Tomorrow, Amnesty International holds a panel discussion on the impact of religious fundamentalism on gay and women’s rights. The speakers are playwrights Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti and Jo Clifford, and artist Sarah Maple. I spoke briefly to Jo and Sarah about their experiences:

Keen churchgoer Jo Clifford knows exactly what it is to attract the ire of today’s irrelevant, but loud, Christian extremists.

Some 300 protestors turned out for the 2009 opening night of her play Jesus Queen of Heaven – a piece where Jesus Christ is presented as a transsexual, and in a skirt. The play, which was performed at the 2009 Glasgay arts festival, was part of an attempt by Clifford to appraise the hostility she faced in her own life as a transsexual. A committed and active Christian, she turned to the bible, and although she saw ‘no scriptural basis for prejudice against gays, or transsexuals there,’ she theorised that society may have taken its lead from ‘god’s suppression of the female aspects of his nature.’

Her cardinal sin seems to have putting Jesus Christ in a frock, and taking the public dime to do it. The Scottish Arts Council and Culture and Sport Glasgow were among the Glasgay sponsors: here’s The Telegraph’s Damian Thompson in small, gaseous, piece about the wrongs of funding transart and the BBC’s failure to give adequate airtime to homophobic rage. continue reading… »

Calls for changes to the Dangerous Dogs Act are becoming strident and oh-so-political (step forward Kit Malthouse). I’ve been working with the Dogs Trust and other groups on this article about the act and perceptions of dangerous dogs:

I’ve owned dogs all my life: labradors, retrievers, yorkies and a large, lovable, hairy number whose father could have been anything. “Wow,” people would say when she walked past. “What’s that?” I have a pit breed dog, see. I wanted to give a good home to a dog that might otherwise not have found one.

It’s been nearly 20 years since the dangerous dogs act made it into law – and to the top of our (rather competitive) rankings for misguided legislation. Neither people, nor dogs have come out in front with the DDA: those who know and care for dogs and people are – well, baying for change.
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This is the third in a series of interviews (the others are here) with people in West Lancashire who are low paid, and/or rely on public services.

Today: Joe Nelson, the longtime chair of the large and thriving Skelmersdale junior football league. He’s lived in Skelmersdale his whole life and is still working, in his 70s. Nelson sees football as an important means of keeping Skem kids off the street. It’s also a potential route into the big time – Everton and Liverpool scouts regularly stop by, although Nelson doesn’t care for that.

Excerpt:

“Noticeable too is the number of tiny footballers playing to a spectacular standard of finish. Parents on the sideline at one game watch as one little kid, who is standing a good few yards out from goal, curls a near-perfect free kick towards the top left hand corner of the net. The ball sort of hangs in the air, then drops like a falcon. Amazingly, the ginger haired boy in goal is equal to this flightpath. He launches himself into the air, sails towards the ball on a straight anti-gravity horizontal, and swats the ball clear with both hands.”

Read the whole story.

Tomorrow night, tireless leftie grafter John McDonnell speaks at a London meeting called to kick off a fightback against public sector union Unison’s vicious witchhunting of popular anti-Labour union activists.

Yours truly will be in close attendance, as will everyone who thinks the future should include a representative Labour party and democratically-run trade unions (I trust I won’t be the sole attendee).

Right now, we have neither a representative Labour party, nor democratically-run trade unions – particularly in Unison’s case.

Unison’s New Labour luvvn’ bureaucrats have lined up against shopfloor activists and members who believe that this Labour party has betrayed working people and that the union must stop funding the party as a result. Things ain’t been pretty for a while.

Some of Unison’s unelected officials appear at employment tribunal next week, accused of running a very nasty campaign to remove activists who insist that Unison cuts its links with Labour.

As I wrote earlier this year, these activists:

“have long held that Unison ought to cut the Labour party loose – and that’s a line that is making sense to more union members than Unison cares to see. The government’s war in Iraq, various doomed love-ins with big business, privatising of public services, and failure to repeal this country’s draconian anti trade union laws have stirred a poisonous – and possibly permanent – loathing for this Labour government in the average union member.”

So it is that Unison members are demanding an independent inquiry into allegations that union officials are actively jettisoning people who dare to dump on Labour’s record.

I will report back from tomorrow’s event. Suffice to say for now that Labour party members dying for reelection should take note. Unison has a million members and they’re very aware that their hardest-working shopfloor representatives are getting the boot for going off New Labour message.

The good people of the grassroots are buzzing with it. Throw them a bone and you might get something back. Do the math, if you will.

This is the second in a series of interviews (first one’s here) with people in West Lancashire who rely on public services.

The people in this article live on the rundown New Church Farm estate in Skelmersdale, just outside of Liverpool. Two – Neil Furey and Barry Nolan – are also local Labour councillors.

Excerpt:

“The broken gate we’re peering through leads to a backyard that is littered with torn rubbish bags, old takeout boxes, rotting food and chicken bones, abandoned toys, broken pipes, smashed concrete, and several hundred empty and crushed Fosters’ cans.

‘This is private landlords,’ Furey says. ‘They rent the places out to Polish and Portuguese immigrants (who work as pickers and packers on the farms around Skem).’

Nolan says that the estate was based on a Cornwall fishing village concept – a maze of small streets, hidden doorways and houses fronting walkways, with cars being parked away from homes. Unfortunately, he says, ‘the main thing that the design built into the estate was crime.’

The BNP knows enough to tap into this: this very morning, a local newspaper is running a story by a BNP member who claims Skelmersdale estate designs prove that weird (read foreign) architectural concepts baffle locals and lead to distress and isolation.”

Read the whole story.

Reposted – the site that this post links to was down on Friday.

Over the last little while, yours truly has been spending time talking to people who need public services, but feel (and often are) excluded from the lofty political circles that will decide the future of those services.

From today, we’ll publish excerpts from these interviews and links to the full articles on a new site.

First up is the West Lancashire town of Skelmersdale – an old ‘new town’ badly in need of regeneration. Poverty is an issue for some Skem locals. Fury at their powerlessness is another. Everyone I spoke to was a Labour voter. I spoke to some Labour councillors. Tory councillors have refused to talk to date.

(Regeneration plans for Skelmersdale have been threatened by Everton and Tesco plans for a stadium and retail park in nearby Kirkby (Skelmersdale is only ten minutes’ drive from Kirkby). West Lancashire borough council wanted to regenerate Skelmersdale by building Skelmersdale a retail centre of its own, but was unlikely to do so if a bigger retail centre was built in Kirkby. (Last week, the government rejected the Everton and Tesco plans)).

Below is an excerpt from the first of four interview sessions with Skelmersdale locals – everyday people who feel they’ve been abandoned by the political process:

Hazel Scully

Long time Skelmersdale council housing tenant Hazel Scully is pleased that West Lancashire borough council is planning a facelift for run-down Skelmersdale town centre – there’ll be a new high street, shops, cinema, library, sports centre, swimming pool, housing, and a lovely landscaped park to replace the spooky weedfest along the River Tawd that presently serves as Skelmersdale’s main municipal space.

It is just a pity, says Scully bitterly, that she won’t have much chance to enjoy the improvements.

She and everybody else who lives on the town-centre Firbeck and Findon estates will be removed from view as part of the upgrade. The council wants to demolish the estates, shift the occupants elsewhere in the borough, and build homes for private sale in place of Firbeck and Findon.

‘We don’t fit in,’ says Scully glumly as she fiddles with the lace pane that she has draped over the large table in her small kitchen. ‘We don’t fit in with their vision of a new, updated Skem.’

Others suspect an infernal Conservative agenda. ‘Is there gerrymandering going on?’ West Lancashire Labour councillor Jane Roberts says on Save Firbeck – ‘and you do start to wonder [about gerrymandering]‘ she says on the phone.

Read the rest.

Lousy news from the trade union front, people:

The New Labour-loving horrors who run the public sector union Unison have stepped up their campaign to purge their Labour affiliated union of all grassroots socialists and leftwing activists.

We on the left are not pleased.

The union has just banned four of its best grassroots activists – Glenn Kelly (Bromley Unison branch secretary), Suzanne Muna (Unison’s Tenant Services Authority branch secretary), Onay Kasab (Greenwich Unison branch secretary) and Brian Debus (Hackney Unison chair) – from union office for three (Kelly and Kasab), four (Muna) and five (Debus) years.

Their crime? – well, that depends on who you ask, and how highly that person thinks of Labour.

I’m one of the many who believe that Kelly, Kasab, Muna and Debus are being strongarmed out of Unison because they are Socialist party members. They are passionate critics of New Labour, passionately opposed to this government’s privatising of public services, and – and this is doubtless the kicker, as far as Unison’s New Labour lubbers are concerned – galvanising grassroots enthusiasm for Unison to break its formal funding ties with Labour. continue reading… »

The Tories are decimating local services, even as David Cameron claims he’s a great fan of local power: here’s more on local Tories who see the public spending squeeze as a justification to keep flogging public services off to the voracious private sector.

Another windy night in the Tory borough of Barnet, and your reporter is snuggled in with the crowd at yet another Barnet council cabinet meeting, watching and listening as this council’s rightist zealots pour forth another torrent of pro-privatisation, efficiencies horseshit.

As many good burghers of Barnet already know, Barnet Tories are working up a mad, massive and massively unpopular scheme (tweely dubbed Future Shape) for future public service delivery in lucky North London.
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A revised broadcast advertising code will force anti-abortionists to make their dangerous bias clear:

We pro-choicers were happy to note that the BCAP’s just-closed consultation on a revised advertising code included a proposal to allow abortion providers to advertise abortion services on radio and TV.

Equally cheering was the news that the code would include this new rule (11.11 in the code):

‘Advertisements for post-conception pregnancy advice services must make clear in the advertisement if the service does not refer women directly for abortion.’

BCAP’s argument – rightly – is that there ain’t time to waste if you’re thinking of getting an abortion: the longer you leave it, the riskier the procedure is likely to be (the BCAP reference is the renowned 2004 Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ paper on abortion safety and standards).

In other words – you need to know immediately if the ad you’re seeing is for a provider who offers balanced, accurate, post-conception information and abortion (or a referral for one) if that is what you want, or if you’re about to be drafted by an outfit that hopes to pull one back for Jesus Christ by neglecting to mention safe, legal abortion is available, and pumping you full of romantic notions about the realities of an unwanted child. continue reading… »

More on sheltered housing warden cuts in Barnet – an example of the sort of Tory public service cuts we’ll see more and more:

We go now to a tall, brutalist council building in Barnet’s Totteridge and Whetstone, where yours truly is holed up at a cabinet meeting in a large committee room, watching Cllr Mike Freer, the spiritual void who runs Barnet council, brush aside the concerns of elderly sheltered housing residents who are about lose their cherished onsite warden service in Freer’s latest cost-cutting wheeze.

As reported here recently, Barnet council and its financial team – that group of fiscal legends best known for investing (riskily) £27m in Icelandic banks, where the whole pile tanked – claim they need to find £12m in savings to balance books compromised by inadequate central government settlements (ie, it’s Labour’s fault – a point that Labour rubbishes, for what it’s worth), inflation, and a desire to keep council tax increases below three percent as local and national elections loom.

The council believes it can save £950,000 (re-forecast to £400,000 in a rapidly revised proposal for this evening’s meeting) by removing onsite residential wardens (whose tasks include dealing with health and security emergencies, organising GP visits, organising social activities, and checking on residents at least once a day) from sheltered housing scheme. They’d be replaced with a ‘floating’ support service where support workers based at hubs would visit elderly people who met eligibility criteria. continue reading… »

A bit more about the realities of evil Tories on the ground, as we prepare to be governed by them:

Parked high outside Hendon Town Hall is one of those wretchedly dated revolving billboards that councils use to spam the masses with unsubstantiated PR bilge: at various turns of the loop, this one proclaims that the Tory Barnet council is ‘working for a healthy community,’ and ’supporting the vulnerable to live independent and active lives,’ and screeds of other modernisation tripe.

All is not lost, though. There is this evening a nice, large protest group under the billboard – a protest group that is made up of exactly the vulnerable Barnet residents that the council purports to so fervidly support.

These protestors are very pissed off. They are Barnet sheltered housing residents, and they’re picketing this evening’s Barnet council annual meeting to protest at a council proposal to remove permanent on-site wardens (people who help in emergencies, organise GP visits and appointments, and check in with each resident at least once a day) from their sheltered housing blocks and replace the wardens with a ‘floating’ support service, whatever the hell that is. They’re mostly very elderly (in their 80s and even 90s) and at that unlovely point in life where people become too frail to stand. They’re huddled in wheelchairs, or clutching walking-frames, or leaning on carers and chairs.

They’re not too sure what a ‘floating’ support service is, either. The cynics among them have a few ideas – they imagine a system where residents telepathically trip some alarm when dropping dead from heart attack, thus alerting a random officer somewhere in the borough to stop by later on with a shovel.

I understand – kind of – the term ‘floating service’ to mean a support officer of some stripe will stop a various housing blocks across the borough, to meet briefly with anyone who needs – well, supporting.

Bill Campbell, Barnet council’s unnaturally oily senior press creature, refused point-blank to say what a floating service was when I told him that I didn’t quite grasp the idea – Campbell said he couldn’t say what a floating service was until the cabinet voted for or against the concept at its 8 June meeting. I said that someone must know what a floating service was, if only to be in a position to put the concept of it before the cabinet. Campbell said again that he couldn’t say what the concept would be. I thought probably somebody could. This went on for longer than was strictly fascinating. Suffice to say a floating service is not one the council wants to brag about. Let’s return on 8 June. continue reading… »

A few thoughts on the ongoing Tamil protest in London that the mainstream media has largely ignored. Here’s a report written over the last week:

Tuesday 14 April, 6pm:

Down at parliament square, a small marquee has been pitched – probably less than 300m from the place where our mighty prime minister and his various hangers-on bitch about the consequences of hiring Derek Draper and other vital matters of state, etc.

A young man called Prarameswaran Subramaniyam sits at the back of the marquee, wrapped in a pile of blankets. Subramaniyam is 28 and a Tamil. He’s in the eighth day of a hunger strike that he hopes will draw world attention to the plight of Tamil civilians being slaughtered by the Sri Lankan government in northern Sri Lanka – the latest awful chapter in the famously horrific 60-year-old conflict between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority.

Anyway – the publicity returns of Subramaniyam’s hunger strike remained disappointing at the time of writing. The protestors have yet to be offered a substantive UK government statement on the conflict, and – apart from a handful of reports last week when Tamil protestors occupied Westminster bridge at rush hour and started chucking themselves into the Thames – mainstream journalism has managed to ignore the fact of this loud eight-day-old protest almost entirely. Alas for UK Tamils, journalism has been at full stretch on important topics such as measuring the gap between Susan Boyle’s looks and talent, and probing Dolly and Damian McBride.
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With more than two million people unemployed, house repossessions on the rise and falling incomes – health, education, housing support, welfare and job support become ever more important. Local authorities are already reporting a rise in demand for debt counseling, housing advice, employment guidance, community finance and business support. The DWP has had to take on extra staff to cope with growing demand.

So this is hardly the time to play private sector lottery with funds meant for the public sector. And yet, public sector leaders continue to promote the lie that private provision of public services is cheaper, more efficient, and inevitable. Pity too, that the public isn’t buying it.
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I report here and here, and here, on the bitter fight that Hammersmith and Fulham residents and staff are having with the Hammersmith and Fulham Tory council over staff and service cuts.

Things seem finally to have reached boiling point: at a union AGM last week, Hammersmith and Fulham Unison members voted unanimously to ballot for strike action to support contact centre workers who are threatened with compulsory redundancy. I have a report on the contact centre story here.

A few thoughts:

Much has been made by Tory commentators of Hammersmith and Fulham’s genius for reducing council tax – but that’s only one half of the picture.
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The recent British Jobs for British Workers union strikes sparked a big debate on whether UK firms were right to employ people from Europe to undercut local workers. We may want to allow Europeans the opportunity to work in the UK, but how far should this go?

It is not unusual for British firms to now actively look for staff outside the country and undermine conditions bargained for here. In fact, these laws offer firms unprecedented bargaining power to companies. In such cases, why wouldn’t workers feel angry?
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Yet another one for the government’s ‘helping ourselves to your liberties’ file:

The British Journal of Photography reports that from February 16, the thrill that is photographing coppers acting like arses will be taken from us by new laws ‘that allow for the arrest – and imprisonment – of anyone who takes pictures of officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’.’

The BJP continues:

‘A person found guilty of this offence could be liable to imprisonment for up to 10 years, and to a fine.

‘The law is expected to increase the anti terrorism powers used today by police officers to stop photographers, including press photographers, from taking pictures in public places. continue reading… »

A few thoughts on yesterday’s Gaza rally at Trafalgar Square (photo link at the end):

Actually, my main thought about yesterday’s rally pertains to the lack of inspired political leadership we have on this, and so many other, issues. I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of Gaza, but absolutely none for the self-appointed champions of their cause at this end. Absorbing their rhetoric is a bit like inhaling cement. I stand at protest after protest and wonder why the far left simply can’t connect with the human race, or learn.

But anyway – this is meant to be a brief report, not a pointless bitch, so let’s have a bit on the day’s speakers:

Lindsey German – a woman I keep thinking I want to admire for her intellect and commitment – graced us with a speech that I interpreted as a bloodthirsty ode to Hamas’ right to pursue its end of the nightmare: “This ceasefire is not a ceasefire in any meaningful sense if the Palestinians don’t have the right to defend themselves… they have to have that right to defend themselves when they are under such attack… self defence is no offence, and that applies to the people of Gaza more than to anyone else in the world today…” etc – further proof (as if we needed it) of the SWP’s genius for missing the point entirely as it sprints to salute extremism. continue reading… »

Thought I might as well enter the fray – please see Cath Elliiot’s excellent post below for a questioning of the legitimacy of some of the groups I reference.

Again, New Labour trades women for votes… I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time.

One issue that us feminists must get our myriad acts together on this year is the legal status of prostitution.

In the coming weeks, Jacqui Smith – a politically-expedient goody two-shoes, if there ever was one – provides us with a golden opportunity to unite in favour of keeping all aspects of prostitution legal (and I DON’T include include kidnapping, trafficking, or rape in that catch-all, as you’ll see at the end of this piece*).

As many of you will know (debate has raged on a range of great feminist blogs and at the marvellous Shiraz Socialist, where you’ll find a comprehensive background) Smith’s 2009 wheeze is to squeeze further votes out of the righteous arm of the voting public by tightening prostitution laws at the next readings of the Policing and Crime Bill. Sex workers themselves are opposed to Smith’s proposals – they believe, rightly, that criminalising sex work will exclude them from police help, legal recourse and support, and society itself.

It’s the flagrant dismissal of women that gets so many of us: women are utterly expendable in New Labour eyes. The English Collective of Prostitutes and the International Union of Sex Workers reported that they weren’t even contacted by the Home Office about Smith’s proposals.
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This is the final post reviewing the last chapter of the Communities in Control White Paper launched by Hazel Blears recently.

Chapter 8 looks at how citizens can move beyond being consulted or holding officials to account, to how people can own and run services for themselves, either by serving on local boards and committees, or through social enterprises and cooperatives.

The first question I want to ask Hazel Blears when Hazel blathers on about the joys of handing community assets to the community to operate is: you mean the few assets that New Labour hasn’t allowed to be sold yet, Haze?

I mean really, people – this has not been the golden age of community, or community assets, exactly: swathes of housing stock moved to arms’ length management organisations, schools closed and ownership of new city academies handed to private sponsors, lidos closed, nursery schools shut and nursery places cut, etc, with Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative councils all cheerful offenders.
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Why the Tories will forever be old hat.

Hello, all.

This lengthy piece (tis a bit long – got carried away) is the first in a number that will look at Conservative behaviour on the ground. Yours truly wonders if the Tories are fit for public office, exactly, and/or if social responsibility is really their bag…

This week, staff at Tory council Hammersmith and Fulham will meet to organise a response to the latest attack by the council’s Conservative leadership. What a distasteful attack this one is, too – all council staff have been told they will be dismissed and forced to sign new employment contracts on much-reduced terms and conditions.

So.

I know exactly how the Tory trollies among you will greet this news: you’ll say (sans deliberation, as always) that lazy, fat arsed public sector staff – those you doubtless imagine operate the schools, housing offices, libraries, street cleaning and social services at Hammersmith and Fulham – deserve it (do you class bankers as fat arsed, overindulged public sector workers now, btw?). You’ll say that public sector workers deserve the awful hours, and the lack of union representation and employer sympathy and flexibility that your average working stiff in the private sector gets.

But do they?

I think not.

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