DV: murdered woman failed by cops

Words fail me.

Police forces were urged today to become more skilled at dealing withdomestic violence after serious failings were exposed in the way officers handled the case of a woman who was stabbed to death by her husband after a long and volatile relationship.

Greater Manchester police was criticised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for failing to properly assess the risks faced by Katie Boardman at the hands of her husband, Brian Taylor.

In the last 16 months of her life officers dealt with 11 incidents involving the couple. But the force failed to put the incidents together and form a view of the risk to Boardman. Instead, it dealt with each call-out as an individual incident.

Kate Boardman complained 5 times to the cops about the harassment and threats she had received from her partner, Brian Taylor, only 4 days before he murdered her. And now the cops are being ‘urged’ to become more skilled. This utterly astounds me that the police have to be told to be more skilled to deal with domestic violence! Time and time and time and time again women experiencing domestic violence have been let down by grossly incompetent cops who don’t seem to give a damn.

On average, two women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner. This constitutes nearly 40% of all female homicide victims.  (Povey, (ed.), 2005; Home Office, 1999; Department of Health, 2005.).

There is an entrenched misogyny within the police that reflects the dominant ideology (institutionally reactionary on all forms of oppression!!) When making her documentary (Partners in Crime – policing domestic violence) my good friend and comrade DeeDee Glass came up against an aggressive detective who told her that domestic violence was not ‘real police work’. She asked him why he thought that and he said it was a waste of resources. She then asked, ‘if I was walking down the street and a stranger broke my jaw, you’d happily arrest him and see him charged with GBH. But, ‘if my husband did it, you wouldn’t be bothered’. He readily agreed.

That was back in the eighties…have things changed much…or at all?  Womenspeak (1999) which was an internet questionnaire project organised by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence, Women’s Aid and Hansard Society, was to give survivors of DV a chance to put forward their views. Over 90% of the women interviewed who had come into contact with the Criminal Justice System said that they didn’t receive an adequate response. The police don’t perceive domestic violence as a serious crime and the courts do not offer adequate protection. Also the lack of legal aid is a serious obstacle for women pursuing legal recourse.

Another interesting piece of research which concentrated on the why the police are organised internally to provide a service dealing specifically with domestic violence was published in 1998. The finding of this report included different policies on domestic violence. Definitions of domestic violence differed from force to force. Line management of domestic violence officers differed and were often blurred. There was no standard model for the domestic violence officer. Forces lacked a systematic approach to the management of information relating to domestic violence incidents. Previous incidents of domestic violence not passed onto relevant officers. Training junior and senior officers should be systematic and a key role in the force’s response to domestic violence (Joyce Plotnikoff et al, Policing Domestic Violence, Home Office, 1998)

To reiterate the question, have things changed? It appears that some police forces take DV far more seriously than others. Surely there should consistent training and education. Unfortunately, there are parallels between how the cops and the judiciary perceive rape. Women constantly being let down, and disbelieved. It is an absolute scandal. But we live in a patriarchal capitalist society that blames the victim/survivor and/or minimises the crime of violence against women and this is undoubtedly reflected in the police.

I have some personal experiences of DV, I experienced it as a teenager I didn’t tell anyone for ages and it certainly didn’t cross my mind to tell the police (why I don’t know possibly because I minimised it and didn’t recognise it for what it was, a violent crime). One woman I knew well many years ago was persistently stalked by her ex. He broke into her flat one night and murdered her, based on vile misogynist controlling garbage of a justification that if he couldn’t have her nobody could.

Though I have come up against the cops when it comes to the minimising and ignoring complaints regarding violence against women, including, one example, lack of concern and a half hearted attitude in actually taking a written statement. Also being told I had nothing to ‘worry about’ regarding the threats of violence I had received from a man who was stalking my friend (her former partner). ‘How would you know, I said, you haven’t taken a statement nor investigated the complaint’!

On this occasion they eventually took the complaints seriously but it was one deeply distressing frustrating uphill struggle. I ended up refusing to leave the police station until they took my statement especially as during that week top cops were bemoaning the lack of women not going to the police when it came to reporting DV…. I mentioned that to the desk cop and said how ironic it was ‘cos here we (me and my friend) were ready to report threats of violence….and yet here we were being told to ‘leave our details and someone would get in touch with us’…. And we knew no one would therefore we had to kick up a bloody fuss just to get some basic advice, and help. But overall for the threats of violence to stop by making this misogynist responsible and accountable for his controlling behaviour, that he was committing a crime.

That’s where the agents of the state play a role but as this latest case shows they still don’t. Fortunately, I got an apology from the cops who said my complaint should have been investigated immediately, it wasn’t, I was made to feel like it didn’t matter. I asked the desk cop when would they take it seriously when ‘both (me and my friend) of us were in the morgue’? His reply was pretty much don’t be silly, it won’t come to that. My reply was ‘how the hell do you know, you haven’t investigated him’.

Reading the case about Kate Boardman makes me despondent, frustrated and utterly unbelievably angry, another woman another murder. How many more before the cops take DV seriously? How many more before society recognises domestic violence as a serious crime?

British Airways cabin crew strike illegal, court rules

This is bloody appallling! Fundamentally exposes what side the courts are on (but hey, should I be surprised….)

Is this the shape of political things to come? The Tories are desperate to ban strike action and we already have oppressive anti-trade union legislation. Coupled with weak right-wing trade union bureaucratic leaders of the Woodley/Simpson kind bearing in mind Simpson’s appalling ‘over the top’ comment which sends a signal to the establishment saying ‘screw the workers’… Well done Woodley/Simpson you bureaucratic right-wing sell-out double act.

A strike by British Airways cabin crew planned for Christmas has been declared illegal in a High Court ruling. The court agreed with BA that the cabin crew’s union, Unite, had not correctly balloted its members on the strike action. The injunction means that the 12-day strike cannot now go ahead.

Mark Serwotka re-elected as general secretary of the PCS union

Mark Serwotka has been re-elected as general secretary of the PCS union for a third term.

Well done Mark!

By London Victoria I sat down and wept

Do you ever get that? You think you are ok, not perfect but ok and then …bang…the technicolour vice like grip of depression just envelopes and overwhelms, captures you unawares? I fumbled in my pocket and found the handkerchief this morning as I thought last night was a kind of dream state, unreal but real, memories you know as real but blurry and fuzzy at the edges. The handkerchief is symbolic of my spectacular breakdown. In my originally dazed but now crystal clear state of mind I can offer up explanations and analyse that experience with scalpel precision. A mixture of alcohol, lack of food, tired, having had no proper break during the whole year combined with the past couple of weeks being hectic, frenetic, pressure campaigning/politicking some brilliant experiences some very very crappy ones while bubbling below was the spectre of depression ready to be unleashed. I knew it was there, I had warnings but kept trying to push it at the back and ignore it. And it emerged full throttle after getting drunk. Funny thing is I steer clear of booze when I am aware of the levels of depression/anxiety increasing as that just adds to misery/hopelessness and booze being a depressive anyhow. But I threw caution to the wind and suffered the stupid consequences.

It is times like this I feel exposed, and that all my protectors and barriers collapse, and I become even desperate to be invisible and unnoticeable. To crawl back into my shell and hide myself from the prying world. I saw myself spiralling downwards to the abyss, feeling crap, useless, stupid while thinking the unthinkable that my life meant nothing…I felt I was being drawn back to my childhood experiencing the putdowns from my parents about just how lazy and stupid I was, constant  unrelenting criticism. You say that enough to a kid you brainwash them into believing it. Shattered confidence and low expectations with the added bonus that you believe your life means very little or of any real significance. And believing that everyone thinks that about me. For those couple of hours things just started to push me to the edge. I vaguely recall sobbing my eyes out, thankfully London has so much anonymity that nobody notices or wants to notice. But the strange thing was once I got on the train I sat down and shut my eyes but still, must have, looked a mess that I felt a tap on my arm and opened my eyes to see a woman passing me a hankie. I blubbed an incoherent thank-you. When she left the train she squeezed my shoulder and said hoped that I was ok.

 So why am I writing this, probably because everything was spinning around inside in my head while trying to get a grip on what was happening. And sometimes writing even on a blog can be therapeutic. I know sometimes we all keep personal and painful stuff to ourselves but with me it is making sense of it as sometimes I don’t understand things. Maybe it is too personal, narcissistic and selfish writing this, maybe people will think less of me for not coping with life’s unpleasant surrpises. I mean, who wants to know this and apologies for anyone reading this but things just seemed so blighted and shattered last night, in the old light of morning (added hangover) things still seemed fragile but less overwhelming. It is also about coming to terms with depression, the tell-tale signs (especially at Xmas time as I always get this awful sense of loss), coping strategies and seeing myself as a valuable person in this world and having the confidence to believe that.

New Year’s Resolution: it is time to seek therapy….again..

Yvette Cooper: ‘everyone will be better off in work’

“In the 1980s youth unemployment continued to rise for four years after the recession ended. A generation of talent was wasted.  We are determined that must never happen again, so we will guarantee a job, training or work experience at six months for 18 to 24 year olds.

“And, because we believe that work is the best way out of poverty we are continuing with radical reform to the welfare system. This means that everyone – be they lone parents, carers or disabled people will get the support they need, not only to get work – but to stay in work.  We will also guarantee that people will be better off in a job than on benefits.”

(Yvette Cooper -on announcing the White Paper - Building Britain’s Recovery: Achieving Full Employment)

And at the moment youth unemployment (16 to 24-year-olds) was at 952,000 in the three months to October, a quarterly rise of 6,000. NL are parrot fashioning the phrase ‘investing in young people’  and this is all meaningless considering there’s an election coming up. They also emphasise the need for  ’high quality’ and ‘the chance of progression and development’… But where are these mythical jobs?

You have fire and Grimstone in the public sector which means slashing public sector jobs, which means more unemployment and selling off the family silver aint gonna help except for the establishment in their desperation to sell the public sector for profit. We are looking towards very depressing times ahead which needs the Left needs to get its act together to fight this….

Gerry Grimstone: Grim by name grim by nature

NL has resurrected a ghoul. Gerry Grimstone was Thatcher’s top man on privatisation during 1980s. And now the ghost of Thatcherism past has resurfaced.

Whitehall is working on secret plans to privatise up to a quarter of the public sector to help slash the country’s £187 billion deficit. The work is being overseen by Gerry Grimstone, a former Treasury mandarin who led the sell-off of household names such as British Telecom and British Gas in the 1980s.

I guess the idea is to kill two birds with one stone. Firstly how to mainline large amounts of taxpayers’ money into the coffers of private corporations. After that and perhaps more importantly in the class war being waged by the bosses against ordinary people how to smash the idea of having people on something like reasonable pay and conditions to provide decent public services. Much better to have your GP replaced by an ATOS “healthcare professional” reading off a diagnosis off a tenth rate computer programme. Anything that the public sector does that cannot be turned into a commodity to be sold for profit will be deemed to be of no value. So having a home help who knows you and your needs well or having a hospital cleaner who feels enough pride to actually give a shit about cleaning up the shit will be sneered at as some sort of special pleading.

Also of course another downward twist in the spiral of pay and conditions. Feeling envious of the “gold-plated” pensions? Once they have been taken away the bosses will be back to take away what is left of your defined contribution rip-off pension. Under the Tories the state pension will not be safe. Noticed Cameron’s description of National Insurance as a “tax on jobs”? Well take away NI and logically you lose the benefits based on it. That would include the state pension. Not a lot to the individual pensioner but £70 odd billion to the bosses. Remember it will always be better in their offshore account than being paid to an ordinary worker to provide services that people need.

A distraction from the reality

Quelle surprise! The article attempts to explain why the cops feel compelled to stop photographers under section 44 of the Terrorism legislation (funny how they churn this out only days after Paul Lewis).

Two suspects were captured on CCTV filming various locations. They were charged with fraud, they had links to ‘extremist groups’ but no direct links. But that’s the thing about this article they were prosecuted for fraud and not terrorism. Again, the terrorism angle is based on assumptions and racist assumptions at that. North African = terrorist. This just looks like a distraction to me, the cops showing how these terrorism laws are important yet the men arrested were done for fraud and the rest is based on hypotheticals. So this is all an excuse to allow the agents of the state to shrink our ever shrinking civil liberties in the name of the ‘war on terrorism’. It also shows what is coming up and how desperate the state are by encroaching on our freedom of expression and civil liberties by claiming it is a necessity along with the privatising of public spaces meaning how agents of the state can object to our presence by using oppressive legislation.

It just feels like (and I know from experience) that anyone with a camera is fair game for the cops to be stopped and questioned about being engaged in a social activity like photography.

It smacks of an Orwellian society.

And that’s why I will be attending this in the New Year!!!!

Another person stopped and arrested for filming!

Spineless schmucks

Just how blinking mealy mouthed can you get? Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth now says about the Iraq war:

‘I supported the war in Iraq based on the arguments that were put at the time, and a big part of those arguments was  -  and I firmly believed that they existed – was the existence of WMD at that time.’ 

 The fact that Ainsworth believed the ‘evidence’ at the time and what did that evidence amount to? A sexed-up dodgy dossier, it shows how pathetic these drones are especially as they originally believed this flimsy piece of evidence. Why don’t they admit that they just wanted a regime change as opposed to arguing about the existence of WMD that insults our intelligence. Thousands upon thousands of people globally disbelieved this absolute crock unlike sniveling and spineless NL clones who based themselves on courtier politics. Not transparency, democracy nor accountablity. Didn’t any of these MPs (excluding the usual Leftie suspects) think about questioning this ‘evidence’ and the ‘wisdom’ of Tony Blair?

The evidence has been obvious from the start Tony Bliar and his merry clones voted for an illegal, unjust and imperialist war! No wonder the Bliar will be giving some of his evidence in secret sans mea culpa.

Iraq is an occupied country that has been ravaged by the spoils of war and imperialism, a country whose infrastructure has been bombed to bits. And for what? A regime change coupled with private companies stealing the oil.

Who is worse, Bliar or the sad spineless schmucks who went along with him?

It needs to be reiterated again and again….Not in my name….

Rage against pre-packaged commodified pap…. (vote RATM for Xmas!)

Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me....

So says the anthem that defines the rage against the X-Factor. Oh yes, Rage Against the Machine. That song takes me back to my twenties that seem such a long time again… Anyway (digressing there) it seems the Facebook group Rage Against the Machine for the Xmas No. 1 is closing in on the piece of pre-packaged hyped-up commercialised and commodified soulless talent show…that spawns anonymous entities…Joe McElderry who grins like an extra from the Osmonds (for those who don’t remember the 70s check that fountain of knowledge Wikipedia).

 I mean, what happened to previous winners? They usually end up in the bargain basement bucket of life, musical career has disappeared quicker than you can say Warhol and 15 minutes of fame. Oh, the fickle finger of fame and previous X-Factor winners……

So, comrades big up Rage Against the Machine…. and a one, and a two and a one, two, three….all together now and in solidarity….And up yours Simon Cowell!

Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me....

Defend higher education

I visited a good friend this evening who works in higher education, I used to work in the same institution. Unfortunately, I have been out of the loop when it comes to higher ed for the past 4 years and during that time I was a Unison branch rep. Instead for the past year or so I have been focused on campaigning against cuts and the continuing attack on jobs, pay and conditions within another part of the public sector.

The cuts in the public sector are sweeping and swingeing. Where I used to work in higher education management want to instigate a 10% cut across the whole of the college and the unions are organising a fightback. This also means fighting against voluntary and compulsory redundancies yet it seems management (oh what a surprise) are happy to slice and dice useful jobs, they are expendable while senior managers are seemingly exempt. Funny old world is capitalism!! One of the areas first to be attacked are libraries, they seem easy pickings for management and the number of times as a union rep I have been involved in a fightback campaign defending library provision. Obviously management in the higher education sector don’t see libraries as an important function in learning. Instead to the unimaginative bean counting manager libraries don’t fulfil a specific function, they don’t make money, so therefore they are usually first for the chop!

On the union notice board I saw this.

• a wave of job cuts is already sweeping through our universities
• 99 universities have said they intend to cut jobs
• employers are offering a pay increase of just 0.5% – undermining recent progress on pay

The demands are simple:

• reject the short-termist slash and burn strategy
• support the campaign for a national agreement to protect jobs
• demand fair treatment and fair pay for all university staff.

Defend higher education.