Olympic Legacy

I used to love the Olympic  Games. Me and my dad, we loved watching the events together and cheering on the Brits . But the more I learn about the truth behind the glossy Olympic veneer, the more disillusioned I become.

We’re told that the Games leave a great legacy for the host country – that the economy will greatly benefit, that tourism will soar, that employment, investment and regeneration will thrive.  They convince us that the Games will encourage the whole nation to get active and that suddenly everyone will be transformed into healthy, keep-fit fanatics.  They sell us the idea of superb sporting facilities –  swimming pools, tennis courts and such-like that will be available for everyone to utilise post-Olympic games.

Well there is another line of thinking which argues that the golden Olympic legacies are mostly mythical, that there is a more sinister side to the Olympic movement and that beyond the hype, real lives are detrimentally and irreversibly affected.

Well let’s take a wee look:

Planning displacement/Forced evictions. How many people do you think were displaced in Beijing to make way for the games?  This report says it’s 1.5 million.  And this website goes into more detail.

Atlanta 96- what went on there?  Amongst other stuff, housing rights violations and – get this – the criminalisation of the poor and the homeless, many of whom were detained without trial for the duration of the games so they wouldn’t be an embarrassment.

London 2012 – how many evictions have taken place so far in London alone due to the building works?  What about the allotments that have been forecably taken to make way for the games?  The businesses that have lost their sites.  And the social housing estate, Clays Lane, that became subject to a compulsory purchase order, against the wishes of the tenants, to build the athlete’s village.

Ethics. London 2012 is so ethical that it’s own ethics chief resigned because of its connections, via Dow Chemicals, with the 1984 Bhopal disaster that killed thousands of its citizens.  When you consider just who the leading corporate sponsors are it’s hard not to be cynical . . .  BP, the aforementioned Dow Chemicals, Rio Tinto . . .  a trio of polluting multinationals with dire environmental records as official sponsors of the “greenest games ever”? Give me a break!

Democratic rights. Be in no doubt, preemptive arrests are very much on the cards at these London games for peaceful protesters.  Just wait and watch our PM trample on our civil liberties, empowering the police to make sweeping arrests before objectors even begin their peaceful protests at the games.  You’ll have to look hard though because it won’t be widely reported.

There’s more.

The Food. McDonald’s (hiss, spit), official partner of the games, have pledged to use only British chickens but what about the beef and the fish? And in any case, come on!  McDonald’s! The unhealthiest food in the world being ‘officially’ supplied at a major, global sports event!  Someone had a sarcastic sense of humour there.

The environmental impact.  The London games are supposed to be the greenest ever.  UK officialdom wants the London games to be an environmental showcase and wants us to believe that the environment won’t be touched at all by these games but nobody can tell me that there has been no major environmental impact.  It’s not possible.  I can’t even be bothered going into detail.  I’ve gone on enough and I’d be stating the bleeding obvious anyway.

To sum up, basically, they’ve sold us a tale of turning the nation into health and fitness fanatics but does anyone really believe that people will get off their backsides en masse and get jogging because they been so inspired by nine-minute sprinters or record-holding marathon runners?  No, we will all watch the games from the comfort of our lounges (or if we’re lucky, from a seat in the stadium) and then we’ll forget about it!  And I’m sure all those super-duper sports facilities that they say the citizens will inherit really will be fantastic – if you can afford the membership fees!

Sure, there will be economic benefits but they will be short-term and there’s little evidence to say that these benefits actually reach those most in need and much historical evidence to say that existing entrepreneurial types and wealthy stakeholders usually reap the most of the rewards.  They say that tourism will benefit and yes, if the games were to be held in Backendofnowhere I’m sure that many ordinary citizens would greatly benefit from increased tourism (or perhaps not depending on your view but you get the point).  But the games are always held in major cities, eg, London.  Tourism is London’s biggest industry and it’s booming, so where will the added value come from?  It’s so small, it’s more likely to cause greater pressure and utter turmoil.

The misrepresentation, the myths, the corporate spin, the total greenwash. Folks, the social and environmental impacts of the games are considerable.  The Olympic legacy is not all rosy but is in fact, pretty much all fallacy.  It certainly does not result in all-round sustainable urban facelifts or jobs for life or booming economies.

So, whose boycotting the games then?

Tree People – we need you now!

It seems that our unmandated government really has it in for our forests.  They have thus-far failed to slip through a bill that would allow them to sell our woodlands to private firms who would subsequently turn them into a profit-making  commodity.  So now they’re going to revise planning laws making it easier for developers to, well, develop on them.

If we are to believe our government (snigger), these proposed new planning policies will have no impact on our green and pleasant land but their promises will soon be put to the test according this article in today’s Guardian. The writer tells us that Oaken Wood in Kent is potentially at risk due to an application for a quarry extension and this highlights some serious concerns.  From the article:

At stake, under a single application for the extension of an existing quarry, is 32 hectares of ancient woodland, home to rare lady orchids, firecrests and nightingales. Under pressure from conservation groups including the Woodland Trust, and thanks to the efforts of local campaigners, Eric Pickles, local government secretary, called in the controversial application in July last year. It is scheduled to go to public inquiry in November. . . .

. . . . Today, ancient woodland covers just 2.7% of England and is home to more wildlife of conservation concern than any other terrestrial habitat. These woods are irreplaceable and require protection.

For goodness sake folks, you heard him! We don’t have much ancient woodland left in England and when it’s gone, it’s gone! Our woodlands are important on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start but to paraphrase Earl Attlee when asked what plans they had to improve ancient woodland protection in the final version of the National Planning Policy Framework, he said it’s not possible to put an economic value on ancient woodland because it is irreplaceable.

It all takes me back to a time, many moons ago, when I camped out in a beautiful ancient woodland with a bunch of tree-hugging eco-warriors in an effort to stop it from being bulldozed to make way for the M65.  Well, I say camped-out . . . taking food, drinks and blankets each day to the protesters and generally playing a supportive role would be closer to the truth but hey, I was there with the likes of  Swampy, suitably clad in wellies, camouflage trousers and an attitude.

The protesters weren’t all stereotypical tree huggers with dreadlocks and doc-martens but they became known by the locals (who mostly supported them it has to be said) as the Tree People. And these guys were fantastic.  They were radical and inventive and totally committed.  They’d lived in those self-built tree-houses for months and they were determined not to give way.  The stakes were high and their determination was downright heroic. They constructed a woodland network of ropes and tree-top walkways so that they were all connected making it very difficult for the axe-men to chop even one tree down without risking the life of a protester.  As non-violent resisters they suffered many injuries at the hands of the burly security men but they never gave up.  At one point militant-me had a very heated debate with the sheriff of somewhere-or-other (probably not Nottingham) but, being  the mardy-pants that I am, I backed off when two large, grumpy-looking policemen started to walk towards me with intent.  Yep, I was passionately proactive and I really believed in the cause but those coppers looked big and mean and there’d already been several arrests.

Anyhoo, needless to say, we were unsuccessful in our efforts. The inevitable forced eviction took place and those yellow-hats stood smugly by as the activists were dragged ruthlessly from the their tree-houses.  Subsequently, and very sadly, the beautiful woodland, where deer used to roam and wildflowers grew freely, was razed to the ground. And now a dirty, great big concrete motorway sits in its place.

I might have turned into little more than a keyboard warrior since then but I’ll tell you this folks – if our few remaining woodlands are put under serious threat of demolition because of these proposals, I WILL GET OFF MY LAZY ARSE!  I will reclaim my activism mojo!  I will tie myself to a tree and I won’t budge until those bloody useless, self-serving, arrogant set of nobs in government do something positive and permanent to protect our magnificent and vitally, vitally important woodlands.

I kid you not.

Sack Andrew Lansley

Seriously, seriously!  Why is this guy still here?  His manic NHS mission has been nothing short of shambolic from the very start.  But then, Cameron – the man in a position to sack him – has stubbornly supported his reckless scalpel-wielding all along so he needs to be punished too.

Really folks, he so badly shouldn’t be here now.  He has failed on many levels and the bill hasn’t even gone through yet!  The scale of opposition to this remarkably ideological Health and Social Care Bill is vast yet Lansley and Cameron, in their isolated world of privatisation and non-accountability, continue to arrogantly bulldoze their way through while pretending to listen to the health care experts who are screaming WOAH! at every hurdle.

It’s actually really bad.

But, let me pause for a minute . . . we’re not stupid.  We can see what they’re doing.  I see health care workers on all levels growing more alarmed and I’m confident that these reckless plans will crumble.  Even David Cameron’s spinning skills won’t be able to salvage this bill.

Thing is, the very fact that they pursued this crazy dream of bulldozing the NHS and turning it into a profiteering machine for themselves and their buddies in the first place shows just how inept, uncaring, arrogant, and totally profit-centred these Tory boys are . . .  so we need to stay vigilant.

If we want to see health justice, Lansley, having lost all credibility, must be sacked, the current bill must be scrapped . . .  and Cameron must be slapped across the face, repeatedly, with a soggy dressing that has just been removed from a chronic leg ulceration.  (I have contacts in that department).

Seriously folks, for the sake of the nations health (and my mental health), please let me wake up tomorrow to the news that Andrew Lansley has been fired.

This and that and rather a lot more

It’s increasingly challenging for me to find the time to blog these days so it’s frustrating to say the least when there’s just so much to blog about.  For instance, George Monbiot’s nuclear-powered, shot0gun-held-to-his-head U-turn on nuclear power.  Well he must have had a shot-gun held to his head when he wrote this.  Either that or his body was taken over and possessed by an evil force from the nuclear industry.  I mean how else do you explain such an aggressive change-of-heart from someone who spent most of their life campaigning against nuclear power.  He appears to have based his newly-found affection for nuclear energy on the fact that Fukushima was hit by an earthquake and a tidal wave and didn’t cause a global catastrophe.  Oh!  He plays down his pre-Fukushima stance by describing his then views as nuclear-neutral.  Well that’s a load of tripe!  He was never nuclear-neutral.  He was blatantly anti-nuclear.  Here’s what he said a few years ago…

“…nuclear power spreads radioactive pollution, presents a target for terrorists and leaves us with waste that no government wants to handle.”

There’s loads more where that came from.  Hmph!  Bloody turn-coat.

And what about this quiet little item?  A new EU directive comes into play soon which will give more power to Big Pharma.  More power! I hear you exclaim.  I know!  Anyway, this new directive sounds ok at first glance. Indeed, but there are implications.  A EU-wide ban will be in place in a few months but from the 1st of May, hundreds of herbal remedies that have been used in the UK for decades will no longer be available to people who have been benefiting from their properties.  This of course may result in people trying to get hold of them via the Internet thus making the control of such remedies impossible . . . and there’s also the added risk that some of these Internet-acquired products will be of a much poorer quality.  It’s a big win for the pharmaceutical profiteers but let me just ask the politicians who’ve made this decision (I suspect muchly due to some sneaky hand-shaking and bribery from the drug companies) a question . . . What do you think people were doing to relieve their illnesses hundreds and hundreds of years ago?  And actually, an important thing to consider is that many herbal medicines are taken by healthy people in order to try and prevent illness.  And we all know the saying about prevention and cure.  But there’s no profit in healthy people is there.  Avaaz have a petition up here.

They’d better keep their hands off my herbal tea!!

Is there room to squeeze in a little personal message to David Cameron?  Yes?  Ooh goodie. . . .

David, do be quiet dear.  Do try to stop being such a condescending twit.  I know it’s hard to keep up the facade of nice, popular man-of-the-people but please try harder to hide your real chauvinistic, homophobic character.  We know you were only trying to be funny and clever and that, but you’re not funny and clever.  You’re witless and boring so do hush up.  Oh and David dear, please try to keep that arrogant, snot-faced, creepy little chancellor of yours under control.  His sneering, giggly, immature face is really making me want to vomit bucket-loads each and every time I see it.  Thank you dear.

Speaking of the patronising Cameron, I’m taking bets on how long after the Royal wedding will it be before Shallow Cam starts using the happiness of the event to spin his ideological visions for Britain.

And to finish, I’ll pop up a picture or two, just to keep the place alive, barely, but alive just the same.  Oh and I’ve sneaked a little video in at the end – a party political broadcast of the Green variety.  Go on – vote for the Green party.  You know you want to.

My middlie taking part in the May Pole dancing for St. George’s day.  So there, BNP.  You can stop spreading the myth that celebrating Englishness is being outlawed.

Bolton Abbey Priory.  I took that picture with my broken little Nikon Coolpix L22.  Impressed?  I am.

Newscloud of sorts

Big Fish Rugby Tour in Swansea . Fabulous rugby-playing by our Under 11 boys . Much bad sportsmanship displayed by winning team’s coaches by-way-of entering two teams separately and doing some dubious jiggery-pokery with said teams . Me-laddie getting pushed about by huge brute of a boy of the ginger-haired variety . Me trying in vain to mask my blatant glee when me-laddie got his revenge on aforementioned huge ginger brute by making an enormously heroic tackle on him thus sending him flying into touch and me-laddie going on to score a magnificent try .  Magnificent try disallowed by dodgy and quite clearly biased ref . Gorgeous weather . Lot’s of freckles .  Too much beer . Too much food . Too little time . Late nights/early mornings . Back to work . Off work again! . Lot’s of pain and soreness, mostly caused by a confused immune system that wouldn’t know a healthy joint (that does not need it’s owners immune system to kick in and randomly attack it and all its brother and sister joints thankyouverymuch) from a real live streptococcal throat infection (that actually does require some attention by said immune system . . . and promptly if you pleaseandthankyouverymuch) . sigh .  Much outpouring of misery and feeling sorry-for-oneself . Back to work . double sigh . Much team conflict . sigh, wail, gnash teeth . Lot’s of regret for having returned to work instead of prolonging sickness leave by exploiting existing condition .

Thank the gods of mercy for weekends.

Arts cuts, police cuts, nursing, crime and tangents . .

Isn’t it strange how the news regarding police cuts doesn’t seem to get the left as animated as they get towards other cuts.  I know the police have not won many public hearts lately due to their public displays of aggression and intimidation at recent protest rallies and suchlike – and quite right too.  We’ve seen some appalling police behaviour and the lack of accountability is downright criminal but I guess they’re not all our enemy.  Just as there are good and bad nurses and good and bad teachers, the same surely applies to the police.

I had three police officers at my house this morning.  Two officers came and went followed by a crime scene investigator.  They were here, in short, because my eldest daughter’s car was broken into.  The poor girl has only had the car for one week.  She was chuffed to bits about it.  What with the sky-scrapingly high insurance costs for new, young drivers, she thought she would never be able to afford a car.  But to her credit,  she somehow made it happen.  She chose the smallest, cheapest, cutest little car available – one with low economical running costs and not so harsh on the environment.

Being a student nurse,  she receives a little bursary each month which just about pays for said car.  But crucially, being a student nurse, she has to go on placements far and wide and at all times of the day and night so a car is really quite essential.  I was very tempted, incidentally, to talk her out of nursing.  She was all set up for university.  Had a guaranteed place at Liverpool and everything.  She couldn’t wait to start.  Why she changed her mind, I’ll never know.  And why she chose to go into nursing befuddles me even more but I suspect her boyfriend, and the reluctance to leave him, had something to with the decision. Ho hum.

Anyway (tangents dear girl, tangents), her shiny, new little car was violated right outside our house the other night and she was gutted.  The perpetrator just popped the lock right out of the door.  Nothing was taken because there was nothing to take.  The police officer said he was probably looking for spare change or hoping to find an ipod because the car came with an ipod thingy where you can plug in your ipod and listen to your playlist.

The first two officers who attended were very nice and helpful.  They showed care and concern towards my daughter and were very attentive.  After they’d completed their bit they left and told me a crime scene investigator would come along later to take fingerprints and stuff.  They asked my daughter if she would need to use the car today and she said yes – she had to go into uni at 12 o clock so they said they’d try to get the forensic guy to come before then.  I didn’t expect this to happen but lo and behold, the lovely lady turned up at about 10.30 with her little black bag of forensics tools.  I was impressed.  She too was very caring and concerned but she couldn’t do any dusting on the car door because it was raining.

I had been listening to the news all morning and there was much talk about the police cuts and cuts to the Arts.  Objections to the Arts cuts, by the way, are easy to dismiss but I don’t mind admitting that I object to these cuts almost as much as other cuts, not least because Art enriches all our lives but more importantly,  there will be many-a knock-on effect by way of employment, education and suchlike and will result in only the well-off being able to afford to study an Arts degree or pursue a particular ‘Arts’ talent.  And youth theatre groups, sports groups . . . what about all those youngsters who are committing time and energy to something fulfilling that they enjoy . . . something that helps to keep them fit and healthy.  We already know that too many unfit teenagers spend their time hanging around streets with nothing to do and nowhere to go.  Tell me what’s beneficial about taking away their facilities when those things give them a focus, where they can learn about commitment, self-respect and teamwork.  The Arts have the power to transform and vastly improve lives.  I’ve seen it working.  Dance teachers are creating community dance-groups everywhere.  It’s classless, genderless and available across the scale.  The kids who attend such groups are growing daily in self-esteem and self-confidence.  And they’re active for god’s sake!  Off the streets.  Not being thugs!  Not being a nuisance!  Not committing crimes!  Isn’t that the goal?  You need look no further than the absolutely fantastic Dance United to realise just how effective and empowering such groups can be.

Basically, Arts funding is there to provide equal opportunities for everybody to have their lives enriched and improved. The Arts cuts are regressive and will make Art and Culture elite and inaccessible to all but a privileged few.   Osborne’s few.

Anyway, where was I? (More tangents.  Focus girl!) My police experience, although brought about by a nasty and annoying crime, was an altogether positive one but it got me thinking about the cuts and how it might affect the three nice officers who dealt with our case.  I don’t know anything about the structure of police forces.  I know that like nurses, doctors, paramedics etc. police officers take a lot of crap from the public.  They deal with aggressive and abusive people on an almost daily basis and are always the first in line for a bashing and being blamed for everyone’s problems.  I do stand by my belief that a lot of officers join the police force for the wrong reasons (ie: power, means to bully etc) but generally speaking, I like to think that, like nurses, teachers etc., most of them are decent with a genuine desire to help others and like most of us, they face worrying times and insecurities.

There’s more to a police force than the images we see of police thuggery on our TV screens and the government’s promises not to cut front line jobs is meaningless given that front-liners depend on non-front-line staff to do their jobs properly so no matter how they spin it, the cuts will detrimentally affect the police and how they protect the public and no matter how bitter the relationship between activist and policeman is, it’s surely in our interest to support them at this time.

Gosh!  It’s all or or nothing with me.

On hating George Osborne

“No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.” Aneurin Bevan

Did you know that if you google the words I hate George Osborne you get 612,000 results.

I try not to give in to the hate emotion.  I really do.  My mother always encouraged us not to use the word hate when referring to someone we don’t like but it’s not always easy to control those feelings when one takes an extreme disliking to someone.  The old emotions tend to take over the logical, calm side and its not usually a pretty sight.  And dammit, that bloody detestable fella George Osborne has gone and forced me to disrespect my dear mum’s sagely advice by making me hate him with a passion.  A fiery, burning passion.  I hate the Tories collectively but I’m feeling a dark urge to specifically target old Gideon.

There’s even a Facebook page called I hate George Osborne and I really don’t know what’s stopping me from joining.  Dignity probably.  I mean when I’ve done with the hate rant that I’m about to embark upon, I’ll need to salvage any dignity remaining and joining such a Facebook group would only make me feel even more sullied. Kind of like how I feel when I read Melanie PhillPots blog or accidentally tune in to the Jeremy Kyle Show.

So why do I hate him?

Lordy, where do I start?

It’s not just his lamentable and downright spiteful budget or the callous cuts that make me detest this vile person.  It’s the smug, uncaring and grossly arrogant demeanor of the man.  He sneers at people folks.  It’s not an unfortunate act of nature that makes his facial features appear to look sneery.  He really does willfully sneer.  And remember when he poked fun at Nicholas Sarkozy for being short.  Now I’m no admirer of Sarkozy, far from it, but for a politician who should be displaying a mature and responsible public face to make fun of a person’s  physical appearance is a personal and really rather shallow thing.  Not funny at all. Gideon thought it was though.  You can see the egotistical twerp laughing hysterically at his own joke here.  Don’t watch it.  You will cringe. He’s also got away with ageist slurs against Dennis Skinner and homophobic jibes against Chris Bryant – letting slip the true bigoted colours of the Tory boys.

And there’s even more to hate.  It’s not just the deliberate targeting of the poor and the squeezed middle.  It’s the unethical pro-wealthy, right-wing ideology that drives him.  It’s the grim fact that he really does aspire to keeping the poor in their place while preserving the luxuriously elite status of a small group of wealthy people.  It’s his blatant generosity towards big business in the face of those at risk of losing their jobs/homes/benefits.  It’s the stealthy tearing away of workers rights and family-friendly flexible choices so that employers can use people as they wish and pay them rock-bottom wages.

In a nutshell, it’s the fact that he is stubbornly pursuing this Tory ideology of a Thatcher magnitude without ever having won a true mandate.  I really believe he is actually enjoying inflicting this pain.  I hope to goodness the karma gods are paying attention.

I must now go into a dark room and chant a mantra or two, before the hatred consumes me completely.

The Work of the Devil – a quick, random, bullet-pointy post

• I don’t think anyone has made me want to throw up more than work-of-the-devil David Cameron and I’m thinking particularly about when he was talking to the BBC today from China about the naughty students and the extremely brave police officers at Millbank during the student protests.  Gawd, he is an unbelievably patronising git.  As for that violence caused by a minority, as overblown as it is, the question has been raised – has this ignited a wider public backlash against the cuts in general.  Who knows?  But hey, who said students and young people were politically apathetic?
• It”s no secret that I am a nervy, jittery person and it doesn’t take much to make me all jumpy.  Well the damned wind outside is proper spooking me out folks.  The letter-box keeps rattling, my lounge door keeps blowing open and, in spite of the double-glazed windows, the silver metal blinds in my boy’s bedroom are blowing right out.  It’s the work of the devil I tells ya.
• Those memoirs.  There’s no way I will be reading George Bush’s feel-good book-of-love but I did just finish a book called The Help which was utterly unputdownable and highly recommended.  I won’t say too much about it except to quote this line . . . Jackson, Mississippi 1962 – black maids raise white children but aren’t trusted not to steal the family silver.  As for that other book – the work of the devil (probably literally!), like I said, I won’t be reading it – remember, I’m easily spooked, but I have read the news and I’m well aware of what he said about torture in the form of water-boarding having saved British lives but he fails to mention that his torture policies, hell, all of his policies, have put people in more danger than ever.  Clearly there’s no limit to the man’s stupidity and inhumanity but enough about him.  I won’t sleep tonight as it is.
• I don’t get the The Labour party.  What are they playing at rebelling against the expulsion of Phil Woolas and his anti-immigrant rhetoric?  We know they’re not doing it out of concern for Parliamentary sovereignty.  They’re dividing themselves again.  Are they trying to lose the next election?  Woolas played the race card and lost.  He pandered to the Daily Mailers and we all know that the Daily Mail is the work of the devil.  Harriet Harman was bang on when she gave him the boot.
• Magnums are utterly yummy.  And probably the work of the devil.

On Frustration

How’s it going folks?  Are we enjoying all the political shenanigans or are we totally exhausted by it all?  Personally, I’m feeling a wee bit weary of the whole sordid business but some things get me so aggravated that I have to shout.  But there’s little to be gained from blanket-bashing our MP’s just for the sake of it so I’m not going to.

Oh hell, of course I am.

And just so you know, my eyebrows are now firmly planted on the top of my head at the cheek of it all.  First I hear that the staggeringly arrogant David Cameron refer to the cuts as ‘delicious’ then Nick Clegg comes over all moral and outraged at PM’s QT when the opposition used the term social-cleansing to describe the Housing Benefit cuts even though we all know he’d be saying  the same thing if he hadn’t got into bed with the Tories.   What’s insulting and offensive is his use of diversionary tactics to avoid arguing the point in case (or is it case in point?).  He’s got a nerve anyway, calling things outrageous when he’s basically sold out his own values for a brief moment of power.  (I wish he’d just hurry up and defect to the Tories.  We know he’s going to do it eventually because he is a career politician who knows damn well that his own party is finished).  And, thinking about it,  some of those very people he says will be offended by the term social-cleansing are probably about to be forced out of their homes again.  I wouldn’t mind betting that a fair few of those people who will be affected by the HB cuts are of ethnic origin and already victims of cleansings of one kind or another.

An audience member on this week’s Question Time mentioned the disturbing drama Cathy Come Home in reference to the HB policies and lordy-me, that made me shudder.  The consequences of these rushed policies are going to hit hard.  They are rushing through sweeping policies without looking at the finer detail, using the “it’s to avoid expensive bureaucracy” excuse but as we all know, the devil is in the detail and just maybe there was a valid social reason for some of that bureaucracy created by Labour after all.

Then lordy-me again!  I find out that the government is going to sell off our forests to private firms. Typical Tory tradition – the minute they’re in power they sell off our assets.  Thatcher did it in the eighties and this time Cameron’s doing it under his  ’Big Society‘ plan, pretending it’s so that private and civil society partners can own the forestry estates and take a greater role in the management thereof.

So, potentially, unscrupulous private developers from anywhere can swoop in, buy up and abuse them as much as they please in order to make money. And even if these business guys want to maintain the woodlands, they could deny access and and ban the public from enjoying the beauty of our own woodlands.  I have no doubt that a Tory-led government will attack the right-to-roam law – a hard-earned law fought for not least by the hugely respected John Smith RIP.

Our only hope is that some wealthy nature lover or a well-funded environmental charity will buy them up just to keep them protected.  Swampy, we need you.

And the last lordy-me goes to the Lib Dem’s  Chris Huhne who has  quietly scrapped their No to Nuclear Power policy.  I know.  I know.  Coalition = compromise.  Blah, blah.  But come on!  We’re talking core values here.  Key pre-election pledges that they’re now totally abandoning.  Have they really got no guts at all?  Hell, they’re even denying they ever had this policy. The Lib-Dem website page on their anti-nuclear power campaign has mysteriously disappeared but one guy here has the evidence which deliciously (up yours Cameron!) includes a video starring Chris Huhne himself no less speaking against nuclear power expansion.  I wonder what tomorrow’s policy-of-the-day will be.  Cowardly U-turns are fast becoming a speciality for the Lib-Dems.  Here’s the video to finish off . . .

Austerity – the rich need not apply

Well folks, on the political front, there’s so much been happening in my absence that it’s hard to know where to start but I think the child benefit fiasco is as good an issue as any to begin with.

First off, I know I’m not alone in being utterly bewildered by the fact that they are allowing such a glaringly illogical inequality to occur within the policy and it beggars belief that they can’t come up with a process so that joint incomes are taken into consideration.  I mean come on guys.  You have two policical parties working at this. You can’t all be as dim as dusk!

Anyhoo, the cut itself (and, true to form, here’s where I start contradicting myself again), I really, reeally, reeeally want to defend keeping the child benefit universal, if only on the grounds that it is a citizens income for children and all children are equal etc. but I just can’t bring myself to argue against a principle that says we should stop paying benefits to the well-off and I’ve been quite surprised at how much the left-wing has stretched the universality argument, coming up with all kinds of romantic socialist reasons as to why it’s wrong to take this benefit away from the middle classes  - one being that the they’ll stop supporting welfare for the poor if they don’t get any benefits themselves.  That’s just silly.  There’s nothing bad at all about cutting benefits for the well-off but of course, me being me (I did warn you), I’m not straight -down-the-line in support of it either.  I mean it’s complicated isn’t it.  £44k is considered to be a high income but that high income isn’t quite so high if you have kids is it.  But ultimately, I can’t believe it will impact these families so much as to cause serious hardship so like I said, all things considered, I just can’t bring myself to oppose cutting a benefit to families that could manage quite nicely without it.  A higher threshold maybe but not universal, at least not under current circumstances.

Well anyway, for those just above the threshold, after the cut some of the luxuries will probably have to go – private music tuition and gardeners and suck-like.  Not such an hardship at first glance but there is a knock-on effect.  I absolutely get that it’s not right for low-incomers to have their taxes spent on benefits for the well-off so they can continue to have their grass cut or their kids enriched with private music lessons and I must stress that this is not an argument against the child benefit cut.  Its merely an observation related to unintended consequences or whatever but it has to be said that the people who provide these household services and private tuition etc. rely on fee-paying middle-incomers for their own livelihood.  Many small businesses have been started by ordinary people tapping into a growing demand from working families who can’t fit it all in and so hire people to help out with the chores.  But these are non-essential products and for families that are just above that threshold and have to take a cut in income, it’s the luxuries that go first.  Again, as I said, not a valid argument for giving benefits to the well-off  but the fact remains that it will have its impact on a chunk of small business owners who may be less well-off.  And anyway, more to the point, it really sticks in my throat that the Tories have suddenly found this to be a useful argument.  Does anyone actually believe that the Tories are sincere when they cry out how wrong it is that the hard-working poor should pay taxes to give benefits to higher earners.  Come off it Tories!  Since when have you cared about the poor being disproportionately taxed in comparison to, and to the benefit of, the rich?  Hark at them suddenly being in support of wealth redistribution in the favour of the poor!

Of course all this has deliberately diverted us from their real agenda ie the real cuts that will disadvantage the poor even more than they already are.  The cap on benefits will seriously plunge many families into deeper hardship and it really will come down to having to choose whether to pay the extortionate rent fees or feed their kids.

And this mantra about people on benefits being a lifestyle choice is a blatant insult.  These people do exist, I accept that but not to the extent that the coalition wants us to believe.  Where the hell are all these jobs that the idle spongers should be taking up anyway under threat of losing their benefits?  I know it’s been asked a million times but as far as I can tell, it’s not been answered so I ask again, how can a single-mum be expected to travel twenty odd miles a day to the only job offer she’s had and it’s a job that pays the minimum wage (which probably won’t exist anyway when the Coalition gets its grubby hands on it), while paying for child care and meeting expensive travel costs?  With the VAT increase taken into account how the hell will she make ends meet?

The thing that gets me is that they keep saying we’re in this together and that everyone across the class divide has to take a hit but I’ve looked and looked and I still can’t see where the rich are being affected.  They give this impression that they too are having to make sacrifices too but I fail to see where? The capital gains tax increase is a gesture that will slightly affect ruthless, buy-to-let landlords and second home-owners.  The rest is Tory ideology hidden behind a false, tough-but-fair slogan and everyone with an ounce of sense knows that the poor are going to suffer the heaviest impacts when their ideology goes live.  But what makes it so damn harsh and cruel is that it’s not neccessary.  There are other ways but in the world of Cameron, Clegg and Osborne et al, austerity only applies to the poor.  Top and bottom is, it’s an ideologically motivated attack on the two things that the traditional right-wing hate the most – the poor and the public sector.

The shared pain slogan is a lie.

Of Camping and Being Jane

After last year’s fantabulous once-in-a-lifetime holiday in the Caribbean, this year we decided to keep our carbon footprint low and go camping.  It was a bit of a mixed bag of unplannedness and camp-impromptu –  ie – destination wherever and accommodation largely unknown.

And it so happened that Grizdale Forest benefited from our presence at one point because that’s where Go Ape is located.  If you’ve never heard of Go Ape, it’s basically a tree-top assault course involving stupidly high-altitudes and lot’s of crazy tree-swinging.  (If you thought I was a tree hugger before, you should have seen how I clung to those trees in Grizedale!!).

Grizedale Forest is a lovely area with enchanting sculpture trails and several mountain bike routes but it’s a bit too manufactured for our off-the-beaten-track tastes so we don’t visit often.  They also hold two motor rally’s each year which I find a bit odd.  I mean they spend all year preserving and maintaining its beauty and promoting eco-values yet they allow rally cars to fly around the place twice a year which must surely have a substantial environmental impact.  Can’t quite get my head round that one.  I did argue with myself about my own possible hypocrisy in that I’ve just taken part in a tourist attraction there involving hair-raising zip-wires and metal ropes wrapped around trees and loony humans swinging from them but there’s really no comparison.  GoApe is as carbon-neutral an activity as it gets and it’s got to be less of an impact than all those highly-polluting, energy-guzzling over-populated, corporate theme parks that appear on every spare bit of land the Western world has left – if Walmart didn’t get there first.

Anyway, that’s the whys and the wherefores out of the way,  the activity – I was terrified all the way, not least because they leave you – the instructors – they leave you to do the courses alone – all five of them!  After a forty minute training session they just leave you.  I couldn’t believe it.  They give you a whistle and tell you to blow it hard five times in an emergency and that’s it.  They stay on the ground while you’re climbing up huge trees and swinging over huge forests.  But they tell me that’s the point, that it’s all about personal responsibility skills, safety, building self-confidence, conquering fears etc..  Hmm.

Well I survived.  I don’t remember when I stopped trying to guess how many feet above sea level we were and I don’t know at what point it was that my legs stopped pretending to be jelly.  It just seemed easier after a while to simply numb my mind and throw myself into it in a ‘what-the-hell’  all or nothing kind of way.

And I can say with some relief and a not-so-small smidging of personal pride, that we completed all five courses.  We even opted for the ‘extreme’  extreme route on the final leg.  Well to be honest, I was all set to ignore the ‘extreme’ extreme route and turn the other other way towards relative safety.  I’d just about had enough hair-raising adventure by then and no longer wanted to play Jane.  But they wouldn’t let me.  My family, they turned against me, said something about me coming this far and regretting it if I chickened out now.  So I was press-ganged onto the final cliff-edge experience.  Well it was just a Tarzan swing really but with a huge drop.  And it was brilliant.  Totally exhilarating.

But I will just whisper (quietly, between you and me) that the cocky, arrogant fella in the group behind us, the one who tutted impatiently when I froze on the first baby Tarzan swing and sighed patronisingly when I got my boot stuck in the net –  yes, him . . .  he took the easy route.

One enlightening and slightly disconcerting thing I discovered is that my kids have no fear whatsoever.  Gulp.

In all honesty, although I loved the whole experience, I’m still not sure how I feel about GoApe in terms of its impact on nature.  The trees must surely take some bashing.  And the wildlife – the birds, the squirrels, the bats – I’d hate to think they’d been forced to flee from their own habitat for the sake of us humans and our endless search for bigger and crazier kicks.

So I’m going to have to do some research . . . in the hope of appeasing my conscience of course.

Drill Baby Drill – Spill Baby Spill – Kill Baby Kill

It’s tediously typical that instead of focusing on the problem at hand, people are bickering about Obama’s perceived anti-Brit rhetoric.  Obama is defending his own ass, never mind trying to decide who’s ass he needs to kick, but excuse me, while people squabble and take offence, the deadly serious ecological and social catastrophe is still happening.

The Prime Minister rushes over to Obama to (suck up) try and limit potential diplomacy failures but why are we more concerned about how this is affecting relations between Britain and America?  People who are feeling offended by the rhetoric should be more offended (and ashamed it has to be said) by the relentless assaults on our dear precious Earth?  What matters is that yet again the dirty industry has messed up big time, on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start.  But as Monbiot implied in his recent article, it will just be cleaned up, swept under the carpet, moved along and oil will remain triumphant:

BP’s insurers will take a hit, so will the pension funds which invested so heavily in it, but, though some people are proposing costs of $40 or even $60bn, I will bet the price of a barrel of crude that the company is still in business ten years from now. Everything else – the ecosystems it blights, the fishing and tourist industries, a habitable climate – might collapse around it, but BP, like the banks, will be deemed too big to fail. Other people will pick up the costs.

BP is trying to reduce the extent of its own accountability while Obama is putting the whole of the blame on BP.  The Mayor of New York is indefensibly defending BP’s CEO who, poor lamb, just wants his life back.  Well there’s more than one punch-bag and those throwing some of the heaviest punches are simply diverting the attention away from their own involvement or inaction.

But for me it’s simple.  I blame the whole of the oil industry.  No-one involved at high levels in the dirty oil business is without blame.  They are all up to their necks in it.  I can’t think of a single oil company who hasn’t cut corners, took major risks, disregarded their environmental and social responsibilities, exploited whole communities, green-washed their activities, destroyed wildlife, or abandoned their pledges to the people whose lives they affect.  All because ultimately, their only concern is to fill their barrels and make unimagineable profits.  Nothing else matters.  Hell, whole countries have been blown up for oil.

As for BP and Deep Water specifically, sure, BP is mainly responsible but not unilaterally.  To paraphrase a guy called Mike Abbott who wrote here, it also stems from years of greed, environmental denial, weak regulations and governments defending big oil and drilling rather than showing some courage.  Mike Abbott also interestingly (and not without merit) calls to account the end user, that’s you and me folks.  He said in his article which is worth quoting in its entirety:

“Ultimately, blaming the entirety of this disaster on BP is like blaming the dealer for the user’s overdose. America’s addiction to oil has made it necessary that we continue to drill for oil in the Gulf to maintain our extravagant energy demand. BP is simply the unscrupulous pusher supplying an unhealthy demand. The cure for this addiction will be unpalatable for many who are loathe to put the environment before profits, cultivate less fossil fuel dependence, and admit the need for regulation by the despised federal government, who the Gulf Coast communities will now expect to force BP to “make them whole.”

It doesn’t need me to tell you that the Deep Water spill is an absolutely tragic and catastrophic man-made event on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start.  The extent of the damage is unknown, probably limitless and it begs the question, how many more of these disasters are we willing to cause before it’s too late?

We all know how much we’ve come to depend on the black stuff but oil drilling is inherently dirty and dangerous and if we fail to see the catastrophic Deepwater disaster as a message that we need to move past fossil fuels then we are a bigger bunch of lazy, greedy, selfish morons than I thought possible.

What’s a free school and other Things That Got Me Mad

There’s been so much that I’ve wanted to blog about this week and I just haven’t found the time but some things annoy me so much that I just have to get it out.  So if you’re curious about what got me typing so furiously, here goes:

# It was the sentencing of that Baroness Scotland’s cleaner that got me started.  I mean, what the hell has she been locked up for?  Her tight-fisted and very wealthy employer ripped off the tax-payers and her punishment is to pay it back.  Her cleaner gets done for scrubbing floors for a measly few quid and her punishment is a prison sentence!  So she lied about her visa but bloody hell, she wasn’t out there beating up old ladies or claiming indecent expenses or anything.  She was working fer feck’s sake!  The mind boggles. It really does.  And I’m glad she’s managed to profit from her woes by telling her story to the papers.  Hell, her wealthy employer who spouts social justice and equality while claiming many thousands in expenses paid her cleaner barely above the minimum wage.

Anyway, now that I’m here, I might as well offload the other stuff so here goes . . .

##  It’s sad that, in this supposedly liberal and tolerant (haha!!) society, David (“the years of public sector plenty are over“) Laws felt the need to hide his sexuality.  He was doing himself and the gay community no favours by keeping it secret but ultimately, it was his decision and he had every right to keep his personal privacy, well, private.

As for the expenses thingy, that’s a different kettle of fish and what can I say except how silly of the man!  So he’s  not one of the worst expenses offenders but he was fully aware of public feeling over this and he still took his chances.  I don’t really care how wonderfully promising he was . . . what a great political loss and all that.  He wasn’t clever enough to realise he’d get caught and as a multi-millionaire himself, he had no need to fiddle the tax-payer in order to pay his partners mortgage for him – but to continue the deceit even after all the expenses hoo-ha while demanding that we suffer cuts in public spending is just too insulting so it’s bloody right that he should resign.  As with the illegal cleaner, we all know that benefit fraudsters and the like get thrown in jail so why should Mr. Integrity get away with fiddling.  If he really wanted to keep his sexuality private why didn’t he just not claim at all?  He’s a multi-millionaire for heavens sake!  It wouldn’t have hurt him.

What I found strangest though was that although his sexuality should be of no consequence, as a gay man, he clearly felt comfortable swapping values with a bunch of institutionally homophobic, nuclear family-obssessed Tory nutters.

### What the heck is a free school?  Seriously, I don’t know.  How do parents start one?  How is it free? Are the schools going to be in people’s houses?  Are the parents going to be the teachers and the grandma’s the welfare assistants (that’s dinner ladies to you and me)?  How will these schools be regulated?  I’m not kidding.  Call me stupid but I really don’t know how to picture these free schools.  And what happens to the kids when the parents get fed up of playing schools?  Do these wonder-parents expect the state schools (which will have been run down to neglectful levels by now) to take them back in? Can these super free schools be selective in who they admit?  I mean are they free to say no to difficult or special-needs kids so that they might remain exclusive and high up in the league tables?  What about anti-discrimination laws and stuff?  Can these free schools be exempt from them?  Will they be allowed to have whites only schools?  Will Mad Melanie Phillpots scream and stamp her feet at the number of Islamic schools popping up?  Questions, questions.

All this talk of competition driving up the standards is a bit worrying when it comes to education because it usually results in inequality whereby the middle-classes benefit and the poorest slip further down as usual.  And so it goes that those who already have it all shall be given more and those who hath very little shall have it taken away.

And why does this silly government wish to take power away from the local education authorities and give it to private enterprise and invite Outstanding schools to become Academies when, as Charles Tyrie from Nottingham pointed out in this letters article, it’s the local education authorities that have delivered the ‘Outstanding’ status of these schools.  Is it a case of thanks for doing all the hard work, now bugger off?  And more concerns – to paraphrase a paragraph from aforementioned Letters article, all those school services (IT, payroll, personnel, training, school dinners etc.)  that were provided by the councils will be sold to the Academies by sponsors – with profit in mind.  Yep, I can smell private profiteering.  I always can when the Tories are around.  I’m just not comfortable with the fact that private firms are about to have a huge influence on the education and wider school life of our children.  And after reading said Letters page, my suspicion is confirmed.  To quote Patti Rundall . . .

Commercial sponsorship of “education” is not philanthropy – it assists the corporate agenda on many levels. Not only does it blur the boundaries between advertising, marketing and education; it helps the most dangerous corporations build public trust and re-establish themselves as forces for good. Before long the curriculum is distorted in favour of business interests – and our children start believing that companies can be trusted to regulate themselves.

Gulp!

#### Probably the Thing That Got Me Mad the most is the BP oil leak.  Well I say mad but utterly heartbroken and dismayed is closer to how I feel.  It doesn’t need me to tell you that it’s an absolutely tragic and catastrophic man-made event on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to start.  I imagine Obama now severely regrets allowing the field to be opened for exploration but we all know that hindsight is a pretty useless ability and Obama should know that if Sarah Palin thinks it’s right then it very definitely isn’t.

It’s just terrible to see all that destruction and loss of life by such a dirty, uncleanable fossil fuel that the oil-heads have come to love so much that they will pursue it endlessly, risking any and every disastrous consequence in order to fill their barrels.

BP has apparently been downplaying the level of devastation that has occurred and this is dangerous in itself because it’s misleading and the destruction is ongoing.  From what I’ve heard, the extent of the damage is unknown, probably limitless and it begs the question, how many more of these disasters are we willing to cause before it’s too late?

We all know how much we’ve come to depend on the black stuff but if this disaster doesn’t demonstrate just how dirty and dangerous oil drilling is then I really doubt that we will ever, ever learn, such is the stupidity of humans.

…………

Well, that’s it I think.  The end of Things That Got Me Mad.  Well there’s more but I want to think happy thoughts now so here’s a picture or two of where we were last week.  Please note that we actually climbed that waterfall.  And you may be amused to know that I fell while walking through Malham village, right in front of a café and a pub full of people sitting at the tables outside, enjoying the weather and being entertained by the stunts of a loony woman who can’t tie the laces of her walking boots . . . and kids rolling on the floor laughing at their undignified mother making a complete arse of herself.  But I soldiered on.  We climbed Gordale Scar (no mean feat I can tell you) and jumped and skipped across the limestone pavements to Malham Tarn.  And on the way back we rescued a little lamb who got lost from its frantic mother.  A lovely day full of sunburnt shoulders, freckles, squashed butties and water.  Lot’s of water.   Well it was HOT!

Erm, I really hurt my elbow when I fell.  Thank you.

ConDem-ed

I’m trying to be grown up about it, I really am but I’m actually feeling physically sick at the sight of the new couple.  After all those debates and the bitching about each other, we’re now expected to believe they are the best of friends.  Hell they’ve spun it into something they actually always wanted . . . almost planned for even.

I want to be mature and philosophical about it but I just can’t help wanting to throw up copious amounts of bile when I see them on TV holding hands and exchanging glances.  It just seems wrong and I have to slap my face hard to stop myself from wanting it all to fail.

I know we have to look beyond all that and think of the needs of the country blah, blah but try as I might, I can’t find much to be optimistic about.  I can’t help thinking that the Tories, before long, will dominate or ignore the LibDems (are they still calling themselves LibDems btw?) and will push through with their own policies.  They will pay lip-service to the Lib Dems political requests and will pretend to look into them then they will do what they want.  Remember, the Tories didn’t have a mandate to govern but because of this partnership, they’ll do it anyway.

Also, how is it right that both parties can play cards with their pre-election pledges that they made to gain our votes?  Pledges that people based their votes on?  Why are they allowed to agree to give up certain key policies that they campaigned on and on which people based their choices when they cast their vote?  Oh how easily they can they scrap key pledges for a seat at the power-table.  Mis-sold is the word that comes to mind.  And how the hell does Cleggy get to be deputy Prime Minister?  What the feck is going on?  His party won the least votes out of the main three and he is allowed such huge influence.

I just can’t see this as a good thing.  I always believed that the Lib Dems were a compassionate party with a healthy and diverse bag of caring policies and I just can’t accept that they jumped so easily into bed with the Tories – a political party renowned for it’s elitist self-interest, privilege and scant regard for the poor and the vulnerable.

No, my gut feeling is . . . to throw up.

On Tory-hating and Political Hopelessness

I watched the Prime Ministerial debate on Thursday and I’m going to make one of those bold statements now – one of those impulsive, heat-of-the-moment comments that are impossible to live up to but we say them anyway because at that time it’s the only way to vent our frustrations.  You know the ones I mean – like when we yell at our kids that we’re going to ground them for a year if they don’t behave, knowing full well that it’s utterly infeasible to ground them for a whole year and the discipline is totally lost on them because they know it too so they usually just ignore us and carry on doing what they were told not to do.

Anyway, here’s my grand and bold statement (so grand and bold that I’m going to use bold type to say it) . . .

If that pathetic, patronising prick of a person David Cameron becomes our Prime Minister in May, I am going to leave the country and I bloody well mean that!

Let’s hope to goodness that my grand and bold statement is not put to the test although whatever the outcome is there’s little to look forward to, apart from a much-needed Green MP in Westminster which is looking more and more likely as the campaign unfolds. Yay to that.  The Greens have launched their campaign manifesto which you can read here but it deserves a post on its own so more on that later but reality tells us that it’s one of the the main three, Labour, Lib-Dem and Tories that we will have to put up with for another four years.  I really don’t like it when people say, they’re all the same.  I think it shows a lack of thinking but do you know what?  They’re all the same.  So laws of physics, maths, whatever, dictates that the outcome will be not good.

Do you know, the Tories in my area have recently developed a very keen interest in the welfare and happiness of myself and my family.  They’ve been sending me regular updates on their political party plans and they even call round on sunny evenings for friendly doorstep chats.  It’s truly touching.  After all these years without a whiff of a councillor, MP or community representative, I now have several of them outside my house on an almost daily basis.  And if they don’t visit in person, they send me lots of lovely mail, hand-written no less with lovely glossy, forest-friendly pamphlets to accompany the letters.

It’s amazing how, after years of absence, they’re suddenly falling over themselves to tend to my needs and wishes.  I wonder if the May election has anything to do with their sudden urge to introduce themselves.  Someone ought to tell that smarmy, bossy leader of theirs that Boris Johnson did not introduce the Living Wage.  Admiration and kudos for that commendable policy goes to our dear red Ken.

Progressive??  No, reactionary.  Radical??  Laugh-out-loud funny.  And utterly opportunistic.

Of course, you could argue that at least the Tories are making the effort to reach me unlike the other parties but when you consider the agenda and the fact that they’ve been nowhere near me for the past four years and more, I can only view their new friendliness with deep and snarling cynicism and basically, they can all go to hell.