Are they deaf? Or just DisAbled?
Tomato Lichy can’t hear. He has a partner and a child who can’t hear either. Anyone would say that this is picture perfect, even if it is a very silent picture. So what’s the problem? Well, now they’ve decided that they’d rather any more children they have can’t hear either.
They, along with other people who can’t hear, like Cathy Hefferman, claim that not being able to hear is not a disability. They see themselves as part of a linguistic minority, and they are proud to speak Sign Language.
continue reading… »
Obligations and privileges
I’m holding fire on the oath swearing nonsense. I mean, if you think that’s bad how about a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, a Green Paper on which is apparently due in the next few months.
This Bill will set out the rights we enjoy and the responsibilities we owe as members of society.
A Bill of Rights is a constitutional document. Constitutions can be more or less permissive in the rights they afford the citizen. Most have a mechanism by which more rights can be added, or which override previously accepted rights. Offhand, I can’t think of a constitution which sets out obligations to the state as a basic condition of citizenship, on which the enjoyment of rights is conditional.
continue reading… »
A female editor for New Statesman?
As the Media Guardian reports this morning, John Kampfner has resigned as editor of the New Statesman. Sue Matthias, deputy editor, has taken over for now.
Sky News reports that she will “take charge… until a successor… is found.” This prompts Louise at F-Word to remark: “Because, of course, Ms Matthias can’t be considered a successor despite her years of experience at the New Statesman, Independent and AOL News, can she?” Is there an inherent assumption here that a woman cannot possibly be editor of a serious political weekly?
The fight continues
As regular readers of this site will know, I’ve been following the story of the Fremantle Trust careworkers who spent much of 2007 striking against the harsh pay and leave cuts a new Trust contract forced on them in April. The dispute is unresolved.
Part one of this series.
A year’s a long while to fight your employer. Sandra Jones, a careworker at the Fremantle Trust’s Rosa Freedman day centre, says there are days now when she wonders if there’s much point to it. She will “keep on with the fight, because you have to keep fighting,” but she doubts that Fremantle will budge. “Fremantle doesn’t give a shit about its staff. It’s gone on for so long now. They [the careworkers] are so demoralised. Some people have depression and stress.”
One thing everybody is specially stressed about is Barnet Council’s recent announcement that it plans to terminate part of the lease at the Rosa Freedman home – that’s the carehome that Jones works at.
Fremantle says it will move residents in that home into residential care elsewhere. Careworkers say families of residents at the carehome are extremely unhappy about the transfer, because of the effect that being dragged out of one home into another will have on their elderly relatives.
continue reading… »
Youth violence and the working class
David Nowak – a 16-year old kid with the street name ‘Turk’ or ‘TK’ – fell victim to a knife killing in the playground across the road from my apartment block shortly before Christmas. Another teenage gang fight, apparently. Same thing happened to some other boy a couple of blocks away only a few months previously. Shrugs shoulders.
Three young men in the same age group – pictured right – were yesterday jailed for life for the murder of Garry Newlove, kicked to death outside his Warrington home in August last year after remonstrating with them for damaging his wife’s car. They were drunk and spliffed up at the time of the crime; Teenage Kicks, 2007 remix.
Meanwhile, one of today’s top stories in the British media is the controversy over ‘the Mosquito’, a device that prevents young people congregating in public places by emitting a high-pitched noise audible only to those aged under 25. The Children’s Commissioner for England and human rights group Liberty want it banned.
Violent or otherwise unruly behaviour on the part of youth is a real issue for working class communities, in inner cities and smaller towns alike. It is also one that many on the left – I’ll include myself here – feel instinctively uncertain about tackling.
The difficulty is avoiding the twin dangers of coming on like either a ‘Gee, Officer Krupke‘ parody or some deranged love child of David Blunkett and Melanie Phillips, manically demanding the return of the birch.
Yes, we can always advance a standard radical sociology critique. Of course these kids – socially formed under Labour governments, let us underline – are both products of the society around us and obviously deeply alienated from it.
Yes, some of the blame for teenage binge drinking surely lies with the directors of the giant booze companies that endlessly seek out new ways to encourage young people to guzzle their products, from ever-tackier sugar-filled alcopops to expensive advertising and promotional giveaway campaigns.
And no, the iniquities of ASBOs and the de facto return of the sus law – to which I was regularly subjected as a council estate teenager myself – don’t seem to have solved the problem, either.
I can’t honestly say that I know the answers. But if socialists ever want to be taken seriously be the people at the sharp end of this one, we need either to put forward some joined-up social policy thinking or risk leaving the field to the demagogues of all parties. After all, it’s not kids in Belgravia or the posh bits of Cheshire and Surrey that are doing the dying.
* Cross-posted from Dave’s Part
Check your privilege here
An interesting meme to identify class privilege has been doing the rounds of the US blogs. Originally designed to make university students think about how class impacts them, the meme requires you to tick off items such as “had more than 50 books in your childhood home” and “you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family”.
In some ways, this list is probably insufficient to reflect our particular class system in the UK (perhaps someone will be inspired to write one specific to us). But at the same time, it is still a useful exercise. You can find the full list at Social Class & Quakers, the blog which seems to have kicked off this meme.
At the same time, these privilege lists are not a new idea – Barry Deutsch has compiled a list of these lists ranging from white privilege to non-trans privilege. Deutsch’s has also added his own take on this idea – the male privilege check list, which my fellow F Word blogger Louise has reminded me of this morning. (Number 14 – “my elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more this is true” – might be of particular interest to some of the commenters on Gracchi’s post earlier this week).
Feel free to experiment with these memes in the comments section.
London pro-choice protest tonight
A quick reminder to London readers: Abortion Rights is calling for people to come out in force this evening, for a protest against efforts to restrict access to abortion and “as a proud public reminder that those who support a woman’s right to choose are in the overwhelming majority”.
The protest has been mobilised to counter Ann Widdecome’s ‘Not on your life…’ roadshow, which the Tory MP is dragging up and down the country to promote ‘pro-life’ amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would chip away at women’s rights.
Similar protests will take place when the roadshow hits Liverpool, Coventry and Cardiff – see the Abortion Rights website for more info. The group has also produced a detailed briefing on the bill’s progress through Parliament, and efforts to tack on anti-abortion amendments.
Here is a flyer with directions and more information.
This was cross-posted at The F Word
‘Would you like a qualification with that?’
The Daily Telegraph website reported on Monday the story that McDonald’s is to be empowered to issue A-levels with an entirely predictable sneer: ‘Would you like a qualification with that?’
The trouble is, that nasty little middle-class jibe reflects the reality on the ground for any kids naïve enough to undergo the course – perhaps with no little arm-twisting from the local JobCentre – in the expectation that they will come out of it with a piece of paper standing them in good stead in any function other than flipping burgers.
They will be following in the tradition of generations of polytechnic students who swallowed the spurious assurance that they would be accorded ‘parity of esteem’ with the products of Oxbridge. They weren’t; indeed, the polytechnic stigma subsequently may even have worked against many in the job market.
continue reading… »
A new coalition on prostitution
A new coalition to put forward a feminist perspective against prostitution is to launch on Monday 11 February. The launch is a public event, with the invite extended to “all those who believe in real women’s-rights rather than men’s right to buy women”.
The meeting is at 6.30pm in the Amnesty UK Human Rights Action Centre in New Inn Yard, nearest tube Old St.
Of course, watchers of UK politics will be aware that the launch comes at a time when ministers are putting serious thought into a shake up the prostitution law along the lines of the Swedish model, to make the act of buying sex explicitly illegal – so women will not be charged for selling sex, but the men who buy their bodies will face prosecution. Today we learn that 52% of Britons agree with this approach and 65% agree that buying sex is an act with exploits women.
The Swedish government pioneered this legislation in 1999 and, although the move has not been without controversy, it has apparently produced a drop off in the number of prostitutes on the street, and perhaps on the numbers of women trafficked into the country.
continue reading… »
‘Iron my shirt’ as political commentary
[UPDATE: American readers can sign this petition to keep sexism out of the media's election coverage]
Robert has already explained why we should be unapologetically covering the US election, despite being a UK blog. So I don’t think we should let pass without analysis the hysterical level of sexism that has been directed at Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Of course, this will all be very familiar to Clinton – back in August last year, we already had the Hillary nutcracker on sale for $19.99.
However, this seemingly gut-level-misogynist reaction to her campaign reached a new low in the run up to her win in New Hampshire, when she was interrupted by men shouting “iron my shirt”. You can see the photos here and AP has the story, although it strangely describes it as a “seemingly sexist” protest. The mind boggles as to what would need to happen to get them to describe it as definitively sexist.
Ready to dismiss this as a couple of extremist nutters? Well, think again. The US feminist blogosphere is buzzing with outrage at how the media has covered Clinton’s campaign. Feministing points to a Washington Post blogger who says she needs an electric shock collar; Wonkette notes that Chris Matthews – a host on the political TV show Hardball – pinched her cheeks (it’s not an exact equivalent, I suppose, but in a UK context this might be roughly similar to Paxman coming over and pinching Brown’s cheeks – or perhaps give him a friendly tickle); Melissa McEwan of Shakesville notes that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd accused Clinton of “playing the victim” – unwittingly casting a light on the gender politics of that particular newsroom in the process.
This has nothing to do with her political stance. Nothing on this list – all from the last two days – has anything to do with her position on any issue. And regardless of our views on Clinton’s specific politics, it’s truly been flabbergasting to see the reaction she has garnered simply for being a woman seeking power.
A version of this post was cross-posted at The F Word
Why I’m supporting John Edwards – an appeal to the Left
At both the last US Presidential election, I took a stance that is not popular on the UK left – one of support for a critical Democratic vote. For those of you who are unaware of my political heritage and who may be surprised that such an apparently uncontroversial stance would excite any kind of debate at all on the liberal-left, allow me to explain. The political background from which I come is one of the left in union and wider labour movement politics, where Trotskyist groups, all of which have a visceral loathing for the Democrats, have loomed large. Indeed, they were only ever really willing to call for a vote for the Labour Party in the UK based on a combination of recruitment raiding, and Byzantine theorising that attached an almost religious significance to the never-exercised trade union link with Labour.
Both of these factors having withered on the vine over the past ten years, most of the left (barring a few real no-hopers) have pulled back from automatic support for Labour, and indeed have ended up in many cases in something of a state of confused hopelessness as a consequence. Some indeed have ended up wandering down blind alleys such as the laughably misnamed “Respect” coalition, following quixotic figures such as George Galloway in the desperate hope of being led to a new dawn. Of course, that dawn will transpire to be a mirage, and most have already seen it. But such is the myopic faith even of ex-trotskyists in their will to follow a “line” that some will continue to do so – even as they spend every passing day tearing each other to pieces and opening themselves up for widespread mockery on this blog amongst others. It’s hardly an edifying spectacle.
So in light of such an extraordinary fiasco, what on earth could a refugee from such a risible political community possibly have to contribute to a debate being held on a far larger arena, in the USA? One of the reasons is because I like to think that people can and do learn lessons, and that therefore they are not doomed to carry on repeating the mistakes of the past. continue reading… »
The lump of indignation fallacy
Once more, Polly Toynbee steps in to protect the helpless state against the bullying individual:
The Porter view has become fashionable because it allows the middle classes to pretend to be victims, too. But it is decadence for mainly privileged people to obsess over imaginary Big Brother attacks on themselves, when others all around them are suffering badly from neglect by the state – or sometimes from real aggression by government. Indignation is precious, not to be squandered on illusory threats, but saved for real injustices.
Blimey: how to unpick this lot? I like the idea that there’s a finite lump of indignation which has to be saved for special occasions, non-renewable and somehow outside the self. The lump of indignation fallacy, you might say. I like the idea as well that you’re supposed to balance your income against your freedom.
continue reading… »
Honour and shame: two sides of the stigma coin
I had a conversation yesterday with a friend about domestic violence within the Muslim community in the UK and the issue of why some Muslims resist discussing what they know is happening in the company of non-Muslims.
In my friend’s view, challenging Muslims, and Muslim men in particular, about domestic violence in such an open space, where non-Muslims are present, is problematic because of the current socio-political climate within the country, including widespread Islamophobia. She felt that a public naming of the problem would be hijacked by those with a racist agenda to further demonize Muslims in the eyes of the UK public, for instance by accusing Muslims of having barbaric cultures.
continue reading… »
Kidneys, coming soon to a high street near you
Consider this:
A kidney patient who travelled to the Philippines to search for a live donor has defended his decision to become a so-called “transplant tourist”.
Stories like this hit the bullseye of the inherent tension between ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ ways of looking at the world.
A liberal (even ‘libertarian’) solution would be simple: we should be allowed to sell a kidney. It’s our body, and we should be free to do what we want with it. The borders of the state must stop at the dermis. Liberty is that simple. Or simplistic.
A left analysis would first point out that the burdens of this ‘freedom’ would fall disproportionately on the poor. Should they need a kidney, they won’t be able to afford one. A rich person is unlikely to need to sell his; a poor person, the opposite. Kidney sellers will be poor; purchasers usually rich. A freedom isn’t a freedom unless its universal; it’s more like a privilege. Just like my freedom (or ‘right’) to buy a Porsche. In a system that relies on exploitation, what we call capitalism, words like ‘freedom’ are sometimes meaningless. (There’s an analogy here with smoking in pubs, but that’s another story.)
There’s really no ‘left-liberal’ solution to this, not in the philosophical sense anyhow. There’s also no place for supporting or condemning one man’s attempt to prolong his life. Perhaps the place to start is with common sense. Support for the BMA’s position on presumed consent is little more than acknowledging the existence of a market failure that can be corrected. Easily and liberally.
Why would women in Britain seek illegal abortions?
Abortion has been legal in the UK for 40 years. So why has the BBC discovered that illegal abortions are still taking place?
BBC Radio 5 Live undertook an investigation, after a discussion in a chat room suggested that women were seeking out drugs to induce abortion without having to consult a doctor. We can surmise that someone suggested going to a Chinese medicine shop, because that is where they sent their undercover reporter, posing as an “illegal immigrant”.
Details so far are limited – the documentary will be broadcast on Sunday at 11.30AM – but the BBC’s story on it brings up some worrying questions about the availability of abortion, and the stigma associated with abortion.
First up, the reasons why women would put themselves at risk by downing illegal pills of questionable providence, when they should be able to access legal, safe abortion with a simple visit to their GP or a private clinic. As I said, the BBC sent their reporter undercover as an illegal immigrant, suggesting that they thought that might be one driver. The story goes on to say:
Abortion is not free on the NHS for every woman. If someone’s home country doesn’t have a reciprocal NHS agreement, or you are here illegally – then you face paying between £500 and £1,500.
If so, it is yet another worrying indication that the government’s prioritising of the drive to get rid of illegal immigrants over healthcare rights for all is dangerous and wrong-headed. But the BBC also suggests that it is likely that British citizens are seeking out illegal terminations:
Community health workers told us the issue of illegal abortion affects many women from young British teenagers who do not trust their doctor, through to people who are here illegally and are frightened of being found out.
This is, again, a significant sign of failure. Yet is it surprising? Only a few weeks ago, one doctor was accused of giving patients biased advice when they come seeking an abortion. A quick look at Pro-Choice Majority, a site which features the stories of hundreds of women who have had abortions, reveals that although many women feel supported in their decision by their doctors, it is not uncommon for women to feel like they are being judged. Here’s one quote from the site:
My doctor was very rude and gave me no information I had to look in the phone book for a clinic, luckily they took care of me. I believe it is any person’s right to an abortion if they believe it to be the right thing for them.
One of the reasons that Pro-Choice Majority is so important, is that it demonstrates that there are lots and lots of ordinary women out there who have had abortions; who don’t regret having those abortions. As Irina Lester recently set out at The F Word, the media tends to select women to talk about their abortions who have been traumatised by the experience. As she said: “If the dominant idea promoted in society is that abortion causes regret and depression and these are the only possible and valid post-abortion feelings, there is little surprise that women are finding it hard to cope.”
Perhaps it is also no surprise that some women – including teenagers who may not want to approach their family doctor, or who may have been rebuffed or felt judged – opt for the quiet, but illegal and potentially very dangerous alternative. It’s a sad indictment of our society that this still happens.
Cross posted at The F Word
The Left vs hierarchy
In a sense, HMRC’s loss of child benefit records highlights the weakness of the Left – it’s failure to challenge the assumption that organizations must be hierarchic.
For years, the Left seems to have believed, to quote Orwell, that Britain is a family with the wrong people in charge. All would be well, it has assumed, if only there were better people with better policies at the top. To listen to some calls for Sir Ian Blair to resign, you’d think that the only problem with the Met is that the wrong arse is in the Commissioner’s chair.
It’s time the Left got more radical. We should ask: is organizational failure a problem of personnel, or is it instead a failure of structure? In particular, why should hierarchical organizations be the only way to deliver state services?
HMRC’s failure perhaps demonstrates the inherent failings of hierarchy.
The problem is that top bosses simply cannot know everything that goes on. As Unity says:
If…all this has come about because HMRC staff have disregarded policy and operated outside specified data security procedures then one can no more hold Alistair Darling personally responsible for the loss of this information than one could reasonably hold the CEO of a private sector corporation to account on discovering that an office junior has been nicking paper-clips.
And it’s not enough to merely have the right procedures in place. The problem is to ensure that employees follow them. And hierarchy can obstruct this, in two ways:
1. Hierarchy demotivates workers. As Ken Cloke and Joan Goldsmith say:
Through years of experience, employers learn that it is safer to suppress their innate capacity to solve problems and wait instead for commands from above . They lose their initiative and ability to see how things can be improved. They learn not to care.
Isn’t this likely to be true of employee who put the CDs in the post? Because s/he had no say in HMRC, s/he felt alienated from its goals and values, and just didn’t care.
2. Hierarchy reduces the scrutiny of workers. Say you were a colleague of this worker, and knew what s/he was doing. Would you have pointed out that this was a lousy way of handling data? Or wouldn’t you have kept quiet, thinking “I have no say here, this is management’s job, I don’t want to rock the boat, it’s none of my business, I’ve nothing to gain from speaking out, and lots to lose.” Greater worker control is a way of policing workers, should motivation fail.
Now, I’m not arguing here for the demolition of all hierarchy and the institution of worker control. I’m merely saying that it should be part of the Left’s agenda to question whether rigid top-down hierarchy is always as necessary as the Boss Parties think.
This is especially true because hierarchy is inherently reactionary. Why should the Left – especially the liberal Left tolerate an ideology which says that working people cannot function without leadership and control from some self-appointed elite?
Melanie Phillips: I blame the gays!
So what else is new? In her latest Daily Mail diatribe, Mad Mel blames the death of the traditional family on Mus-… gays (via Dave Hill).
The issue became more toxic still with the arrival of a movement that demanded for gay people the same rights to family life as heterosexuals – cohabitation benefits, gay adoption, the promotion of gay sexuality in schools. Anyone who objected was crucified as homophobic, creating a climate of rampant intimidation and cultural bullying which has successfully stifled debate and dragooned politicians into line.
All the traditional right-wing hobby horses are here: first, the aversion to equality; then playing the victim card (how dare they call me homophobic/racist?), blaming political correctness and accusing others of stifling the debate (while writing it in a national newspaper)! Sound familiar? And don’t forget, this has little correlation with reality.
Your money for nothing
[The first part in this series on trade union issues is here.]
It is 1pm on a crisp afternoon in North London’s Burnt Oak, and a hundred or so Fremantle Trust carehome workers and supporters have gathered in the St Alphage church hall on Playfield Road, where they’re waiting to be addressed by various lefty speakers and political worthies.
There’s a bit of a buzz in the hall this afternoon: the carehome workers have just finished a very noisy (whistles, horns, hooting, honking, yelling, etc) protest march through the town centre, where they again aired their grievance about the harsh cuts that the Fremantle Trust has made to their sick pay, holiday allowances and salaries.
Most of the workers here are middle-aged women, and they are from a variety of – charming term – ethnic groups. They say they have no intention of abandoning their fight to win back the salaries and working terms that the Fremantle Trust forced them to sign away in April this year.
Longtime Barnet carehome worker Breege Kelly is one of these women. She’s worked in the laundries and kitchens of Barnet Council and Fremantle carehomes for about 18 years. She says that she got her letter telling her to agree to the new terms and conditions just before Christmas 2006.
“Yep,” she says. “It was saying that we had to sign the new terms and conditions by the 31st of March (2007). A lot of people put it off for as long as they could, but in the end, we had to sign it, or we would be sacked.”
Indeed, Unison says that some members of staff who refused to sign were sacked. “They (Fremantle) work on putting pure fear [into everybody],” Kelly says. “I had to sign the new contract. I’ve got a mortgage and people got a mortgage, you know. They made it so that we had to stay and take it, what they were giving out.”
continue reading… »
Looking into Cameron’s promises to tackle rape
Cartoon by Jacky Fleming
Teach children about consent in schools. Pour money into rape crisis centres. Overhaul sentencing of rapists. David Cameron’s speech today reads like a feminist wish list.
Speaking to the Conservative Women’s Organisation in London, Cameron outlined some statistics that those of us who are involved in feminist activism are all too familiar with:
- One in 20 women in the UK have been raped
- 75% of rapes are not reported to the police
- Of those that are reported, 5.7% result in conviction in England and Wales, (not mentioned by Cameron, this figure falls to 3.9% in Scotland)
This means, says Cameron, that of every 1,000 women raped, only 15 will see their rapist convicted. Or, to flip that around, for every 15 rapists that end up in jail, approximately 985 rapes are committed with absolutely no repercussions – for the rapist, that is.
continue reading… »
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civil cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
» Is this the end for the socialist left?
|
25 Comments 66 Comments 20 Comments 12 Comments 10 Comments 18 Comments 4 Comments 25 Comments 49 Comments 31 Comments |
|
LATEST COMMENTS » Nick posted on Why don't MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours? » Bob B posted on Complete tits » Nick posted on Complete tits » Mike Killingworth posted on Complete tits » Mr S. Pill posted on Complete tits » Nick Cohen is a Tory posted on Complete tits » Nick Cohen is a Tory posted on Complete tits » Matt Munro posted on Why I'm defending Ed Balls over immigration » Kate Belgrave posted on Complete tits » Kate Belgrave posted on Complete tits » Nick Cohen is a Tory posted on Obama is right to slam BP - and why capitalists should too » Thomas Hobbes posted on The Daily Mail and "Bongo bongoland" » Matt Munro posted on Complete tits » Matt Munro posted on Complete tits » Lee Griffin posted on Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed? |
