Cheeky request

Please could you vote for my photo here.

I know it is a very cheeky request but nonetheless it would be appreciated and the baby punky heron chicks will get the recognition they so deserve. The caption for the pic is “Feeding time for the punky heron chicks”…. Obviously, I hope you like the pic….

Voting ends 1st June 2011…..

Many many many thanks!!

Defend the NHS!

I attended the UK Uncut protest in Brixton today to highlight the fact NHS services for South Londoners are under threat!

The NHS has to cut £20bn over 3 years.

The Banks have been bailed out by £100bn a year.

Kings College Hospital:

• cutting £51m
• axing 55 staf

Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital

• is making cuts of £27.9m
• has privatised its pathology lab in a joint venture with Serco.
• is putting out to tender an urgent care centre, pharmacy and A&E reception.

St George’s

• £55m cuts.
• 500 job losses.
• 3 wards to close.

Mladic in the dock

Ratko Mladic has finally been arrested. He has been accused of crimes against humanity and genocide. The siege of Belgrade to the massacre in Srebrenica. It is about time he faces justice. But when it comes to the Balkans War there has been plenty of revisionism especially around the numbers massacred at Srebrenica, worst massacre post-ww2. Revisionism and capitulation to Serbian nationalism existed on the Left, at the time, including Living Marxism and Socialist Worker. Events leading up to the genocide in Srebrenica and the overall assault on Bosnia:

On March 1 (1992) the assault on Bosnia started when Serb paramilitaries erected barricades in Sarajevo, dividing the city. Bosnia was torn apart by Serbian and Croatian forces for three years. Bosnian cities were bombed into rubble and their inhabitants starved out. Europe saw its first genocide, since world war two. Bosnian Muslims faced massacre, rape, and terror. In Srebrenica 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the course of a few days. Three quarters of Bosnia¹s territory was occupied by either Serbian or Croatian forces. 30,000 Bosnian women were raped as part of a policy of terror. The war left a quarter of a million dead and three million Bosnian refugees.

There is plenty for which the Bosnian regime could be criticised. But the idea that it was no different to those of Milosevic or Tudjman is preposterous. Bosnia was by far the most multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Yugoslav Republic. For Bosnia it was a war of survival and a war in defence of a multi-ethnic society. That multi-ethnicity mostly survived throughout the war. There were Serbs and Croats at every level of the Bosnian state and military. 10% of the army were Serb or Croat, and there were 50,000 Serbs and 30,000 Croats in Bosnian Sarajevo throughout the siege.

On the numbers game and how many people were murdered at Srebenica, David Osler rightly argues: Even on the most patently sympathetic Serbian nationalist counterestimate, they hold direct responsibility for thousands of illegal executions, and are very rightly in the dock. Let’s hope that that point is lost on nobody”.

The Milosevic lead thugs of the 1990’s were not opposing imperialism or defending the downtrodden and oppressed. They were trying to build a political enclave for their own power and privilege based on racist nationalism. They were happy to use murder and war rape to further their cause. The Bosnians were right to resist them. For three years imperialism did not know what to do. Massacres  were permitted. The Bosnians were not allowed to get weapons to defend themselves. As it was the West allowed people to suffer the most appalling brutality of the forces, second to none against unarmed civilians that Mladic commanded.

PC Harwood to be prosecuted

PC Harwood will face a trial for manslaughter over the death of Ian Tomlinson.

Statement from Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign

We welcome today’s decision to bring a charge of manslaugher against the officer. We believe this is the right decision. What we have always wanted is to achieve justice for Ian and to show that police officers are not above the law.

And as Kevin observes: Today’s decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions to charge PC Simon Harwood with the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper seller who died during the G20 protests in 2009, is hugely significant precisely because it is so unusual. Statistics from the custody-death campaigners INQUEST show that in the last twenty years, there have been nine ‘unlawful killing’ verdicts reached at coroner’s court inquests concerning deaths in police custody and one ‘narrative’ verdict that placed the spotlight firmly on police conduct. Of these, three decisions were later quashed. 

Let’s hope justice will be done.

Rape is rape whoever commits it

I am getting sick and tired of this, coupled with rage at the vilifying and demonising of rape victims/survivors. There isn’t a day goes by when there’s criticism and the spotlighting of rape and sexual assault that purposely undermines and denigrates the seriousness of the offences. Simply women lie and that some forms of rape aint that bad.

What enrages me even more is the way people who consider themselves left-wing have a tendency to leave their brain somewhere that leads them to spew a lot of misogyny. Though with some it is not a matter of unthinking responses but more, I daresay, capitulating to the sexist myths or to be more precise, when one of the poster-boys of progressive politics, is accused of sexual offences then it seems the collective response is to believe they have been set-up, nothing more than a CIA honeytrap where the women are just pawns making up their stories of sexual violence to smear the good name of this worthy champion of truth, justice and the wikileaks way. Instead of waiting for the evidence to be tested in court the women are named and shamed, reduced to honeytrap accusations, vilified, smeared and denigrated. Left high and dry while various people of left persuasion continue to vocalise the innocence of Assange. I prefer to wait for the court case myself……

And now we have Dominique Strauss-Kahn, according to the media, nothing more than a “seducer” of women. So the logic runs it’s not rape or attempted rape but seduction and that the accuser can’t tell the difference.  The woman has been named and shamed, vilified and demonised by the French and American Press. DSK is simply “incapable” of carrying out this kind of attack. Why? Powerful seductive so-called charming men like DSK can’t carry out attempted rape? Well, that the spin the media is peddling along with the woman being part of a honeytrap…. questions about her stability, appearance, looks and so on. Let’s trash the accuser. Let’s stick her under the microscope and dissect everything about her life, let’s hang her out to dry, scrutinise and let’s destroy everything including her reputation…..‘cos women lie and powerful men don’t commit these sort of crimes, do they? Well, that’s the line and who cares about the women…..

The “left” in France are split over DSK, the so-called socialist who likes wealth with his connections to the IMF. Excuse after excuse is found to defend this close friend of capitalism. But I say wait for the court case though I have been accused by some on the “left” as having too much faith in the bourgeois courts… I say, comrades, what else have we got! It is not the men in these cases who are experiencing injustices it is the women as they are being constantly denigrated and dismissed as fakers and liars.

As Suzanne Moore powerfully writes: “A woman’s life has been ruined, whatever happens. Yet it is the great lover in chains the French public is being encouraged to sympathise with.And, so far, it’s working”.

Receiving justice in this country is an uphill, in France 10% of 75,000 rape victims each year go to the police. I don’t know how many reach court and successfully prosecuted as we have live in a patriarchal capitalist world very few possibly. Justice has a tendency to be stacked against victims of rape and sexual assault. Power and control doesn’t enter the bourgeois equation of sexual violence neither does race, sex and class. The problem with the left is that it builds up these poster boys and can’t quite believe they could do bad things.

It is more grist to the victim blaming mill when you get police telling women to avoid dressing like sluts, Ken Clarke pretty much proposing a hierarchy of rape i.e. some worst than others and now this from a reactionary “straight talking” MEP of a fool on date rape:

In the second case the victim surely shares a part of the responsibility, if only for establishing reasonable expectations in her boyfriend’s mind.

So a woman should know better when it is her partner or someone a woman trusts. She is putting herself in the situation and some blame should be attached to her behaviour. I so seethe with anger. And there’s this too:

Imagine that a woman voluntarily goes to her boyfriend’s apartment, voluntarily goes into the bedroom, voluntarily undresses and gets into bed, perhaps anticipating sex, or naïvely expecting merely a cuddle.  But at the last minute she gets cold feet and says “Stop!”.  The young man, in the heat of the moment, is unable to restrain himself and carries on.

Furthermore

I think that most right-thinking people would expect a much lighter sentence in the second case.  Rape is always wrong, but not always equally culpable.

Firstly, unable to “restrain himself”… what is this man, a dog on heat…? Reducing men to their biology negates any responsibility and accountability. Yet a political choice has been made by ignoring the response of the woman demonstrating overwhelming power and control over the situation…because that’s what it’s fundamentally about. Rape is rape whoever is committing it. Does this straight talking MEP want to bring back spousal rape immunity which only disappeared from the statute books in 1991?

Secondly, I know I shouldn’t get angry at this MEP as I shouldn’t waste my energy but it’s a further attack on justice for women who have experienced sexual violence. Thinking about this my own personal experience crept to the forefront. You can apply the scenario that the straight talking MEP to my own traumatic experience as a teenager. I trusted my boyfriend, I voluntarily went into his bedroom, undressed and got into bed…. I didn’t want sex but he held me down and attempted to rape me, I screamed, “No”! “Stop”! “Stop”! “STOP”! But to no avail, I remember thinking maybe I wasn’t shouting “no” out loud and only in my head… but I was screaming and shouting… he didn’t stop. Trust in men after that relationship was in tatters, my identity was shattered and even though it happened well over 20 years ago I still live with the emotional wounds, wounds have healed but mentally the memories are still tucked away even if I believe I have come to terms with this. I internalised blame believing it was my own fault (and many women do this) along with could have I done more to stop it. At that precise time it never occurred to me that he was to blame and that I couldn’t formulate the word “rape” inside my head cos, he was my boyfriend, surely it wasn’t rape? But it was and it took some years to come admit the horrific truth. Society already blames women and I in turn carried on that blame by blaming myself… and that was hard to shake.

The attempts to put forward a hierarchy of rape would mean rape by someone you know wouldn’t be that bad or not as worse as stranger rape. I mean, you choose to be in that situation, don’cha! Rape is rape whatever the situation but arguing divide and rule tactics will create a serious/not so serious rape that will continue to denigrate and demolish justice for rape victims and survivors of rape a like.

Rape is rape. No means no!

Interesting articles written by French feminists (in French)

FMI, LAMENTABLE SYMBOLE D’UN SYSTÈME CAPITALISTE ET PATRIARCAL (CADTM.ORG)

SOLIDAIRES DES FEMMES VICTIMES DE VIOLENCES, TOUJOURS!

WTF….. GMB!!

There are times when the only response you can come to is “What the hell…..”??!! Short and sharp as it illustrates just how shocked you are. Anything longer at that point is hard as your brain is constantly stuck like a needle in a scratched groove of a vinyl record repeating the more graphic acronym “WTF”?! And the culprit which caused this shocked reaction is this report from the trade union GMB in partnership with Kennedy Scott on The Road to Work and Opportunity in the 21st Century.

WTF!!!!!!

Firstly, a trade union working in partnership with a private company that is one of the uk’s leading firms of accountants and business advisers and specialises in advising the management of developing private and public businesses. we pride ourselves on creating and sustaining supportive relationships where objective and timely advice enables our clients to thrive and develop.

WTF!!!!

Secondly, why is a trade union involved and not only that is supporting a pilot based on America Works draconian welfare to work? Why oh why oh why…?! How can a trade union not only be involved with a private welfare to work provider supporting workfare and peddle and spin the so-called wonders of welfare to work. And calling America Works… “innovative” (the language of the corporate that sullies and damages and ultimately destroys public services). More accurate descriptions would be retrograde and regressive.

WTF!!!

Thirdly, why were criminologists involved in this research? Are they saying there’s a relationship between unemployed and criminality? Well, I will say this the ideological attacks on the poor intends to criminalise people!

Finally…..

See letter from Brighton Unemployed Centre to GMB general secretary Paul “scab” Kenny here.

Also, see as well PCS pamphlet on Welfare: an alternative vision

As a member of GMB I am livid and will be writing myself to comrade Kenny. I would also encourage people (members or not) to inundate him with letters/emails of complaint. Surely as part of the labour movement Kenny’s ultimate job is fighting against attacks on workers which means be campaigning against privatisation, marketisation, attacks on pay/conditions NOT capitulating by writing this damning report! Sold-out and admitted defeat by cosying up to these private sector companies that leech the blood life out of the public sector. And they are an incompetent, greedy and profit led scabs. Kenny’s email is paul.kenny@gmb.org.uk

Why would a trade union hitch a ride on the welfare-to-work bandwagon, what’s the payoff and what’s in it for the bureaucrats while they watch their own members being shafted?

There will be apparently outside GMB Congress, Brighton between 5-9 June, when I receive further details I will pass them on. Hopefully there will be emergency motions put to Congress about this.

BTW: DWP’s own research on Workfare.

Update: it seems that Paul Kenny is dissociating himself from this report but you have to ask yourself, what the hell were they playing at? His “reply” begs more questions than it answers and the research is utterly in favour of welfare to work …….

All quiet on the Heron Towers front

To disclose or not to disclose that is the question…..

If, like me, you have experienced a situation where you feel caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to mental health and you wonder what to do especially regards to employment then the Guardian has a live Q & A on the subject about disclosure. Though when I looked at the panel… yep all professionals/charity workers… not one described as a former/current mental health user. The only one of the panelists I am interested in is the lawyer at least they can explain the legal aspects.

And that’s why it is important…nay vital, to have the survivor experience especially to explain the realities of mental health and employment. From confronted with occupational health questionnaires which want you to dredge up every single experience in the past x number of years, to being hauled in front of an occupational health doctor who asks you questions you wish you didn’t have to answer……and this is BEFORE you are fully accepted into the job. It’s humiliating and upsetting having to endure this along with professionals believing they every right to ask you intrusive questions that certainly make you make feel so so so powerless. I do wonder if many of professionals get a kick out of this power.

During the past 20 odd years I have been in employment I have seen many occupational health doctors and nurses (one nurse told me she didn’t think people on medication should be working with students……). One seemed to enjoy telling me that I had to see him or else they wouldn’t make my contract permanent. It all hinged on him giving me the “all clear”… It was horrible and humiliating. Eventually with the support of my boss (she was pissed off as she was my line manager who saw me everyday and that Personnel was more interested in a doctor who has never seen me) I saw him. I also think he believed  I was possibly too ashamed to tell anybody about my mental health history but I brought my line manager along and said I had been open and honest and she supported me… That made him nervous a bit as I bet he assumed I would have kept my history to myself except on the form.

But I was fortunate, I had the support of my boss. Equally, there are times when I have been confronted with ignorance and lack of awareness. Out of the 20 odd years I have met only one occupational health doctor who seemed understanding and actually listened to me. That shocked me as I was used to the unenlightened and judgemental attitudes that expose their own prejudices and ill-informed views. Though they have the power to make or break your job opportunities.

In every aspect of a job from start middle to finish I have had varied experiences. Some positive some downright offensive. It never ceases to amaze me the number of times I hear the phrase “duty of care” as the reality is ever so different. Employers seemingly understanding while at the same time trying to find ways of getting rid of you through legal or not so legal methods, it happens and to many people. No matter with all the legal requirements and policies in place people with mental health problems are still unfairly treated.

And they wonder why people spend ages looking at an application form deciding whether they should mention things or not. Twenty odd years ago (after Beverley Allitt) there was the Clotheir Report recommendations that literally stopped people who have experienced mental distress from entering the NHS, you had to be “clean” i.e. not on meds, not seeking therapy and so on. This rightly so caused an outcry in the mental health user movement and I campaigned against this. I mean, how can you legislate against only having “sane” people in a certain public service. Many mental health professionals thought it was nonsense and unworkable along with precisely creating a climate of fear. Don’t you want a workforce based on objective criteria, skills and experiences not whether they have sought help for mental distress which is seen as a hindrance? Also, what kind of workforce, through this kind of occupational health policing, are you getting anyway.

The demonisation of mental distress combined with the stereotypical belief anyone with mental health issues were potential killers. Lumped all together as mad, bad and dangerous to know…so keep ‘em all out of the NHS.

This behaviour creates a climate of fear. I recall working for a user movement organisation and the number of letters you received from people who worked in the NHS experiencing distress but too scared to tell anyone. That does not encourage good mental health as people felt under the spotlight along with your history being dissected by some judgemental occupational health doctor. Also, the way people are treated who have gone on sick leave, sometimes positive sometimes very negative with the end result being sacked. Discrimination and unfair treatment.

In the present unenlightened attitudes and ignorance exists and the fear has increased correlated with the attacks on the benefits systems and constant demonisation of disabled people. More fear. More stress. More silence.

And

One in five workers who had disclosed a mental health issue at work said they had been fired or forced to quit.

One in five people are scared of losing their job if they admit they are suffering from stress.

Though Paul Farmer – CEO of MIND (as this research was conducted by MIND) states,
There are reasons to be positive though, as research suggests a large amount of employers say they are happy to discuss mental health issues with a job applicant.

Well, that may be true but it depends on each workplace. Some do, some don’t. Managers and Personnel get training (though how adequate that training is I don’t know) but rarely have I seem training for workers overall. One workplace I was in did have a day on mental health training but it was headed by professionals not a user in sight. It is vital to have training given by users as they know what it’s like plus it gives a voice to say what our experiences have been so far, to discuss good practices and the bad practices.

Listen to the people who have been through the system and the barriers they face when it comes to employment. You know, it would be great if for once you’re allowed to get on with your life without the constant worry that your mental history will be used as a tool of oppression against you.

Visit from the parakeets

Sack Ken Clarke and Nadine Dorries

Is this blame the victim of any sexual violence month…..? What is it at the moment with Tories with their moralistic and vile crusades. First Nadine Dorries and now Ken Clarke.

Dorries started the ball rolling with this offensive “victim blaming” statement:

“A lot of girls, when sex abuse takes place, don’t realise until later that that was a wrong thing to do … Society is so over-sexualised that I don’t think people realise that if we did empower this message into girls, imbued this message in schools, we’d probably have less sex abuse.”

Dangerous message it is because what Dorries and her small-minded judgmental reactionary statements mean that sexual abuse is down to the victim nothing about control and power. Culture of victim blaming is endemic in society overall. And that’s so utterly wrong and dangerous and bloody insulting to survivors of sexual abuse. Survivors already go through stages of self-blame internalising the crap that exists in this society. Powerless are scapegoated. Sexual abuse, similarly to domestic and sexual violence, is to reiterate, about power and control. Dorries will make things so much worse with her demand for abstinence for girls (Not for boys? Funny that). Read this powerful post (H/T Simon) that illustrates why Dorries really should resign and leave us all in peace.

And now the piece de resistance …. Ken Clarke with his “serious rape” and there’s “date rape. This is a way of creating a hierarchy of rape. Rape is rape whoever is committing the offence. Criminal justice system doesn’t take rape seriously highlighted by the low number of convictions. With the ConDems and their right-wing ideology expect to see further moral crusades. Sexual violence is wedded in the patriarchal capitalist order but with this current political trajectory expect to see more woman blaming….It is an uphill struggle for victims of rape and sexual abuse to obtain justice as it is stacked against them. Dorries and Clarke’s statements highlight a political harmful and retrograde step.

What next, Clarke bringing back the old “corroboration rule” that existed into the 1990′s that required judges in sexual offences cases to warn juries that women where prone to making up  such allegations!

Sack Ken Clarke and take Nadine Dorries with you!