It's a Mother's Job to Pull Rank

Apart from boardrooms, the other places I’ve encountered a high concentration of psychologically dysfunctional individuals were, in the enclaves of Westminster and at a British Psychological Society (BPS) conference. I was invited to exhibit my research on agency v’s structural manifestations of sex discrimination within organisations. When I turned up, my pitch was facing a rear wall. When I protested that no-one would see my exhibition, I was blithely informed, “Well, it’s a bit controversial, you’ve got some pretty bold images (he was referring to actual recruitment adverts featuring testosterone charged images of men). We don’t want to alienate [male] delegates”!

Despite the initial resistance, I persuaded the organisers to take the radical move of relocating my pitch to a more prominent position. No cash exchanged hands.

At lunchtime, there was only one seat free in the dining hall. Out of politeness I asked the man opposite if I could join him. He looked at me as though I had killed his cat and stuffed it with out of date horsemeat from Tesco. Ignoring the pregnant pause, I smiled and sat down. About to take my first mouthful of chargrilled potato soup, the man said, “I was hoping to be alone”. Strange thing for someone who paid £150 to be surrounded by other people to say I thought. I assured him that a soon as another seat became available, he could be alone with someone else. In the meantime, I was comfortable with eating in complete silence. Thirty minutes later, I still didn’t know the stranger’s name but I could give you chapter and verse about his unresolved Electra complex. He was a psychologist and "an expert" (in something to do with the mind)but that didn't prevent him from being a psychological mess himself.

So when I found myself in A&E last month advocating for my 6 year old and my husband, the words “Trust me I’m a doctor” were never going to wash. Letters after your name and titles do not infallibility make. If there’s one thing I learnt hanging out with so called eminent folk, it’s that everyone is fallible and no-one should ever be beyond scrutiny. In fact, the less accountability, the greater the likelihood of error.

In this year’s BBC Radio 4 Reith lectures, US based Dr Atul Gawande, grappled with why doctors Fail. He examined how much of failure in medicine remains due to ignorance (lack of knowledge) and how much is due to ineptitude (failure to use existing knowledge). He advocates putting systems in place, such as checklists for surgical teams to go through before embarking on surgery. Despite medical practitioners railing against the system on the grounds that “we know our job, we do this every day”, those teams that followed the system reported significantly reduced errors and better surgical outcomes. In short, even experts make mistakes and cross checking can save lives.

I hadn’t heard Dr Gawande’s lecture before I got the phone call we all dread. My loved ones had been hurt and were en route to hospital. A **** came ‘round the bend on the wrong side of the road and hit my husband’s car head on. Our 6 year old child was in the back. They both sustained injuries and were hospitalised for two days. In A&E I was inwardly distressed but outwardly calm.

I never left my sons side. I asked the nurse responsible for my husband’s care to give me an update every 10 minutes. A&E is a frenetic, overwhelming environment. Not somewhere any parent wants to find themselves with their child. By way of slowing the pace down enough to allow my brain to assimilate what was happening, I asked everyone who entered the room to identify themselves to myself and my child and to explain to us what they would be doing, before doing it. I needed to feel I had a semblance of control, some level of involvement in decisions that were being made, from the start.

Fortunately, my son’s presence was like an enchantment. The staff came in their droves to meet the boy who, despite his injuries, never complained. Every-one was lovely and very tolerant of my constant questions, which were always posed in a respectful, appreciative way. Then the big cheese came in. The doctor. He was authoritative. But did he really know what he was doing? After examining my son he ordered x-rays. I asked why he didn’t order more. He explained that he’d been satisfied by his physical examination that it wasn’t necessary. “But how can you know for sure…” I challenged, politely, but earnestly, “…if you can’t see what’s happening inside”.

A junior doctor said the big cheese knew what to look for. Not moving my gaze from the big cheese himself, I said, “Then I’d be grateful if you could impart that knowledge in a way that I can understand”. To my amazement, he did. There was no hint of reproach in his tone. There was no jargon, no condescension. Just facts delivered with compassion. He explained the protocol of minimising unnecessary exposure to radiation. He knew what he was doing. I could trust him and I did. I made the usual self-deprecating apologies for being an anxious mum but he rebuked them, “You’re just doing your job, which is to make sure I’m doing mine”. You could have knocked me over with a cardboard bed pan.

Over the course of spending 2 days in an NHS hospital, my little boy was superbly well looked after. On the second night, my child was exhausted. The previous night was punctuated by intrusive, though necessary, hourly obs. By the second night, having spent the day in hospital and spoken to a number of doctors, I was looking forward to him getting more sleep. But the hourly obs continued. By 10pm, he had had 4 interruptions and was crying for sleep. Emboldened by my A&E big cheese experience, I asked the nurse (with whom I had struck up a warm rapport the previous night) to explain why my son was still on hourly obs and if the reason wasn’t medically compelling, I would like him to have an uninterrupted (as much as possible on a children’s ward) nights sleep. She explained that the instruction hadn’t been amended by the doctor. She kindly offered to confer with the on call doctor.

The doctor came on the ward and very politely told me he was down for hourly obs but couldn't help me understand why, other than, “doctors orders”. He was a very affable junior (i.e. big cheese in training) doctor who was just following orders. I didn’t want to make his life difficult but this wasn’t about him, or me, it was about my sick child. In a haze of sleep deprived angst I tried to convey my concerns. To communicate that every maternal bone in my body told me that what my child needed more than anything else right now, was a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. I argued that his body needed rest in order to heal and that being poked and prodded by beeping equipment that startled him every hour could only hinder his recovery. I told him I wanted the obs’ to stop until morning and that I would take full responsibility. I offered to put it in writing.

I pulled rank as a mother and to my amazement, it worked. Turned out the junior doctor wasn't a "big cheese in training". He was already a brilliant doctor. He possessed two qualities you can't teach in medical school. The ability to listen and compassion. He put my child's wellbeing before his career that night, and for that I'll be eternally grateful. My son had a solid 8 hours sleep and awoke rested. Ready to fight another day.

When I tucked my little boy in tonight he said he didn’t care if Father Christmas didn’t bring any toys (delayed concussion?) as long as I promised him my undivided attention on Christmas day. “No work for a whole day mum. Do you think you can do it”? “I can do better than that”, I said, “I’ll disconnect until January!” I'm sure that rabbit in the headlights look in his eyes, was an expression of sheer joy. Definitely not dread...

I’m not religious but I embrace the opportunity that Christmas affords us to wind down and reconnect with the people and things that matter. In that spirit, I wish you all fond festive greetings, wherever you are in the world.

*Had this not been such a personal story involving my role as a mother, I would have used the word “parent”. Pulling rank applies as much to fathers as mothers, in my view.

Pornographic Images of Boobs Abound But it's Breastfeeding Mums we Berate

Laura McKenna was a 22 year old nursing student. Jordan was a glamour model. Both got their breasts out in public, one to breast feed her baby, the other for male titillation. Guess which one was thrown off the bus for offending the driver?

Last month a privately owned café in Surrey put a “polite” notice in its window informing breastfeeding mothers that they were welcome to breastfeed in their new, expansive… disabled toilet. For their convenience, the sign read, a chair would be left outside. Groups of breast feeding women were welcome (in the toilets but not at the table). As long as they were happy to sit on the toilet/floor and take their own disinfectant, presumably.

Last week a breastfeeding mother in top London hotel, Claridges, was lectured about “discretion”. The manager helpfully provided a starched white linen napkin for mum to hide, not just her boob but her baby too. Ironically, the ridiculous, indiscreet starched shroud is what drew everyone’s attention to the woman, who said she was made to feel humiliated and uncomfortable by the hotel’s intervention.

Breastfeeding in public is not some perverse form of exhibitionism. It can be a daunting, intimidating experience. Although around 80% of women start off breastfeeding their baby, by 12 weeks the percentage still exclusively breastfeeding drops to 7%. Only around 1% of women are still breastfeeding when their baby is 6 months old. It’s not surprising given that women who dare to breastfeed in public are labelled “tramps” on social networking sites, such as Facebook.

Perversely, TV coverage of the Claridges story showed a photo of a female guest with her bare boobs on show in a see through dress. I have a feeling she wasn’t asked to sit in the corner and cover up. I somehow doubt that she was lectured on “discretion” by the waiter

Becoming a mother for the first time is a joyous, exhilarating experience but it’s also overwhelming and all consuming. In those early days, weeks, even months, I worried that I’d break my baby if I held him too tight. New mothers are preoccupied every waking hour by doing the best for their baby. Yet, we can’t do right for doing wrong. “Breast is best” we’re told, but the social stigma attached to breastfeeding in public is too much for many women to endure. If it’s not prats like Ukip leader Nigel Farage lecturing us about sitting in the corner, it’s the hostile starers, the tutters and the complainers.

I’m no shrinking violet but it took me weeks before I had the courage to breast feed in public. Anxiety about judgemental comments/glares was preventing me from going out. When I arranged to meet a non lactating friend in a well known high street coffee chain, I got there early so I could feed my baby in a quiet corner before she arrived. A few minutes later, the waiter approached and told me a customer had complained about my “offensive” behaviour.

In a state of perma sleep deprived comatose, I doubted my own sanity. Had I in fact just done the lambada on the table in my off white Mothercare bra and elastic-less pants? Had I forgotten to put any pants on and caused offence by inadvertently exposing my rear? No, I was definitely wearing pants because the woman in the chemist told me my skirt was tucked into them at the back, so it couldn’t be that (I untucked the skirt but was too jaded to give a flying feck as to how many people saw the off white undies). Dignity is the first thing to go when you become a mother. Or is that just me….

Being in the aforementioned comatose state, the best I could muster for the waiter was a glazed gait like stare. Clearly irked by my not cottoning on to the sub text, he told me I’d either have to cover up or leave. His tone, more than the words, struck a chord. I found my pre baby brain and asked the waiter who had complained. Realising from my tone that he had crossed a line, he pointed at a man in his 60’s sitting with a woman the same age. He was reading The Sun and I could see it was open on page 3!

I pointed this out to the waiter but the irony was lost on him. Why? Because, as a society, we have normalised the visibility of surgically enhanced, pneumatic breasts gratuitously exhibited for male sexual titillation. So much so, that breast exposure for this purpose has become acceptable. For the frivolous purpose of feeding a baby, however, it’s “scandalous”, “exhibitionism” and “tramp” like behaviour. There’s something seriously wrong in a society in which a nursing mother is considered an aberration.

I told the waiter that I was “offended” by the complainants’ ogling of pornographic images of a woman’s naked full frontal boobs in a public place and asked if he could please request that the man either be more discrete or leave. Incensed that I clearly had no intention of being bullied, the man and his female accomplice left in a huff. The waiter scowled at me in a “see what you’ve done now” manner. By the time my friend arrived I felt like I had done 10 rounds with Mike Tyson (I came out for a coffee not to fight my corner). 

Eighteen months after this experience the Equalities Act 2010 made it illegal to do what was done to me, i.e. discriminate against a woman for breastfeeding. For the avoidance of doubt, it is illegal to approach a woman breastfeeding in public and tell her to be “discrete”, or to cover up, or to sit in the corner. Mothers, fathers, midwives and supporters staged a protest outside Claridges Hotel on Saturday to remind the management of this legal duty. It was co-ordinated by Free to Feed, an organisation set up in March by Emily Slough after she was described as a “tramp” on Facebook for breastfeeding in public.

The following spoof poster is doing the rounds. I can’t not share it:

BREAST FEEDING MUMS WELCOME

If you are a Ukip supporter we politely ask, for the comfort of other customers, that you eat in the corner, or in the toilet, or under a large tablecloth that we can drape over you.

We’re sure you understand that, when people are eating, they don’t want to have to look at a complete and utter tit.

Thank you.

Is Britain Not Bothered about Raped Children in Darfur?

An edited version of this is published in todays Independent on Sunday. Heartfelt thanks to my Darfuri friends who risk their lives in order for the truth to be known and to James Hanning for allowing their voices to be heard.

On October 31st, when most of our children were playing trick or treat, enjoying their childhood innocence, 200 women and girls (as young as 7) in Darfur, were raped. According to locals, the perpetrators were the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). One month later the victims of this egregious assault are no closer to justice.

Rape has been a weapon of genocide in Darfur for decades. The attack in the village of Tabit however, is on an unprecedented scale. Despite numerous sources verifying it, the discredited hybrid UN/AU force (UNAMID) issued a press release claiming, “None of those interviewed confirmed that any incident of rape took place in Tabit”. What the press release neglected to mention is that, according to a UNAMID officer, military personnel accompanied the UNAMID delegation so, “No one could speak freely to anyone”.

UNAMID’s chicanery emerges at the same time that a UN investigation exonerated the force of previous allegations of cover up. Despite finding instances in which UNAMID officials withheld evidence indicating the culpability of Sudanese government forces in crimes against civilians and peacekeepers, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon concluded, “There was no evidence to support the allegation that UNAMID intentionally sought to cover up crimes against civilians".

To the uninitiated, withholding evidence of crimes against civilians, particularly given that protection of civilians is UNAMID’s remit, may sound like a cover up. But in UN land, unless the scandalous event was the result of an intentional cover up, and you can prove that, it doesn’t count as one.

Where is the UK in all this? Instead of calling for an independent investigation into the mass rape in Tabit at the time, our government diverted attention away from it. Issuing a press release about food vouchers for displaced people in Darfur (440,000 beneficiaries over 7 months) was in my view, an act of either willful obfuscation or gross ineptitude.

The cash/vouchers have been in place since 2011 apparently, but there’s no evidence, that I could find, that anyone other than the government of Sudan benefits from the UK’s £11m contribution. A local UN official told me he was unaware of the scheme. The 3m Darfuris living in camps want the humanitarian organizations that were expelled by the genocidal regime in 2009, to be reinstated. Not gimmicks. They want enough food for every child (not just the percentage calculated to hit millennium goals).

Eight years ago, having visited Darfur, David Cameron said, “This is ethnic cleansing and we cannot remain silent in the face of this horror”. He knows that rape is a weapon of war and that mass rape constitutes a war crime. He is therefore obliged under international law, to ensure that the perpetrators in Tabit are held to account.
Ban Ki-Moon once said, "Break the silence. When you witness violence against women and girls, do not sit back. Act." Here’s Ban and Cameron’s chance to put those laudable words into action. Speak up, the world is listening.

It's Road Safety Awareness Week

It was road safety awareness week. Tell that to the 61 people who were seriously injured today by other road users, and the 61 victims the day before that and the day before that and everyday in the UK. According to Road Safety Charity Brake, who launched a campaign this week calling on road users to “Look out for each other”, in addition to 61 serious injuries daily, on average, 5 people die every day on UK roads.

Other sobering facts include:
• Two fixed penalties for 'careless driving' or speeding issued every minute
• Two in five (41%) UK primary school children say they have been hit or nearly hit by a vehicle while on foot or bike

Yet, the fixed penalty for driving offences, including speeding and mobile phone use, is currently £100 plus three penalty points. “Brake believes this is woefully inadequate, given these crimes can and do lead to terrible crashes, injury and death. Minor crimes that do not pose a direct threat to human life, like littering and smoking in a public place, can be met with a fine of £1,000+. A £100 penalty for driving offences sends out a dangerous message that offences like speeding and phone use at the wheel are not real crimes, and important safety laws need not be taken seriously. Brake argues a fixed penalty of £500-£1,000 would have a significant effect on compliance with these laws, which are in place to protect and safeguard the public.

Brake is also concerned the penalty points system is not working as a way to protect the public from dangerous repeat offenders who show disregard for the law. Brake recently revealed 40% of drivers who have reached 12 points are not disqualified, due to a loophole allowing drivers to keep their licence in 'exceptional circumstances'. This loophole should be closed urgently: those who reach 12 points have been given ample opportunity to comply with the law, and should be automatically disqualified to protect themselves and others”.

Brake is calling on road users to sign up to the following pledge:

Slow
Drivers – I'll stay under limits, and slow down to 20mph around schools, homes and shops to protect others. I'll slow right down for bends, brows and bad weather, and avoid overtaking.
Everyone – I'll speak out for slowing down and help drivers understand that the slower they drive, the more chance they have of avoiding a crash and saving a life.

Sober
Drivers – I'll never drive after drinking any alcohol or drugs – not a drop, not a drag.
Everyone - I'll plan ahead to make sure I, and anyone I'm with, can get home safely and I'll never get a lift with drink/drug drivers. I'll speak out if someone's about to drive on drink or drugs.

Secure
Drivers – I'll make sure everyone in my vehicle is belted up on every journey, and kids smaller than 150cm are in a proper child restraint. I'll choose the safest vehicle I can and ensure it's maintained.
Everyone – I'll belt up on every journey, and make sure friends and family do too.

Silent
Drivers – I'll never take or make calls or texts when driving. I'll turn off my phone or put it out of sight and on silent, and stay focused on the road.
Everyone – I'll never chat on the phone to someone else who's driving.

Sharp
Drivers – I'll get my eyes tested every two years and wear glasses or lenses at the wheel if I need them. I'll take regular breaks and never drive if I'm tired, stressed or on medication that affects driving.
Everyone – I'll look out for friends and loved ones by ensuring they only drive if they're fit for it, and rest if they're tired.

Sustainable
Everyone – I'll minimise the amount I drive, or not drive at all. I'll get about by walking, cycling or public transport as much as I can, for road safety, the environment and my health.

Why not sign up & help prevent the daily carnage on our roads. Any one of us and our children could be innocent victims of reckless road users at any time. Lets do our bit to raise awareness, and safety standards.

Mass Rape of 200 Girls and Women in Darfur

On October 31st, 200 women and girls (some as young as 7) in Darfur were raped. Locals say the attacks were carried out by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

Rape has been a weapon of genocide in Darfur for years, as documented regularly on the reputable local media outlet, Radio Dabanga. This attack in the village of Tabit however, is on an unprecedented scale. Despite numerous sources verifying it, the discredited hybrid UN/AU force (UNAMID) issued a press release claiming, “None of those interviewed confirmed that any incident of rape took place in Tabit on the day of that media report”.

What the press release neglected to mention is that, according to a UNAMID officer, national security staff, police forces, and military personnel accompanied the UNAMID delegation so, “No one could speak freely to anyone”.

The Coordination Committee of Refugees and Displaced Persons in Darfur sent a delegation to Tabit in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. They spent 2 days interviewing women and girls and reported, “We looked into their eyes while they told us they were raped by soldiers”.

UNAMID’s handling of, what has been confirmed by numerous sources to be mass rape, has been marred by incompetence and complicity. Its chicanery emerges at the same time that a UN investigation exonerated the force of allegations of cover up. Sort of. It found that there were instances in which UNAMID officials withheld evidence indicating the culpability of Sudanese government forces in crimes against civilians and peacekeepers. It also concluded that UNAMID self-censored their reporting on Sudanese abuses, leading to "under-reporting of incidents when government and pro-government forces were suspected to be involved".

More on this story on Sunday. Watch this space.

Fiona Woolf’s Replacement Should be Approved by Survivors of Child Sex Abuse

As someone with professional experience of working with survivors of child sex abuse, I was relieved by Fiona Woolf’s resignation as chair of the historical child sex abuse inquiry. That she was considered an appropriate candidate in the first place is staggering, particularly in light of baroness Butler-Sloss’ resignation just three months earlier due to her links to the establishment.

In the end, the survivors’ objections were heard. If they don’t trust, absolutely, in the integrity of the process, starting with the appointment of the chair, they will (rightly) boycott it and the whole charade will unravel. If their views are treated with contempt at this stage, why should they put themselves through the nightmare of reliving historical sexual traumas?

Alison Millar, the solicitor representing around 50 survivors, wants the inquiry to be given statutory powers, such as the ability to compel the production of documents and the attendance of witnesses. She also wants those who give false evidence to face criminal charges. Perhaps the involvement of the Home Affairs Select Committee, chaired by Keith Vaz (who has had flashes of brilliance in the past), will advance the survivors’ bid to secure some teeth for the inquiry, and focus the terms of reference to ensure it is conducted in a timely and transparent, manner.

Micheal Buerk's Misogynistic Comments Expose Moral bankruptcy of The BBC's Moral Maze

Michael Buerk’s misogynistic comments about the rape victim of Sheffield United footballer, Ched Evans, this week should come as no surprise. What is far more sinister, in my view, is that someone who has form when it comes to vocalising his contempt for women, should be allowed to chair the BBC’s Moral Maze.


The trailer for this week’s programme aired Buerk pontificating that neither Evans, nor the woman he attacked emerged “with any credibility because she was so intoxicated she could barely stand”. Thus positioning the victim of rape as morally equivalent to the rapist.

As someone who specialises in ethics, I had to stop listening to the programme several years ago, predominately because of the sanctimonious, self righteous, alpha male tones of the two female presenters, Melanie Phillips and Clare Fox. Why they, or indeed Michael Portillo, qualify to make moral judgements of the day, alludes me. Giles Frazer is a theologian at least. For the moral Maze to be relevant in contemporary Britain, it should reflect it. The panel should be made up of different faiths and people of no faith who deal with ethics (academics & practitioners who help institutions navigate the real world on a daily basis).

Michael Buerk and three of the current panellists are out of touch (Portillo, Phillips & Fox) and have a pompous &/or combative approach, which is completely at odds with getting the best out of witnesses. It’s like a blood sport. Listening to Melanie Phillips’ verbal attempts to annihilate anyone with opposing views is worse than watching Benefits Street. Having my finger nails pulled out with a pliers would be preferable to listening to Phillips and Fox in action.

I digress. Buerk sort of apologised but implied that there was substance to what he said. A similar position to that which he took in 2005. In a toe curling mockumentary (supposed to be serious) he made of women, he railed against the plight of men moved to the margins of a woman’s world. Back then he claimed women set the agenda in the media. He claimed it was run by women for women.

Nearly 10 years on there are even fewer female editors and media executives, so there was no need to panic about the “femocracy” Michael. Male domination prevails. Viewers of week-end TV will know that it’s a veritable lads’ fest. Mock the Week is to be renamed “Mock the Women”. I have a game I play with friends (we need to get out more) called “spot the women” on the male dominated panel shows (QI, Have I Got News for You, 9 out of 10 cats, soon to be renamed 9 out of 10 times the panellists are white men…). Sometimes there’s a token female pitted against the otherwise all male panellists, and if she’s an ethnic, that ticks 2 boxes. Actually, if there’s an ethnic male they often don’t bother with the token woman.

Buerk played down his choice of words as “Clumsy”. Not a good enough defence for a highly paid journalist where, words are your craft. Perhaps if he hadn’t referred to Tess Daly as “that pneumonic bird brain from Strictly” a few years ago, he might have gotten away with a gloss over, half hearted apology. But, he did say that about Daly and he referred to other female colleagues as “air heads”. Stooping to such vitriolic sexist epithets isn’t just morally reprehensible, it’s sloppy journalism. Rather than articulate a case to illustrate a point, he uses the short hand of prejudice, effectively conflating any perceived professional shortcomings with gender. What a Buerk.

Human Rights Are For All Not Just Those Who Can Afford to Buy Them

The stale, pale, male aphorism associated with our political elite is far from defunct. The run up to the election is invariably dog whistling O’clock. I can set my watch by them. Be it Enoch Powell (rivers of blood), Michael Howard (“Are you thinking what I’m thinking”?), Gordon Brown (the Britishness test) or UKIPs bongo bongo land (though in fairness to UKIP, they wear their racial epithets on their sleeves).

Homogeneity and inbreeding leads to a lack of creativity and ideas, a by product of which is poor decision making. A phenomena described by George Orwell as, “The decay in the ability of the ruling classes”. Given 54% of Tory MPs have been educated privately (versus 7% of the overall population) and indoctrinated in establishment ideology, it’s little wonder the same old clichés emerge in the run up to every election. I can imagine the pre-election brainstorm at Tory HQ, “How about, go home foreigners, discreetly written on the side of vans cruising immigrant “hot spots”? Or, “Islam is the new IRA” (though I never heard the phrase “Catholic fundamentalism” on Newsnight).

This time they came up with scrapping the Human Rights Act (HRA). In practice, the government has cut legal aid to the point where only the rich can afford to access many aspects of the HRA. Only women on 6 figure salaries, for example, can afford to take their case of sex discrimination to an employment tribunal. In theory, the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is a watchdog, there to uphold the rights of ordinary people. In practice, it’s a toothless organistion, so bereft of funding, and gumption, to render it almost extraneous.

In practice, the most vulnerable in our society have less access to the HRA now than ever before. Under the Con-Dem coalition we have seen the legislature lurch to protect the interests of the state and the powerful, such as large corporations (Amazon, Google, Starbucks, energy giants, banks etc etc) at the expense of the individual. In addition to cutting legal aid (resulting in an 80% reduction in tribunal cases), criminalising peaceful protests and making freedom of information requests more difficult, have, in my view, eroded what little recourse ordinary people had to justice.

Human rights laws are supposed to protect the marginalised from the powerful. This is why a bill of rights (the alternative proposed by the Tories), decided solely by the parliamentary majority, is so perilous. The HRA serves as a check on the majority.

McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris is a case in point. McDonalds sued 2 environmental activists (known as the Mc Libel two) over a leaflet they claimed was libelous. Two hearings in English courts found some of the leaflet's contents to be indeed libelous and others to be true.

However, in 2005 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the original case (heard in the UK) had breached Article 6 (right to a fair trial) and Article 10 (right to freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. In its ruling, the ECHR criticised the way in which UK laws had failed to protect the public right to criticise corporations whose business practices affect people's lives and the environment (which contravenes Article 10). It also ruled that the trial was biased because of the defendants' comparative lack of resources and what they believed were “complex and oppressive UK libel laws”.

In particular the Court held: "in a democratic society even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace, must be able to carry on their activities effectively and that there exists a strong public interest in enabling such groups and individuals outside the mainstream to contribute to the public debate by disseminating information and ideas on matters of general public interest such as health and the environment".

It is thanks to the HRA that Jacqueline Carmichael (who has spina bifida) and her husband /carer, are not homeless. They successfully challenged the grossly unjust bedroom tax (AKA tax on poverty). They appealed against the crippling cut to their housing benefit on the grounds that it contravened their human rights. It was physically impossible to fit 2 beds into their tiny flat so Jacqueline’s carer husband had to sleep in a separate room.

It seems the bedroom tax (together with benefit cuts) is also forcing some soldiers, disabled by combat, into destitution. The newspapers regularly report stories of war heroes having to sell their medals to pay for care homes and to avoid eviction. Evictions are at a 10 year high yet, William Hague is reportedly living in a luxury London residence costing the taxpayer £2,000 per day (disclaimer: I have been unable to corroborate the facts of this story..). A charity boss responded, “Who exactly are the scroungers in our society”? Fear not, a government spokesperson reportedly said, “We monitor usage for good value for money”. That’s alright then.

As the Human Rights Group Liberty recently reminded us, the HRA protects victims of crime. For example, as a result of a case brought in the European Court under Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR, rape victims no longer have to suffer the indignity and trauma of being cross-examined in person by their alleged attackers.

It’s thanks to the Human Rights Act that children with SEN in this country still enjoy the right to mainstream education. Funding for which has been under threat recently by unscrupulous local authorities around the country.

We’ve seen how state powers can be used to abuse the rights of the individual. Undercover police officers spying on the Lawrence family in the aftermath of their son Stephen’s death, rather than looking for his killers. Yet more under cover officers “infiltrating” environmental activists, engaging in sexual relationships and, in some cases, fathering children. The women who fell victim to such “surveillance” described it as “like being raped by the state”.

Finally and compellingly, Liberty warns us, “Anybody’s privacy could be breached by the prying eyes of the state or big corporations, anybody can be wrongly accused of a crime, and anybody could fall foul of careless and insensitive decision-making by public authorities. Hopefully this won’t happen to you but if it did, you might find you need to rely on the Human Rights Act or the European Court of Human Rights to help you”.

Tory Conference Peddles the Same Old Promises

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. A sentiment that surely informs Tory policies. Bedroom tax has reportedly led to people committing suicide, food and fuel poverty has and will lead to more deaths. Minimum, instead of living wage, scrapping of permanent contracts and undermining employment protection rights, have all served to destabilise humanity and society. Despite policies being more likely to kill people than make us stronger, they are pursued blindly. Recklessly. Cruelly.

4 years ago George Osborne promised he would take on bankers and rein in their bonkers bonuses. Thus far he has not. He promised he would close tax loopholes that allow corporations, and the rich, to effectively cheat the exchequer. He has not. David Cameron promised to protect the NHS. He has not. So, when I hear the very same promises emerging from the Tory conference this week, I am at once patronised (they think we’re too thick to remember they made the same promises last time…), incandescent with rage (see above & read the newspapers) and resigned (they know not what they do).

For anyone at Tory HQ reading this, you can put me down as a swing voter.

BP, GlaxoSmithKine & Tesco are in the Dock, Again. When Will They Learn....

Recividism is high in miscreant corporations. Moral deviance and psychopaty, it seems, need not be career limiting personality traits. This, together with centuries of in breeding and cloning has led to reduced institutional intelligence and a dearth of strategic capability making repeat offences inevitable. In the last month, BP, GlaxoSmithKline and Tesco have all been in the dock.

Putting profits before people has demonstrably failed as a strategy (see global financial meltdown & my previous blogs if you’re not convinced). Myself and others have been making the business case for ethics for longer than Justin Bieber’s been on solids (though rumour has it he’s regressed to a liquid diet). Take care of people and the planet. Put ethics at the heart of your business and the profits will take care of themselves. It’s not rocket science. Time and again we see that greed and the pursuit of short term profits lead to corporate catastrophe. Yet, it remains the primary corporate driver.

At the start of the month, BP was found quilty of gross negligence for the Deepwater Horizon explosion which killed 11 people and caused environmental carnage. The share price fell by 5%, wiping in excess of £5bn off its stock market value. Had BPs directors taken on board the learnings from a similar explosion only a few years earlier, the Deepwater disaster could have been avoided.

Yesterday, Tesco was forced to suspend four senior executives and call in investigators following the discovery that its profits had been artificially inflated by £250m. More than £2bn was wiped off its share value. A whistleblower warned that payments from suppliers were being irregularly booked and business costs were being misrepresented.

Last week, Chinese police accused GSK's former head of operations in the country of ordering employees to commit bribery on a widespread scale. Four senior managers from GSK’s China business were arrested last July while investigating £320m in potential bribes to individuals in order to secure higher market share & prices. Mark Reilly, who led GSK’s China business until the bribery scandal first broke last year, allegedly “pressed his sales teams to bribe hospitals, doctors and health institutions”, according to Chinese police.

The charges against GSK could lead to the cancellation of its business licenses in a major growth market. Reilly also faces jail.

There were suggestions that these allegations compromised GSK’s corporate integrity. I would argue that, if corporate integrity was a GSK priority, this scandal, like the one involving the reported use of black orphans as guinea pigs for drug trials or the Seroxat scandals before that, would not have happened.

A number of years ago I wrote to some UK charities that had awarded GSK gold star employer status for disability. I asked them how they squared the allocation of such a prestigious accolade with the recent BBC Panorama programme which exposed alleged evidence about GSK’s handling of concerns about their drug Seroxat (e.g. that it’s linked to aggression, suicide and dependency)?

I asked them to respond to the evidence which seemed to indicate that GSK had been aware of some of these dangers for a number of years but withheld crucial information from the public domain, only publishing trials that showed positive outcomes. It is also claimed that GSK knew Seroxat to be harmful to children, yet one month after the previous Panorama programme, where they denied this, they sought a licence for Seroxat to be prescribed to children. Although not licensed for this age group, it is alleged that GSK knew GP’s were prescribing it to them, based on the positive trial results published. What GP’s and the public did not know was that:

“GlaxoSmithKline's own clinical trial data revealed that the drug simply didn't work in depressed children. Worse still it made them up to three times more likely to self harm and attempt suicide than depressed children who were just given sugar pills. This was evidence the regulator had never seen before”. (Taken from Panorama transcript of 3 Oct.)

Panorama also produced, what it claimed to be, a confidential internal memo indicating that GSK knew that Seroxat, also known as Paroxetine, didn't work in depressed children as long ago as 1998.

SSB CONFIDENTIAL – FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY – October 1998
"It would be commercially unacceptable to include a statement that efficacy had not been demonstrated as this would undermine the profile of Paroxetine."

GSK’s apparent withholding of these clinical trials is the subject of an investigation and the programme indicated that criminal charges may be brought. My concern, then & now, is as much related to the ethical as it is with the potential criminal implications. In addition to many Seroxat users themselves, numerous eminent doctors were prepared to speak out on the Panorama programme, including the President of The Royal College of Psychiatrists.

I put all of this to the charity, which had no defence. Yet GSK retained its “gold member” champion of disability status on their website. I was told that member companies of the charity made financial contributions for that honour.

When will shareholders, government and business leaders (BP, GSK & Tesco’s boards are dominated by a white, male “like minded” elite) wake up to the fact that people, and how we treat them, is central, not peripheral, to profit making. Unless and until power is shared equally between women and men, and until marginalised voices are heard, the groupthink that lunges our world from one crisis to another, will prevail.

Darfur "Peacekeeping Mission" was Doomed to Fail

Heart felt thanks to the visionary team at the Independent on Sunday for being the only Western media to run with this story. More details are published in today’s paper.

In April, the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) came under scrutiny amid allegations that it was covering up crimes by Sudanese government forces against civilians.

In a leaked report published by US Magazine, Foreign Policy, a former UNAMID spokesperson, Aicha El-Basri, gave accounts of several transgressions wherein the joint mission failed in its primary mandate, which is to protect civilians and humanitarians. As a result of these allegations, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon instigated an internal investigation. On Wednesday I was informed by a contact on the ground that UNAMID’s head, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, had stepped down (there was no official UN announcement making the story hard to corroborate initially), just weeks before the report’s findings are due to be published.

Darfuri civilians, I’m told, are indifferent to Chambas’ departure. Two weeks ago he was reported as saying “UNAMID cannot stop government forces [from] enter [ing] the camps for the displaced”, despite having the resources and mandate to do just that. Whilst Chambas certainly won’t be missed, Darfuris have given up any hope or expectation that UNAMID will ever fulfil its mandate towards them.

The mission was deployed to Darfur in 2008. It costs an estimated 1.4 billion dollars annually, making it the worlds most expensive and arguably least effective, peacekeeping force. So sullied is the reputation of UNAMID amongst Darfuris (approximately 2 million people have been newly displaced since its arrival, most by violence) that many believe they are working for the Sudanese government. The history of incompetence dates back to its inception and has been a constant throughout.

In August, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, described UNAMID as being largely ineffectual in protecting civilians from violence. The report warned of an escalation of government led attacks on civilians in the region making accurate and timely reporting more crucial than ever. HRW berates the mission for its failure to report detailed findings, including civilian death tolls, estimates of property destruction, and alleged violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. In fact, the mission has not reported on human rights issues, including the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war, since 2009.

Last week New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, leaked data from a UNICEF document. In it he states that, 45% of children in central Darfur, 40% in East Darfur and 35% in West and North Darfur suffer from chronic malnutrition. This condition commonly leads to "stunting", which is a retarding of children's growth and development, amongst other things. The UN cannot be allowed to prevent the gathering and publication of damning data such as this in an apparent bid to obfuscate genocidal activity and its failure to stop it.

UNAMID was arguably doomed to fail. It is based on a false premise, one that assumes there is a peace to keep. Peace not only eludes Darfuris, its utterance taunts them. The people in camps, lying doubled up from starvation induced abdominal spasms, know that there are no deals to be made with the devil. Al Bashir has signed several, so called peace deals, but honoured none. Peace cannot be brokered as long as the UN allows Sudanese forces to drop bombs on civilians.

At what point and at what human cost will the UN stop the crippling charade of appeasement and complicity? If Ban Ki-moon is serious about his pledge to put ‘Rights up Front’ in the UN’s work, why is Darfur always languishing at the back of the queue?

Mc Donalds, Im Not Lov'n It

I’ve never been a fan of Mc D’s. In my university days, myself & a friend popped in to the O’Connell Street branch in Dublin. A quick pit stop to line our stomachs as cheaply as possible, preferring to use our pennies to swell the student union bar coffers instead. My friend, a vegetarian had not been before. She asked for a veggie burger and got a guerkin in a bun. That was McDonalds take on vegetarian at the time.

Ever since seeing the Mc Libel documentary, wherein two Greepeace activists took on the fast food behemoth and won, I vowed that I would never again cross the threshold of an edifice with a giant yellow M. A pledge I have kept, apart from 2 occasions, both of which were driven by necessity rather than choice. The last time was a few days ago. The mitigating circumstances were as follows:

1) It was late at night and we had to catch the Chunnel (Calais to Folkestone) early the next morning
2) My 6 year old had been forced to forego food in order to make it to the port on time & was starting to eat the upholstery of the hired campervan
3) It was a choice of loading up with wine in the supermarket or feeding said child. Fortunately, we spotted a Mc D’s while we were loading up the vino
4) It was either Mc D’s or a day old baguette & everyone knows Baguettes have to be eaten fresh. It would breach cultural protocol & international incidents have been born of far less effrontery.

I ordered the Mc Fillet and small fries. I couldn’t taste the fries for all the salt they were smothered in. My request to exchange the fries for some without salt caused a near diplomatic episode. “Did you ask for them without salt?” said the “crew member” as though she was prosecuting me for murder. “No, I retorted, but I didn’t order my fries with salt either”. If I didn’t ask for salt, why did you add it without asking me”? “If I’d wanted salt with a sprinkling of fries, that’s what I would have ordered (I said this last bit in my head as my French wasn’t up to that level of complexity)”.

The discussion ensued with Mc D’s rep arguing that all Mc D’s fries are served with lashings of salt so what did I expect. I pointed out that I’m not one of their regulars (evidenced by the fact that my waistline is still discernible) & asked if it didn’t occur to them that some customers, given a choice, would prefer not to ingest their weekly sodium allowance in just one portion of fries? Either she couldn’t think of a clever retort or she just gave up the will to live, but I got my sodium free fries.

Having done some research on Mc D’s nutritional components I came across numerous reports citing a document apparently published by Mc Donald’s last year. It set out the ingredients that go into their fries. All 17 of them. One website elaborated on what some of those ingredients actually comprise of. They range from hydrogenated soybean oil which they claim is largely extracted from genetically modified soybeans to dimethypolysiloxane, an anti foaming agent, which appears to be an industrial chemical and allegedly carries a host of safety concerns and TBHQ, which is cited as a petroleum based butane like ingredient (lighter fuel), which is allegedly used as a preservative. The list, including alleged hormone disrupters, goes on.

Next time you want to order some fries in Mc D’s you might want to take the list & ask them to hold all but 1 of the 17 ingredients. The potato.

No Matter How Many “Potential” Genocide’s Obama Seeks to Prevent, His Presidency Will be sullied by the One he Failed to Stop

Last Wednesday, while delegates at the US Africa summit tucked into their grilled beef with coconut milk sauce and cappuccino fudge cakes, Omar, aged 3 and Haroun, aged 4, died of starvation in Darfur.

Sudan’s president Bashir was not invited to the summit which took place in Washington this week. He’s wanted by The Hague on charges of genocide in Darfur, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is right that Bashir was excluded from the summit, but it’s wrong to silence the voices of Sudanese citizens who are crying out to be heard. To hide the first genocide this century in the corner of the room marked “off limits” is an affront to humanity. In Darfur alone, it’s estimated that half a million people have died from violence, disease, and starvation. Approximately 4 million are living in “displaced person’s” camps, all of whom are dependent on aid.

In 2009, when Khartoum expelled 13 aid agencies from Darfur, rather than condemn the regime, Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly reassured Darfuris that the agencies would be reinstated imminently. They were not, and now hundreds of thousands of people are dying of disease and starvation, as a direct consequence of what has become known as a genocide of attrition. Kerry’s actions arguably served to deflect the media glare from the escalating humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur, thus emboldening the genocidal regime. Perfidy, incompetence and impunity have become the trademarks of the US’s calamitous role in Sudan.

In 2010, it was reported that the U.S. signaled its willingness to remove Sudan from the state sponsor of terrorism list, if Khartoum fully implemented the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. When the Bush administration made similar overtures in 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama reportedly fulminated, “This reckless and cynical initiative would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments”.

Why the change of heart? There are those who believe that US foreign policy in Sudan is driven, not by its “Responsibility to Protect” endangered civilians, but by a counter-intelligence agenda, as reported in the Los Angeles Times in June 2005;
“The CIA and Khartoum's intelligence and security officials have met regularly over the last few years, but Gosh [then head of Sudan’s national security service] had been seeking an invitation to Washington in recognition of his government’s efforts”, sources told The Times. The CIA, allegedly hoping to seal the partnership, extended the invitation.

In August 2010, the Washington Post reported; “The CIA is continuing to train and equip Sudan’s intelligence service in the name of fighting terrorism” said a former intelligence officer who served in Sudan. He notes the duplicitous nature of the arrangement, “We also refer to the Sudanese as a state sponsor of terror and have called their activities in Darfur genocide”. If this is true, the failure to recognise, or care, that this armoury could be turned on defenseless Sudanese civilians is unconscionable.

As presidential candidate, Obama said, “When you see a genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia or in Darfur, that is a stain on all of us…We can’t say ‘never again’ and then allow it to happen again, and as a president of the United States I don’t intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter.”

It seems that being the first African American President to turn a blind eye to the genocide of black Africans is not the legacy Barack Obama planned to bequeath. Yet, he seems bent on doing just that.

Obama’s betrayal of black Africans in Darfur hit a heart breaking low last week when he vowed to act decisively in Iraq in order to prevent a “potential” genocide there. What about the one you vowed to stop 7 years ago, if only you were president and had it within your gift? Where the power now exists it seems the will is lacking.

How many more starving, slaughtered Sudanese children must be sacrificed at the alter of (misplaced) self interest before we call in Obama’s promise of “never again” in Darfur?

Everyday Racism, At a Seaside Near You.

If you’re taking an only child for a day at the beach (that’s a long time) it’s essential to pitch up in just the right spot, i.e. next to other children the same age with accompanying adults that look keen. That, says my friend, who is also the mother of an older “only”, is key. Parents who look as though “they have a bit about them” will be vigilant and stand at the waters edge while your child plays with theirs’. “That way you can top up your tan while catching up with the latest celebrity gossip in Heat Magazine”.

I don’t do sun bathing (My freckled Irish skin goes a kind of radioactive red which isn’t a good look) and The Economist, as opposed to Heat, would be my magazine of choice. Despite dismissing the advice as a load of codswallop, I found myself doing a quick reccy of the beach last week and, completely coincidentally, pitched up next to a couple with children about the same age as my 6 year old.

As I wrestled with a beach tent with an identity crisis (it thought it was a kite) in gale force winds (this is England after all), my neighbours watched in amusement. It dawned on me that I would be the one on coast guard duty for the duration.

Having erected our base (after a fashion), I set to work pumping up the newly acquired inflatable dinghy. “A vital procurement”, according to my friend. “It’s a great way to lure other children in”. To which I replied, “I’m the mother of an only child, not Myra Hindley on a grooming expedition.”

The pump either wasn’t up to much or my technique was rubbish, but I kept trying. I overheard the woman opposite (part of the duo that allowed me to struggle unaided with my tent) say to one of her children who seemed upset, “Them children aren’t the same as us. They’re mean and rude, don’t play with them”. Her two blond boys had been playing with two British Asian boys, who I later discovered were Muslim.

Frustrated with my failed attempts to inflate his dinghy, my son accosted the first male he saw to rescue me (time to swap his superhero comics for some Jacqueline Wilson books methinks). The man was the father of the “rude, mean” children, Isa (pronounced Eesa) and Kareem. In return for saving the day, I offered them a ride in the boat. Turns out they were kind, well mannered boys with whom my son spent a joyous day, along with the blonde boys, Josh and Ben, who I invited to jump in too.

I gleaned that the incident that invoked outrage from Josh and Ben’s mum earlier was Isa and Kareem’s decision to go for lunch in the middle of a game. Her son’s disappointment was twisted into something sinister and ugly by his mother. Fortunately, still too young to be tainted by entrenched prejudice, both her boys were oblivious and carried on playing and sharing with their darker hued peers.

In last week’s Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote about the scourge of every day racism. She lambasted the lack of roles for black actors in the UK, the fact that only one black or Asian writer was longlisted for the Booker Prize and the dearth of black editors anywhere in the mainstream media.

The 2011 census showed that 17.9% of the UK population is non-white, against 4.2% of MPs and 3.5% of FTSE 100 chief executives, chairmen and finance directors. That’s not good enough. But, while the campaign group, “Everyday Sexism”, is gaining momentum for gender equality, Everyday Racism goes either unnoticed and/or unchallenged. Apathy and complacency are the greatest enemy of equality and democracy.

Our children aren’t born bigoted. They’re born pure and prejudice free. We (parents, schools, the media, politicians and society), have it within our gift to inculcate that purity or, contaminate and annihilate it. I wonder how long Josh and Ben have before they start seeing Isa and Kareem through their parent’s poisonous prism?

This is no Time for Neutrality. Israel's Assault on Palestinian Civilians Must Be Stopped

" The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality". A quote from Joe Wilson’s book, The Politics of Truth.


Palestinian children are persecuted and pulverised in Gaza every day. A plight they have endured for over 50 years of Israeli occupation. Of the estimated 600 Palestinians who have been killed in the recent Israeli onslaught, 75% are civilians and a quarter of those are children (3 Israeli civilians have been killed and they are no more or less worthy of our heart felt sympathy). Their cries for help compete for column inches with their counterparts in Sudan, Syria Ukraine and elsewhere.

So much agony, so many disturbing images of severed little limbs and mangled bodies, but the media rations our exposure. Bite size chunks and palatable sound bites. Nothing to stir us into such a state of incandescent rage that we’d get out of our armchairs and, God [insert whoever or whatever it is you believe here] forbid, protest against the Israeli occupation and oppression of beleaguered Palestinians.

In spite of the media’s patchy at best and misleading at worst coverage of the horrors in Gaza, tens of thousands took to the streets in London on Saturday to demonstrate against Israeli occupation of Gaza and what some describe as a genocidal campaign. Similar demonstrations took place around the globe yet blink and you’ll have missed it. The mainstream media (with some exceptions), not for the first time, is out of step with the public mood but far more crucially, it has lost sight of the truth.

Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights points out the hypocrisy of the West when it comes to Israel.

“…instead of condemning such recourse to massive violence as ‘aggression’ that violates the UN Charter and fundamental international law principles, the reaction of Western diplomats and mainstream media has perversely sided with Israel. From the UN Secretary-General to the president of the United States, the main insistence has been that Hamas must stop all rocket attacks while Israel is requested ever so politely to show ‘maximum restraint’.


Ethical journalism is about reporting the context as well as the facts and allowing the truth to speak for itself. The rhetoric is heavily loaded against Palestinians. For example, I came across this in a left leaning newspaper today, “…For more than five years the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas nor Israel appeared ready to stop fighting…”


Why is religion only referenced when it’s Islam and why is it used as code for “terrorist”? If religion is deemed relevant, why not cite both? Why do we never hear the phrase, “Jewish fundamentalist” when reporting on a state that has breached numerous international laws and stands accused of “possible” war crimes and crimes against humanity?

Other common discursive distortions, which serve to obfuscate the truth, are to refer to the occupied territories as “disputed territories” and to portray one of the strongest military powers in the world as the victim of an unfortunate situation whereby “both sides” are equally culpable.

The reputable international organisation, Human Rights Watch, has been investigating Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza. The evidence it has gathered is damning. Despite being an independent source of evidence on the ground, the media has all but ignored its findings. The full report can be found on their website but here are some extracts;

“Human Rights Watch investigated four Israeli strikes during the July military offensive in Gaza that resulted in civilian casualties and either did not attack a legitimate military target or attacked despite the likelihood of civilian casualties being disproportionate to the military gain. Such attacks committed deliberately or recklessly constitute war crimes under the laws of war applicable to all parties. In these cases, the Israeli military has presented no information to show that it was attacking lawful military objectives or acted to minimize civilian casualties.

Israel has wrongly claimed as a matter of policy that civilian members of Hamas or other political groups who do not have a military role are “terrorists” and therefore valid military targets, and has previously carried out hundreds of unlawful attacks on this basis. Israel has also targeted family homes of alleged members of armed groups without showing that the structure was being used for military purposes”.

“A fourth Israeli airstrike, on July 9, killed Amal Abed Ghafour, who was 7-months pregnant, and her 1-year-old daughter, and wounded her husband and 3-year-old son. The family lived across the street from an apartment building that was struck with multiple missiles, according to witnesses. Residents of nearby homes said Israeli forces fired a small non-explosive “warning” missile at the apartment building minutes before the main missile strikes. However, the family did not know of the warning or have time to flee. Israeli officials have not said why they targeted the apartment building.

“For warnings to be effective, civilians need adequate time to leave and go to a place of safety before an attack. In several cases Human Rights Watch investigated, Israel gave warnings, but carried out the attack within five minutes or less. Given that Gaza has no bomb shelters, civilians realistically often have no place to flee.


When reporting on issues pertaining to Human Rights abuses, the press would do well to appraise itself of International Human Rights laws. If they don’t know what constitutes a violation of international law how can it be reported? For example, the International Court of Justice said that, as an occupying military power Israel has an obligation under the 4th Geneva convention, 1949, to protect the rights of civilians under military occupation. So, indiscriminate shelling of Palestinians communities, killing civilians, collective punishments, destruction of water supplies and natural resources and building settlements in occupied territories, would constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I, like Stephen Hawking, Brian Eno, Mike Leigh, Alice Walker and countless others around the world, am boycotting Israeli goods. It’s my way of demonstrating that, whether it's Jews in the Holocaust, black Africans in Sudan or Palestinians in Gaza, when it comes to the slaughter and suffering of innocent civilians, I am not neutral.

It’s Been a Shitty Week for Barclays Bank, The Met & Me

I don’t know what was more shocking. That a man described as being in his 40’s, “well to do”, with a “calm but angry” demeanour walked around a Hampshire branch of Barclays, pooing as he went, or that the incident wasn’t picked up by the mainstream media. A customer in the branch at the time tweeted pictures of a female branch employee desperately wiping up the poo with a hanky. No protective clothing, no mask, despite the “disgusting stench” that permeated the building. Not even a pair of gloves.

You don’t have to be a therapist versed in the teachings of Freud, but it just so happens that I am, to know that if someone shits all over your house, there’s a good chance you pissed them off big time. Perhaps you invited them ‘round on false pretences. Promising free range Waitrose chicken but serving up a battery hen from Lidl instead.

People are losing their homes and businesses because of the reckless incompetence of the kind of “talent” that got a 10% increase on their bonus this year, a tidy £1 million, despite a 32% drop in profits. As one disgruntled shareholder recently said “We’re paying for Man United but we’re getting Colchester United (I’m sure no disrespect towards Colchester fans was intended…).

The same talent that came up with the brilliant idea of Libor rigging which saw Barclays fined £290m and just when you wonder at just how much talent any one bank can handle, another cunning plan from one of Barclays talent pool backfires. The bank is facing a potential £50m fine by the Financial Conduct Authority for breaching listing rules when dealing with Qatari investors in 2008.

Looking at the picture of the woman cleaning up someone else’s excrement, I wondered if she would be one of the 1,800 branch staff that will lose their jobs in order to pay for the £1m bonuses of the 148 super talented executives at HQ. I couldn’t help thinking that, if cleaning up after their own mess was a condition of their bonus, executives might take their talent somewhere else. The further away the better.

There’s only so much shit anyone can take and since the government has broken its promise to change the culture of contempt at banks, it’s little wonder some customers snap and resort to dirty protests. Anger is a powerful emotion. It demands expression. If all legitimate channels of grievance are closed down, expect it to emerge elsewhere.

It’s not just bankers who seem pathologically predisposed to repeating the same mistakes. A few days ago a tribunal found the Metropolitan Police had “directly discriminated” against employee Carol Howard on the grounds of race and sex. It emerged that the internal investigator was asked to delete any reference to sex or race discrimination from her file. Kiran Daurka, the lawyer representing Ms Howard, said that this wasn’t an isolated incident and that the alleged deleting of evidence in such cases was policy within the Met. Two words, Stephen Lawrence.

Incompetent unaccountable leadership causes harm, both to individuals and society. We tolerate it at our peril.

Notwithstanding the above, I’m grateful to Barclays for providing the hook and excuse for the gratuitous use of the word shit. Having had a pretty shitty week myself I’ve found using it (i.e. “shit”) in this blog remarkably therapeutic. Time to either do some transcendental medication or pour another flagon of poitin. Can’t decide…

Guildford Four's Gerry Conlon Dies of a Broken Heart & Cancer, Aged 60

Hooded and shackled he was unceremoniously plucked from his home in Belfast and taken to a police station in Surrey. It was 1974 and the end of Gerry Conlon’s life, as he knew it. He was 20 years old.

Gerry Conlon, along with Paul Hill, Carole Richardson and Paddy Armstrong became victims of what is described as one of the worst miscarriages of British justice. The Guildford Four, as they became known, were convicted based on wholly fabricated evidence.

In Gerry Conlon's autobiography, Proved Innocent, he recounts that, despite there being cast iron alibis proving that two of the Four couldn’t have been involved, the witnesses were intimidated, confessions were extracted through torture and a statement proving Conlon was in Kilburn and not Guildford at the time, was buried. Even when an IRA unit took responsibility for the Guildford bombings in 1977, Conlon and the others were sent back to prison until their convictions were quashed in 1989.

Gerry’s ailing father, Giuseppe, who came to Britain to rescue his son, was also falsely convicted, as part of the “Maguire Seven” and died in prison a few years later.

My path crossed that of Gerry’s on 9 February 2005 en route to a parliamentary committee meeting in the House of Commons. I wrote the following account in my diary:

Emerging from Westminster station, the Evening Standard headline caught my eye: “PM to Apologise to Guildford Four and Maguire Seven”.

On entering parliament, I saw a camera crew and a crowd of people huddled around someone. It was Ian Paisley. To get in, I had to squeeze past him as he pontificated loquaciously. I resisted the temptation to slice my spiked heel into the ankle of the man who is to Catholics in Northern Ireland what Primark is to ethical trading.

My head still reeling, I entered Westminster hall, to find myself face to face with Gerry Conlon. There was a group of people with him, standing in the centre of the imposing hall. Mr. Conlon was talking on his mobile. The atmosphere was charged but I couldn’t discern if it was good or bad energy. Had Blair reneged? Had the irascible Paisley stolen their thunder? I hung around trying to glean what was happening. I wanted to reach out to Conlon and say…what? “Congratulations on your prime ministerial apology after 30 years of living purgatory”? Words escaped me, so I just hovered, and stared. I noticed them looking at me awkwardly then moving on.

I realized later how I must have appeared. Looking down on them, vexed at their raised, Irish voices. No doubt donning my default furrowed brow, dressed in power clothes and brief case, ceremonial armour for my dance with the devil. Being an Irish (ex) catholic myself I was racked with guilt. Not only had I failed to communicate my sorrow and anger at the injustice they endured, I had inadvertently driven them on and made them feel they had no right to be there.

Having endured years of torture and abuse, which included, defecating in his food, putting glass in his food, having a gun put in his mouth, as well as spending years in solitary confinement for the audacity of protesting his innocence, it’s little wonder Gerry Conlon suffered post traumatic stress disorder for the rest of his life.

Yet, far from being incapacitated by it, Gerry Conlon galvanized his incredible energy, humility and compassion into fighting injustice globally. He met with survivors of Guantanamo Bay and berated the phlegmatic Irish American community for failing to support Muslims who had taken over the epithet of “suspect community” from the Irish.

Gareth Peirce was the human rights lawyer responsible for Gerry Conlon’s release. She said: "Once a community has been made suspect en masse, every organ of the state will feel entitled, in fact obliged, to discover proof of their suspicions. The example of what happened to Gerry and his entire family should haunt us forever"

SDLP MP Mark Durkan told the House of Commons this week that Gerry Conlon's dying wish was that secret documents relating to the bombings, which are being held in the national archives for 75 years (there are only two cases in history where the Official Secrets Act has been applied in this way), be made available for public scrutiny. He said Mr. Conlon had been promised access by the previous Victims’ Commissioner for Northern Ireland. He asked David Cameron: "Will you ensure that the dying wish of an innocent man is honoured?" He is said to be considering the matter.

Too little, too late for Gerry Conlon, who is being buried in Belfast on Saturday.

We Must do More to Stop Rape Being Used as a Weapon of War Against Girls Like Roa.

An edited version of the below was published in yesterdays Independent on Sunday. Apologies for delay between posts. My internet connection has been down since Thursday.

As fathers throughout Britain unwrap their polyester pyjamas on Sunday morning, imagine this. You’re sitting down to a meal with your family when you hear gun shots. Moments later you’re surrounded by militia pointing AK47’s at your family. You, the father, are given a choice, “We either rape your daughter or kill your son. You decide”.

The father was a relative of a Darfuri friend of mine. His daughter, Roa, was 4 at the time.

The UN has recognized rape as a deliberate weapon of war in Sudan since 2005. Yet, it steadfastly fails to provide adequate protection for the victims or any consequences for the perpetrators. UN special envoy, Angelina Jolie and William Hague co-chaired a summit to end sexual violence in conflict in London this week. Roa and her family could not be there.

Driven from their homes and their livelihoods they, like an estimated 4 million others, sought refuge in a displaced persons camp on the border with Chad. Given the government of Sudan (GoS) persistently obstructs access of humanitarian aid to the camps, Roa’s nightmare is far from over.

Three weeks ago the UNICEF representative in Sudan, Geert Cappelaere, warned that an entire generation in Darfur may be lost as a result of over a decade of violence in the region. Given that 60 percent of the displaced in Darfur are minors, he warned that the children growing up in the camps may not be able to return to a normal life. Many are traumatised having witnessed attacks against their families or being themselves subjected to violence, abduction, and other assaults. In addition, the malnutrition figures are very high. More than 80,000 children in North Darfur are severely malnourished. He warned that the world should not turn its back to the tragedy of the children in Darfur.

Despite the shocking nature of this very red flag and the fact that is was raised by a senior UNICEF official, apart from Radio Dabanga and Reuters, it was not picked up by the mainstream media.

In order to combat starvation, women and children in Darfur face the prospect of being raped and beaten on a daily basis. Leaving their homes and camps in search of food and firewood is highly hazardous. It’s where over 80% of the rapes occur. Some women refuse medical help after being raped because they say they fear being arrested by the Sudanese security forces. Many never reveal their ordeal to spare their family the stigma. Those are the “lucky” ones. Others are “branded” by their attackers (including facial scarring) so that they will never be free from “shame”.

Rape is an integral, strategic component of the genocide in Darfur. Women and children are routinely raped in front of their families, breaking minds as well as bodies in a bid to crush their will and erode family structures where virginity and chastity are sacrosanct.

A few years ago I collaborated with Ricken Patel, who since founded the hugely impactful campaigning group Avaaz, to organize a series of global demonstrations for Darfur. One of which focused entirely on rape as a weapon of war. We asked the women in the camps what the international community could do to help and that is what we campaigned for.

Firstly, they wanted whistles so that when women and children ventured outside the camps for firewood, they could raise the alarm if attacked. Citizens around the world simultaneously demonstrated outside their respective parliaments, blowing whistles against the systematic rape of women and children in Darfur. Having got the attention of our respective governments and the media, we pressed for the other key “asks”, which included; more UN peacekeepers to protect civilians, sending groups of policewomen from African nations to accompany the firewood-gathering trips, rape counseling in a bid to break the taboo of silence and increased medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

Seven years on and there’s no sign of African policewomen and efforts to provide medical treatment and counseling have been obviated at every turn by the GoS. More peacekeepers have been deployed to the region, with a mandate to protect civilians, yet the raping rampage continues undeterred. We blow our whistles, said one woman, but no-one comes. The dins of their whistles, like their cries for help, fall on deaf ears.

After a decade of sexual violence being used as a weapon in the ongoing genocide in Darfur, a generation of women will never be able to have children due to infection or physical damage. Countless raped women (little data is collected or reported) who became pregnant by their attackers, or “branded”, will live with the stigma of rape for the rest of their lives. For the London summit to be of any use to Roa, it must translate into action. We owe her that.

Wanted: BBC Trust Chairman (women need not apply).

* There is currently a bidding war between the BBC & the Sunday Times to publish this piece...

In the spring of 2004 Barbara Cassani, then chair of the London 2012 Olympic bid, successfully led London through to the final five shortlist. In reporting that not insignificant feat the BBC News at Ten referred to Cassani as the bids “Chief Cheerleader”, not once but on two consecutive nights.

Despite her obvious business acumen and talent, the British media, disgruntled it seemed to have an American woman at the helm of the British bid, made her position untenable. After reportedly winning a libel action against the Telegraph, she stepped aside, making way for her successor, Lord Coe, who is now in the running for the position of chair of the BBC Trust, along with another American woman, Marjorie Scardino.

According to the job specification, Scardino appears to be the most qualified of the two (if they apply). Yet, David Cameron is already being warned not to give the job to a woman but to award it on merit, as if the two are mutually exclusive. In the corridors of power, however demonstrably brilliant a woman’s track record, a male (sometimes mediocre) with the right other credentials (class/title, political affiliations, race, old boy club carrying card) will always be the best “man” for the job.

The BBC is in crisis. The rot that enabled a series of debacles that exploded with the Saville scandal and which continue with the ongoing bullying revelations is systemic. More than ever the role of the BBC Trust is to be the conscience of the organisation. The person taking the lead will need to have the moral fortitude, independence of mind and a strong track record in governance (as opposed to the 100 metres) to have any chance of reinstating a semblance of trust in the BBC. The head hunters will need to be creative in their approach and recognise that titled elites, male or female, may not be the best people for the job.

Looking on the appointed head hunter’s website though, I’m not hopeful. Groupthink and faulty decisions are the product of homogeneity, a core factor, I believe, in the BBC’s downfall. Yet, of the 21 listed employees, the 18 pictures I could see were all white with the co-founder boasting having worked in Whitehall. It doesn’t bode well, in my view, for finding a wide rage of diverse talent from which to choose an outstanding candidate.

The Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, and the BBC should know that, when outsourcing contracts to external parties they are obliged to ask for evidence of their adherence to Equality legislation. I wouldn’t have thought that an apparently all white head hunter in London, where 10% of the population is BME, would make the grade. The Culture secretary, the BBC and the head hunters themselves should also be aware of their duty to promote gender equality under the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA). It’s not enough to be seen to remove barriers to gender equality, they must actively promote and encourage it. The advertisement for the position falls at the fist hurdle with the title, Chairman. Subtext (whether intentional or not), women need not apply. As part of the SDA’s duty to remove barriers and promote gender equality, gender neutral language would be an absolute minimum requirement.

Ten years ago I conducted research into the impact of testosterone charged images and language used in advertising for leadership positions. I tracked several adverts and followed up on the appointments, all of which were men. In some cases, no women even applied. The advert that spurred my action was the following: What Turns Businessmen on: DOMINATION?

This advert appeared regularly in The Sunday Times “Appointments” section during the summer of 2004. When I first encountered it, I felt as though, as a woman, I was a non-person. Like a waitress at a free mason’s ball, with Bernard Manning as the guest speaker. You may say the newspaper was merely employing the term ‘businessmen’ as a universally understood euphemism for business people of both sexes. You might also brush off the concept of ‘being turned on by domination’ as a vaguely humorous and largely innocuous turn of phrase that underlines the newspaper’s attractiveness for recruitment advertising. And indeed, this was how the Sunday Times defended its use of language to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) when I lodged a complaint. However, when viewed as a strategy of dismissal, we can begin to understand how such language contributes to the marginalization of women at work. It does so by portraying the business arena as an inherently “man’s world”. The complaint was upheld.

Encouraging the use of gender-neutral language is an unashamed and totally legitimate act of political correctness. Many titles, such as ‘chairman’ and ‘businessman’, are so culturally imbued that they are not recognised for what they are, i.e. symbols of a masculinised business paradigm. Examining language within the social constructivist paradigm, as I do, it would be fatuous not to acknowledge the political aspect and the power it wields. Language does not simply reflect reality (i.e. that the majority of chair or business people are men) but constructs and perpetuates it (i.e. “that’s the norm” and “lets keep it that way”).

The discourse of the dominant sets out different rules for those with and without power. Language, which itself can be understood to be constitutive of both knowledge and power, is hijacked to legitimise what is deemed mere “common sense”. Protestations that serve to challenge this rationality are ridiculed and labelled as “radical”. Some media very deliberately choose their language to enflame prejudice by playing on people’s fears, inciting outrage at the very thought of introducing positive discrimination to attract black recruits to the police, for example.

The fact is that positive discrimination has existed for years. The metaphorical tap on the shoulder and old boys’ networks are all practices so institutionalised that we take them for granted. Those who profit from privilege accept such benefits as their birth-right, and are the ones who have the most to lose if these unwritten rules are exposed by the critical scrutiny of language.

Hay-on-Wyte

This piece was published in the Huffington Post on 29 May.

After half an hour waiting in my second queue of the day I was catatonic. The people behind were chatty at first but grew markedly frosty when little Sylvian exclaimed (finger pointing for dramatic effect) she’s the one that booed bankers in the Tata tent! (more on that later) As the father’s face froze in a glacial manner, I clocked the Barclays logo on his salmon/pink Lacrosse sweater. Suddenly the Festival’s 87 page brochure became a compelling read.

It also enabled me to feign obliviousness to the tuts from the family in front, who clearly disapproved of my 6 year old catching stagnant water in his open mouth as it dripped, in torrents, from the side of the tent. There were some big questions posed in the forward, such as Who are we in 2014? and What do liberty and equality look like? I leafed through the brochure for answers. Apart from one black face on page 57, all the other images depicted happy white families enjoying the Festival’s delights.

I looked around at the hundreds of people queuing, eating in the café and walking around. Everywhere I looked, the whole day, there were white faces. Around 10% of British people are BME. The answer to the question, who we are in 2014 then, won’t be found in the hideously homogeneous Hay brochure (eat your alliteration heart out Francesca Simon), or indeed the corridors of the festival itself.

This was my first foray into the world of the literati. My son is an avid consumer of the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third series of books by the splendicious Cressida Cowell (who encourages playing with words, as opposed to traffic or fire). She was our main attraction and didn’t disappoint, inspiring children and adults alike. I was slightly disappointed to learn of her privileged background. I liked imagining her sagesse as being born of a life of privation and adversity but my prejudice could not deny Cowell of her genius.

There are core themes that form a thread which weaves its way, seamlessly through her work. In a tribe of burley Vikings, Hiccup is the “weakling”. He employs wit and intellect to defeat brute force and idiocy. Although Cowell clearly coddles her penchant for the pantomime villain, her complex characterisations challenge us to see the potential for good in everyone. But perhaps the most compelling theme for me is her call to arms, to children everywhere, to question everything.

Childrens' thirst for knowledge and their innate curiosity is satiated by questioning things we take for granted. That’s how they make sense of a sometimes incomprehensible world, even for adults. Cowell said her next book would depict Hiccup growing up and his political awakening. So, when she said that anyone seeking fortune should go into banking rather than writing, I found the sound boooo involuntarily oozing out from my mouth and dissipating like flatulence into the ether. It was an instinctive reaction to the contemporary pantomime villain and the children loved it. Those in close proximity joined in, much to their parents’ disgust. Not surprising, given the demographic and sponsors (including Barclays Bank), there’s a good chance many of them were b***ers.

When I saw the first black face of the day on my way out I wondered how he would answer the second big question posed in the brochure’s forward, What do liberty and equality look like? Surveying the sea of white faces looking back at him I can only imagine his answer, Nothing like this.

What do E.On, The Tories & Gary Barlow Have in Common?

They all exploit loopholes in the law (allegedly) to their own advantage.

E.On has apparently been fined 12m for mis selling to its already long suffering customers and the Tory party is accused of circumventing electoral law in order to keep big donor anonymous. Individuals who donate over £1,500 per year are supposed to be named. If donations are made through a private club however, no such restrictions apply.

One such club, despite having no website and appears to be operating out of a house in leafy Buckinghamshire, has donated inordinate sums to Tory coffers but individual contributors cannot be identified. By way of putting our minds at rest, a Tory spokesperson (speaking from an offshore, hot and duty free location) said “All donations are entirely proper and accounted for”. See, everything’s entirely above board. Nothing illegal going on so it’s obviously a loony left wing conspiracy.

As for Gaz Barlow (a devout Tory apparently), should he be asked to relinquish his honour just because he was allegedly engaged in some kind of tax avoidance scheme? According to his mate, Dave (the PM), absolutely not. His logic? Barlow gives shed loads of money away to charity. If I didn’t have to pay all the tax due on my income, I could afford that kind of munificence too, and get the knighthood that goes with it. The fact is though Mr Cameron. It isn’t his money he’s giving away, it’s ours. Does Gary Barlow live in Buckinghamshire by any chance?

Bring Back the Stolen Girls of Nigeria

It’s almost a month since 274 girls were brutally abducted from their beds in the dead of night in Nigeria. They were piled into the back of lorries and transported, like livestock, to be sold into a lifetime of child slavery, rape and forced marriage. A barbaric practice that affects 10 million children worldwide. Some reports cast doubt on whether the girls will ever be found alive.

Yet, this mass kidnapping has only hit the headlines in the last few days. What took so long to break this story and why are the children’s parents living in fear of their lives for speaking out? In theory this has all the hallmarks of a headline grabber. Anyone who has children or a heart could relate to this heinous crime, yet it didn’t make the grade.

Protestations of the remoteness of the locality don’t bear scrutiny. The story was known but it took social media, rather than mainstream media to break it. Once broken, momentum was slow. It gathered pace once pictures of grieving parents were beamed across the globe and outrage began to grow about the lack of urgency or apparent strategy to rescue the girls.

Is it that the abduction of 274 girls doesn’t seem to matter or is it that the abduction of 274 African girls doesn’t seem to matter? One thing is for sure, if this happened in California or Cornwall, it wouldn’t take a month for it to make the news.

I’ll be supporting the “Bring Back Our Girls” Campaign and lobbying for the safe return of those 274 children to the arms of their distraught parents. I hope you will too.

* A Note to my readers in Nigeria: If you have any information you think I could help to disseminate please get in touch via my website: www.tessfinchlees.com. Many thanks.

City Fathers Revolt. Better Late Than Never.

Probably the most incendiary movement to hit the city since Occupy London is Cityfathers. A charity set up to lobby city employers to recognise the role of fatherhood in male employees’ lives. That it exists, is the single biggest threat to capitalism since the abolition of slavery.

Capitalism is founded on the principle of having control over its workforce. Clearly demarcated gender roles are integral to that. With women paid less than their male counterparts they’re often the ones to be the stay at home parent. The Equal Pay Act proved to be a surmountable threat (devised & [not] implemented by a predominately male judiciary). With women at home looking after the baby, the pressure is on the sole remaining breadwinner to provide for the family. No pressure.

City employers know that sole breadwinners don’t tend to rock the boat and are easily exploited (though the mega buck earners could hardly be described as vulnerable). It’s generally considered career suicide to resist working long hours and a request for parental leave could result in dismissal on grounds of insanity.

Cityfathers wants to change that culture. In a recent survey of its 750 members 44% of its working fathers said that missing their children was their greatest daily challenge. Yet, only 29% of them said they availed of their legal entitlement to parental leave. All 2 weeks of it. For some it comes down to finances. Paternity leave pay amounts to 90% of the average weekly wage, which is less than the minimum wage.

The government plans to introduce shared parental leave from April 2014, whereby apart from the first two weeks, parental leave can be shared between both parents. Sounds good, but even the government has predicted a poor uptake, around 4-8%.

The devil, as always is in the detail. Whilst it’s being sold as shared parental leave, it has been criticised for being “transferable” leave, i.e. it’s still essentially maternity leave which can be transferred to Dad if he so requests it. Cityfathers wants fathers to have the same automatic rights as mothers & wants city employers to tackle, what Nick Clegg describes as an “Edwardian” approach to gendered roles in the workplace.

Research that I did 10 years ago, interviewing young fathers in particular, exposed the myth that men are happy to have walk on parts in their children’s lives. When I presented these findings at a city business conference at the time it was as if I had announced the bar was out of Bollinger. It was considered highly controversial to suggest that the city’s malleable male workforce might be so miserable that at some point in the future they may stage a revolt. It’s a bit late coming but welcome nonetheless.

As more men assert their rights to work reduced hours, there will be more room for women to share those top positions, thus allowing both fathers and mothers to have an equal role at home & in the workforce. This isn’t just good for families. It’s good for society and the economy.

Irish Parenting Wisdom: It Involves Jam, a Door Handle & a Bottle of the Hard Shhstuff

Dia daoibh mo chairde! I’ve just returned from my annual pilgrimage to my homeland to 1) ensure my 6 year old can brush up on his “Oirish”, which usually involves him saying “dia dhuit” to random strangers who invariably say “whah”? and him saying “howya”, 2) provide said child with ample opportunity to inform the aforementioned strangers that he’s Anglo Oirish but that he feels “more Oirish than English” (see Pete McCarthy’s hilarious book, “McCarthy’s Bar”, for more Anglo Irish angst and, 3) stock up on items from The Dunnes Stores Homeware range. Where else would you get door stops filled with ammonite rock in the shape of a leprechaun. For 5 Euro?

The day before I left for Ireland a piece I wrote was published in The Independent. It marked the 20th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, as well as highlighting the current genocide in Darfur. It was scathing of the UN’s failure to learn from its mistakes. Cue a barrage of abuse and threats. Whilst supping on a pint of the hard shhstuff and enjoying a chin wag in a local watering hole, a relative commented on the minefield that is my chosen profession. But, the truth be told, the hardest thing I’ve ever done was becoming a parent. It’s a rare day when I can kick back my heels and pat myself on the back for a job well done. Invariably, the Mother Mary Consumpta, Ignacious, of the holy child of Jesus, voice in my head bellows, “shite, shite, shite. Must try harder. Shite”.

Since an incendiary device was planted in my head on the day of my first holy communion (guilt), it’s hard to shake off the proclivity for self reproachment. Especially when it comes to being a mammy. However, on my recent pilgrimage to Knock (the airport as opposed to the shrine itself….) I came across a little gem that has proved to be the missing link in my arsenal of parental armoury. You won’t find it in any of those nauseatingly “knowing” and judgemental parenting books in WHSmiths. This nugget of wisdom was wrapped up in a beautiful Irish poem that I had known as a child but since forgotten. It’s “Subh Milis” by Seamus O'Neill.

"Bhí subh milis, Ar bhaschrann an dorais, Ach mhúch mé an corraí, Ionam d'éirigh, Mar smaoinigh mé ar an lá, A bheas an baschrann glan, Agus an láimh bheag, Ar iarraidh." ("There was jam on the door handle, but I suppressed the anger that rose up in me, because I thought of the day that the door handle would be clean, and the little hand would be gone.")

So, now, when my child is, I don’t know, lassoing an OAP with his Bob the Builder belt in the middle of the spirits isle at Aldi, instead of pretending he’s not mine (God forbid) whilst making a frenzied B line for the nearest exit with a bottle of Paddys in one hand and an own brand chocolate gateaux in the other, I simply take a deep breath, think of the jam on the door handle and all the guilt inducing rage evaporates from my being. Then, I pretend he’s not mine and make a calm, composed B line for the nearest exit.

Twenty Years after Rwanda the UN is Accused of Covering up the Genocide in Darfur

This piece will be published in The Independent tomorrow.

It grates that the head of the UN, an organization accused of complicity in the Rwanda genocide, could unceremoniously hijack its 20th anniversary as a tawdry PR opportunity, airbrushing out the current Darfur genocide in the process.

That’s what Ban Ki Moon did in last week’s Independent on Sunday. Although the UN failed in Rwanda, "lessons have been learned", he said. His contrition came amid reports in the US’ Foreign Policy of leaked UNAMID (UN and African Union Mission in Darfur) documents proving, not only that lessons haven’t been learned from Rwanda, but that there is evidence of "a pattern of denial, disingenuousness, concealment of data and reports and outright mendacity in downplaying the continuing genocide in Darfur".

Ban talks of UN “eyes” and ears” being deployed where civilians are under threat. Given the Khartoum regime forbids a media or human rights presence in those areas where it’s slaughtering its own people, the only “eyes” and ears” is a multimillion pound US embassy in the capital which is being built, not to protect Darfuri, but US citizens. The Foreign Policy report indicates that the US’ silence on the Darfur genocide is the price for anti-terrorism intelligence, considered necessary to avert attacks on the US.

White blood, it seems, always trades higher than African blood on the open human rights market. General Dallaire, who headed the UN's small peacekeeping mission in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, lambasted the international community’s reticence to act in Africa, but meanwhile hundreds of millions of dollars were pouring into Yugoslavia. Were some human beings "more human than others”? he asked.

Ban Ki Moon boasts about the UN’s Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the “United Against Impunity” slogan. This catchy rhetoric is meaningless. In a recent attack in March, the leaked documents indicate that government forces destroyed an entire camp for displaced people adjacent to the UN compound. The attackers are reported to have burned to death a sheikh, injured multiple others, kidnapped local leaders, looted property and livestock while also destroying water wells, homes, and a hospital. UN peacekeepers apparently did nothing to intervene despite their mandate to protect civilians. The head of UNAMID later expressed only general concerns about the “escalation of violence”.

On Monday a UN spokesperson admitted that “There is tension between the necessity to preserve the consent and good will of the host government (whose president is indicted by the Hague for war crimes and acts of genocide against his own people) required to allow peacekeepers (The UN seeks permission from a despot to protect the civilians his regime is attacking) to do their jobs and the sometimes contradictory imperative to report accurately and candidly on any and all incidents of violence”. That he thought it okay to admit covering up “any and all incidents of violence” against civilians is terrifying.

The former UNAMID spokesperson, Aicha Elbasri, who resigned in protest in December, said that much of the evidence is withheld from public reports. Due to self imposed evidentiary restrictions, UNAMID disallows the testimony of local witnesses so, despite numerous aerial bombardments constituting violations of the UN ban on air strikes, they are rarely reported to the UN Security Council.

Michael Gaouette, A former UN official who led the Darfur peacekeeping team in 2008, said that many of UNAMID’s deficiencies were predictable. Without a ceasefire in place the peacekeeping mission was set up to fail. To achieve that would have meant implementing some of those 16 UN resolutions that were passed but never enforced, such as no fly zones to prevent aerial bombardments. Only when civilians are protected can political settlements be pursued. That requires political will on behalf of the international community. Unfortunately, in Darfur, as in Rwanda before it, that doesn’t exist. Today, as 20 years ago, the international response is marred by indifference and incompetence.

When, as head of the UN, Mr Ban says, “Let us show people facing threats that they are not alone or abandoned and that the lifeline they need is on the way”, we must hold him to account. Darfuris have waited 11 long years for that lifeline. Still, those hanging on by a thread will grab it with both hands. The world is watching, waiting for you to throw that lifeline Mr Ban. Act now or face the opprobrium incurred by your predecessor, Kofi Annan, for his failure in Rwanda.