PC Insanity

No, I am not referring to the wave of madness that grips you when your computer malfunctions but political correctness morphed from a blessed guard from the nauseating attitudes of the past to a pedantic scourge to terrify the outspoken into silence.
I am particularly referring to Diane Abbott who committed the cardinal sin of saying:-




Now this was in reply to Bim Adewunmi objecting to the lumping "the Black Community" into a homogenous whole "I do wish everyone would stop saying 'the black community' though. WHICH ONE?"

I believe Diane Abbot was only really guilty of generalization in respect of white people; ironic as that was pretty much what Bim Adewunmi was complaining about in respect of black people! To qualify as racism it should really have been pejorative - complaining about divide and rule tactics isn't really the same as calling all white people lazy, work shy or dirty. Nor is it anywhere approaching sticking on bed sheets and grabbing a rope. As a white person I am going to generalize now. White people need to cut comments like this a bit more slack because we should all still be writhing with guilt for the past for at least another 100 years.

No Fool. Like and Old Fool!

We decided to go away this New Years Eve - normally we are the NYE equivalents of Scrooge "I'm not paying THAT much to enjoy myself dagnabit!" But this year we booked up for a Murder Mystery Evening with the Killing Game, with a disco after. It was fantastic! I didn't get the murderer right (sigh and I am so good when its in a book or on TV!) but our table got on like a house on fire. I have even got to THAT age...the age where hotel discos play tunes from my youth cos I am that old. This resulted in a lot of excessive pogoing and skanking and yes, I was crippled the next day!

Needless to say it also involved a lot of drinking and eating as well so the next day we decided to be virtuous and walk some of it off. As we are National Trust members, we went to one of their properties, Baddesley Clinton. Oh the satisfaction of sailing past waving your membership cards knowing that you have already more than recouped the membership fee!

It was such an interesting house and the room guides were so friendly it took us nearly 2 hours to get round it - and it really is pretty small! Its not getting on but we don't feel we have had a "proper" walk to blow the cobwebs off so we decide to do the nature trail too as its the shorter of the two walks there - 45 min. So off we head following little green National trust signs..or so we thought. We didn't notice anything awry when the going got rather Herculean for a NT ramble...after all it had been raining...we didn't suspect anything, although the walk was not showing signs of being anything but circular..ok we did worry a bit when we were sent down a road...but it was only after an hour when we should have been back at the house that we double checked the green signs to find we had actually wandered off on the Heart of England walk and god only knows where that was going to end! We turned back the way we came, by now somewhat knackered and with the light fading and struggled back to the car. Needless to say I was stiff as a board the next day!


The end result is that I am still waddling ...sigh. No fool like an old fool eh?

30 November strike

So admittedly, being a housewife, I don't belong to a Union...or have a pension..or well ..a wage. But that did not stop me striking on 30 November! Nor did the stinking cold that started the Sunday before - although it brought me to a crashing halt after 30 November! The husband, for his sins, has a vocation to teach - it's inconvenient and it will keep us poor but, as someone who never found their passion in a work sense, I do envy him his dedication. I don't think this is enough of a bonus for the government to shit on him from a great height though and it is my pension too, so I was happy to join in on the 30th.
He is getting a huge pay cut in February as it is (although, on the bright side, that will reduce how much his pension contributions are increased!) Now, when I did work, I was actually a pension specialist, so this is an area that I am familiar with. The last Labour government were responsible for killing the defined benefit scheme in the private sector, in an act of myopic stupidity that still leaves me frothing at the mouth. Not only did it deprive thousands and thousands of people of benefits in retirement (which will only have to be topped up by Welfare Benefits) but it destroyed the major source of long term investment, damaging the economy and I believe, contributing to the current economic crisis.

On 30 November, I was on the picket line at 8 am, then there was a march though the town where we live. About 1500 people marched  - pretty impressive - culminating in speeches that stressed the need to raise the benefits for the private sector, not just use their inadequate benefit levels to decrease the public sector ones. I thoroughly enjoyed the day, even if it did worsen my cold into an illness that persisted for 2 weeks and even though I have the feeling we will not win, even though we should.

Cutting pensions to solve a short term or even medium term economic problem is a huge mistake. Pensions are the stew of benefits - they need to simmer for years, even decades to be effective and the cuts this government propose will not provide that much relief in the short term - commitments have already been made to pensioners - but it will irreparably damage the ability of many to retire on any kind of meaningful income in the medium and long term. And who will foot the massive benefit bill then?

Occupy and the 99% Movement

I have nothing but good wishes for the Occupy and 99% movement - I know its not perfect, but it is heartening to think that there are other people out there who would like to live in a fairer world. If the number of ways it is attacked are anything to go by, it may even be threatening the status quo!
It is a spontaneous expression of disperate people saying "enough is enough"..so it is accused of having no formulated ideas or policies....
It is supported by some organsations like UK Uncut so it is accused of being fuelled by organised trouble-makers...
It has many eccentrics amongst its ranks so it is dismissed as a loony fringe....
It has some people who work or study so it is criticised for being part-time...
It was forced away from the banking district and into the square in front of St Paul's so it is criticised for interupting the business of the cathedral...
The truth is that it represents the 99% of us that do not own all the wealth, we work, we study, we have different political beliefs, we are sane, we are loony...we are the people. We want fairness. We want less disparity between the rich and poor. We want politicians to do their jobs and come up with the policies to achieve this.

Anyone else got deja vu?

As a teenager in the 1980's, I pulled on my Doc Marten's, soaped up the spikes in my hair and protested. The Tories were in power, Labour was weak and various fascist organisations were looking to capitalise on the despair and frustrations of the time to gain new recruits to the philosophy that all woes are someone else's fault, (some "foreigner's" no doubt!)
Today, deja vu hits me like a bucket of water in the face and its not altogether unpleasant. The younger me has re-awakened. After two decades of disillusionment and frustration, I have hope again. Maybe this time, in opposing what we know we do not want, we will get that much closer again to what we do want. For all of us it will be a little different, but the general themes of fairness, equality, freedom and decency are common enough ground to build on.
First step for me is attending the Unite Against Fascism march in London on November 6th....now where did I put those Doc Marten's?