Don't Think Jeremy Corbyn Is A Worthy Leader? Maybe It's Time To Leave The Labour Party

The following (edited version of my last blog entry) was published in the Independent on Tuesday. It's still trending & provoking lots of (mostly) constructive debate.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dont-think-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-worthy-leader-maybe-its-time-to-leave-the-labour-party-a6773741.html

Elsewhere in the news this week. Police forces admit they're "overwhelmed" by the surge in domestic  violence cases in recent years. One woman in England and Wales is killed from domestic violence every three days and despite it being one of the biggest killers in this country, resources to tackle it have been cut to the point where the system is at breaking point.

It should come as no surprise that brutal austerity measures that are hitting the poorest the hardest lead to a surge in alcoholism, mental health incidence and domestic violence. There is a known correlation between economic hardship and domestic violence, yet services that previously existed, albeit basic, have been cut into oblivion by the same government whose policies have created an even greater need for their existence.

It Isn't Just David Cameron Who Thinks Those of Us Who Oppose Air Strikes On Syria Are "Terrorist Sympathisers"

It seems Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour has taken over from Islam as the root of all evil. Not since 7/7 have I witnessed such naked hysteria and loathing in the British media. The same reductionist, lazy language is now also being invoked in response to the awakening beast of left wing politics.

The obvious way of describing the divisions in Labour is along ideological lines. Jeremy Corbyn represents the overwhelming majority of labour supporters who gave him a landslide victory, and with it, a mandate to lead the party to the left, in line with its founding principles. There are those, more aligned to the Blair/Thatcher ideology on the right, who, despite being in the minority, are resisting change at all costs. Even if it means letting the Tories off the hook. These people are pro austerity, pro war and have more in common with the other right wing parties than that of Labour.

If the media was seeking to be impartial, it would refer to both factions in line with their ideological leanings, one being left wing, the other, right wing. Whilst the term “left winger”, “trots”, and “terrorist sympathisers” is regularly used to depict the Corbyn majority, the right wingers (who support bombing and austerity, which has seen child poverty and poverty related suicides rise exponentially) are described as “moderates” and “modernisers”.  The media think that, if they don’t refer to the right wingers as being, right wing, we might not notice the fact that there are already plenty of right wing parties and they’re not Labour.

The rhetoric is heavily loaded against the left, in a way that is far too commonplace in reporting the plight of Muslims around the world. Take Gaza for example. Last year, 600 Palestinian and 3 Israeli civilians, were killed during an escalation of hostilities. At the time, I came across this in a left leaning newspaper, “…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? 

But it is not Palestinians that David Cameron and Hilary Benn want to rescue from a life of occupation, persecution and starvation.  Nor is it the beleaguered victims of the ongoing Darfur genocide (which Hilary Benn was criticised for downplaying during his time as Labour’s Secretary of State for International Development) Why are there no plans to bomb the fascist despot in Khartoum? These are all Muslims suffering at the hands of brutal regimes, so why is it not OK to walk by on the other side of the road when some Muslims are being persecuted but OK when it’s others? Are some Muslims more worthy than others?

The media would have us believe that Hilary Benn is a leader in waiting. He may well have a future in the Tory party but not as a Labour leader. If you find yourself unable to oppose your political opponent on the grounds that you have more in common with them than not, that’s a pretty good indicator that you’re in the wrong party. The government of the day needs to be held to account by a robust opposition (the clue is in the name), that constantly challenges, questions and opposes its ideology and actions.

Corbyn’s leadership style is inclusive and is loathed by those who seek to maintain the fear and control of the past. Ironically, those Corbyn traits that are depicted in the media as “weakness” (listening to ordinary people, engaging with Labour’s grass roots, being driven by principle and integrity, as opposed to the whim of focus groups) are the very traits that endear him to the public.  But the party faithful who gave him his mandate will not tolerate him floundering over his response to the saboteurs in his midst. They had their chance and in return for being given a seat at the top table of the shadow cabinet, they plotted to undermine the new direction of labour. The dignified response would be for them to do the decent thing and go, but if they don’t, they should be shown the door.

A degree of dissent and disagreement is healthy within organisations. The challenging and questioning leads to better decisions and prevents “group think”. If the level of dissent however, becomes dysfunctionally divisive, to the extent that it impedes the organisation's ability to be effective, decisive remedial action is called for. Taking on the Tories and their toxic austerity agenda, requires every shred of Labour’s energy and focus. Either respect the democratically elected leader and his left wing mandate, or join one of the many right wing options out there (Tory, Lib Dem, UKIP, take your pick).

Kidnapped By The State: The Scandal Of The UK’s Stolen Children

Last week, a delegation from the European Union visited the UK to investigate innumerable allegations of illegal practices relating to forced adoptions, i.e. taking children for adoption without parental consent. The barbaric practice is not permitted in any other European country, except here. If you think it couldn’t happen to you, read on.

Conservative MP Lucy Allan’s nightmare began with a visit to her GP for depression, which spiraled into a sequence of horrifying events, over which she had no control. Having been referred to social services for “support”, she was branded an “unfit mother” by an expert in the pay of the local authority, who she had never met.

Experts used in family courts have been widely criticized. Professor Jane Ireland reviewed reports submitted to the family courts by psychologists and found most of them were written by ‘professional experts’, some not even qualified, who make up to £4,000 per report. Those who side with the parents are rarely invited back.

Lucy Allan’s husband was never interviewed, yet based on a specious “expert report”, they came within a whisker of losing their child. Despite this horrendous experience, Lucy Allan was one of the lucky ones. She had the resources to launch a robust legal challenge, most victims do not.

If you’ve ever burnt toast, given your child too much freedom or not enough freedom, put your coat on before that of your child, suffered with depression or had a panic attack (even once), been in care, been in an abusive relationship (even though it’s long over), be afraid. Any of the above could constitute “risk of future emotional abuse” to your children, and is increasingly the sole basis upon which children in the UK are surreptitiously taken from biological parents and adopted without their consent. 95% of whom will never see their children again.

To compound this tragedy, many children won’t be adopted at all. 4,000 children under irreversible adoption orders languish in care homes or foster homes. Meanwhile, children in care are routinely ignored by social services when they report abuse.

While children are being ripped from their birth parents on the grounds of "possible risk of future emotional harm", they are being placed in the care of proven abusers and suffer actual harm. A report in the Independent last year found that, More than 2 out of 5 foster carers in proven abuse cases had been subject to previous allegations - yet they were still caring for children.

Haringey Council (responsible for failing to prevent the tragic death of baby P’s) and the police were criticised last year for ‘serious failings’ in a review into the suicide of teenager Mary Stroman. They failed to investigate claims she had been sexually abused for 4 years. As many as 9 police officers can be deployed to restrain a mother while her newborn baby is ripped from her arms by social workers, without any evidence of wrongdoing, yet children who report actual abuse continue to be ignored by police and social services.

If someone is accused of murder there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. In UK family courts, the child’s biological parents are presumed guilty and their children can be removed, in secret family courts, without any evidence or legal representation and without any right to appeal, never to be seen again. If parents dare to speak out about their injustice, they face prison.  Even when families can prove that they are fit and the decision was wrong, the adoption orders are irrevocable. It’s a life sentence for a crime that was never even committed.

Single mothers, lower income families and foreigners are the most vulnerable. For example, a pregnant Italian woman came to London on a training course and had a panic attack. She was sectioned, sedated and woke up to find her baby had been forcibly removed. A court order was granted to conduct a caesarian and then to have her baby adopted without consent. At no point was she, the baby’s father or her family consulted.

One of the worst miscarriages of justice (that we know of) carried out in UK family courts was that which was inflicted upon the Musa family. The couple’s 4 children were seized on trumped up allegations. When proven to be fallacious, new ones were presented. When the couple had another baby, six police officers and 3 social workers ripped the baby from his mother’s arms when she was breastfeeding, just hours after giving birth. Under the Children’s Act, parents and children are entitled to regular contact until an adoption order is obtained. During the first visit with their older child, she said she had been interfered with sexually at her foster home. They never saw her again and they will never know what became of her.

This would appear to contravene the Children’s Act but it seems the law, when it is there for the protection of vulnerable children, is not always binding. In 2010, The Telegraph quoted a whistleblower, At a recent case conference, the social workers admitted that maybe they had made a mistake, and that the mother they had falsely accused was in fact devoted and blameless. But apparently, because of “press interest” in the case, the officials agreed that the council could not afford the very damaging publicity which might follow if the unhappy children were reunited with their parents. It was therefore vital that the council should continue to justify its actions.

Last year, Justice Pauffley severely criticised family court judges, social workers and local authorities for colluding to remove children from their biological families without just cause. In an appeal case, she lambasted the unnamed authority for removing a child based on ‘the result, almost certainly of cutting and pasting” the social services report. Ms Pauffley described this practice as having “become the norm” in local family courts, which she found ‘profoundly alarming”. She described “an established but largely clandestine arrangement between the local authority and the court which, to my mind, has considerable repercussions for justice”.

The concept of the good enough parent, emanating from the work of Donald Winnicott, and integral to any good social work teaching, was designed to defend ordinary, imperfect parents, against what he saw as the growing threat of intrusion into the family from professional expertise. Social workers in this country are increasingly seen as that threat. Due to government policies that incentivize child removal, the focus of social work had shifted from supporting families to succeed to that of setting them up to fail.

The statistics speak for themselves. Over 2,000 children per month are taken into care. In 2014 the number of children being removed from their families in England alone was nearly 30,000.  In total, 67,000 children are in care in the UK. Many are so distraught they run away. Around 10,000 go missing every year.

The head of the Social Worker’s union, Bridget Robb, has expressed concerns at the speed at which this government, through policies and incentives, is moving social work away from being about doing everything possible to try to keep children with their biological families to a culture that favours forced, fast adoptions. There has been a 96% increase in the number of court orders placing children for adoption in the last 3 years. She believes this disturbing trend is a result of government ideology and sits with the rhetoric of the welfare state and, “the language about an underclass of people not deemed fit to look after their children”.

There is no greater risk to children than poverty and this government, through its blind pursuance of austerity, is pushing poor families over the edge, psychologically as well as financially. There’s something fundamentally wrong with a system that provides State payments of £400+ per week, per child to foster carers, but only £50+ per week, per child to biological parents.

Where there is evidence of abuse, as was the heartbreaking case of baby P, of course swift intervention should be made but, more children are taken for emotional abuse than physical and sexual abuse added together. Despite “baby P” the number of children taken for physical abuse is steadily falling as a percentage of the total number of children removed.

When the European delegation publish their findings we should brace ourselves to be shamed. As Nelson Mandela said, There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children. 

It's Not The Tories That Are Destroying The NHS, It's Old People. Who Knew?

This satirical piece was published in the Indy a couple of days ago (scroll down for link). It's noteworthy that people from Shropshire commented to say they didn't know any of this. They question why they heard it first in a national news outlet & not from the local press.

Keep a close eye on your local NHS because the national health service no longer exists. Creating localised Trusts makes the NHS easy to pick off. There will be no big bang for the national press to report. It will be a series of localised sniper attacks, taking their targets out one by one. Survival will depend on the integrity and bravery of the local press.

As one of the comments suggests, the Independent is to be congratulated for running this story, even in the absence of the "national hook".

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/its-obviously-old-people-who-are-destroying-the-nhs-isnt-it-a6712406.html

I have worked with Paedophiles & their victims. We must never downplay the horrors of child sex abuse

This article was published in yesterday's Independent. Thank you to the survivors who have been in touch in response to it. I will continue to ensure victims of child sex abuse have a voice in the media.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/i-ve-worked-with-paedophiles-and-their-victims-we-must-never-downplay-the-horrors-of-child-sex-abuse-a6706417.html

The Transgender Revolution

Congratulations to the New Internationalist on the ground breaking October edition, The Transgender Revolution. I was proud to be part of the production, contributing a detailed country profile on human rights (or lack thereof) in Sudan, up to and including the South’s secession. NI is a subscription based magazine, so I’m afraid I can’t supply the link. You can subscribe online. It’s the best international human rights magazine out there, read by Hollywood Stars and UN ambassadors alike. I rest my case.

Candy-floss Clouds

Candy-floss clouds in the morning sky

Mist and magic, days gone by

Hundreds of Jinny Jo taking flight in the wind

Translucent specs, carrying hopes and sins

In the valley a teenager is plucked from this world

The paperwork's ready, it’s all unfurled

His loved ones hearts are pulled asunder

He wasn’t ready, the strike of thunder

A child tells her mother that life’s not fair

Her tummy is rumbling, the cupboard is bare, no time for her to stand and stare

No parties, no shoes, no laughter to give

It’s hard to be aspirational when you have nowhere to live

A woman hides behind a broken door

His hand came down, she hit the floor

She wonders how to escape his touch

But there’s no safe place. They cost too much

The old man waits on a rickety trolley

Bed blockers, they call them, on an NHS jolly

His feet are cold and his lips are dry

Robbed of his dignity, he longs to die

Candyfloss clouds in the morning sky

Mist and magic, days gone by

Hundreds of Jinny Jo taking flight in the wind

Translucent specs, carrying hopes and sins

*Jinny Jo is the term many Irish people use to describe Dandelion seeds. You make a wish and blow them in the air.

It was national poetry day in the UK on Thursday, so I had a bash at writing this poem incorporating some of the news stories that moved me this week.

Respect to Sisters Uncut who stormed the Suffragette premier this week. Staging a die in on the red carpet, they chanted, “Dead women can’t vote”. Like the original suffragettes, they were man handled off the premises by a bunch of burly men. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-i-protested-with-sisters-uncut-at-the-premiere-of-suffragette-a6685686.html

The Volkswagen Scandal Exposes The True Cost Of The "Free Market".

I have worked as a therapist and as a leadership adviser to big business and I’ve encountered far more psychopaths in the boardrooms of Britain than I ever did in Broadmoor.

In his book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Joel Bakan compares corporations to psychopaths, for whom people are purely a means to making profit. They employ sophisticated control mechanisms, such as excessive pay, to indoctrinate employees into compliance. History is littered with examples of how corporations put profits before people, with calamitous consequences. 

The Volkswagen emissions scandal is the most recent. Whether its emission rigging by the car industry, Libor rigging by the banks, suppressing unfavorable trial results by the pharmaceutical industry (see Seroxat story this week) or the usurping of public services and workers’ rights via the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), far from being free, worshiping at the altar of “the market” has cost people and the planet dearly.

VW could face a fine of up to $18bn (£11.6bn), as well as criminal charges and legal action from customers and shareholders amid claims in the US that it used a device to falsify emissions data. Suspicions that the “defeat device” was also installed in European models, if substantiated, would add to the already crippling pecuniary and reputational costs. It has been described as the biggest corporate cover-up since Enron.

It seems inconceivable that no-one at managerial level knew of this software. The more likely scenario is that a cost-benefit analysis was done and life threatening respiratory problems and irreversible damage to the planet came out cheaper than investing in producing legally compliant cars. The alleged rigging of emissions tests may have added around 1 million tonnes of air pollution annually.

This isn’t the first time the car industry has been in the dock. Ten years ago, I used the Ford Pinto case study to demonstrate that, apart from the morality of conducting a cost-benefit analysis where customers’ lives are known to be at risk, it’s also bad for business in the long term. 

When a fatal fault was discovered in the Pinto production in 1968, Ford’s executives conducted a cost-benefit analysis and concluded it was cheaper to continue selling the faulty car and treat predicted deaths as the cost of doing business. Ford’s now infamous “Pinto memo” caused public uproar and resulted in record compensation payouts. Ford’s reputation never fully recovered.

Last year, General Motors agreed to pay $900m in a bid to prevent the company's executives from facing criminal charges over a serious ignition defect and cover-up which has been reportedly linked to 124 deaths. The company was also accused of hiding the defect (for 13 years) from regulators and defrauding consumers. Apparently, wait for it, a cost-benefit-analysis was conducted which concluded that paying off deceased relatives was cheaper than installing a $10 part per car.

In Bakan’s book he explains the logic behind such amoral decisions, time and time again. Directors are legally obliged to put profit before everything else. Maximising shareholder profit is their first priority. Setting aside for a moment the ethical issues of killing customers, scandals involving cover up, cheating and corruption, kill corporations too. About €25bn (one third), has now been wiped off the value of Volkswagen’s shares in the few days of trading since the scandal erupted. How are tumbling share prices and astronomical penalties good for shareholders?

In 2005, BP was hit with a (then) record $50.6m (£32.5m) fine for failing to fix hazards at its Texas City oil refinery resulting in an explosion that killed 15 people. Numerous red flags had reportedly been ignored.

Four years later, the company hit the headlines again for unleashing yet more human and environmental carnage at Deepwater Horizon. An explosion killed 11 workers and led to 3.2 million barrels of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico

The cause? Same as the last time, “Management failure which put costs before people’s safety”. So why weren’t lessons learned? Because corporate psychopathy (the delinquent offspring of unregulated capitalism), and political incompetence, has no conscience, feels no remorse and refuses to abide by the same rules as mere mortals.

A record settlement of $18.7bn (£12bn) was reached with US regulators and share prices fell by around 46% in the wake of the disaster. History has shown us that ethics belong at the heart of leadership decisions, not as an optional extra thrown in at the end of an MBA.

CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, also made headlines this week when he raised the price of a drug called Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750. Shkreli has a monopoly on the drug and is effectively holding a gun to the heads of sick and vulnerable people. Further proof, if we need it, that the “free market”, which assumes multiple competing sources, is obsolete. Shkreli has since said he’d reduce the price but hasn’t disclosed by how much. It was later reported that Mr Shkreli is being investigated by the US government for being involved in illegal activities and that he was ousted from his previous post amid multiple allegations of misconduct.

In his book “Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work”, Dr. Robert Hare highlights the disproportionately higher percentage of people with psychopathic tendencies in positions of power. I’m not suggesting everyone in power (and definitely NOT those mentioned here) is a psychopath, but I am perturbed by the proclivity with which we reward dysfunctional, amoral behaviours.

Probably half of society’s psychopaths are incarcerated (the poor) while the other 1% (the rich) are more likely than people without psychopathic traits, to occupy powerful positions. Both groups are a danger to others (as opposed to themselves), the difference being that one is heavily medicated, the other is the lunatic in charge of the asylum.

Jeremy Corbyn's Win Will Breathe New Life Into The Labour Party

I couldn't be happier at Jeremy Corbyn's win. He has already brought swathes of Labour voters back to the fold with his politics of principle & integrity. An edited version of the entry below was published in Thursday's Independent, ahead of the leadership results:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/suffragettes-died-for-my-right-to-vote-so-dont-tell-me-that-i-shouldnt-vote-for-jeremy-corbyn-10495014.html

Cognitive dissonance is what the brain does to rationalise and justify dysfunctional behaviour.  As a therapist I’ve seen people dismiss even the most compelling evidence in order to pursue a path of self destruction. I believe this is the root cause of new labour’s demise.  In the same way that smokers continue to smoke even though they know it could kill them, “new Labour” resists any movement away from the right, despite the catastrophic consequences.

One of the strategies invoked to deal with cognitive dissonance is to minimise the evidence in support of behavioural change by seeking alternative research. Smokers might do this by latching onto studies that dismiss the dangers of smoking, however tenuous. New Labour produces meaningless reports which endorse business as usual.

Yesterday a report was published indicating that Labour’s woes are attributable to not being Tory enough. It was carried out by a lord and an ex aide to Tony Blair (I kid you not). Labour’s response to the shocking May election result is to commission reports that sanction the onward trajectory to the right, despite it leading Labour to electoral annihilation.

The report was right about one thing though. The party was rejected by an electorate who no longer trust or respect the party.  I lost respect for the party when Tony Blair’s true Thatcherite ideology became apparent (Margaret Thatcher apparently cited Tony Blair as one of her greatest legacies). It doesn’t help that he starts his sentences with “look” and thrusts his thumb out for emphasis.

The epic groundswell of support for Jeremy Corbyn is a far more credible barometer of the public mood. It demonstrates a hunger for the party to be realigned with Labour’s founding principles.  Corbyn gets that Labour lost the election, not because it was “anti-business” (as Blairites claim), but because it wasn’t anti-austerity.

Three weeks before the election, a guy in his 20’s sat opposite me on the train. I was reading Tony Benn’s Diaries, he was reading Margaret Thatcher’s biography. A polite if lively discussion ensued.  Turns out he was an intern for a prominent Labour MP and known Blairite. I asked if it was wise to admit to being a Labour intern while brandishing Thatcher’s biography. He extolled her virtues. As someone who, despite being ideologically aligned with labour, was forced into a political abyss as a result of the party’s lunge to the right, this rankled.

I asked if he’d read Tony Benn’s diaries. With a condescending snigger he dismissed Benn’s legacy out of hand. “He was a bit too left”. I asked what constituted “too left”. He couldn’t say because he hadn’t read his book but had been reliably informed that at labour HQ being “too left” was not good. I knew that already. I met a Labour party insider when I visited the Occupy London camp who told me the party was monitoring developments. It concluded that the movement didn’t generate enough numbers to justify a realignment to the left. It’s that fickle, corporatisation of politics that is so demoralising.

My conversation with the Labour intern drew to an abrupt close when I told him Labour’s support for the failed austerity experiment ruled out my vote. “Voting on principle is wasting your vote”, he lectured, “that’ll just let the Tories in”! It was expressed as a statement of fact rather than with rousing conviction. So that was labour’s election strategy in a nutshell. It came down to tactics and a business strategy involving scaremongering people into voting strategically. Principle, or policies, didn’t come into it.

Suffragettes died so that I could vote, I wasn’t going to be lectured by a man on how to cast it. “If the Tories get back in, it’s down to you guys for pushing supporters like me away. If Labour can’t stand on its’ own principles and be prepared to defend them, why the hell should the people whose principles you abandoned vote for you”?

It’s ironic that traditional labour voters, like myself, were forced to vote elsewhere because new labour reinvented the party on Thatcher’s principles. Yet, when a true labour contender for the leadership contest woos us back with an anti-austerity narrative for which we yearned at the election, we’re rejected on the grounds that we don’t share Labour’s values. What are Labour values? The website boasts, “… the establishment of the National Health Service… and the creation and maintenance of an empowering welfare state”

So why was Jeremy Corbyn the only leadership candidate who voted against the recent Tory welfare bill (which sought to abolish child poverty targets and cuts to child tax credits, Employment and housing benefit for young people) in its entirety? Labour’s crowning glory was the establishment of the NHS. Yet it was new labour, with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown at the helm, that sowed the seeds of the NHS’ demise. The reckless implementation of private finance initiatives (PFI), not only paved the way for privatisation by stealth but saddled the NHS with crippling debt. Next year alone, trusts will make some £2bn in repayments. How is being responsible for polices that bankrupt the NHS espousing Labour values? How was the de-regulation that led to the financial crash, the brunt of which is borne by the most vulnerable, in step with Labour values?

Abandoning Labour’s founding principles has left new Labour with no meaning, no soul and therefore, no relevance. Jeremy Corbyn is the party’s only hope of survival.

What About the African Refugees?

Public pressure has resulted in David Cameron agreeing to accept more Syrian refugees, albeit still a pitiful amount. "Syrian" is now synonymous with "refugee" in almost all the headlines, but what of the swathes of African refugees who are fleeing genocide and persecution? Surely all human beings in need of shelter and humanitarian help are worthy of our munificence, irrespective of colour, creed or nationality? Why is David Cameron not offering homes to victims of the 12 year long genocide in Sudan? Why is their need less worthy than that of a Syrian? What criteria is used for deciding which nationality is prioritised over another? It shouldn't be a case of them or us. The refugee crisis has to be tackled more strategically and more fairly.

The link below is to an article published in today's Independent. It's an updated version of my last blog and includes the heart breaking story of a Sudanese refugee's agonising, dehumanising journey to Britain.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/now-weve-changed-our-minds-about-syrian-refugees-we-need-to-stop-ignoring-those-in-calais-10490142.html

Shame On Britain For Abandoning The Calais Refugees.

“Do some humans smell different mummy?” My seven year old had spotted police with sniffer dogs as we waited to board our ferry at Calais. He wanted to know if the refugees from Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan emitted a uniquely distinctive aroma that differentiated them from the French and the British.

“No”, I said, feeling impotent by the scene of inhumanity (the dogs and the depravity of the camp I’d seen earlier). “The dogs can’t smell their nationality, only their fear". Fear, on this scale, has an intoxicating pungency, I explained. “I hope you never have to know it”.

As the motorway neared Dover a couple of weeks earlier, portaloos appeared at regular 50 yard intervals. Remnants of the tail back that ensued when 2,300 people disrupted traffic when they entered the tunnel to jump on trains and trucks in an effort to reach Britain. The inconvenience to British holiday makers was widely reported in the press, the subtext being “bloody selfish migrants disrupting our holidays so they can come here and have a better life. At our expense…”

Whilst I sympathise with holidaymakers and truck drivers, it is wrong to subjugate the refugees’ plight to our inconvenience. Conditions these other human beings have to endure in the camps, where they have to queue for hours for a toilet unfit for human use, were considered less newsworthy. The inflammatory, dehumanising language, used by David Cameron and Phillip Hammond recently, has served to dehumanise the refugees. A tory tactic that is beneath contempt.

The press has largely (with some notable exceptions) failed to communicate the stories behind the human beings who flock to the “Calais jungle”. They are not seeking a better life (heaven forbid), they are seeking life itself. They’re not just fleeing economic hardship, most are fleeing death and persecution. During the mass bid for freedom in July, a Sudanese man in his 20s died after being crushed by a truck. The day before, an Egyptian man was electrocuted at the Gard du Nord in Paris when he leaped on the roof of a Eurostar train headed to London.

These are not the actions of people making lifestyle choices. These are acts of desperation by people for whom there is nothing left to lose. Whereby death is a more favourable outcome to the alternative. Most are fleeing corrupt regimes in Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, who starve, kill and torture their own citizens while world leaders bury their heads in the sand.

The same short term politics that precipitated the global financial crisis is now cultivating a European refugee crisis. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Foreign policy that serves to prop up and embolden despots will come back to bite. David Cameron and Francois Hollande have known about the genocide in Sudan for twelve years but, like their UN counterparts, have failed to implement the UN mandate to protect citizens when oppressed by a sovereign state. What are these people, abandoned by the international community supposed to do? Stay and be starved, raped and bombed, or try to get the hell out of dodge? I know what I’d do.

Even now, as the sky falls, Theresa May stands at the shores of Dover and, with all the delusion of king Canute, issues edicts to refugees to turn back. But the refugees, like Canute’s tide, cannot stem their flow. There is no going back. However high the fences, however torn the flesh in a bid to scale them, and however many dogs are used to sniff out human beings as though they were animals, the refugees will keep coming. We have left them nowhere else to go. British political ineptitude is part of the problem, so it is right that David Cameron provides a fair share of the solution.

Instead, Britain has turned its back on the people at the heart of this crisis. Journalist Owen Jones visited the camp and talked numbers with a UN co-ordinator there.

According to the UN representative in Calais, “31,745 people applied for asylum in Britain last year; twice as many opted for France; more than six times as many applied in Germany; and in Sweden, with a population nearly seven times lower than Britain, the number was 81,180. The UK accepted 10,050 non-EU asylum applications, but France took over 4,000 more; in Germany, it was more than four times as many; Italy, ravaged by economic crisis, accepted more than twice as many. And yet, the vast majority of refugees move from one poor country to another. UNHCR figures show that 86 per cent of refugees live in poor countries, compared with 70 per cent a ­decade earlier; 95 per cent of Syrian refugees are in neighbouring countries, mainly Lebanon and Turkey”.

Fortunately, citizens around Europe, embarrassed and enraged by their government’s inaction, are plugging some humanitarian gaps. Individuals are setting up make shift collection points throughout the UK and France, where vital supplies can be deposited. These incredible individuals will then transport the food, winter clothes, shoes, tents etc to the refugees in Calais, at their own expense. There’s bound to be one near you and/or a crowd fund site where you can make a financial contribution to transport and other costs.

As we were embarking at Calais, my son asked, “What would you do if you saw a refugee climbing onto a truck”? “I’d say, good luck to them. What would you say”? Looking perturbed, he shook his head slowly and replied, “I’d tell them not to come to Britain”. As I tried to disguise my disappointment and wondered where I went wrong, he added, “Someone should warn them that David Cameron doesn’t like poor people, or the homeless or foreigners (he talks to The Big Issue sellers)”. “Interesting angle...”, I conceded, “but until such time as he starts shooting them, Britain has got to be a better option than Sudan or Syria. Right”? But by then he was dangling some aromatic French cheese out the window. "What are you doing"! I gasped. "I'm putting the dogs off the scent. Fear isn't the only thing that stinks mum". Ain't that the truth. 

Want Stress Free Car Hire? Take a Forensic Approach

Pre motherhood, if I wanted to rent a car, I’d book online and rock up at the car hire desk equipped with driving licence and designer shades. Nowadays, I take a more CIS, evidence based approach to car hire. Less Thelma and Louise and more CIS, without the chiffon headscarf.

Arriving at a busy airport on my own with a child, I wanted to minimise any hassle or stress. I never had a problem in the past but I had read the horror stories about the tricks and hidden charges that can ruin a holiday. But first I had to find the best deal.

The cheapest deals are usually through brokers. When booking, I realised the fuel policy was “full to empty”, which is not good. It means you get charged a higher rate for it being filled up on your behalf when you return the car. In the box provided I stated that my rental was conditional on a “full to full” policy (which is the car provider’s policy). When I heard nothing I contacted the car hire provider directly. They said it would be fine. I hung up but the horror stories were ringing in my ear. Is it a ruse? When I get there, will someone else say they know nothing about it and declare the booking void (which the broker says can happen on the terms and conditions). I phoned back and got an email address and name and put it in writing.

I arrived at the car hire desk armed with all my documented evidence (which I didn’t need to produce) and a zoom lens camera. Despite being told the car was brand new and never used before, I took photos from every angle, inside and out (you can’t be too careful when it comes to these cowboys). A piece of dirt was wiped away but left a finger mark, so I took a picture of that too for good measure.

And I didn’t allow all those smiles to lure me into a false sense of security either. Not on your Nelly. Sign here and initial here and here, the agent said. The small print was very small (I should have gone to Specsavers) so I asked her what it said. When she answered, I said, “ I don’t understand that and I don’t sign anything I don’t understand”. So I asked for her pen. To her horror, “what are you doing?” she panicked, looking around for her boss, who appeared to be hiding behind a beige Ford Focus with alloy wheels if I’m not very much mistaken. “I’m writing my understanding of what you just said so that I can initial It. You want me to initial it don’t you?” She nodded resignedly, surveying the mounting queue behind me.

I proceeded to do that everywhere I was asked to sign or initial, including writing “full to full fuel policy agreed” in capitals and underlining it. In the end, she and the manager gave up the will to live, took the clipboard from me and ushered me on my way. I even put an x where the thumb mark was. In the end I think they would have paid good money to get me off the forecourt.

We returned the car an hour early (always leave enough time to review the paperwork and ensure no miscellaneous costs have accrued before dashing off for the plane) ready to thoroughly examine the car. The same young woman was there. “It’s full to the brim” I beamed,  “and not a thumb mark on it”! Without even looking, she took the keys and said “I don’t doubt it. I can see you’re very thorough”, and grabbed all our bags, dashing to get us on the shuttle bus going to the airport terminal. “There’s no need” I protested. “They’re on wheels and our plane isn’t for ages”, but she seemed keen to send us on our way. I will definitely recommend this company I said. All those horror stories psyched me up to do battle, but you guys are amazing. Excellent customer service, no underhand tricks….but we were off.

We waved at the team from the bus, promising we’d be back again. Their gait like smiles indicated the stress these people are under. I bet they have to deal with a lot of weirdos in that job.

The Pay Gap Isn't Just a Women's Issue

An edited version of this was published in yesterdays Independent on Sunday

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/equal-pay-evening-up-salaries-would-also-benefit-men-who-are-under-pressure-to-work-longer-hours-10399092.html

Prepare your daughter for working life. Give her less pocket money than your son. This slogan appeared on an Equal Opportunities Commission campaign poster 15 years ago. I keep it on my fridge to remind my son of his gender induced entitlement.

David Cameron’s announcement this week to make companies with over 250 employees publish their pay audits is welcome, if a tad tardy. Paying women less than their male counterparts for a job of equal value has been illegal since the 70’s but that hasn’t deterred the pernicious practice. In 2012, Birmingham council was ordered to pay over £700m to 170 women, including cleaners and carers, for depriving them of bonuses which were awarded to employees in traditionally male jobs.

In 2005 women earned 18% less than men. In 2015, the gap has widened to 20%, which can reach 40% at senior levels when bonuses are included. The impact of the pay gap on women is well documented. It is particularly marked when women become mothers. Decisions about which parent stays at home are usually driven by pay so it’s no surprise that it is predominately women who relinquish their jobs.

However, the far reaching societal consequences of the pay gap largely go unreported. It creates a vicious circle whereby men, as primary bread winner, are under increased pressure to work ever longer hours in order to ingratiate themselves with the boss. Companies exploit this vulnerability. There is a myth, propagated by employers, that men eschew flexible working practices because they love the cut and thrust of long hours. Whilst this is true of a minority, for the vast majority it is not.

When I carried out research on the long hours culture, I asked men who had small children why they didn’t request flexible working arrangements (having children is no longer a requirement). All of them responded that it would be career limiting. One said he took a promotion to compensate for the loss of his [more qualified but less paid] wife’s income. He was promised his travel would only increase by 10%. It increased by 70%. He was struggling to cope with being an absentee dad and his wife was drowning as a lone mum. He was actively looking for a job elsewhere.

On a couple of occasions, whilst advising some of the UK’s largest organisations on discrimination and ethics, I came across coded data I wasn’t supposed to see. There were secret budgets ring fenced for litigation in relation to discrimination. In amongst stats breaking down staff attrition along gender lines, I came across a column marked “deaths”. In one of the organisations there were 6 in the past 12 months. All of whom were men.

I was told the information was “classified” but gleaned that it related to deaths suspected to be work related. In one global corporation an executive had committed suicide while on assignment overseas. Apparently he got extremely stressed before making presentations. Rather than ease up, his manager forced him to “man up”. Unable to cope with the stress, away from his family, the night before a presentation he threw himself off his hotel balcony.

Elsewhere an executive who worked notoriously long hours dropped dead of a heart attack one night. He was in his 30’s. The corporations’ response? Invest in an onsite gym for employees to “de-stress”. It was spun by HR as a fitness issue, completely unrelated to his being pushed by his employer to breaking point. As I was informed by one HR professional, “Our job is to optimise employee productivity, not to babysit”. In my experience though, people are far more productive when they’re alive.

The lack of women and minorities on boards was identified as a factor in the global recession, which could have been avoided had we listened to similar warnings issued in the Higgs report (commissioned, post Enron, to improve Britain’s corporate governance) in 2005. Higgs found that a few men held multiple board positions and that many were appointed by a tap on the shoulder rather than competing in an open and fair selection process. Isn’t that positive discrimination? Yes, but as long as the beneficiary is not female or black, we don’t call it that.

Homogeneity leads to group think, which in turn leads to bad decisions. Pay transparency (with corresponding sanctions) will help break the vicious circle of inequality by encouraging women to return to work after child birth, for example, and to participate at leadership level. This would mitigate against the long hours culture, which, despite being bad for productivity and societal wellbeing, prevails in a climate of masculinity.

It is detrimental to society and the economy to reduce fatherhood to a walk on part whilst at the same time driving women out of the workforce when they become mothers. Children need fathers as well as mothers and UK plc needs women, as well as men, at the helm.

If You’re Not Angry Right Now, You’re Either Very Rich Or In A Coma.

This weeks’ budget unveiled a naked, brutal assault on the most vulnerable in society. Our poorest children and young people.

According to Nelson Mandela, “There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children”.

George Osborne’s budget oozes contempt for children audacious enough to be born into poverty. Rather than throw them a lifeline to break the cycle of disadvantage, he kicked the escape ladder from under their feet. Knowing what it feels like to live from hand to mouth should be a prerequisite for the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

What differentiates human beings from animals is our ability to empathise. Without it, we can’t access compassion and a sense of fairness and justice. Without ever experiencing hardship, it’s difficult (though not impossible, see Tony Benn) to comprehend that poverty is not a life choice. That many people, through no fault of their own, or sheer bad luck, end up in crisis. Many work hard to escape the cycle but find the odds stacked so high against them that they become paralyzed by hopelessness and despair.

According to the institute for fiscal studies, the budget will leave the poorest 10% of families around £800 a year worse off with the next 10% seeing their income slashed by £1,100 annually. Child poverty is expected to soar in the coming years due to relentless welfare cuts. George Osborne also abolished grants for the poorest to go to university and with them any hope of a better future.

Meanwhile the richest 10% will see their family’s income reduced by just £350 a year while inheritance and corporation tax is also reduced. This week Kevin Farnsworth, a researcher from York university, revealed that, at the same time as the government is making 12bn in welfare cuts, taxpayers are handing businesses £93bn a year in hidden subsidies (this doesn’t include legacy costs of bank bailouts for 2008-09 and other crisis measures, which are estimated to have cost £35bn in 2012-13). That’s more than £3,500 from each household in the UK. You don’t have to be Carol Vorderman to do the maths.

I can’t help but see alarming resonances between today’s austerity Britain and the austere Victorian era so evocatively chronicled in Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times”.

I read the book at a time of prolonged recession in Ireland, which didn’t end until the 90’s. I discovered a hook upon which I could hang and articulate all the observations I’d accumulated, through the prism of a working class child. How society is structured, the divide between the classes, how the haves gain at the have nots’ expense. The unfairness and inequality, the powerlessness in the face of the enormous state machine constructed in such a way as to grind you down and spit you out when you become a burden (old, disabled, poor). The way espoused ideology of governments indoctrinate children, through educational constraint (“fact” not corrupting “fancy”), social segregation (private boarding schools) and a cycle of disadvantage and poverty (welfare cuts to the poor and subsidies to the rich).

My father, a self employed builder, would take myself and my three siblings with him on Saturdays in the hope that seeing he had little mouths to feed might shame business owners into paying him the wages he was owed. Some left him for months without paying, others never paid at all, but there was nothing he could do. He had no recourse to justice. Even as a child, I remember feeling incredibly proud of my father’s dignified integrity but at the same time furious at the bosses who claimed not to have the means to pay, while standing next to their brand new Mercedes.

In contemporary Britain, the big bosses plead unfairness at having to pay their fair share, threatening to take their business elsewhere at the first sign of a brown envelope marked HMRC. The Mercedes’ have been replaced by private jets and tax free houses in Belgravia Square.

If my parents’ fate befell me in today’s austerity Britain (or Ireland), working 2 jobs, as they did, would not be enough to shield my child from the indignity of a food bank. During the lean years, clothes were sourced in charity shops (before it was cool) and the hand me down system worked for my elder sister (but not so much for my younger siblings). But, we were never cold or hungry.

The rampant deregulation of industry over the years is crippling society and driving, even those in employment, into poverty. Between 2002 and 2011, energy bills rose by 44 percent and water by 21 percent, while incomes of poorer households fell 11 percent over the same period.

A Report published this week by the Competition and Marketing Authority (CMA) revealed that 70% of customers and 14% of small businesses are being overcharged by the big 6 energy companies. This is not breaking news and the espoused solution is a red herring.

Urging people to switch providers is not the answer. Dealing with the root cause, wanton exploitative practices by the big 6 is the only sustainable solution. It is unacceptable to shift the burden onto the individual customer to change provider every time energy companies move the goal posts. Just like the banks, no sooner have you switched provider to get a better rate, than the rate changes and you’re back to square one.

Meanwhile, with the eyes of the world diverted to Greece this week, the European Parliament dealt democracy a crushing blow. TTIP (see earlier blog) is stolen, like a thief in the night, ever closer into our midst. But hey, at least we can seek solace in some quality TV. I’m off to watch one of the “Benefits Britain” spin offs. Tonight, it’s “Too fat to work” (for the benefit of my overseas readers, this programme exists. I'm not making it up). I'm looking forward to the day when Channel 5 commissions a series entitled, "Too rich to pay taxes". I won't hold my breath.

*I’ve been commissioned to examine the rights (or lack thereof) of children in Britain. It’s a medium term project, which will be published in a couple of months. If you have any personal experiences or stories (relating to education, health, including mental health, access to justice etc) do get in touch. You can contact me directly through my website.

Terrorist Attacks & Child Poverty Are On The Rise

Last Thursday, 164 people were slaughtered in Syria by terrorists who call themselves IS. I just call them terrorists. The next day, the same terrorist group allegedly carried out three further attacks, massacring 38 people on a beach in Tunisia, 27 people praying at a Mosque in Kuwait as well as carrying out an execution in Lyon.

All of these innocent lives are of equal worth and their loss will not be diminished for being borne by brown or white skin. Grief does not discriminate on grounds of nationality, nor should the media.

Despite the Syrian attack having the highest death toll (by far) and being carried out, allegedly, by the same terrorist group, it was not deemed as newsworthy as the other three atrocities. This is no doubt partly attributable to the media’s predilection for focusing on the “British dead” but it’s also more than that. I suspect the sidelining of the Syrian massacre is also about making sure we don’t start joining up embarrassing dots.

The international community’s failure in the region has led to an escalation in civilian attacks, which in turn is creating a humanitarian crisis with refugees fleeing in droves, many of whom end up in Calais, prepared to risk life and limb to give their families some hope of a future. Who wouldn’t do the same in their position?

According to the UN, the world is facing the largest number of displaced persons in modern times, with nearly 4 million fleeing the crisis in Syria alone. Whilst the EU could reportedly comfortably absorb 1 million of these refugees, its’ leaders will only agree to provide safe havens for a mere 60,000 beleaguered souls. Britain’s expressed priority is the destruction of human smugglers’ boats rather than rescuing their discarded victims.

Meanwhile, here in the UK, child poverty is thriving under the Tories. Plans to cut tax credits, which go to the poorest children in society to buy food, shoes and pay for bus fares, will plunge 300,000 more children into poverty.

But the Tories are not ashamed. Two in three children in poverty have at least one parent in work. Rather than tackle the scourge of child poverty by providing a living wage so that families (even those with work) don’t have to resort to food banks, this government’s solution is to repeal the 2010 Child Poverty Act, so that children’s welfare can be legislated away. Forget about eradicating child poverty by 2020. Eradicate the embarrassing target instead.

This week, four UK children's commissioners have joined forces to urge the Government to halt its savage benefit cuts to prevent more young people being pushed into poverty.

The commissioners for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland sent a joint report to the United Nations, expressing concerns at the impact on children of the Government's plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British bill of rights.

"The HRA has been vital in promoting and protecting the rights of children in the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights has had an important role in developing the protection offered to children by the ECHR," it said.

The report criticises ministers for ignoring the UK supreme court when it found the “benefit cap” – the £25,000 limit on welfare that disproportionately affects families with children, to be in breach of Article 3 of the convention. There are now 4.1m children living in absolute poverty – 500,000 more than there were when David Cameron came to power.

The commissioners said the Government's "austerity" policies had resulted in "a failure to protect the most disadvantaged children and those in especially vulnerable groups from child poverty".

The commissioners also highlighted concerns over failures to tackle child abuse, the treatment of young people in the criminal justice system and the provision of mental health services for children and young people which they said were "vastly under funded".

With a further £12bn in welfare cuts due to be announced next week, the future for our most vulnerable children does not look bright.

This Is No Time For The UN To Abandon Darfur

The following was published in the Independent on Sunday.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/this-is-no-time-for-the-un-to-abandon-darfur-10334281.html

As Sudan’s president Omar Al Bashir flew out of South Africa on Monday, contrails of the country’s shame left an indelible trace in his wake.

Despite Al Bashir being issued with two arrest warrants by the ICC for crimes against humanity and genocide, South Africa offered him immunity to attend an African Union (AU) conference in Johannesburg last week-end.

As a signatory to the Rome Treaty, South Africa had a duty to arrest Bashir and hand him over to the ICC to face trial. A local NGO secured a court order preventing Bashir from leaving the country but while the court sat to decide Bashir’s fate, the fugitive surreptitiously fled the country.

The world once stood with ordinary South Africans in their struggle against state oppression and brutality. Yet, when their fellow Africans in Sudan cry out in tortured anguish, broken by the serial rape of children, serial murder and starvation of civilians, they are serially, cruelly ignored. By allowing Al Bashir to escape prosecution, the African National Congress (ANC), whose founding principle was “to bring all ordinary Africans together as one people to defend their rights and freedoms”, betrayed African victims of genocide.

The ICC depends on member nations to enforce arrest warrants. Having evaded arrest for 6 years, the court appealed to the UN Security Council, which does have enforcement powers. The ICC has said that the Security Council’s failure to authorize any penalties against the Sudanese regime for non compliance with the arrest warrant, is preventing it from fulfilling its mandate of ending impunity.

In November, the Independent reported on the mass rape of 200 girls and women in the village of Tabit and called on the UN to conduct an independent investigation. It did not. Instead, Human Rights Watch produced a report in February publishing findings which unequivocally impugned government sponsored forces for these rapes. Eight months on and the victims have still not received any support or counselling, the villagers live in fear and in conditions they describe as “an open prison”.

Ten months ago the UN waved through a resolution which potentially paves the way for the withdrawal, or significant reduction, of UNAMID troops in the region. The force has already been reduced, with a mere 15,000 troops responsible for a region the size of France. In February UNAMID and UN officials began meeting to discuss the Darfur exit strategy.

In May, Ban Ki-Moon recommended that the Security Council re-authorise UNAMID’s mandate as it is. A Sudanese official I spoke to said he was not reassured. He is fearful that UNAMID will either be reduced or pulled out when it comes to the Security Council vote on 30th June. A UN spokesperson told me that conditions on the ground did not merit a change in UNAMID’s mandate but confirmed that, “Discussions about an exit strategy are ongoing”. He indicated that the emphasis was more on “streamlining” numbers rather than “pulling out”. A report issued by Ban Ki-Moon on 26 May announced that 790 posts had been abolished.

At an informal meeting of the Security Council on Friday, two Darfur activists spoke of deteriorating security in the region and made a heartfelt plea for members to take tougher action to stop the bloodshed. Afterwards, US Ambassador Samantha Power said. "Now is not the time to abandon the people of Darfur." She also called for sanctions and arms embargoes to be enforced.

More than 3 million civilians in the region have been forced into refugee camps, almost 500,000 of whom were displaced in the last year. International Sudan expert, Eric Reeves, estimates that mortality rates in this region alone could be in the region of half a million. UNAMID is clearly failing in its duty to protect civilians but the answer is not to withdraw. Its’ presence has allowed at least some NGOs to operate in the region. If UNAMID goes or is further reduced, the last remaining lifeline will be severed. Bashir will be free to accelerate, unfettered, his genocidal campaign.

Never before in the history of declaring a genocide has the institution then officially left the perpetrator, indicted by The Hague for genocide, in charge of the victims’ safety. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Surrendering Bashir to the ICC should be a condition of UNAMID’s withdrawal.

Fortunately, there is some hope on the horizon, in the form of the UK’s incoming UN Ambassador, Matthew Rycroft. He has publicly stated that, “Now is not the time to withdraw troops from Darfur”, urging instead to re-configure UNAMID to focus on its core mandate, that of protecting civilians. Could Rycroft be the person history credits with bringing the Darfur genocide to an end? God knows there’s a situation vacant.

TTIP is a Corporate Trojan Horse & it's Rolling Our Way

This was published in today's Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/ttip-heres-why-meps-have-been-protesting-it-and-why-you-should-too-10313239.html

A vote on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) in the European parliament was postponed today, sparking protest amongst a large number of anti TTIP MEPs. Earlier in the week, protesters gathered in Bavaria (despite aggressive police tactics) to protest against the G7 proposal to hand yet more powers to corporations at the expense of citizens. This is what TTIP would do and, despite over 2 million Europeans signing a petition to stop it, the G7 leaders have announced their intention to forge ahead with it anyway.

In the quest for profit at any cost, corporations strive for two things, new markets and deregulation. In reality, regulation is what keeps corporations, some of whom are richer and more powerful than countries, in check. The move in the US and the UK to deregulate financial markets was one of the main causal factors of the global financial crash. Regulation, however inconvenient to big businesses, has a crucial role in democracy and economic stability. It provides safeguards against exploitation and protects hard earned rights of the most vulnerable in society.

Critics are particularly concerned about the investor protection clause, known as ISDS. This allows corporations to sue governments for terminating a contract. A US health care provider, for example, could secure a contract to run an NHS hospital, however they want, irrespective of UK laws. If the public objected and the government intervened, they could be sued for the company’s loss of earnings. Running the hospital on the cheap will make more profit but cost more lives. Under TTIP, it’s the profit, not safety, that matters. There are legitimate concerns that this deal could make NHS privatisation irreversible.

It would allow US behemoths such as Monsanto, to put Independent farmers in many developing countries out of business. They cannot afford GM technology and would lose out to the bigger landowners. Eventually corporations like Monsanto will control all food production in these countries and wield far more power and control than is healthy.

MEP Yannick Jadot described ISDS as “a way of privatising justice to the detriment of our citizens". It puts companies above the law and justice system of the country in which they operate.

Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland who are in trade agreements which include this kind of investor-state relationship have been sued 127 times and lost the equivalent money that could have employed 300,000 nurses for a year. The government of Ecuador has just had to pay $2.3bn to Occidental Oil over its lawful termination of an oil concession. A Swedish energy company is using an ISDS clause in an energy treaty to sue the German government for €3.7bn following its decision to close its nuclear power stations in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

Last month it was reported that the EU scrapped planned pesticide regulations under pressure from US officials citing TTIP. According to documents obtained by the Pesticides Action Network Europe, a visit from senior US officials to Europe in July 2013 resulted in the EU dropping planned regulations that could have led to the banning of 31 pesticides containing hazardous chemicals. The proposed regulations related to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which have been linked to cancer and male infertility. The health costs emerging from these toxic chemicals has been estimated at €150bn per year.

How will governments and MEPs justify this to their citizens? They don’t have to. Why consult with the public when the decision has already been made. In secret. The sheer lack of transparency surrounding the negotiations of TTIP alone should raise alarm bells. Key components of the negotiations are reportedly subject to a 30-year embargo on disclosure. How can that be possible in a supposedly democratic union? What is so incendiary that cannot be shared with the people on whom it will have the most impact, the public?

MEP Molly Scott Cato attempted to find out. In order to access the top secret TTIP negotiation files she had to sign a gagging clause which prohibits her from disclosing any of the information she unveiled. Something that is in the public domain however, is that 92% of those involved in the consultations have been corporate lobbyists. Of the 560 lobby encounters that the European commission had, 520 were with business lobbyists and only 26 were with public interest groups.

It isn’t just that TTIP allows for further exploitation of citizens by corporations. The process itself, shrouded in secrecy, is sinister and undemocratic. The electorate has a right to understand, scrutinize and obstruct laws that threaten to undermine national sovereignty and erode the meagre citizen protection that remain in a world where governments increasingly dance to the omnipotent corporate tune.

Why Does Same Sex Marriage in Ireland Eclipse Human Rights Atrocities in Bangladesh?

I’m thrilled that Ireland voted for same sex marriage this week. I’m not, however, inclined to be swept up in the mass hysteria surrounding the landmark outcome. Women, even those who have been raped, are still deprived of their right to choose what happens to their bodies. As long as abortion is illegal in Ireland, any attempt to claim enlightenment, in terms of equality, is disingenuous.

The other reason I’m uncomfortable with the UK media frenzy surrounding the referendum outcome in Ireland, is that it eclipsed the plight of the beleaguered Rohingya population in Bangladesh. After some initial, belated coverage of those forced to drink their own urine while stranded for months on flotillas off the coast of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, the media (with few exceptions) got bored and moved on.

The following are a list of actions that Physicians for Human Rights urged in a report issued last week. A report that was all but ignored by the mainstream media:

For the Government of Bangladesh to:
• Desist immediately from arbitrarily arresting and forcibly expelling legitimate refugees who have a well founded fear of persecution.
• Establish a national refugee and asylum administrative framework that guarantees the fundamental rights to safe-haven from persecution and non-refoulement and that allows access to life-saving humanitarian assistance.
• Allow humanitarian agencies full and unobstructed access to provide relief to this vulnerable population that faces critical levels of malnutrition and disease. This assistance should include the immediate distribution of food rations to all unregistered refugees and a blanket supplementary feeding program to prevent a high number of avoidable deaths.
• Condemn immediately and prevent the campaign of ethnic hatred and incitement against Rohingya refugees.

For the Burmese government to:
• Cease immediately its campaign of widespread human rights violations against ethnic minorities, including the Rohingya, which has led to the flight of millions into neighboring countries.

For the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to:
• Assert its global mandate to protect and assist the unregistered Rohingya as a population of concern and press the Government of Bangladesh to stop the arrest and forcible refoulement of those Rohingya who have a well-founded fear of persecution.
• Press the Government of Bangladesh to allow immediate life-saving humanitarian assistance to this vulnerable population.
• Launch a coordinated appeal to regional and other donor nations for humanitarian relief and protection to this

Five More Years Of Misery. The Tories Couldn't Have Done It Without Help from Labour & The Lib Dems.

This week a report revealed that EE is the UKs worst communications provider. It comes top of the list for customer complaints and rates abominably for customer service. I was reading this whilst on hold to said provider for the umpteenth time in a week that has been hijacked by EE’s excruciating incompetence. The time and income I’ve lost at the hands of EE’s ineptitude, compounded by a culture of contempt for customers (no apologies, no call backs, no interest) I’ll never get back. What’s worse, I still have no internet access and no indication of when or if it’s likely to be restored in the foreseeable.

Apologies therefore for the delay in this posting, which I’m submitting from an internet café, slightly high on caffeine (they don’t do decaf here).

“What’s a Miliband?” shouted my seven year old. “What’s the context?” I shouted back down the stairs as I multi-tasked (cleaning the toilet whilst fairy cakes burn in the oven). “Miliband’s in peril!” He was reading from the headline of a weekly news magazine. “That’s a long and tragic story” I said. I discarded the marigolds, took Tony Benn’s diaries off the book shelf and began reading it aloud to my child as he tried not to crack his teeth on my cake.

One week after the election, and I remain locked in a state that fluxes between delusional disbelief and catatonic anxiety. Like a lot of people in this country, I’m aggrieved. At the Tories, who have and will continue to annihilate human and worker’s rights, and for destroying the dignity of the most vulnerable in our society. I’m angry at the Lib Dems for selling their souls to the lowest bidder. Five years ago an all male Lib Dem contingent sat around a table and traded party principles in their personal pursuit of power. All five men emerged with top jobs and ministerial cars. For their moment in the limelight, the party and the public paid dear (e.g. the Health & Social Care Act couldn’t have succeeded without their complicity). All five of the Lib Dem architects of that stitch up five years ago got kicked out last Friday. Nick Clegg described the electorate’s response as “unkind”. One word that conveyed so utterly the bubble of oblivion and disconnect he had come to inhabit. My deepest anger though is reserved for Labour.

In theory, Labour is the party for whom I should (but don't) feel the most affinity. In practice, as documented forensically in the aforementioned Tony Benn’s diaries, it has gradually abandoned and betrayed its founding principles. Under Tony Blair, so great was the lurch to the right that the moniker “New Conservatives” would have been far more accurate than that of New Labour. Margaret Thatcher apparently cited Tony Blair as one of her greatest legacies. That left a situation vacant in the political arena for a worker’s party that speaks to and for those hit hardest by austerity. The Greens and the SNP (in Scotlland) provided a refreshing, progressive alternative to austerity whilst UKIP went after “the man in the street” vote. Had Labour not allowed itself to be engulfed in an identity crisis and had instead the confidence to assert a bold alternative to austerity, the election outcome could have been very different.

Five years ago I blamed Labour stalwart Jon Cruddas (MP for Dagenham) for his party’s defeat. I was absolutely convinced he was the key to Labour’s salvation. He came second to Harriett Harman in the deputy leadership election but he won the hearts and minds of the public. I tried my best to convince him to stand for the last Labour leadership against the New Labour contestants, to no avail.

A member of the shadow cabinet and a key Labour strategist, who better to vent my spleen to at last Friday’s results, than Jon. I sent him an “I told you so” email. In my defence, I had been up all night filing election results to an overseas news outlet.

“Had you listened to me 5 years ago and stood against Miliband”, I pontificated, “all this misery could have been avoided”. I told him the party had shot itself in the foot with Brown, then Miliband. The time had been right for the party to go back to its roots after Blair. There was a situation vacant for a worker's party, a party for ordinary people. Jon Cruddas ticked (& still does) all the boxes. He’s likeable, lacking in grating affectations, a voice and background that people can relate to. Yet, to my fury, he didn’t stand.

After 5 years of austerity, the Labour party could have decimated the Tories. The tough talk about tax evasion, energy companies and non doms was too little too late. Hedging bets and trying to be all things to all people means Labour has no meaning, no purpose, no soul and therefore, no relevance.

I am forlorn at Labour’s apparent inability to learn from mistakes. The only viable option for survival is to be the champion of workers, the poor and marginalised, as well as everyone else, from across all classes, who believes in equality of opportunity and fair distribution of wealth and power. Without fairness and justice, social order and economic stability will crumble. That is in no-one’s interest. Labour should be a party driven by principle and passionate, convicted leadership, as opposed to a "safe", albeit lacklustre, disconnected, pair of hands.

I’m not going to divulge Jon’s response to my email. On Monday, he resigned his post in the shadow cabinet in order to carry out a review of the party’s direction. No better man or woman for the job.

Until the Labour party is prepared to live up to its name and founding principles, it, as well as democracy and society, are doomed.

Being Mistaken for a Terrorist by the BBC (parts 1 & 2 )

Maybe it was my Irish accent, which, to the uninitiated could be from anywhere. Perhaps it was my scarlet boots with matching finger nails, but I suspect what alerted the BBC to my radical tendencies was the badge on my lapel which read, “I Love the NHS”.

That’s pretty much the explanation the editor gave for editing out my question at a local hustings, despite the question provoking cheers of support from the audience (it’s the single biggest issue for this community), uniting people across all political hues. Our local A&E is under threat of closure and the Tory candidate, (in a seat that’s so safe he’s built a moat around it), is the only one to declare he wouldn’t fight it.

Thousands of locals have signed a petition against closing our A&E, so our position is clear. I told the Tory candidate that the most important criteria for this job is that he works for us and if he’s not prepared to fight for our A&E, why on earth should we vote for him. The audience's reaction did get a bit rowdy, to be fair. They booed and heckled when he mentioned the “business case” (hello, the NHS is a service, not a bloody business) as his defence, which, the BBC must have thought was jolly irreverent. And who sparked the riotous booing rebellion? Moi.

Perhaps precisely because my question was delivered in mellifluous tones, the BBC suspected my tactics as a sinister inversion of fundamentalism. After all, what could be more incendiary than a loaded question shot from a velvet gun? The question and the embarrassing heckles ended up on the BBC cutting room floor.

The editor had forensically researched the issue of A&E closure in this constituency (she spent a couple of hours outside a supermarket on the outskirts of town) ahead of the programme. Not being from here herself she obviously felt honour bound to exert the utmost rigour. She concluded that my question on A&E wasn’t relevant because people around here aren’t that bothered. The reaction of the hoodlums (not her exact word) at the hustings was not representative, she said. They could have been bussed in by Al-Qaeda for all she knew, in a bid to destabilise the state.

But what of all those petitions and posters in the shop windows saying “Hands off our A&E”? How was she supposed to corroborate and authenticate their true source. That butcher’s shop could be a safe house for the Taliban, and the baker next door is a known Green Party activist, for god’s sake. When you work for the BBC, you simply can’t allow yourself to be hijacked as the voice piece of ordinary people and their NHS fundamentalism. It could result in even more people engaging in the democratic process, which would completely undermine the hard earned ground in the fight for autocracy.

As I chipped away at the editor's logic, she grew impatient (she’s not used to having to account to us licence fee payers) and in a fit of unguarded rage, the truth was out. She knew who I was and had strong views about me. “And, and (she puffed), you strike me as someone very passionate and, and campaigning”. She spat the words passionate and campaigning out as though they were egregious character traits, indicative of social deviancy akin to, well, terrorist activities.

If being passionate and a campaigner makes me a terrorist, then I’m guilty as charged. My writing about human rights abuses has been cited as evidence by the UN in the International Criminal Court. Ten years campaigning (fitted in around my day job), armed only with a pen and some passion, has helped provide evidence against a genocidaire. The cost of which is constantly having to look over my shoulder. My charge sheet, obfuscated by a veil of repute, is lengthy. It's true that I am an unrepentant recidivist.

Having started my career as a therapist, I dug down deep and found the dregs of empathy lurking in a crevice of my red suede boots. The BBC cannot be seen as a recruiting sergeant for passionate people like me. It goes against editorial guidelines. Passion has no place on the BBC, unless you’re a right wing commentator such as David Starky or Katie Hopkins, being passionate about hating women, immigrants &/or people on benefits. Anyone passionate about inequality, corporate or political corruption and greed has no place on the BBC (section 196, para 50, subsection 1.2b). Celebrities passionately against tax on their mansions are allowed but not anyone who has any sympathies with people squatting to save their council homes from being sold off to developers. Leave that stuff to looney lefty, Russell Brand.

By way of neutralising my newly acquired persona, I declared my personal interest in preventing the closure of my local A&E. I told the editor that my child was seriously injured recently and it already took over an hour to get to A&E in an ambulance. All the medical evidence suggests the greater the distance, the increased likelihood of mortality. She lamented that, had I said that at the hustings she might not have cut it. She invited me to phone in and pose the question again at a BBC radio hustings a few days hence. When you come close to losing a child, it’s hard to talk about it publicly I said. I’m still feeling emotionally raw. But I agreed to do it in good faith.

When I phoned in to ask my question, I thought I had taken a wrong turn at the larder and strayed onto the set of Newsnight, where I was being cross examined by Paxman for crimes against humanity.

It occurred to me that I had inadvertently unleashed my secret weapon and the BBC editor immediately saw the error of exposing me to listeners. There was a very real risk that people might warm to my dulcet tones, thus indoctrinating and even converting listeners to my “cause”. I had to be stopped before I radicalised hitherto complacent listeners to NHS fundamentalism. The presenter tried correcting me on something I didn’t actually say in a bid to disarm me. He then went on to take out all the candidates who had pledged to support constituents in the A&E fight. He verbally AK47ed all of them for the crime of being prepared to fight on behalf of constituents and disagree with the Tory. Who needs to pay for a press officer when you’ve got your very own BBC henchman.

After my BBC appearance, people stopped me in the street and asked if they could join my terrorist cell. My status has been elevated in the community to that of Che Guevara. The school gates have become a recruiting ground for mothers wishing to don their fundamentalist credentials on their lapels. “I love the NHS” badges are selling like home made jam on the farmers market. Leafleting, petitioning and other radical activities, such as writing “passionate” letters to the press, have all become embedded since the BBC elevated community activism and passion to terrorist status.

Power to the people for whom the BBC is as irrelevant and disconnected as the party of hedge fund managers (locally at least) it favours to win the election.

Further evidence of my NHS fundamentalism can be found on the Huffington Post website.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tess-finchlees/the-nhs-conspiracy-of-sil_b_7174328.html

My article, The NHS Conspiracy of Silence, was published this week. Health warning: Contains flashes of passion which some BBC editors may find disturbing.