A gram is better than a damn
Attention shoppers, and ladies that means you: now that marriage, mortgage and maternity are the new must-have items in today’s post-credit-crunch-pre-Torygeddon social control bonanza, there’s a new lifestyle drug on the market. It won’t help you dance all night, shunt you through a red-eyed work deadline or – heaven forbid – encourage you to go to bed with random strangers; it won’t even make you lose weight. It’s called Filibanserin, and it’s here to help you please your man.
As any fool knows, in this all-the-sex all-the-time society the only functional couples are the ones who are going at it like crack-addled bunnies night after hard-shagging night, whatever their age or personal preference. Your duty as a woman is to provide your male partner with the sexual release he needs. Don’t fancy sex with hubby tonight? Let’s not be silly enough to question mandatory heteronormative monogamy or a culture that frames heterosexual intercourse as the ultimate panacaea: the problem, little lady, is with you. You have a disease called Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, and Filibanserin can fix you.
According to Boehringer-Ingelheim, which just happens to make and sell Filibanserin, HSDD is “a form of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD)” affecting around 10% of women. It is “a medical condition characterised by a decrease in sexual desire…. the condition can negatively impact a woman`s life and her relationship with her partner.” continue reading… »
Citizens’ response to the economic crisis
Earlier this year, London Citizens asked its member organisations to come up with a ‘citizens’ response to the economic crisis’.
Thousands of people were involved in these discussions, and the following priorities were agreed:
continue reading… »
How to help the homeless
Guest post by Cllr Patrick Murray
Ten years ago, at the age of 19, I was homeless. I had been suffering from depression for several years and my life was really on a downward spiral. I lost count of how many colleges I walked away from and jobs I messed up. I had been in hospital at the age of 17, on an adult ward. I had lived in a halfway house. Nothing had worked. So when I got discharged from the hospital I was in, after an argument with one of the doctors, I didn’t have many options. I turned up at the door of the homeless shelter for young people in Oxford and stayed there.
What I saw on the streets were a lot of people who had been repeatedly let down by society and the state. People who had been discharged from the care system with nowhere to go. People who had left the army and been unable to cope with civilian life, to give two examples.
Some of the faces I see on Oxford’s streets now are recognisable from my time. They’re a lot older, and they disappear for stretches at a time, but they’re still around. They’ve fallen through the cracks in our system so many times by now. I’ll be honest – I feel guilty that I got out and somehow they didn’t. So why did I get lucky? continue reading… »
Cameron: More to be done on workplace bullying
Anthony Painter has nothing but praise for David Cameron’s stance on workplace bullying…
Can I just say that I categorically agree with the statement on bullying that David Cameron issued to the National Bullying Helpline in September of this year:
“Stamping out bullying in the workplace and elsewhere is a vital objective. Not only can bullying make people’s lives a misery, but it harms business and wider society too.
Now it seems he has a perfect opportunity to put his views into practice…
A News of the World reporter who suffered from a culture of bullying <b>led by former editor Andy Coulson, who is now David Cameron’s head of communications</i>, has been awarded almost £800,000 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination.
Anthony asks the question…
“Perhaps Mr Cameron could give his reaction and say how he intends to demonstrate his commitment to making workplace bullying a ‘thing of the past’?”
30th anniversary of attack on Islam’s holiest site
Thirty years ago this month, religious extremists pulled off an audacious attack on Islam’s holiest site in Mecca, storming the Grand Mosque in Mecca at the start of the hajj, and demanding an end to the Saudi rulers’ process of modernising the country.
A media blackout and the developing Iran hostage crisis helped keep the story off the front pages, but what followed led to the Faustian pact between the Saudi royal family and religious conservatives that sparked the growth of global Wahhabism, and the religious fundamentalist movement it spawned.
With the help of an interview with Yaroslav Trofimov, foreign correspondent for the Wall Street and one of the few writers to study the siege and its impact, our friends at the new website ‘The Samosa’ have taken a look at this under-reported event and how it influenced the world we live in today, radicalising Osama bin Laden and helping to fund the Taliban.
You can read the whole story here.
Do not fear a crooked shadow
This is a guest post by Sarah Brown
On Saturday, two events took place within a few hundred metres of each other in central London. The first was the London vigil for the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, where trans people come together to remember those who met their deaths simply because they were trans, or were perceived as trans. This was a quiet and emotional affair.
Emotional in perhaps a different way was the London Reclaim the Night march, a march ostensibly aimed at highlighting the fear and violence women face can face simply because we are women.
As a transsexual woman I attended the former event, but not the latter, ironically because of fear. After the vigil, myself and some friends bumped into the march on our way to get food, and it got me thinking.
I think “facing ones fear” is a cost-benefit thing; I’m scared to go on the RTN march, and I know lots of other trans women are. Ironically, I’m scared to go on it for a reason which may be very similar to the reason those women on the march did go on it…
When a woman walking home alone, in the darkness, she might encounter a man, or group of men walking along. These men probably intend the woman no harm at all, but quite a few men do intend harm, or at the very least, they intend to subject her to verbal and possibly physical harassment. Lots of women therefore treat all men as potentially suspect until proven otherwise out of simple self preservation. When hearing this, lots of men tend to protest – “But I’m not like that!”, they’ll say. Chances are they’re not, but we don’t know, and it pays to err on the side of caution, because erring the other way only has to go wrong once.
Compass launch ‘In Place of Cuts’ Report
Compass will be launching their report ‘In Place of Cuts’ in Committee Room 12 at the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday 25th November.
This report calls for new top rate of tax and for the 10p tax band to be reintroduced, as part of measures which would cost higher earners an extra £42bn, cut spending in areas such as Trident, ID cards by £15bn, and cut taxes for lower earners by £10bn.
The full report can be found here.
Laws matter; politicians don’t
IT news site The Register has spotted the first person ever to be sent to jail for refusing to give the police the keys to their encrypted files under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.
Unsurprisingly, he’s not an extremist or a terrorist or any kind (neither white supremacist nor Islamist fundamentalist) – he’s just mentally ill with an odd relationship with society:
With a deep-seated wariness of authorities, he did not trust his interviewers. He also claims a belief in the right to silence – a belief which would later allow him to be prosecuted under RIPA Part III.
Normal Service will be resumed shortly…
As you may have noticed, earlier today LC’s webhosts had a bad attack of the gremlins, or perhaps Murdochs, causing their entire network to fall over for several hours.
Thankfully, the parrot turned out not be a Norwegian Blue but this has put us a bit behind, hence the lack of posts today and a backlog of emails I’ve got to try and sort out later this evening.
All things being equal, we should be back to normal tomorrow morning, providing we can work out what normal is in the first place.
The Truth about Immigration – The migrants you don’t hear about in the tabloids
Fact: The population of the UK rose by 3.737 million people between 1990 and 2007.
Fact: Total net migration to the UK between 1990 and 2007 was 2.097 million, 56% of the total increase in population. Of that figure, 1.859 million stems from the period from 1997-2007.
Fact: Between 1997 and 2007, 1.292 million people were granted the right to settle in the UK.
Fact: Between 1997 and 2007, 1.646 million former migrants became British Citizens.
Fact: Net immigration rose significantly under New Labour. There is no denying that fact.
For some people those figures, alone, are sufficient reason to put up the shutters and declare that Britain is full, even if they barely scratch the surface when it comes to telling the real story of immigration over the last 12-18 years.
For example, although total net migration amounts to 1.859 million between 1997 and 2007, the number of people currently living in the UK with full settlement rights has risen by only 480,000. Britain is a net exporter of its own citizens, 811,000 in the period from 1997-2007 on top of the 297,000 (net) who left the UK between 1991 and 1996. So somewhere in the world right now, possibly Spain, someone is sitting down to read today’s copy of the Daily-o Mail-o and complaining bitterly to themselves about all the bloody Brits who’ve been going over there to take their jobs.
Migration is not a zero sum game. The net increase in Britain’s migrant population stems from population movements involving 12.454 million people between 1991 and 2007 (9.076 million since 1997) into and out of the UK. Of the 4.586 million foreign nationals who entered the UK between 1997 and 2007, 1.838 million had moved on by the end of 2007 and a further 1.51 million were still here only on a temporary basis, including 454,000 whose immigration status remains uncertain as they await a ruling on an asylum application. Of those pending applications, the data suggests that. A quarter, may be granted the right to settle or extended leave to remain in the UK, although it may be less than that as the UK tightens its approach to dealing to asylum seekers and most may eventually have to leave.
Once you drill down into the data, past the few scraps of information that make the tabloid headlines, the picture becomes ever more complex. It’s that picture we are endeavouring to present.
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» The real agenda behind Telegraph’s abortion investigation
» How Scotland Yard monitors prying bloggers and journalists
» When disabled people want to work – employers can hold the back
» Revealed: the reality behind Workfare and why it doesn’t work
» Job snob? No, I’ve got the T-shirt
» Why country-by-country reporting matters to our wellbeing
» If Unions want to become stronger, they need to modernise
» Why work “reforms” in Spain are a warning for workers across Europe
» Five things you need to know about the NHS bill
» Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.
» Laziness levels in Britain getting lazier, wails government
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