy from 8 to 11 years old as I was taken out of a school riddled with vicious bullying. If I hadn’t been then my ‘sanity’ would certainly have disappeared into a void, I spent the latter days in that hypocritical and contradictory god fearing hell hole on antidepressants and sleeping tablets, sleep walking through my life while staring into space. Those childhood years highlighted obsessional compulsive behaviour (to give it a label), anxiety and depression.

Thankfully, I spent 3 years in a more inclusive and understanding school which brought me emotionally out of my wounded shell. But secondary school beckoned, by the time I was 14- 15 I decided to do ‘my own thing’, I was part of a group that eschewed the usual stuff we concentrated on academia, that was the focus, I was still a non-conformist existing on the margins with my odd tastes in music, clothes and political beliefs (I got the ‘fuck off back to the Soviet Union’ a few times but that made me laugh more than anything…and recently I got..’fuck off back to North Korea’ which also made me laugh as it gives a new twist…and spin!). I think I was seen as an eccentric, there was an uneasy truce, and I was left alone by the bullying in-crowd.

Naively, I believed things would be easier once I left school, thinking that people are more mature. Well, I was proved very wrong there. Again, I was seen as a weird eccentric where people thought they could dissect my life, create pathetic gossip about me. I didn’t conform to stereotypes, and a whispering campaign started about my sexuality culminating with some guy in one of my classes badgering me, shouting at me and goading me about my sexuality. That was soul destroying, the ritual of humiliation.

I stumbled out of the class room where I ended up in the toilet crying, desperate and despairing, the fog of depression sucking me in, slipping further into the abyss, wanting this to stop, wanting to find the exit. It felt never ending and never stopping. I wanted out of this shitty life along with the dehumanising cruelty. I just couldn’t  fight it anymore and the worst thing was feeling so alone. Loneliness is the killer.

I turned around and there was this young woman who had witnessed all this homophobic bullying shit happening, she hugged me. Her words were simple enough, ‘Don’t let them destroy you’….

Simple yet hard to put into practice. And today reading about this teenager made me remember all this, it brought it all back to me. How all life is so painfully fucking unbearably hard. Another lost life.

Cut galore……..just where will it end??!!!!

Talk about a feeding frenzy.

Not one of these schmucks wants to be left out of the competition known as Top Slasher. There’s a consensus in the establishment to smash the public sector, and one thing is that the public sector is the last bastion of trade unionism.

And gee, all of these  schmucks want to smash trade unionism into little pieces. Unfortunately, the trade union bureaucracy is not exactly organising a concerted fight back. So it is up to TU activists to organise the struggle (and as we have seen grass roots activists taking the lead).

Again , these cuts will have a severe impact on the working class. Rather than ridding us of that albatross known as Trident  they want to means test Child Benefit. Rather than withdrawing troops from Afghanistan and Iraq and stopping these barbaric and illegal wars they want to make cuts in education with the phrase, ‘pay restraint’... Balls to that plan!

What about pay restraints for bankers. Oh but they got away with their bonuses murdering the financial system with their free market piracy while it is austerity for the public sector. We pay for the failure of neoliberalism. But when there’s a massive disorientating shock  to the economy our ruling elite see an opportunity to make sure that it is everyone else who will suffer the consequences when they push through what they have wanted for a long time. What they want of course is an all out attack on state provision for health, education and the benefit system.

The attack on the public sector will have a massive deflationary effect. 10% off public spending will account roughly to a  4% drop in demand. This is an attack on workers in the private sector as well.

Political bits and pieces

So LRC was today as opposed to last Saturday. Labour Party conference starts next weekend and just another plug for the Convention of the Left next Saturday. Sounds an interesting conference and I will definitely be attending.

Geese walking off in disgust after discovering I had no food for them....

Red Pepper had Their Crisis, Our Challenges conference today. Would have gone if the LRC hadn’t happened today. I see Kevin attended be interested in what he has to say about the day.

Pix from St James’s Park where I wandered through today.

Carers find Jobcentre Plus ‘unwelcoming’

New research commissioned by the DWP has shown that carers find Jobcentre Plus as ‘unwelcoming’ and staff ‘lacking in knowledge’ when it comes to employment support needs.

The research Employment Support for Carers, was commissioned to examine what employment support is needed for carers currently in work or those who are currently caring or have recently ended a spell of caring and want to return to paid employment.

Carers said that the Jobcentre Plus environment was unwelcoming and their needs not understood by staff  along with no specialist on the issue of caring. The jobs on offer weren’t tailored to meet their needs such as flexibility of working hours or they were only offered access to jobs that did not reflect their level of experience or previous job status.

Carers also complained about the complexity, inflexibility and bureaucracy of the benefits system.

And I wonder what the DWP will do with the findings of this research or the conclusions made….as they have tendency to ignore research they have commissioned….?

Cops won’t be disciplined for not wearing their ID badges (now there’s a surprise!)

So according to senior police officers it is unnecessary to discipline cops for failing to wear their ID numbers because the badges could fall off and officers could forget to attach them.

Words fail me. They truly do. It just shows the contempt the cops show, a total disregard for accountability and transparency. They take, to put it bluntly, the piss! A law unto themselves.

Speaking at a meeting with senior Yard officers, Dee Doocey, a member of the authority, said: “I find it quite extraordinary that an officer who does not wear their numerals gets basically a slap on the wrist.

“I think it is really important that everyone can identify an officer. If someone is bashing you with a shield, it is quite nice to know who they are.”

Indeed, and it is back to the issue of accountability. Instead of being disciplined cops who are caught without their ID badges being visible will be dealt with by ‘words of advice’…

 What will the formulation be? ‘Don’t do it again…now off you go’?!?!

One word. Pathetic!

Hat tip: Kevin via Twitter.

Michael Mansfield Q&A talk after Stockwell play

I will write a review of the play Stockwell later. What was fascinating is the Q&A session afterwards conducted by Michael Mansfield. His name is synonymous with fighting against miscarriages of justice and defending civil liberties .

Firstly, he comes across with much flair and flamboyance (the actor who portrays him captures that essence…..and I have been told that barristers do come across as ‘frustrated actors’!)

He spoke about how angry he still was about the inquest. That there was no admission of fault, mistakes or just simply mea culpa from senior ranking cops like Commander John McDowall and Commander Cressida Dick. Actually the scene in the play where ‘Mansfield’ is cross-examining ‘Cressida Dick’ is very dramatic, as it exposes the sheer level of  incompetence, cock-ups, negligence and above all the contradictions in their stories…yet not once does she admit that there were serious flaws, from the start, in this surveillance operation such as no useful identification of the suspect to technical problems with the police radios, contradictory orders from the command centre to the officers on the ground, Mistakes, fatal murderous mistakes, were made that day…but not one of these people will take any responsibility for the fact an innocent man was fatally shot, executed in the name of ‘war on terror’ by wound-up cops with their trigger itchy fingers. Their behaviour that day more akin to the Keystone Cops.

In the Q&A session Mansfield coined the term, ‘institutional denial’ to describe this behaviour from the cops. Their ‘justification’ being that Jean Charles was in the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’, ‘acting edgy’ and ‘suspicious’… Not once do they examine their own behaviour or simply, to admit they were wrong. Instead they use Jean Charles as a distraction to justify their collective responses. Cressida Dick’s time frame was out of synch. And of course the shocking debacle over the identification of the suspect by using a grainy unusable image, when they had pictures all along just no bloody communication between departments!! Mansfield also maintained that the inquest jury when it came to the narrative questions asked they didn’t believe the evidence by the cops, such as whether they shouted ‘armed police’ once on the platform at Stockwell or inside the carriage. Shockingly, the coroner refused to allow the jury to consider an unlawful killing verdict, and we enter the realms of speculation about whether the jury would have reached that specific verdict as the only other options were ‘open verdict’ (which they reached) and ‘lawful killing’… Indeed it was a travesty of justice that the jury were not allowed to consider ‘unlawful killing’.

Interestingly, Mansfield asked the officers at the inquest whether they have received training, post-9/11, in stopping a suspected suicide bomber without resorting to bullets. They had not at the time but they do now apparently. He also asked them how they could have stopped Jean Charles de Menezes without resorting to firearms. One of the officers, ‘Ivor’ told Mansfield how he would have apprehended the suspect once in the tube station by two cops standing at either side of Jean Charles, lifting his arms quickly then handcuffing him. And they wouldn’t have had to shoot the man. The cops had 3 opportunities to stop Jean Charles before he went down the escalators. But once he was down those escalators you know he was a dead man. Again, Mansfield said that the officers involved in the surveillance whether on the ground or at the command centre weren’t exercising a modicum of common sense. Where were the tactics? Everything emphasised guns, there was no lateral thinking shown. There was another building under surveillance that day, there were a number of controlled stops. Guess what? Nobody was shot dead.

There was a general discussion about cops not being prosecuted for perjury, or if there is a case then it has a tendency to collapse. Mansfield mentioned Orgreave during the Miners’ Strike and only recently the policing of the G20 protests. Overall, the importance that accountability and transparency is ensured. Also, how NL are restricting this very process by restricting public inquiries through the 2005 Inquiries Act, the then Bill described as ‘Public Inquiries Cover-up Bill’. And this brought Mansfield onto the Chilcot inquiry where there’s a distinct lack of the adversarial process.Who will be asking the questions? And will there any legal/criminal proceedings? To reiterate his point that money was poured into an illegal war yet NL is slashing legal aid, the problem families have when it comes to inquests, no right to legal aid. He quoted Lord Denning who said, ‘Why do they need funding, they’re dead’…. The final question that was asked was what happened to the officers in charge the day Jean Charles de Menezes was shot. Mansfield answered simply, ‘They were promoted’… But his manner and expression displayed the disgust mirrored by the rest of the audience who gasped in astonishment.

That’s called British justice.

I bought Mansfield’s book (which he referred to a few times in his talk…..) which he signed for me at the end of the session.

Vestas day of action

National Day of Action today, around the country in support of the campaign to Save Vestas and for Green Jobs.

Please see website for details.