In honour of World Mental Health Day, I state the fucking obvious

I’ve commented on the original post – go look at that instead. :-)

Another angry woman

Content note: I talk very frankly about my mental health problems in this post. Some of you might find it upsetting.

Today is World Mental Health today, so now is as good a time as any to be honest. I have alluded to this in previous posts, and Twitter, and so on, but let me say this outright: my mental health is not exactly tip-top.

I have depression. I’ve had it for so long that it’s just kind of become a part of me. I remember going through a brief period in the middle of it when I wasn’t depressed, and I felt so light that I might float up, up and away into the atmosphere. My usual state is kind of numb and apathetic, weighed down by a burden I barely notice any more. Sometimes I literally cannot be bothered to do anything, and will sit around and stink…

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Dear David Blunkett

See my comments on Stavvers’ blog – I pretty much agree with everything she has to say here, and frankly I’m seeing some pretty fascistic tendencies in Labour these days. Maybe they’re after the EDL vote?

Another angry woman

Dear David Blunkett,

I was surprised and disturbed by your somewhat revisionist historical analysis. In case you’ve forgotten the speech you gave, these is the alarming sentiments you articulated:

“The Lib Dems in Glasgow debated this and decided they were against automatic protection unless people chose to over-ride it, in terms of pornography on the internet and the protection of children. I think they were wrong.

“I think we have a job in this country, in a civilised, free, open democracy, to protect ourselves from the most bestial activities and from dangers that would undermine a civilised nation.

“In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Berlin came as near as dammit to Sodom and Gomorrah. There was a disintegration of what you might call any kind of social order.

“People fed on that – they fed people’s fears of it. They encouraged their paranoia. They developed hate about people who…

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How to report abuse when they call you a liar?

Left at the Lights

It’s been an odd week on Twitter. I’ve felt reluctant to check in, not least because it’s made me acutely aware of the disparity between the empathy afforded to white women in contrast to women of colour and in doing so, it has made me feel worthless and redundant. I am not sure what the point is to anything anymore.

When I made the mistake of accusing the wrong person of racism, it didn’t matter that I had suffered it for many years before or that I would experience a sudden and severe escalation as a result of a murder that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH ME, on that occasion white people, male and female, held me up as an example of how privilege politics were deeply flawed, as if somehow my mistake said something about the intentions behind the whole of intersectionality. They manipulated the truth and bullied…

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UKIP supporters desecrate graves with swastikas

I’ve often said elsewhere that the UKIP are crypto-fascists…

Pride's Purge

(not satire unfortunately – it’s the UKIP)

Unfortunately in these intolerant times, there’s nothing new about graves being desecrated by far-right extremists.

However, along with the usual swastikas, BNP, NF, EDL graffiti we expect to find among their familiar handiwork, there’s a relatively new tag turning up more and more.

The UKIP.

Here’s some graffiti left by far-right wing extremists on a grave yesterday in a cemetery in Newport Wales:

As you can see, below the BNP and above the swastika someone has painted the word ‘UKIP’.

More proof of what I’ve been saying for a long time now – that the UKIP are not in the least bit libertarian as they like to claim – they’re just good old fashioned far-right authoritarians who hate foreigners, Muslims, Jews, blacks, gays and all the other usual targets swivel-eyed right-wing loons like to blame for their own inadequacies.

What more proof do…

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Open letter to Caroline Lucas

Matt Moran
12:45 (0 minutes ago)

to caroline.lucas.

Dear Ms Lucas,

(Open letter published on my Tumblr & WordPress blogs)

I’m pretty badly disappointed in you. After your colleague Jason Kitcat & his Green controlled council voted to cut Brighton Council workers’ pay by up to £4K/year (http://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/that-wonderfully-progressive-greens-party-is-about-to-bring-in-scab-labour.311238/ ) you rushed to defend the Green Party’s left wing credentials, joining a GMB sit-in & saying you’d get Kitcat to rethink his position. http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/lucas-joins-strike/ Now it seems you’re going round picking up litter in Brighton, effectively scabbing against the GMB workers. http://www.libcom.org/news/caroline-lucas-green-scab-17062013

I had been arguing with various trades union types that the TUC ought to switch from funding Labour to funding the Greens since according to the Political Compass the Greens were the only party left on the Left Libertarian quadrant – everyone else is in the right-wing authoritarian quadrant which gives us lefties little choice, especially when in order to conserve funds the Greens only field candidates where you believe you have a fighting chance. Given the lack of campaigning in areas where you don’t stand, that’s a catch-22 position, but one that getting the TUC on-side would sort out. Labour could fade into obscurity & irrelevance as the party that betrayed the working class while the Greens take up that mantle, and the right wing vote gets split between the Tories, UKIP, LibDems & what’s left of Labour.

But that’d be difficult if you go around saying you’ll back the unions on one day & then go scabbing against them not long after. What’s happening, seriously? I don’t want to be a spoiled ballot in the next general election. I want to vote Green, but I can’t if you do this.

Hopefully yours,

Matt Moran

Romany Blythe & the Thatcher Funeral

I heard about Romany Blythe a couple of weeks ago, when she was plastered all over the Daily Heil, being vilified for setting up an anti-Thatcher “hate group”, planning to celebrate when Thatcher died & was buried. I was puzzled. Who is this person? Why did they pick on her? Aren’t there dozens & dozens of groups of people planning celebrations? 

Well, there are & there were. I’d been planning to crack open a few tins & celebrate since I was a kid. I was 9 when Thatcher was elected & promptly fulfilled my gran’s prediction that “The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer”. Many, many of my friends are of similar opinions & inclinations. 

So, as far as I can see, Romany has been picked on fairly randomly, and maybe singled out because they were able to find pictures of her looking rather fetching in a pink corset. I gotta say, I don’t look nearly so good in a corset. Sex sells, so a picture of someone looking a bit risqué, the, I dunno, burlesque drama teacher? – that’d sell more papers than my ugly mug. 

Anyway, so, the Mail picked on her, and the supposedly Left-Wing press, the Grauniad, New Statesman et al, seem to be pretty deafening in their silence on the matter. Romany Blythe appeared on Sky News, to clarify that it wasn’t about hating on a little old lady – it’s about respect for her victims. As you’ll see from my previous post, Thatcher was an evil monster when in power, who ruined Britain & caused great suffering & loss of life here & abroad. It is very important that we do not let the only narrative about her being the hagiography being vomited forth upon us from Thatcher’s cronies through the entire British  media. Some of us, like Romany and like myself, lived through it. 

So, about Romany herself – I’ve been on the facebook group itself for a few days, because it seemed like a good place to co-ordinate protests/parties/etc & see what was going on generally. From what I’ve read there, she’s had to face a rising tide of threats by phone & by email, people slagging her off, making out that she’s evil for wanting to mark the passing of this friend to fascists & defender of Apartheid. She comes across as a perfectly decent individual. Some of these threats have included threats of deadly violence, shootings & so on, and then last night she had her phone stolen from her.

C’mon folks. People have committed suicide over this level of abuse & harassment. Leave her alone if you’ve nothing good to say, or if you’re like us & know Thatcher for the evil she was, show her some support. Romany’s one of the good guys & she doesn’t deserve this shit.

Whatever you do, don’t make a mistake, and NEVER trust a cister

Whatever you do, don’t make a mistake, and NEVER trust a cister.

Maggie Thatcher – why all the hate?

 

Well, here’re my reasons:

1. She implemented monetarist economic policy in a way which destroyed the mining, steelworking, shipbuilding & car industries in the UK. 
2. She replaced the manufacturing sector with service industry jobs that were less well paid, and with financial services industry jobs. The communities where she’d destroyed their local manufacturing didn’t benefit from this – her reign saw a great concentration of wealth in London & precious little anywhere else.
3. She gave council house tenants the right to buy the houses they rented, swelling the sub-prime mortgage market in the UK.
4. She didn’t use the money raised from this sell off to replace the social housing lost in this way.
5. She used the police as a political tool to squash dissent & break strikes.
6. She cut defence spending such that the Argentines thought we no longer cared about the Falklands, having removed the one ship we had there. She then made war on the Argentines to take the islands back. Through her lack of strategic planning we had a much harder job re-taking the islands – a war that was totally unnecessary.
7. She armed Saddam Hussein & prolonged the Iran-Iraq war, so is responsible for thousands of deaths.
8. She was a friend to Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile whose regime abducted, tortured, raped & killed thousands of its own people.
9. She was a friend to Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia whose right-wing economic policies killed 1 million of his own people through starvation & poverty.
10. She sent the SAS in to Cambodia in 1980, not to fight the Khmer Rouge, who had been driven into the jungle by the Vietnamese army. The Vietnamese had invaded because the KR were committing genocide against ethnic Vietnamese in Cambodia, as well as killing a greater proportion of their own people than any dictator has managed to do anywhere. The SAS were sent there to train the Khmer Rouge. To train a guerrilla army who had committed such atrocities they are a byword for evil. 
11. She discussed the possibility of ethnically cleansing Northern Ireland, sending the Irish Catholics to the South.
12. She gave approval to her son Mark’s failed coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea.

That’s all I can think of right now, but if more turns up I’ll add it to the list.

Tales Of Kink.Com

So disappointed in Kink.com – I was turned on to them by Violet Blue’s rave review years ago where she enthused about the fact that before any session they’d film an interview with the participants & they’d have questions & answers about what they wanted to do, what their limits were, what limits they were prepared to push a little & what squicked them, and sought enthusiastic consent for the various acts they were about to do. After the session there’d be a follow up interview, asking what they enjoyed, what didn’t work, what they thought, would they like to come back & do another session sometime, & there’d be smiles & cuddles & closeness & it looked like they were conducting things in an ethical, responsible, safe, sane & consensual way.

It seems that was at best a veneer. So sad about this.

So, inviting comment here: does anyone know of porn sites that genuinely are ethical, responsible, safe, sane & consensual? Preferably collectives/coops, places where the participants are full stakeholders in everything that happens & where they get a proper share of the proceeds? Have any porn performers unionised yet, & if so, what union, & what are your experiences of that? Does it get you blacklisted to stand up for your rights?

In a way I see this as a microcosm of the greater world of work. In a way we’re all getting shafted to some degree. But I’d like to see if it’s possible for things to be done properly & well.

Totally agree with this. Big problems with all labels & therefore any kind of normativity.

Sex Geek

Polyamory is getting a lot of airtime in the media these days. It’s quite remarkable, really, and it represents a major shift over the last five to ten years.

The problem—and it’s hardly surprising—is that the form of poly that’s getting by far the most airtime is the one that’s as similar to traditional monogamy as possible, because that’s the least threatening to the dominant social order.

Ten years ago, I think my position was a lot more live-and-let-live. You know, different strokes for different folks. I do poly my way, you do it your way, and we’re all doing something non-monogamous so we can consider ourselves to have something in common that’s different from the norm. We share a certain kind of oppression, in that the world doesn’t appreciate or value non-monogamy. We share relationship concerns, like logistics challenges and time management and jealousy. So we’re all in this…

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