Shame

I remember noticing a poor kid at school.  She was spotty, had greasy hair and her clothes were about a decade behind the fashion.  The only time she ever updated her equipment was when it literally fell apart on her.  I should know, the only time I saw her was when I looked in the mirror in the girl's loos.

Yeah, that spotty, greasy geek was me.  The joys of growing up being a benefits kid.  No matter what you do when you are a benefits kid your differences stand out.  Even then being on benefits came with a heavy does of shame, a thing that seems to be increasing as more and more benefits are reduced or cut all together.

It seems the current Government is good at shame.  Stay at home Mothers who bring their children up themselves instead of leaving up to a child minder are stigmatized, single Mothers even more so.  Disable people only have fifteen minutes visits from their carers, elderly people have to choose between staying warm or having something to eat.

Paul Maynard (Conservative MP) is quoted as saying last week that emergency food parcels shouldn't be given out because people might become reliant on them, stating:

"I value responsibility.  I do not believe that immediate food relief should be the role of the Government."

In other words, "people who are struggling to stay out of debt because they were made redundant in the job cuts we caused should be left to starve because helping them might send the wrong 'message'."

As JK Rowling wrote in 2010,

"Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say 'it's not the money, it's the message'.  When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans and your child is hungry, it is the money."

Yeah, she is now one of the riches people in the UK (though not as rich as she once was, she dropped out of Forbes' billionaires list because she pays her taxes and has given away an estimated $160m to charity) but JK Rowling once was an immigrant, a single mother and a benefit claimant.  She knows how tough it can be when you are living on the bread line.

There isn't anything noble about going hungry.  There isn't anything uplifting in having to choice between feeding yourself or feeding your children.  And there certainly isn't anything character building in being abused at school because you're "the brat of a thief who takes the public's money and hides it by calling it benefits" as one of my younger sister's classmates said when they were in Year Four.

This seems to be genuinely surprising to the current Government and though people like to try to forget this, the previous Government as well (believe me I should know, I was there, remember?).

It seems that governments believe that poverty is caused by personal failing and not the failing of the Government to provide us with stable, sustainable jobs and the using benefits is the result of a lack of personal responsibility rather than doing what you need to make ends meet, just.

Responsibility?  Does the Government actually know what that word means because right now we seem to be using different dictionaries.  It lets children get poorer, to the point that one in five children are now considered to be in poverty and blames "workless" parents for this 'crime'.  Well if you'd provide us with jobs that we could do then we'd darn well do them!

It's about time that made/produced/grown in Britain actually had some pride to go with that label.  Stop taxing every single company that tries it's best to keep it's work force in Britain to its knees, give them a tax break to encourage them to take on even more British workers and then tax the ones that send their work force over seas.  We could still have industry is the Government wasn't so keen on strangling it with taxes.

Poverty causes shame, it's just it's coming down on the wrong side of the scales right now.

Why Do People Make Predictions of Doom?

In answer to the question asked on the BBC News website today I'd like to say this.  It is because the world is such a mess that it looks like it's going to end in seventeen years or so.

Given that there are more pollutants in the air than at any time previous in mankind's history, we are still making bombs while children in Britain starve to death, cancer is on the rise, there are drought threats in our temperate climate zones and the Western World still buys the blood diamonds and gold of Africa, then I'd say that there is plenty of reasons to say that the human race is going to hell in a handcart.

Perhaps the people who make these predicts hope that if they say that if mankind doesn't buck up it's act in seventeen years time then we are going to start suffering then the human race might just take notice of what it is doing and buck up its act.

However, I don't think that it will.  If you read the book of Jeremiah then you will know that people have been making these predictions since the time of Babylon.  Nobody listened to them then and nobody is going to listen to them now.  Why?  Because people don't care.  They want to carry on their lives, not bothering to change, taking what they want when they want it.  It's a case of 'today's alright and we'll deal with tomorrow when it comes'.

Well what if tomorrow comes and you can't deal because the time to deal was today and today has already become yesterday?

It is why I signed up to receive e-mails from SumOfUs .  It takes me, what, five minutes max to sign an online petition to tell Bayer to accept the pesticide ban from the EU and stop trying to sue the EU for 'loss of profits'.  SumOfUs has already done the hard work, they have tracked down the lawsuits and set up the petition to tell the greedy where to get off, all I have to do is put my name on the line and then do my best not to buy stuff from Bayer and other companies like it.

Think about, five minutes out of your day and then being more conscientious of where you buy your stuff.  Doesn't take much does it but it could just change the world.

Cause its not the big things that change the world, not really.  It's not the big predictions of doom that make people sit up and take notice.  It is the little things.  Things like, instead of having a large coffee at the Café, you settle for the medium and use the spare change to buy a Big Issue.

And if you don't believe me about how the little things change the world, think about how much the world changed when one black man walked out of a jail cell in South Africa and decided to forgive those that put him there?

To Cull or Not to Cull

So the government has decided to go ahead with the badger cull.

Alright, I can see why some people might not like these creatures, especially the urban variety that is highly destructive of peoples gardens and other such property.  I, myself, could see the point if they said that, as we now have about 290,000 badgers running loose in the UK and they are now being forced out of the countryside and into the cities were they are a pest, they were going to trap and cull the urban badger.  If nothing else it is probably a mercy on the badgers as all animal surveys that study the urban populations say that the urban variety suffer from more diseases than their country cousins due to their association with humans.  What does that say about humans.

But no, apparently they are going to cull them out in the countryside because they spread TB.  At least that is what the head government vet said so that is what everybody is expected to believe.  Rather like the report of weapons of mass non-existence, I mean destruction, out in Iraq.

And that's rather the point as to why the badger has become such a point of passionate protest for so many people.  There is no correlation between badger population and bovine TB, despite what some farmers think.  Scotland has a widespread badger population and is virtually TB free.  Northern Ireland has numerous badgers but no TB cases in their cattle. Why is this?  Because Scotland and Ireland still have yearly TB vaccines for their cattle, whereas in Britain the cattle have a yearly TB test and if that flags up positive then the cow is destroyed.  In short Scotland and Ireland still run by the maxim 'prevention is better than cure' and it shows.

When people protest against the badger cull, they are not so much protesting against the culling of badgers as protesting against the ignorant mind set that is behind it.  If the government had used the argument that the urban badger was a danger to children and pets and therefore had to go then fair enough.  Badgers aren't meant to live in a city anyway .  But it is because the government tries to fob it off with a phony excuse that people get mad.  We are not stupid and we object to being treated like it.

The only thing is if badgers must be culled because they spread TB to cattle, when are cattle going to be culled because they spread TB to humans?

Abortion

Does that word make you uncomfortable?

It should do, especially in the light of something I recently discovered.

After 1991 the legal upper limit for 'social' abortions (i.e. abortion instead of contraception) was lower to 24 weeks of pregnancy.  However, abortion on the grounds of disability became allowable up to birth.  Before this all abortions had to be done before 28 weeks.

Apparently many people are aware of this provision but I wonder if they realise that the actual wording of the bill is not 'disabled' but rather 'seriously handicapped' and what some medical practitioners have take this to mean.

Some medical practitioners have decided that 'seriously handicapped' includes conditions such as a cleft palate or a club foot.  While both these conditions are unsightly, they are so easily corrected by cosmetic surgery after birth that it's almost routine so nobody in their right mind should consider the children born with these conditions 'seriously handicapped'.

Considering that the UK has signed up to all the laws that protect minority groups (that includes the disabled) from unjust discrimination and forbid the unfavourable treatment of one person by another due to disability, then why are we allowing this anomalous denial of the equality of disabled people to continue.  This law clearly states that a disabled baby is less worthy of life than a non-disabled baby.

While members of all three main parties from the House of Commons and the House of Law formed a Parliamentary Inquiry earlier this year to review the law and how it is put into practise, there still needs to be a public response to this law.  Only then will the lives of unborn disabled people be protected.

One way of responding is to visit www.abortionanddisability.org

Another is to simple talk about it.  Talk to your family, talk to your friends, talk to social clubs.  One of the major lacks in our society that leads to babies being aborted on grounds of disability is the lack of support for Mothers' with disabled new-borns.  Being the mother of a new born baby is stressful and exhausting in the best of circumstances.  Being the mother of a new born who's disability leads to strangers turning away in pity is heart breaking.  One of the joys of motherhood is people coming over to coo at the baby.  Now imagine that being taken away because people don't want to look at a baby with a cleft palate.

There needs to be a mental shift in society towards people with disabilities.  We need to start looking at people in wheelchairs, talking to those with deformities and scarring, exploring the minds of those with mental difficulties to find their talent, their gift that means they can give back to society.

Because it occurred to me there other day when I watched the film 'Warm Bodies' - what fantasy creature most reflects the popular perception of autistics?  Well let's see - can't co-ordinate properly, can't communicate properly, have very little empathy with those they hurt and have been referred to as an "epidemic".  I do believe that's a zombie.

Well in 'Warm Bodies' they save the world by teaching the zombies how to interact and connect again and the metaphor still holds true, autistics can be taught how to connect and interact and relate to people.  It just takes a lot of time and effort on the part of so-called normal people when we're a little slow to catch on to what you're trying to teach us.  Time and effort that people won't be willing to give while the attitude that autistics should be "euthanized" (to quote that truly offensive letter sent to the mother of an autistic boy in Ontario) is still present in our society.

The only way to get rid of that sort of ignorance is to start breaking the taboo that still surrounds disability and the easiest way to do that is to talk about it.

Big Companies or Governments - Who's Running the Show?

On a cold October last year a group of twenty one people dashed across the grounds of an EDF owned gas-fired power station, scaled two of the chimneys and forced the company to turn the station off.  What for?  In protest that, after intense lobbying from big energy companies like EDF, the UK government now plans to build forty new gas-fired power stations.  According to their own committee on climate change, this would destroy our climate change targets and the rising price of gas would add around £600 to the average household's bills by 2020.   This 'Dash of Gas' would push millions into fuel poverty but do the big companies care about this?

Well EDF certainly don't seem to.  In response to the protest they planned to sue the protestors £5 million for 'significant knock-on costs by delaying its buildings work'.  I do believe that translates as 'they caused us a loss of profits'.  Thankfully the internet and social media resulted in a petition over 64,000 signatures long condemning EDF's actions, which resulted in EDF dropping their ridiculous law suit, which to my mind was nothing more than legal bullying.

However, EDF are not the only company who engage in this sort of behaviour.

Bayer, the company that manufactures the pesticide that resulted in the death of 35 million bees on a single farm in California, is now in the process of trying to sue the EU for loss of profits. The reason?  The greater majority of EU countries banned the use and production of said pesticide within their boarders.

So, in answer to my question of is it the big companies or the governments who run our world, I conclude that it is the governments but only when the big companies let them.

The only thing that gives me hope is that people power still counts for something.  A petition made EDF back off and there is a petition in the making on line to tell Bayer to do the same.  If you are interested then check out the website of pressure group Some of Us.  If they are not running the petition themselves then they have the links to find it.

But for one final sting from Bayer - Bayer is the only company that produce a treatment (Advocate) for lungworm in dogs so the only way to boycott their produce is to run the risk of your pet dying a hideous and agonizing death.  And here's me thinking that monopolies are illegal.

Virunga: Africa's Oldest, Most Beautiful... Oil Field?

Virunga.  It is actually Africa's oldest and most beautiful National Park.  If you were looking for the National Park that started the drive in Africa to preserve at least some of it's natural history then this is it.

It covers a large chunk of the rainforest in the Democratic Republic of Congo and is home to quarter of the remaining population of mountain gorillas.  The land of 'King Solomon's Mines', it is the most diverse national park in Africa, thanks to its long history.  If Africa has managed to keep part of its land untouched by the ravages of mankind's industrial occupation of the land then this is the place.

However, this long and glorious history may soon be destroyed.  The UK oil company Soco is planning to drill within the borders of the park for oil, hence the title of my blog.

Soco claims that it will provide a boast to the local economy and will do minimal damage to the environment.  However, anyone who does a little research into even ultra-modern drill techniques will know that the sites of the drilling will be striped of trees, the water quality in the surrounding area will decrease and the noise pollution alone will drive wildlife from the area, assuming that it can make its way across the roads that will be driven into the heart of the forest.

There are also concerns that it will do quite the opposite for the local economy and population as several thousand people rely on the park for their food (they are allowed controlled gathering within its borders) and many more rely on the lake it contains for their water.  The lake that will be one of the first points of contamination if the pollution makes it into the water supply.

The oil field will also encourage poaching as it will make what is under the ground more valuable than the wildlife on top of it.  Time and experience has show that the best way to prevent poaching is to provide jobs for the local people guarding the creatures and acting as guides for eco-tourists.  As Congo's civil unrest finally begins to calm down, the best way to reunite the people is to give them something they can be passionate about apart from money because money all to often goes back to be the realm of the haves and haves not, which restarts the violence.  The wildlife and the beauty of the land that they have been given to guard is, to my mind, the best receiver for that passion as it can give something for those that were either side of the divide of the unrest something that they can talk about with each other without risk of blame and anger entering the conversation.

There is also the fact that the scientists who study the global weather patterns have noticed that there is a direct correlation between the destruction by logging of the Congo rainforest and the increase in the frequency and violence of the storms that are racking Europe and the East Coast of America.  I'm sure the oil below Virunga will provide the board members and share holders of Soco with some very nice quarterly statements but how much worth will they be when the hurricanes blow your house down on top of you?  Or when the American government sues you for damages to the Eastern Sea Board?

Then there's the threat of Ebola to consider.  Scientists still have no idea where this hideous disease comes from or how it spreads.  All that is know about it is that every now and then someone stumbles out of the depths of the jungle vomiting up their stomach and spreading it to every one that comes into contact with them.  So I would say that carving a road into the heart of the rainforest and setting up an industrial site with a large population is the height of folly, unless you don't care about being remembered as the person who gave the green light to the project that unleashed something worse than the bubonic plague.

Finally, if Soco is having to go so far abroad to find a new source of oil, coupled with the drive to introduce Fracking to England's green and pleasant land, does that not give the impression that the current oil fields are all running dry?  If that is so then surely, instead of scrambling around destroying the last few pristine places of the world, it's time to start really researching alternatives to oil and gas.  Or is mankind going to continue to push aside the problems, saying 'let our children deal with the problems we could have solved'?  What happened to Mankind the Great Explorer and Problem Solver?

If you agree that letting Soco destroy somebody else's back yard is a crime then the WWF is running a partition online.  Signing up takes less than two minutes (I should know, I've done it).

The Lone Ranger

Just been to see the film of the above title and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I will agree that it is most definitely worthy of it's 12a rating due to some of the details of the story.  For me the most upsetting scene in the film was the Native Americans charge against the cavalry position that is armed with a couple of the early versions of a machine gun.  The words 'no chance and no hope' come to mind.  For me it brought home the hopelessness of the American peoples efforts to defend their homeland against the invasion of white man.

I also thought Armie Hammer played the part of John Reid aka The Lone Ranger very well, as the character moves from a newly qualified lawyer who trusts absolutely in the justice of white man's law to a man who has realised that white man's law too often defends those who have money and no conscience.  I wonder how many people who watch that movie know that 'justice' is based on the idea that the law guarantees that the poor man has a come back against the rich man when the rich man kicks him.  Think on that and then go away and read modern social history, particularly the bit about the poor farmers and natives in Brazil who are being walked all over by the rich landowners and logging companies.  Makes me start wishing that there was a couple of real life Lone Rangers out there willing to walk on the wrong side of the rich man's law to make sure the poor man has a come back.

Johnny Depp as Tonto was, in my opinion, a very good choice.  Other than the part where he uses a ladder to step between two speeding trains, I did not think that the character was a rehash of Captain Jack Sparrow.  The way I would describe it is that Captain Jack is over the top, laugh out loud comically crazy, where as Tonto is very serious with his craziness.  In fact after a while I found myself thinking 'is it that Tonto is crazy or is it that he is sane and it is the rest of the world who is mad?'  "It is difficult."

Helen Bonner Carter was great as the Madam of the local brothel who has her own grudge against the outlaw who kills John Reid's brother.  That character is a very good contrast between the over the top scarlet woman appearance and a very down to earth speech when she opens her mouth.  She is in many ways the character that shows the old maxim of 'don't judge a book by it's cover' because she may run a house of sin but when the end game comes she knows her right from wrong and which side of the rich man/poor man divide she wants to be on.

All in all a film well worth the watching.