Monthly Archives: September 2010

Politics

The tragedy and pain of benefit cuts

September 19, 2010 – 6:35 pm

A final belated report from Green Party conference last week. I chaired the session on “Benefit cuts: how the poorest and most vulnerable will suffer the most”, organised by Green Party national disability spokesperson Alan Wheatley, with speakers Claire Glasman, from Winvisible, Kim Sparrow from Single Mothers’ Self-Defence and Sarah Bukasa from the All-Africa Women’s Group, so I didn’t get time to write a lot of notes, but a few points that were particularly striking…

* We were told that Job Centres have been given strict rules on sanctioning – each week they have to sanction 6% of recipients of jobseekers’ allowance, and with 50 completely cut their benefit.

* One third of all adults who are on the autistic spectrum are living without income, from employment or benefits, of any kind.

* Private, for-profit providers are being paid £62,000 for each long-term unemployed person they are able to get into work, irrespective of how long-term or appropriate that work is.

* People fleeing domestic violence have just one month to try to get their life back on track, then they are on job seekers’ allowance, and expected to meet all of its rules about applications etc, on £62 a week, when they may have been left with no household goods, furniture, housing etc…

* The worst (legally) paid people in the country are carers, who must be looking after people who need at least 35 hours of care a week (and it is often much, much more) for the princely sum of £53.90 a week.

* 37% of people applying for employment support allowance, the replacement for incapacity benefit, drop out before their assessment before the private supplier ATOS is completed. No research has been conducted on what happens to them. Undoubtedly some have recovered, but anecdotal evidence suggests many have been so horrified/damaged/frightened by the experience that they are simply not getting benefits to which they should be entitled, but instead are, in the words of campaigners “begging, shoplifting, or living with their families with no income”.

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Blogging/IT Politics

Britblog Roundup No 282

September 19, 2010 – 4:52 pm

Yes, it is the political conference season, but before I get into all of that, something different – an interview by Cath Redfern on The F Word with blogger/writer Zoe Margolis, on her new book about her experience of being a reluctant celebrity.

But back to those politics – for the Green Party conference I’ve only got to point to one post, Jim’s pretty well comprehensive blog roundup. Although he did write it before I’d had the chance to record our excellent fringe with a speaker from the English Collective of Prostitutes and a Manchester street worker, so I’m going to take the host’s privilege to point to that post now.

Ongoing now is of course what an independent observer would consider a fascinating if uncomfortable conference, that of the Lib Dems. Jonathan on Liberal England, sometime host of this roundup, is, I’m surprised to find, in New York, but he’s got some thoughts on Labour’s claim to be scooping up Lib Dem members. (And before conference blogging MP Lynne Featherstone followed through the unlamented end of ID cards.)

There’s a promise you might want to note about the universal postal service, on Caron’s Musings, and David blogging at Disgruntled Radical has thoughts on the emergency motion process, and a plea for the Trident motion.

More no doubt on next week’s roundup…

Looking back, Brian Barder has been reading the chapter on Kosovo in Tony Blair’s autobiography. He says “not to allow the perversely distorted and self-serving account offered by Mr Blair to become the accepted wisdom.” There are lessons for the future. And looking forward Jeff on Better Nation wonders what “Labour leader Ed Milliband” would mean for Scotland.

You might have also noted that a religious leader, and head of a minor little statelet, has been visiting Britain this week. Onionbagblog has an eyewitness account, with copious pics, of a little covered part of the visit. Stroppyblog has been “taking a pop at the Pope” (and those who can’t understand why he’s an issue). While Cruella is questioning the BBC’s news priorities.

Back to women’s issues, fairy godfather of the roundup, Tim Worstall, offers his views on maternity pay mandated by the European Union. Regular readers of this blog are likely to be well aware of my likely reaction – but that’s one of the pleasures of this roundup – everyone’s welcome (and if you want to nominate something you read this week the email address is britblog AT gmail DOT com.)

And All that Chas, who I suspect might have a good debate with Tim, has been watching The Wright Stuff (which I gather from Google is a TV show, although curiously the website doesn’t seem to say which channel) and getting (I’d judge rightly) very, very annoyed.

For more great blogging like that, Cath Elliott has compiled The Missing List, a great collection of feminist bloggers who somehow always seem to get left of lists of political blogs.

Away from the political world, Sharon on Early Modern Notes has been revelling in the pleasures of Twitter, not just for historians, and Earthwitch has been ruminating on the trouble with perfectionism.

And on the science side, John Hawks isn’t writing from the UK, but I’m going to use this post on the UK debate over cousin marriage as an excuse to point to his excellent blog, a must-read if you’re at all interested in human evolution, and lots of other genetics issues.

For an entirely defensible form of vigilantism, I rather think the Stroud “catch a plonker” campaign, as documented by Ruscombe Green, might catch on.

But we might worry about how the probation service might treat offenders, after reading the excellent newish On Probation blog, by a self-billed “ordinary probation officer”. Also from inside the justice system, The Magistrate explains George Michael’s sentence.

And finally on the lighter side, as the news bulletins say, Richard Osley has an account of north London’s most important sporting encounter last week, the Camden New Journal versus Camden Labour – Alastair Campbell looms large in more ways than one…

If that sounds too hard to stomach, you might enjoy a short visit to Jubilee Market Hall in Covent Garden with Ornamental Passions instead.

That’s all for this week – don’t forget those nominations (britblog AT gmail DOT com) for Matt Wardman next week.

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Feminism

Can we remove the lingering legal stigma of sex work?

September 16, 2010 – 10:48 pm

A further belated report from Green Party conference from the fringe on the need to decriminalise all aspects of sex work, which I organised. I was really pleased that in addition to a high numerical turnout, around 50 at the peak, it attracted a number of our elected reps from England and Scotland, and had a very high quality of questions and debate.

Since I was chairing, I didn’t have time to take many notes, but the one issue that I want to highlight was one on which it might be possible to take immediate, achievable action.

It arose from the testimony of “Jenny”, a streetworker from Manchester who is caring for her disabled daughter. She explained how because prostitution offences (prostitution itself is legal in the UK, but many of the essential actions around it are not) show up on the “enhanced” criminal checks, such as those conducted for people wanting to work with children and vulnerable adults, for their entire lives, not lapsing as other offences do.

Given that many of the people being convicted for these offences are women, a significant number would be likely, were the option available to them, to be seeking this career option.

And if this were to be changed, even for women and men who aren’t seeking such a job, it would, in Jenny’s own words “take the stigma away”.

This is something that I hope many people could agree would be a good idea, and which I hope to work on further.
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Feminism Politics

One good side of cuts – they could lead to a fall in prisoner numbers

September 15, 2010 – 9:04 pm

A belated collection of notes of the excellent Women in Prison panel on Friday night of Green Party conference.

The first speaker was the hugely impressive and powerful Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust.

She explained the rising numbers of women in prison from the fact that sentences have become longer, and more women are going in on remand even though they won’t subsequently be jailed. The rising sentences “seem to be particularly acute with women”.

“What is particularly frustrating everyone knows (it was New Labour policy) that the way solve women’s offending is through education, employment, safer housing, better housing. Yet having said that they cheerily went on and built more capacity for women to go into the prison.”

She identified a “handwringing element” to discussion of prison reform: “we don’t want to keep going over the problems – let’s move on to solutions.”

It doesn’t excuse fact they have hurt or harmed someone else, but helps to understand why they do offend – half of women prisoners have been victims of domestic violence, a third of sexual abuse. “I do feel that at the worst we are punishing women for the experience they are having for being victims.”

Then she came to one of the extremely painful facts of the evening – only 5% of 18,000 children whose mothers are jailed every year end up staying in their own homes.

But she did have a rare piece of good news – government cutbacks will almost certainly reduce the number of prisoners – because keeping people in prison is very expensive.

But the problem is, and this isn’t something you’d want to use to argue for prison, it is also the only place where for many women services they need are available. Women prisoners say: this is the first time I’ve had help with my drug problem, my mental health problems.
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Books Feminism

A great women’s art

September 5, 2010 – 9:27 am

Article first published on Blogcritics

If you ask people to imagine “an artist”, what you’ll probably get is an image of a Renaissance man in a linen smock, or a slightly modernised equivalent. What you’re unlikely to get is an Indian peasant woman in traditional dress perched on a rough country ladder, painting the side of her house.

But browse through the pages of Nurturing Walls: Animal Art by Meena Women and the image in your head might well be changed.

Two short essays in the text explain and explore the women’s work, setting out how Mandana painting, as their work is term, is done by women from the Meena tribe in Rajasthan. It explains that the large tribe is concentrated as farmers in the Aravalli Hills, although they have a history as a warrior clan, which when overrun in the 11th century took to the hills as guerrillas, a role they maintained into the 20th century, leading to them being named by the British under the “Habitual Criminals Act” of 1930 as robbers and criminals whose movements needed to be curtailed.

Yet there’s nothing of this surely turbulent history in the images of this tradition, although perhaps a hint in the fact that it’s a temporary art, meant to be painted over again and again, as the chalk on mud fades. (Then again perhaps that’s simply a reflection of art has it has surely been through most of human history – a pleasurable creation to be immediately enjoyed, before we distorted it with the destructive effects of the market. And it gives a hint of how much of human artistic history we’ll never be able to recover through archaeology, except through the most unusual accidents of preservation.)

The style certainly broadly fits within that tradition somewhat patronisingly called “naive”, in that there’s no focus on realism, or the rules of perspective or many rules at all really (except one that’s probably largely practical – the great majority of the images are white chalk on brown walls).

And the skill of the artists, as you’d expect, varies – but the best of it here is truly stunning – captivating in its depiction of a playful love between animal mother and child, innervating in its lithe energy.
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