Anti-abortion group wins NI case

“Abortion is not health care. In Northern Ireland it is a criminal offence”.

Indeed the SPUCer is correct and 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.

Instead of criminalising women for making a choice and forcing them to obtain an abortion elsewhere it should be free safe legal abortion in the North of Ireland…

‘Not the church, not the state….’ you know the rest..

The wonders of keyword searches

My latest keyword search was ‘things not to do as a leader’… Team leader? Leader of the NL gang?

Wonder if the Miliband bros are doing some research …just in case..

Here’s some helpful hints for Miliband senior and younger…

1. ‘War, war is stupid’… Wars are bad, bad, bad (including proxy wars) Capice?

2. Neoliberalism baaaad Socialism good. Repeat after me… (I am sure Ralph would concur if he was alive).

3. Stop blaming, attacking, stigmatising and shafting the poor.

4. Progressive taxation system.

5. Ditch this obsessive social authoritarianism and attacks on civil liberties using the War on Terror as an excuse.

6. Social housing programme

7. Real work done over climate change and green jobs….

Ooo… there’s more to include but that should be enough for them to think about..

Taking a photo of a sunset gets you stopped by the cops now!

Brighton sunset

Thanks to Twitter (specifically Copwatcher) I discovered this gem.

A BBC photographer was stopped by the cops for photographing a sunset over St Paul’s Cathedral. This utterly beggars belief! The number of times I have wandered around the South Bank armed with a camera taking photographs of views over the Thames….there are some wonderful views to behold especially early evening as you get some beautiful sunsets. And Jeff Overs pic encapsulates sunset along with the lights and reflections. It is richly stunning…

And yet…he was stopped because:

They said you could be doing a recce for a terrorist attack. which would have been a joke if it was not so sinister.

On what grounds? That he may be a terrorist on a recce.

Reminds me of when I was in Brighton during LP conference where I was stopped by a cop who asked me what pix I was taking ‘cos there were loads of armed police around. I said I was taking pix of buildings (which I was cos I like the juxtaposition of modern 20th century architecture to 19th…ok, a very sad but true explanation) and she let me go. It didn’t occur to her that I was taking pix of buildings instead she let me go after I explained my own displeasure at being stop for no reason whatsoever! And this is another issue, the cops are not consistent with this.

The problems with this anti-terror legislation is that it is loose, and ambiguous. And gives the agents of state any excuse to stop an individual. This attacks civil liberties and freedom of expression. The freedom to take a bloody picture of a sunset. This exposes further the authoritarianism of NL. It is more akin to a lousy tin-pot dictatorship than a democracy.

Wish I had my camera on me now as I would, after work, wander over to the South Bank, and with countless of others armed with camera and videos take a pic of a bloody sunset….

Carpe diem!

I have been mulling this over for some time mainly due to lack of confidence and worry… and the ‘am I doing the right thing’… The carpe diem (though every time I think of that phrase I think of the saccharine coated yuck factor…Dead Poets Society film) kicked in and finally, finally and finally have decided to do study a short course in reportage photography early next year and hopefully if that goes well then I will sign-up (*holds her breath*) to study a part-time BA in Photography and the courses I have been looking at allow flexibility and a chance to study other courses/modules. The downside is that blogging will be very light from next year and not the usual conveyor belt style of posting…..

With photography, I have to admit I feel confident with this and actually enjoy photography, and experimenting with the whole process. It also gives me the chance to study photography theoretically as well (Ha! A good start as I have 2 out of  the 3 intro. books!).

The downside to these courses is how phenomenally expensive they are a deterrent from studying if ever…absolutely appalling these financial constraints serve as a class barrier to stop people from studying…. The annual course fees for the p/t degree are something around £3,000… Better start saving now and hope Father Xmas leaves me wodges of cash under the Xmas tree…..