Writer’s block

Found myself in a bookshop today, a small independent one. Haven’t been in a bookshop for a long time as I have got into the unfortunate habit of buying books over the web. You kinda lose the human interaction and the joy of browsing and today I had a wander around of one. I am having a very real problem of concentrating and reading has become a chore as opposed to the enjoyment. My brain has seemingly seized up and am incapable of reading anything especially non-fiction. I saw Terry Eagleton’s “On Evil” ….read the blurb, tempted to buy it as was interested in how he reclaims and defends the word “evil”… But at this moment I don’t think I can concentrate as my mind gets easily distracted so wouldn’t have anything cogent or interesting to say.

I sorta go into panic mode and ideas become blocked, my mind becomes paralysed with fear. This has happened over the past few months, along with lack of energy and listlessness. And that’s what irks me so much is that I can’t be myself …avidly throwing myself into research, reading copiously, analysing and thinking about things… but that seems to have disappeared for the time being. I have been told that this will ‘come back’ at some point but am more overwhelmed by a very big sense of frustration. Feel clumsy when I start the process of writing with intermittent blanks of not knowing what to say and becoming forgetful. Can write short posts but anything lengthy deserving research and analysis is beyond my capability at the moment. I have lots of books gathering dust on the shelves and on the floor which I have not picked up. I have also a backlog of articles that I promised to write but I just don’t have the will or the inclination. Depression blurs the mind.

So I bought some fiction, wanted to buy a book or two by JG Ballard but there weren’t any…!! Toyed with the idea of buying Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun” but changed my mind. Resolutely stuck to my plan not to buy any crime fiction because that’s what I usually end up buying… I bought Lady Chatterley’s Lover, mainly because the last time I read was when I was 14 and wasn’t impressed with it, probably due to the fact I was expecting something quite different. Well, it caused such a shock to the repressed sensibilities of some sections of society along with the censorship and trial for obscenity I thought it must be shocking beyond belief….was kinda disappointed. Anyway, will give it another read. Also, bought Isherwood’s “Goodbye to Berlin” (film version…”Cabaret”) which documents the final years of the Weimar Republic and introduced the world to Sally Bowles. Liked the film as well.

Credit agencies….the new bounty hunters

The poor are being vilified and stigmatised as the cause not only of their own plight but of the economic mess that Britain is in (the rest of the world is of not much interest to those inclined to get hot under the collar about benefit fraud). It is  an exercise in distraction. Political distraction. The Con bit of the ConDems are creating a smoke screen for their mates in the city (…nice one George, cheers old man!). The only other motive is crude class hatred of ordinary people who dare to ask for anything from the system other than to be exploited and oppressed.

And the latest wheeze by the Con/Dems (or as David Cameron put it, ‘using modern technologies in dealing with benefit fraud’) is using credit reference agencies as ‘bounty hunters’ (sounds like the Wild West) tracking benefit fraudsters. Surreal but true. It raises questions of which accuracy, accountability and access are just three. Who will see this information and where else will it go?? You can just imagine the cock-ups happenings, can’t you. People of same or similar names being mixed up, people moving around, incomplete information….and more cock-ups can be imagined. It will end in tears and not the Con/Dems unfortunately.

But the agencies are not accountable for errors such as people being wrongly harassed by debt collectors or unfairly refused credit. It’s a Kafkaesque world where the credit agencies absolve themselves of responsibility for their material, saying it is how the banks and other organisations use it that counts – and that’s beyond their control. Question the banks, however, and they say they have no option other than to follow the information from the credit reference agencies. So it is beyond their control as well.

These proposals don’t make sense. How can you possibly find someone cheating the benefits system by using Experian? It’s policy making on the hoof. Also, why bring in credit rating agencies to deal with the benefits system, to deal with an area they have no expertise or knowledge (but as we know that hasn’t stopped previous governments bringing in private companies who know jack about the benefits system)?

Furthermore

Work and Pensions Minister Chris Grayling told the BBC: “This is data that is publicly available, that is publicly on sale, that’s available to – not go into the fine detail of what you spend – but overall to set out spending patterns, what loans you have taken out, your overall patterns of spending in your life.

“And if there’s a huge mismatch between the way you are living your life and the amount of money you are supposed to be receiving from the state on benefits, surely it is right and proper that we should be saying: ‘How is that happening?’”

Ok, take this example, say someone has just become unemployed their spending patterns will be shifting dramatically, they may have more money than someone who has been unemployed for a longer period. There will be significant differences, what about the person who has some redundancy money?

This is an ideological attack by the Con/Dems on the public sector, the public sector is about the common good while the private sector is based on greed, profit and incentives, plus in the long term it will cost the state more money. It will also cost the poor a hell of a lot more through benefits being wrongly taken away and that’s a stark reality. It will create more misery and poverty.

Declare war on tax havens and not the poor!

David Cameron is again putting the spotlight on so-called ‘benefit cheats’ (this time claimants with addictions)… and declaring war on them. Fighting talk. The screaming headlines will pass into the collective consciousness and memory of the readership. The lazy assumptions between claimants and fraudsters. These headlines and stories make good copy albeit lazy journalism. And that the Con/Dems are doing something against these dodgy fraudsters….

Now talking of dodgy fraudsters…..

Tax fraud in the form of tax evasion costs in the estimate of HM Revenue & Customs more than £30 billion a  year and in the estimate of others £70 billion a year.

And that’s a conservative estimate….

Now somehow I can’t see David Cameron declaring war on Jersey. The attention falls …predictably…on the poor in this society, while the rich and powerful who have the luxury of not having to worry about money but get away with tax avoidance and evasion cos they can….

Furthermore, where are the screaming headlines over this?  That around £16bn worth of benefits are left unclaimed. Where’s the indignation from the Tory press and the Con/Dems? Where’s the shock and horror over this? Or does this just slip past them because it doesn’t correspond with the right-wing populism that the media likes to peddle.

Yes, over £16bn of benefits are unclaimed…. No fanfare over this. Nor over the millions lost through underpayments. And as a consequence working class people are losing out therefore increased poverty. The spotlight falls on the poor in this society, and also the amount of money lost due to ‘error and fraud’ with lots of trumped up tabloid hyperbole never mind that this is a drop in the financial ocean when comparing it to tax evasion and avoidance.

Fighting the cuts and the usual suspects….

There have been some lively debates currently raging around the cuts. Debate is a very useful tool in forming strategies. But after reading Sunny contribution in today’s Guardian kinda astounded me especially this bit

Some of the more firebrand trade unions want immediate widespread strikes – but this would be counterproductive. If the usual suspects turn out to protest and demonstrate, the government will be able to breathe easy. The challenge for us will be to mobilise and tap into the anger of the middle classes. But that will take time because we have to make the arguments, show them the evidence and wait for the cuts to affect them personally.

But we do need to start building for industrial action now. Any “usual suspect” with experience of actual struggle against the Tories or NL will be able to tell you that gathering the strength for strike action takes months of work, patient organising work. It means recruiting union members in the workplace. Holding shop meetings so that the rank and file are readied for what lies ahead. It means trade unions building links with local communities to outflank divide and rule tactics and to provide  a backbone of local and national financial support to make sure that as many strikes as possible are successful. It is also necessary to organise to politically defeat the ConDems. That means starting now and it means involving a good number of “usual suspects” along with any (very welcome) new faces. And this issue of the middle class…. it is about building as much unity in the working class…

If you want to read a cogent article which is bang on the money then read Kevin’s here….

This isn’t an equal opportunities recession

Recession is not an equal opportunities recession and neither is cuts in public services as this article proves it hits disproportionately the poor and women.

Some of the fear being felt by women who work in the public sector can be seen in Newcastle. It is there that Natasha Nicholson, an outreach worker for Sure Start, jokes that next year she will be able to afford only beans on toast for her young family. “The reality is we might not even be able to pay for the bread,” says Nicholson, 25, through a choked laugh.

And in Yorkshire, in Hebden Bridge, Lisa Ansell, a former civil servant and social worker, remembers settling down with a calculator after watching the chancellor, George Osborne, deliver his emergency budget. “I suddenly realised just how much I rely on public services: on subsidised public transport… on Sure Start.”

Travel 290 miles south to Worthing, West Sussex, and there is Dee Luxford, 40, with her husband and three children. She and her colleagues in low management and administration roles at HM Revenue & Customs (mainly women) fear for the service they are providing. “If we tighten the belt any more, we are going to suffocate,” she says.

Furthermore

It is research by the House of Commons library, commissioned by shadow minister Yvette Cooper, that claims women will suffer 72% of the tax and benefit cuts. After all, four in 10 working women are in public sector jobs – which will be hit by a pay freeze and projected net losses of 600,000 posts. The fact that women make up 85.4% of part-time jobs in the civil service also makes them feel vulnerable.

It is women, too, who are most likely to be dependent on a long list of benefits targeted in the budget.

TUC published a report in March this year, Women and Recession: One year on, before the election and the Con/Dem’s savage emergency budget consisting of public sector cuts galore! This specific report’s introduction states even though more men have lost their jobs due to the recession however in finance, hotels, restaurants, distribution and manufacturing sectors men and women have “experienced proportional falls in jobs”

The key reason fewer women haven’t been made unemployed is due to working in the public sector (40% of women employees nationally and many work part-time).

But….should large scale public sector cuts occur in the future signficant numbers of working families could face extreme financial hardship (particularly in regions that already have high unemployment).

And since the emergency Con/Dem budget of pay freezes, savage and brutal cuts in the public sector, attacks on welfare benefits and so on will lead to utter misery for countless women. A grim reality.

The attacks on the public sector will affect women greatly than men (4 in 10 women in public sector occupations, compared to less than two in ten men) with other knock-on effects such as attacks on pensions will create female pensioner poverty, pressure on women workers particularly to work unpaid overtime (it is estimated that unpaid overtime for women is worth five and a quarter billion pounds!) and once the savage cuts bite women will be expected to work longer  unpaid hours which will have the inevitable consequences of more stress, pressure and negative impacts on personal lives such as childcare.

Geographically, Wales (46.6 per cent), the North East (45.9 per cent) and Scotland (43.1 per cent) are the areas where the highest proportion of women work in the public sector. Therefore women working in these areas are most vulnerable to job losses resulting from public spending cuts.  Inevitably with cuts in services and loss of jobs this will impact on pensions and increased poverty for women pensioners. Another consequence of these attacks will be a double-dip recession. A bitter, cruel barbarous and austere future await us creating a climate of powerlessness….Or resistance?

Nine out of 10 lone parents are women; 30,000 women lose their job each year because they fall pregnant; we know that women are paid lower amounts for the same work. These inequalities are likely to be exacerbated by these cuts. Fears also surround the impact on the poor, the disabled, the young and ethnic minorities.

One approach being undertaken is the Fawcett Society is taking the Con/Dems to court over this Budget claiming it is unlawful because the government didn’t carry out an equality impact assessment.

But there has to be a political fightback where people and organisations come together and fight this pernicious and ideological attack on the working class, public sector and the welfare state.

There’s the Coalition of Resistance: Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay…slogan reminiscent of the Anti-Poll Tax campaign…  And integral to this resistance is fighting to defend the welfare state and public services.

The fightback and resistance starts now!

Sex workers ‘named and shamed’ by the police

So we are seeing the start of the Olympics ‘clean-up’ then with this?

Sex workers and their support groups have condemned a police operation to “out” prostitutes even when they have not been convicted of any crime. Six street-based sex workers in Newham, east London, were named on the Metropolitan police website. Police posted their photos, full names and dates of birth. In a second case, two Polish women who were selling sex from their home in Aldgate, east London, were raided by City of London police as part of Operation Monaco.

The thing is that the police can do this without referring to any law. On a legal matter these sex workers could challenge this through a judicial review and even then that would be unchartered territory (and expensive). In other words, the police can get away with posting up the faces, names and addresses of these sex workers without any legal redress.. And for this to be challenged it has to be through political means.

But the latest actions by the police, sex workers, already marginalised, will be further alienated, victimised, criminalised and stigmatised. Where will this information go, how will it be used? It unjustly creates a criminal record without going through the usual legal processes. This is utterly wrong.

Stark reality is that these women will be further targeted, increased vulnerability and scapegoated along with possible vigilantism because that’s what naming and shaming does. This further illustrates the desperate need for decriminalisation and unionisation.

Harry Fletcher (Napo) rightly says, “I suspect this is part of a pre-Olympics clean-up in east London.”

And in previous Olympics there have been ‘clean-up’ operations which meant getting rid of the ‘undesirables’……..

So is this the start of social cleansing?

The return of Rachman

So David Cameron announces class war by ending lifetime council tenancies

Cameron said he wanted to see fixed terms for all new council and housing association tenancies lasting as little as five years to help increase social mobility. The prime minister admitted that “not everyone will support this and there will be quite a big argument”. Speaking in Birmingham, he said: “There is a question mark about whether, in future, we should be asking when you are given a council home, is it for a fixed period? Because maybe in five or 10 years you will be doing a different job and be better paid and you won’t need that home, you will be able to go into the private sector.”

So if by hard graft a working class person starts to earn a bit more that a pittance that extra is not for them but is there to be snaffled up by a buy-to-let landlord. For the Tories and their scummy voters  the housing market is not there for people to get an affordable roof over their heads, or even to keep the roof that is over their heads but is a way of screwing ordinary people. Any LIb-Dems out there feeling proud of this latest bit of class war from their “partners” in government? By the way once you are in the private sector and you get made unemployed the amount of Housing Benefit you will get for a private sector rent will be reduced. For many private tenants it already does not cover all the exorbitant rent charged by most private landlords. Lose your job lose your home. Spend your last pay cheque down at Millets…perhaps they have a tent sale on now the festival season is drawing to a close……

Miliband younger and trade unionism

Well, I suppose if you have the 3 biggest trade unions backing you then you probably have to show how in favour you are of fighting unions (though this is a signal more to the bureaucracy than the rank and file).

I am determined to make sure that the Trade Unions are able to fairly represent the interests of their members and the wider workforce. Of course industrial action is a last resort, but the right to strike is a fundamental human right which must be protected and I will make sure it is. The British Airways dispute showed that the rules governing strike ballots are in urgent need of reform. Supporting strong, vibrant unions means we must re-visit the rules relating to access to workplaces and we must ensure that during a dispute either side can refer to the mediation service ACAS. It is a real shame that so few people in the private sector are trade union members. I want to see that change.

But what is Ed Miliband saying? He mentions ACAS. He mentions the need for reform over strike action. But doesn’t exactly go into detail (and the devil is in the detail) unlike Diane Abbott who is a lot more straight forward about what she means, what she supports and has had experience of being in a trade union:

I support John McDonnell’s Trade Union Freedom Bill and I have signed the Early Day Motion to demonstrate my support. I think we have to free up some of the legislation around industrial action which paints workers as criminals. I think we also have to simplify the technocratic rules and regulations around disputes.

But the most importantly, I want to make it unlawful to strike down an otherwise lawful ballot because of unintentional technical breaches of the regulations which would not have altered the outcome of the ballot. I would also change the law to stop employers taking vexatious injunctions.

The right to strike is a fundamental right and in Britain we have stifled this right for too long. As Labour leader, I would make sure this right is reinstated.

Miliband younger makes no mention of this Bill from John McDonnell. Again, does this expose more opportunism from Miliband trying to open up a modernised version of labourism with a left gloss, along with seeing himself as reconciling the Labour base but which is amenable to the establishment…? And interesting that the 3 big unions back Miliband younger while Abbott is more radical in her support for the trade unions. But then the bureaucracy see Miliband as a ‘safe pair of hands’…

In the GMB press release they see him as the only candidate who understands how much Labour needs to change. He will end the division and posturing of the past. He will end the era of New Labour technocrats. And most importantly for GMB members, he will return the party to its values.

No mention of the anti-trade union laws in the press release and the need for repealing. Not a priority for my union? Seems like the GMB has conveniently forgotten the fact that Miliband younger was part of the NL machine. Oh, ‘cuse my cynicism, but if Miliband is so utterly passionate  about the trade unions then why wasn’t he when in the cabinet? Vestas, Ed, remember Vestas?

As someone who has been a member of all 3 of these unions it doesn’t surprise me that they have backed Miliband younger. The bureaucracy see him as the “right person for the job”.

Nothing what I have read so far from Miliband younger inspires me to vote for this opportunistic  individual (1st or 2nd preference….and oh lucky me… being a member of a Labour affiliated TU and a member of the LP …it gives me 2 votes… to spoil).

As I said before, vote for Ed Miliband and get what…..exactly? Empty rhetoric. And let’s not forget that he was part of the NL machine therefore more spin no activism and certainly no principles either.

Sarkozy and his racist right-wing populist drive for votes

This video is utterly harrowing to watch where French cops forcibly, brutally and violently move these women and their children (one traumatised baby is seen being dragged underneath his/her mother by the cops…Words fail me other than feeling immensely bloody angry!).

The film was shot in the early morning on 21 July in a particularly volatile town called La Courneuve, outside a block of flats called Balzac. The decaying 15-storey building is set to be demolished, leaving dozens of squatters homeless. Many are young women originally from the Ivory Coast, and it was these who were mainly filmed as they were targeted while taking part in a sit-down protest. At least one pregnant woman faints, while a little boy is in hysterics as he is dragged along the ground under his mother.

Sarkozy is on a racist right-wing populist spree targeting, vilifying, stigmatising and scapegoating immigrants, travellers and Roma. And the above video shows people being dehumanised and brutalised by a racist state. It is beyond comprehension, these women are treated like they are nothing. But then Sarkozy thinks he can gain a few votes by playing to racist right-wing populism.

This is not the first time Sarkozy, who before his election in 2007 was the country’s tough-on-crime interior minister, has been accused of exacerbating social tensions for his own political gain. Last year he embarked on a much-derided quest for “national identity”, an exercise which critics said had more to do with deciding who and what was not French rather than who or what was. Before that, he imposed a harsh new quota-driven expulsion policy for illegal immigrants, and, while still interior minister, caused outrage by referring to youths in city suburbs as “scum”.

Scum? That definitely fits the profile of Sarkozy….

Commercial break

I haven’t been blogging as much as I usually do. Don’t have the energy nor the inclination which is odd as that’s not like me at all. Lack of concentration and mind in a fug. Not like myself at all. Bereavement is odd, well for me it is, grieving for someone you really don’t want to grieve for. And especially so when you are put in a position to explain estrangement. Dredging up your past and bringing it to the forefront. I am kinda berating myself because I shouldn’t be like this, I should be moving on. I couldn’t stand the woman. Here now have said it in black/white. But ….. so contradictory.

It’s hard to face up to grieving for someone who hurt me so much. And that’s central to all this (the GP gave it a medical term, ‘delayed shock’) finding myself in a place where I don’t want to be. Fighting the feelings of grief because I don’t want to feel that way, ignoring them as well, along with wishing they would go away, disintegrate, dissolve and disappear…. but no… it doesn’t happen. And that has prolonged things not facing up to the truth, also I keep having that, ‘why aren’t you over this yet’…. The GP quoted the various ‘stages’ you go through. And time varies etc.  etc. Instead of giving me pills he gave me a list of counsellors who deal with this area. Though seeing the doctor triggered something inside my head which I am not entirely sure what it was. I kinda crumbled and all the defences I have built inside my head, fortresses to protect me from grief have kinda shattered (though the pain was starting to seep through anyway). And to my detriment kept ignoring and hope it went away.

So at the moment I feel jaded and … numb (again) staring into space. Why aren’t I over this, why should I be grieving for that woman.

Oh, must not be myself as someone from the David Miliband campaign called me yesterday asking me who I was voting for… there was so much I wanted to say (polite..of course) but just didn’t have the energy nor the inclination.