Corbyn Coup Misjudges Public Mood

The article below has just been posted on The Huffington Post website. Why not click on the link & show Corbyn some love. Wherever you are in the world!

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tess-finchlees/jeremy-corbyn_b_10760550.html

The Blairite coup against Jeremy Corbyn has sorely misjudged the public mood. The economy is in free fall and the rampant racism unleashed by the Leave campaign makes the “No blacks, dogs and Irish” signs of the 60’s seem welcoming. Vigilante bigots now roam our streets attacking “foreigners”, issuing unofficial deportation orders demanding, “We want our country back”.

The first parliamentary debate I attended ten years ago was on the Darfur genocide. I took my place in the press gallery just as the then secretary of state for International Development, Hilary Benn, stood up. His opening words served as my first lesson in political chicanery, “I am delighted to see such a full house”. There were 6 people present, including himself.

After wards, I asked John Bercow (my then MP and Darfur ally) why Benn had implied there was a full house. He said, “One word Tess. Hansard” (the official public record). Since then I’ve never taken what a politician says at face value.

The architects of the Corbyn coup, including Benn, defend their treachery by claiming that, if Corbyn couldn’t convince Labour voters to Remain, then he can’t win a general election. But, Corbyn delivered a 2/3 Labour majority for the Remain camp, something Margaret Hodge, who tabled the motion of no confidence against Corbyn, ironically couldn’t achieve. Her constituents voted to Leave. 

The truth is that the coup wasn’t staged because Blairites don’t think Jeremy Corbyn could win the next election. It was because they fear he could. A Corbyn win would be an unequivocal endorsement of his progressive Labour and yet another outright rejection of Blair’s right wing New Labour/Thatcherite agenda.

As chair of the Labour In campaign, Alan Johnson’s line up of pale, male and stale spokespeople failed to inspire. Women, young people and ethnic minorities hardly got a look in. Producing the toxic trio though (Blair, Brown and Campbell), was the final nail in the coffin. I know people who voted Leave out of protest at being pontificated at by “The war mongering Bliar”. The idea that the men who presided over the global financial crash would boost trust and credibility to the Remain camp signals the extent to which Alan Johnson, like his Blairite plotters, is in denial about the incendiary legacy of New Labour.

The Blairites went up against Corbyn nine months ago. He won the leadership with a landslide victory. The membership rejected their right wing austerity agenda, which lost Labour the last election. They rejected the “Tory light” candidates, who failed to vote against Tory welfare reforms last July, which proposed abolishing legally binding child poverty targets, cutting child tax credits and Employment Allowance, as well as housing benefit for young people.

Among the several thousand people that flooded parliament square on Monday to show Corbyn their support, were junior doctors. They weren’t there to mourn the resignation of Shadow Health Secretary, Heidi Alexander, who refused to stand by them on the picket lines. They were there to reciprocate the unequivocal support Corbyn showed them during their months of bullying by Jeremy Hunt.

New Labour supported the Con-Dem’s Health and Social Care Act, which sanctioned the privatisation of the NHS. Heidi Alexander had the opportunity to reverse elements of that by backing Caroline Lucas’ NHS reinstatement Bill, but she declined to do so. At a time when the NHS is under constant attack, Alexander lacked the conviction to fight for it.

One of the few people on the political landscape that people trust, whose integrity we cling to as we drown in a quagmire of Brexit fallout, has been stabbed in the back. The brutality of the attack has fuelled the contagion of hate and makes the Tories look like teddy bears.

When all Labour’s guns should be pointing at the industrial incompetence of the Tory wreckers, the Blairites are plotting to oust their own leader. Someone even they agree, is an honourable, decent man. They want to replace him with a Teflon Tony or a PR Dave. Media darlings they may be, but arguably two of the worst Prime Ministers in this country’s history. If ever there was a time for principled leaders, like Jeremy Corbyn, it’s now. 

Britain is Broken

In a vote that became about hate & fear v's love & hope, hate won. Like many immigrants waking up in Britain today, I'm not feeling the love.

My Independent article this week (below) unleashed a barrage of hate. Outrage at the temerity of suggesting that austerity, not immigration, is the cause of the shortage of school places, GP appointments and social housing. Immigrants didn't cause the global economic crisis & without our taxes the UK's debt would/will rise and, as for austerity? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Britain is broken. A piece of my heart is broken too.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/now-my-eight-year-old-thinks-he-could-be-deported-because-of-leave-rhetoric-clearly-its-time-to-face-a7095016.html

"Am I a foreigner mum?" Why I don't want any part of a little Britain

The article below was published in today's Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/now-my-eight-year-old-thinks-he-could-be-deported-because-of-leave-rhetoric-clearly-its-time-to-face-a7095016.html

An Ode to Michael-John

Remembering my dear Dad on Father's day. Michael-John Foley grew up on a farm in county Mayo, Ireland. He walked bare foot across the fields to school. He was my hero.

I remember your favourite colour was blue

That you liked crew neck jumpers & a dapper shoe

I know you had your fair share of strife

& that West Brom’s performance was the bane of your life

Never knowingly short of a yarn, your stories always had me gripped

Out for a stroll in Bridie’s field

A convincing ghost – you had us all tricked!

Poaching salmon on your neighbour’s land, who today would understand?

Foraging barefoot you brought home the grub

Your mother was proud, ‘till you became an honorary Dub!

You strutted your stuff on a Saturday night

The clubs of Camden provided much needed respite

Travelling around from town to town

The cold dank digs didn’t get you down

The crib you made with your own bare hands

For me that was Christmas, magical & clever

The bedtime stories you created

Enchanting & funny. Thanks belated

The Sunday roast you always cooked

Because, you said, “The Shelbourne is booked”!

Hide & seek in Phoenix Park

Picnics & caravans, up with the lark

Behind the curtain in economy class

You said, “I have a dream” & the passengers laughed

In Bogota, pursued in the street

Wearing a Chicago bulls cap – not exactly discreet!

There are those consumed by bitterness & anger

& there are those, like you Dad, who rise above rancour

A gentleman – you never complained

Whatever your burden you bore it alone

Your grandsons meant the world to you, in them your legacy lives on

Last Christmas with Archie was so very special,

Memories abound to look back upon

When mam died you were broken hearted

Death did you part, now at last reunited

A loving father right to the end

Determined to shield us from what no-one could mend

You died like you lived, with dignity & grace

No-one can ever fill your space

Wise, witty, warm & true

Our lives won’t be the same without you

Michael-John, you’ll be in our hearts forever

Memories of you we’ll always treasure

Child sex abuse stories buried under EU referendum hysteria

This blog was published in Monday's Huffington Post. Just before Clement Freud (BBC quizz show star & liberal MP) was exposed as a rampant paedophile.

Every child sex abuse news story triggers a Pavlovesque reaction in me. It’s as if a jagged blade is lodged in my heart and someone’s twisting it. The physical pain is searing.

Searing, but transient. It comes from having worked with, and opened my heart to, sexually abused children and adults. For survivors, the blade and the concomitant pain is constant. Every breath a possible trigger.

Stories of child sex abuse featured every day this week, albeit buried under EU referendum hysteria and spin. Although hard, survivors, who have often been silenced and disbelieved, welcome the truth about the scale of child sex being exposed to sunlight.

Twenty years after the Rotherham child abuse scandal, the first arrest was made yesterday. In the wake of the Jay report, which revealed the rape and trafficking of 1,400 children between 1997 and 2013, the National Crime Agency (NCA) began an investigation in 2014. This week it was announced that the investigation will take at least 8 years to complete. Two years in and having already been ignored by the South Yorkshire Police for a decade, this protracted timeline adds insult to injury for beleaguered survivors. Justice delayed is justice denied.

In January, Les Paul was convicted (for the third time) for abusing four boys whilst he was a care home manager in Lambeth in the 1980s. The Goddard historic child sex inquiry is currently investigating claims of high level systemic paedophile networks operating throughout Lambeth care homes in the 80’s and 90’s.

A recent Newsnight investigation revealed that, in 1986, Lambeth discovered that one of its care home managers, Michael Carroll, had a previous conviction of child abuse which he hadn’t disclosed in his job application. Yet, the conviction, and his failure to disclose it, did not result in his dismissal. It gets worse, when Carroll asked if he could turn one of the care homes into a centre to provide therapy for victims of child abuse, Lambeth agreed. It wasn’t until Carroll was sacked for fiddling his expenses in 1991 that the press was made aware of his child sex convictions.

In a report published yesterday, Leicestershire County Council pledged its full support for the Goddard historic child sex abuse inquiry. The council is one of several organisations required by law to contribute to the inquiry’s first investigation which is looking into allegations against former Leicester Labour MP Grenville Janner.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, some survivors have expressed misgivings about the pressure being brought to bear on Justice Goddard by lawyers representing the myriad of institutions accused of exposing children to abuse by powerful politicians.

When Justice Goddard took over the inquiry she promised to put survivors at its heart. If she is to instil trust and credibility, survivors’ voices cannot be silenced and side-lined by loquacious lawyers acting on behalf of powerful institutions and individuals.

I publicly criticised Justice Goddard’s predecessors. Their establishment links undermined trust amongst survivors, without which the inquiry could not claim credence. I gave Ms Goddard my conditional backing when she was appointed sixteen months ago. I said then and repeat again now, that survivors must have absolute trust in the integrity of the process. Otherwise, it will unravel.

Theresa May described the inquiry as “A once in a lifetime opportunity”. We owe it to survivors to get it right.

Other child sex abuse stories in the news this week:

·         Richard Huckle, described as “Britain’s worst paedophile”, was given 22 life sentences in a London court. He admitted to 71 charges of sexually abusing children in Malaysia and Cambodia from the ages of six months to twelve. He exploited sexual taboos to silence his victims.

·         While Nigel Farage was recently engaging in racist Brexit scaremongering about migrants sexually abusing Brits, a former UKIP aide, Aaron Knight, had just started a prison sentence for paedophile attacks on a boy.

·         A United Nations whistleblower, Anders Kompass, who was suspended for exposing the sexual abuse of children in the Central African Republic by peacekeepers, resigned over the organisation’s failure to hold senior officials to account.

·         Teenage sisters abducted a toddler from Primark in Newcastle. They had allegedly run internet searches on how to kidnap & rape children.

·        A former Eton student, Andrew Picard, eluded a prison sentence after making and sharing more than 2,000 graphic images of child abuse of children as young as two, which included rape and bestiality. His lawyers argued for leniency on the basis of the promising future that awaited him.

People Power & A Child's Thwarted Rebellion. All For The Love Of Our NHS

“There’s no school tomorrow” announced my 8 year old the other day. Panic seized me like a python around my neck. Hyperventilating at the idea of arranging last minute childcare, I had a transient flash of lucidity. “There’s nothing about that in the school bulletin?” I said doubtfully, realising said bulletin had been languishing at the bottom of my child’s book bag for days. “It’s a strike,” he said casually, “we balloted for it today”. My heart sank like a brick as I braced myself for a call from the head master.

Some back story. My 8 year old was very cross when he discovered (in First News) that he’d missed the memo about the recent national children’s strike. He’s against academies, and tests of any kind of course, so he felt robbed of his day off school, I mean, day of protest.

With squinted eyes my disgruntled son sought to extract my motives for preventing him from going on strike. I explained that strike action is borne of a collective decision taken locally by a representative group or body having balloted its members. That was the conversation we had a couple of weeks ago.

Fast forward to this week and my child has put a notice on the school gates declaring tomorrow a day of strike action. For the NHS, no less. The “ballot” consisted of a petition to “Save our A&E” and, having gained several signatures from children and staff alike, the designated representative group (the Secret 7…which is more like the secret 17 because no-one who wants to join is excluded) voted in favour of strike action. To top it all, I was to blame.

Last week, I had been gathering baby booties from parents with small children at the school gates. The local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) were meeting last Tuesday in a fourth attempt to axe our A&E (the local health campaign group, of which I’m a member, thwarted three previous attempts). We knew the good men and women on the board who had previously voted against the (un)accountable officer (the boss), had come under intense pressure from above, so we didn’t expect a positive outcome this time.

We had submitted compelling evidence and had won the rational, clinical and intellectual argument. We needed a plan B now, to win hearts, as well as minds. Hence the baby booties. I arrived at the board meeting armed with 20 pairs of baby shoes and divvied them out amongst the public. The room was packed. My every move was watched by communications people whose job it was to spin the meeting to within an inch of its life. There were more PR people on the premises than there were doctors in the hospital.

I sat in the front row with my child’s first pair of moccasins. They were no bigger than the palm of my hand. I was there to speak up for him and the other children in this county who, had the A&E not existed, might not be alive today. Many of the booties came with a story of a child who had, at some point, fought for their life in the back of an ambulance. I realised I couldn’t share them all but I had to tell one.  Joshua’s mum had thrust his tiny shoes in my hand and said, “Put these in front of the chairman” and tell him my child’s story.

Doctors who become directors (CCG members are mostly clinicians) have conflicting interests. As doctors, their Hippocratic oath, Do no harm, takes precedence. As directors, corporate law dictates that finances and saving money trumps saving lives. The sterile boardroom arena, with spreadsheets and acronyms abound, is designed to keep the human element out of the decision making. I wanted to bring some humanity into the room, to remind doctors that the decisions they made would determine the fate of real children (as opposed to stats on a spreadsheet). Vulnerable human beings who depend on our generation to make the right decisions and leave them with a local health service that’s fit for purpose.

The public were reminded, “This is a meeting in public, not a public meeting”, which means we’re not allowed to speak unless or until the chairman says so. There’s the occasional display of low level civil disobedience, such as a local woman in her 80’s who regularly interrupts ever so politely with variations on the following, “I’m terribly sorry and I don’t mean to be rude…., followed inevitably by,….”but you’re talking total nonsense”, or “this is a farce”, thus the scene is set for theatre (heckling the baddies and clapping the goodies).

We waited patiently and then the public was granted 30 minutes to speak. Not nearly long enough for all the hands up but, that was our lot. The chair prevented the razor sharp, forensically informed chairwoman of the health campaign from speaking until the final moments.  But when she spoke, it was Hollywood gold. It was like being in a courtroom, listening to the closing arguments by an impassioned lawyer. Speaking as though her own life depended on it (it may well do), she set out a compelling case not to sign the death warrant of her client. In this case, the NHS. Nye Bevan would be proud. The rapturous applause turned to shouts of protest and slow clapping, when the chair malevolently announced he was drawing the public’s time to a close. Not only was he cutting our time short, he had allowed the (un) accountable officer to speak for 15 of our 30 minutes.

I stood up but the chair, seeing me armed with my BMDs (booties of mass destruction), tried to prevent me from speaking. Refusing to give me the mic I was forced to raise my voice to be heard as the meeting descended into chaos. This is Joshua’s story:

Joshua, age 2, had a severe fit a couple of weeks ago. He’s had a number of fits. Previously first responders came and waited with his distraught mother while an ambulance arrived. The wait is usually 15 minutes. On this occasion the ambulance took over 30 minutes during which time he stopped breathing. The first responder didn’t arrive.

First responders are increasingly not turning up, especially in critical cases. They’re local volunteers, trained in basic first aid only. They know ambulances are taking longer & longer to arrive & they didn’t sign up to holding people in their arms as they die.

In the ambulance Joshua turned blue and developed a rash. Paramedics changed route to allow them to get to the nearest A&E (having closed the children’s ward in our local hospital, children are now forced to travel almost twice the distance to get to another hospital). They made it clear that the best interests of the child was paramount & that meant getting to the nearest A&E as quickly as possible. Mothers at the school are terrified. If they shut our A&E, our children wouldn’t have that option and they could die.

Even healthy children are vulnerable to medical crises, such as anaphylactic allergic reactions, asthma, meningitis etc, where speed of access to A&E is of the essence. 

While I was speaking, people slowly emerged, like ghosts, from the public gallery and placed the baby booties on the table in front of the board. The solemnity and stillness of their movements was incredibly poignant. More so than I’d imagined when we’d planned it. I took my seat with the others and waited for the vote. To our astonishment, it was another victory and, even though we know the threat has not entirely disappeared, we savoured the moment. One of the board members approached me afterwards to say the blue fluffy booties I put in his hands made him think of his 2 year old. (I had reached out to him in particular because I thought he was one of the incredible doctors who treated my child in hospital).

The BBC had surreptitiously captured it all on a mobile phone and it was broadcast twice that evening. My son had seen it, which inspired his petition. Fortunately, by the time we got back to school, the rain had washed away any traces of the strike notice. The only evidence of a child’s thwarted rebellion clung to the tarmac, the blue ink bleeding a trail of destruction on a pulverised shred of white mulch paper. 

Anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia And Racism In Any Form Must Be Condemned.

There’s an acrid stench of stale turgidity emanating from the inexorable anti-Semitism headlines. This week, commentators accused Jeremy Corbyn of bias for standing against anti-Semitism and, racism in any form. Condemning anti-Semitism doesn’t count, it seems, unless it is singled out for special treatment.

To suggest that some forms of racism are more worthy of censure than others is a disturbing development. Racism, in all its forms, must be called out. There can be no hierarchy where the oppression of one group is deemed more tolerable than that of another.

In ten years of genocide prevention, I have worked with faith leaders of all denominations. One of them, a rabbi, called me yesterday. He was dismayed at how Judaism is being “hijacked by the unrepresentative, yet omnipotent, pro-Israel lobby”. In a misguided attempt to discredit Jeremy Corbyn (for the crime of speaking out against the plight of Palestinians), he said, “They are sabotaging our fight against real anti-Semitism”.

In 2009, Peter Oborne exposed the ubiquitous, insidious reach of the Israel lobby in his Dispatches programme. In it, Michael Ancram, a former Conservative shadow Foreign Secretary said, “The pro-Israel lobby is the most powerful in British politics”.

Speaking at a Conservative Friends of Israel (CIF) dinner in 2008, amid accusations of Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza, David Cameron addressed the party’s “biggest donors”. Gaza didn’t merit a mention, but he promised, “If I become prime minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel”.  He who pays the piper calls the tune. Many believe that David Cameron’s BDS ban was pay back, or the first instalment.

The charges against the Labour party took root in February when Alex Chalmers resigned as co-chair of the Oxford Union Labour Club. He reportedly labelled the club’s support for Israel Apartheid Week, which aimed to highlight Israel’s “ongoing settler-colonial project and apartheid policies over the Palestinian people”, as anti-Semitic. It’s akin to accusing those who supported anti-apartheid in South Africa as anti-white. Conflating any criticism of Israel’s foreign policy with anti-Semitism is scurrilous, dishonest and an attack on free speech.

Then came Naz Shah’s tweets, which were sent two years ago when Ed Miliband, a Jew, was Labour leader. Why are they only emerging now? To cause as much damage as possible ahead of the local elections today. The media has made much of this being a test of Corbyn’s leadership, so right wing lobby groups, Blairites and the media, are seizing the opportunity to expedite his exit. Instead, it has galvanised his support.

The London Mayoral campaign has been plagued by dog whistling, with Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith accused of attempting to portray Labour’s candidate, Sadiq Khan, as a terrorist sympathiser. David Cameron was called racist in the House of Commons when he repeated accusations that Khan was affiliated with an imam he alleged to be an IS supporter. It transpired that Suliman Gani is a prominent anti-extremism campaigner and a Conservative supporter. He lambasted the Prime Minister’s personal attack as a betrayal. Boris Johnson was also accused of racism last week but the media is not calling for an inquiry into “rampant” racism in the Tory party.

Question Time on Thursday didn't raise any questions about the racist, scare mongering tactics employed throughout the mayoral election campaign by the Tory party. Instead it focused on Labour’s anti-Semitism allegations. The audience (and panel) was a sea of white faces. There was a pro-Israel panellist who licentiously attacked Labour’s “problem” with anti-Semitism. There was no Muslim voice to challenge the Islamaphobic rhetoric detonated by the Tories, like a hate bomb, spreading toxic contagion over London.

Earlier in the week, The BBC was forced to apologize after its presenter Andrew Neil also falsely referred to an imam as “a supporter of the Islamic State”. The man responsible for news and current affairs output (including Question Time) at the BBC is James Harding, an avowed pro-Israel proponent.

Jeremy Corbyn was right to condemn anti-Semitism and racism in any form. Whether it's Jews in the Holocaust, black Africans in Sudan or Muslims in Gaza, when it comes to human rights and racism, there can be no hierarchy of worthiness. 

Whether It's Paedophile Politicians Or Priests Justice Goddard Must Not Bow To Power

In the middle of a Dublin street I got a phone call. Sky news were doing a package on Paedophilia and wanted me to provide an expert perspective. What with the traffic noise and being out with my 8 year old, it wasn’t a good time. Isn’t there a quiet building you can duck into for the interview, my husband suggested. I was standing in front of a church called, “Our Lady of Dolours”, which means pain in Spanish. “Not really,” I said.

It’s only a few months since Spotlight was released in cinemas throughout the country. It tracks the work of the investigative journalism team set up at the Boston Globe to expose paedophile priests. The establishment closed ranks, emboldened by the inoculation against justice that power affords.  Undeterred, the Boston Globe pursued truth with the same determination with which the church sought to obscure it.

With investigative journalism all but extinct, UK survivors of abuse are pinning their hopes on Justice Goddard’s inquiry into child sex abuse.  They are relying on her to fulfil her brief to investigate child sex abuse, in all areas of the establishment. The winding down of police investigations into the Westminster VIP paedophile ring, with no convictions, was a blow to survivors. One witness, “Darren”, who said he believed a 15 year old girl was killed at a paedophile orgy in Dolphin Square in the 1990s, was allegedly reported by police to social services as being a danger to his baby. Fortunately, social services found the claims to be unsubstantiated.

When Ben Fellows accused Kenneth Clark of groping him at 18 when he was acting undercover for ITV’s Cook report, he feared for his safety. Instead of being treated as a victim by the police, he was accused of perverting the course of justice. It was he, not the accused, who stood trial. Despite widespread media coverage prior to the trial portraying Fellows as a, “fantasist”, when the jury acquitted him, the media was conspicuous in its silence.

In stark contrast, when charges against high profile figures are dropped due to lack of evidence, the words, “acquitted” and “exonerated” are regularly and speciously used in headlines. One can only be exculpated by standing trial.

Some survivors have expressed misgivings about the pressure being brought to bear on Justice Goddard by lawyers representing the myriad of institutions accused of exposing children to abuse by powerful politicians.

Nigel O’Mara was recently rejected by Goddard to be a “core participant” in her inquiry into alleged abuses by Lord Greville Janner, the late Labour peer, and Sir Cyril Smith, the late Liberal MP. In 1992 Mr O’Mara co-founded a helpline for survivors of sexual abuse and claims to have received a number of calls from young men alleging that they had been sexually abused as children, while in care, by Janner and Smith. He said the reports were sent to Kenneth Clarke, then home secretary, in 1992 and 1993 but that no response was forthcoming.

David Enright, Mr O’Mara’s solicitor, said: “When we appeared in the High Court before Lady Justice Goddard on behalf of Mr O’Mara the court was overflowing with lawyers and barristers representing every institution and organisation alleged to have failed to protect children from sexual abuse by these powerful politicians.

“All of those institutions have full participation in this judicial inquiry and will have the opportunity to see the evidence and influence the inquiry. 

“A key survivor witness will not.”

If Justice Goddard is to claim any kind of legitimacy of process, the voices of survivors cannot be silenced and side-lined by loquacious lawyers acting on behalf of the institutions and individuals in the dock. If this inquiry is to have any credence it must retain its independence and not lose sight of who the victims are. This must not become yet another process where abuse of power reigns supreme. 

100 years After The 1916 Uprising, Is Britain On The Brink Of Civil Unrest?

To assuage my guilt I rationalised that the DVD I sat my child in front of was educational. Admittedly, Box Trolls does not elucidate the latest curriculum but that’s because it seeks to reduce schools to fact factories where fanciful, or god forbid, critical thinking, is stridently discouraged. Mr Grandgrind of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, would be immensely gratified.

Nevertheless, Box Trolls gave me a 90 minute window to pull together a body of clinical evidence to present to my local hospital board. They were poised to vote on the principle of closing our much needed A&E, which already takes over an hour to get to in the back of an ambulance – yes, I’m talking about the UK, not Malawi.

The evidence was compelling but when has patient safety ever gotten in the way of axing services and systematically dismantling the NHS? Why waste my time going to a meeting in the vain hope of influencing a decision that had already been made, when I could/should be spending time with my child during half term?

When the film was over I asked, “So, what was the moral of the story?”. Without missing a beat my 8 year old said, “There are two morals mummy. Firstly, always fight evil wherever you see it. It’s no good ignoring it, it won’t go away, and secondly, even bad people can become good if they make the right choices”. My doubts dissolved and hardened into a steely resolve. If we want to protect the NHS for future generations, we must be prepared to fight for it.

Sitting in the oppressive board room, powerless to speak unless permission is granted, disenfranchised by democracy, reduced now to a redundant concept invoked only by “militants” and “dreamers”. I watched helplessly from the side-lines, impotent in all but symbolic gestures with no real mechanism to be heard.

As the cost of the future of our A&E was presented purely in fiscal terms, with no consideration whatsoever given to the cost to lives, the words of James Connolly, one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter rising came to mind. “Yes, friends, government in capitalist society are but committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class.”

And I recognised the similarities between, what has become my reality under a totalitarian Tory regime, and that of my ancestor’s under British rule. All of my spare time is invested in various campaigns to defend hard won public services, civil liberties and human rights. We’re under constant siege with sniper fire coming from all directions.

As a parent who knows what it’s like for their seriously injured child to have to travel great distances in an ambulance to get to A&E, the madness of suggesting that journey increases, is a battle I cannot surrender to. As a parent who believes in schools being accountable to parents and communities and not owned by academy chains who are not accountable to anyone but their shareholders and for whom profit, not child well-being, is their primary motive, I have no choice but to fight imposed academisation.

Our schools are now on the brink of being removed from local accountability to voters, parents, students or staff. They are to be signed over to private companies and directors who will not be required to have any connection whatsoever to our schools or our communities.

In the same way that splitting the NHS into individual Trusts makes it easier to pick them off one by one, the imposed conversion of schools into academy Trusts will achieve the same goal- privatisation. It’s so much easier to do under the radar if they’re all fragmented into separate local entities

This in turn makes our public services easy picking for US healthcare giants and “edu-businesses” to swoop in if TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) ever gets past the European Commission. Under TTIP, future governments would be unable to preserve education as a public service.

The investment protector clause (ISDS), allows corporations to sue governments. In the UK, critics are concerned that US healthcare companies now running parts of the NHS might use ISDS tribunals to sue future British governments wanting to reverse privatisation of parts of the health service. Cigarette maker Phillip Morris used ISDS to sue Australia and Uruguay for implementing plain cigarette packaging. Governments’ duty to promote public health is subjugated to corporate profit.

Writing in today’s Conservative Home, Peter Lilley MP raises the red flag on TTIP saying, US companies could sue the UK government should it want to take back into the public sector privately provided services in the NHS, education, and so forth – or open fewer services to private provision.

Then there’s the attack on our libraries and leisure centres. Too many battles and so little time and energy to fight them all. Which is all part of the grand plan. Overwhelm us, divide us, demoralise us. This is how this government, acting as an agent for the insatiable, greed crazed capitalist machine, plans to break us.

George Osborne, who James Connolly would no doubt describe as the capitalist committee’s finance director, didn’t disguise his motives in the recent budget. His plans to sell the Government’s 73 % in Royal Bank of Scotland at a loss of £22m was described by critics as “reckless and short-termist”. Christine Berry, a senior researcher at the New Economics Foundation, accused Osborne of relying on the sale of public assets to plug holes in the budget coupled with an “ideological obsession” with private ownership. While hedge fund managers stand to profit at our expense, George Osborne announced that cuts to disability benefits would raise £4.4 billion.

The same conditions that precipitated the Dublin rebellion 100 years ago are present today. A disenfranchised, disillusioned, dispossessed people, have had enough. Enough of the transference of wealth to absentee landlords, enough of rack rents, starvation and poverty, enough of inequality and injustice. In the absence of fairness, justice and democracy, an uprising is surely inevitable.

Piers Morgan & The Naked Celebrity Selfie Are Boring But Not Innocuous

This was published in The Huffington Post last week.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tess-finchlees/piers-morgan-naked-celebrity-selfies_b_9417356.html

I dedicate this piece to all girls & young women in my life. Never forget that your brain is your greatest asset so don't be afraid to flaunt it!

Whilst possessing a sexist streak wouldn’t be part of his job description, as a columnist for the Mail, it’s unlikely to hurt Piers Morgan’s job prospects. Earlier this month Morgan was so offended by the sight of Susan Sarandon’s cleavage, he took to twitter to give her a public dressing down. Yesterday, his guns were pointed at Kim Kardashian and her naked selfie.

Morgan’s atavistic rants about Madonna’s “age inappropriate” antics are as perfidious as they are pernicious. There’s something inherently unedifying about a middle aged man lecturing women on what they should and should not wear. It’s hard to imagine that Piers Morgan was once a national newspaper editor. As a journalist, words are his craft and there is an expectation that he should employ them to better effect. Rather than articulate a case to illustrate a point, he resorts to the sloppy short hand of prejudice.

Morgan’s personal attacks on women’s appearance, using patronising, value laden adjectives like “tacky”, “inappropriate”, “grotesque”, “embarrassing”, pollute the social media landscape. There’s no basis for his invective except his own disapproval, making his comments seem like old fashioned bullying.

I’m not going to defend Kardashian’s naked selfies. As someone who spent the last 8 years covering lads’ mags with copies of Good Housekeeping every time I went to the shops, it pains me to see women reduced to the sum total of their body parts. Twenty year old actress, Chloe Moretz, made a legitimate point when she tweeted Kardashian, "I truly hope you realize how important setting goals are for young women, teaching them we have so much more to offer than just our bodies”.

As a feminist, journalist and therapist who has worked with women made ill by sexism, I would argue that portraying women as sex objects perpetuates gender inequalities and that objectification is dehumanising. That’s the point. It’s much easier to abuse (or discriminate against) a non-person reduced to mere body parts. The sex industry, which includes lad’s rags, has vested interests in normalising the objectification of women. To them women, and girls, are just commodities.

Last year it was reported that half of school girls were considering plastic surgery to make themselves thinner and prettier, 90% of eating disorders are amongst females, teenage gang rape is on the increase and 1 in 3 girls have reported unwelcome sexual touching at school.

There were so many crucial issues that Morgan could have used his column (which was published on IWD) to highlight.

Yesterday Labour MP, Jess Phillips, stunned parliament into silence when she read out the names of 120 women killed by men they knew in the past year. On average, two women a week are killed each year by a current or former male partner and 25% of young women (aged over 13) experience physical violence.

According to  End Violence Against Women, nearly a quarter of young adults aged 18-24 report having experienced sexual abuse in childhood (31% of young women and 17.4% of young men), 90% are abused by someone they know and 66% are abused by other children or young people under 18. In 2012-2013, 22,654 sexual offences against under-18s were reported to police in England and Wales with four out of five cases involving girls. The UK is a significant site of internal and international child trafficking. The vast majority of trafficked children in the UK are aged 14-17, with many girls trafficked for sexual abuse and exploitation.

The internet has broadened the ways in which women and girls can be sexualised, dehumanised and exploited. Piers Morgan could have used his column to expose these, and any of the above, evils but he didn’t. He chose instead to be part of the problem women face on social media, not the solution.

It Was International Women's Day Yesterday But Most Women Are Too Busy To Give A Flying Feck About Equality

What with pole dancing classes in the morning and mindfulness in the afternoon, I didn’t have time for International Women’s day. Yet every year it finds me. Feminist indignation and “shocking” statistics abound.

But do the stats bear scrutiny? For example, I read that only 1% of titled land in the world is owned by women. Maybe women just don’t fancy owning land. It’s bad enough keeping on top of the housework without having to tend the flipping land too?

Women in part-time jobs in the UK earn on average 42% less than men. Kate Winslet dismissed talk of the gender pay gap as vulgar. I couldn’t agree more, especially when there’s an obvious solution. Work full time where the pay gap is only around 20%. Frankly though, if women had equal pay they wouldn’t know what to do with it. We already buy far too many cosmetics.

Shares in L’Oreal might benefit but then there wouldn’t be as much tax payers’ money left to subsidise the gap in revenue lost to tax havens.

The recession has pushed single mothers into poverty. Apparently 47% borrowed money and/or went without food in order to pay for childcare. Is it just me or is the remedy here a no brainer. Get married. Marrying for love is over-rated. The money I save in tax benefits as a married pays for 6 solarium sessions and a year’s subscription to The Lady.

Yesterday, Bono issued a feckwa against world leaders who have allowed women to plunge into poverty. 70% of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty are women and children. It would be churlish to point out that the amount Bono evades in tax could be enough (possibly) to lift an African country out of poverty or fund a rape crisis support worker in the UK or Ireland for a century. So I won't say that.  

Instead, I’ll blame women themselves. They need to “lean in” a bit more (so what if you get kicked in the teeth), be less complacent, climb that greasy pole and be better role models for children.

The BBC even caved into pressure when it sacrificed merit at the altar of political correctness. Panel shows such as QI and Have I got news for you now all have to have at least one woman. We’re talking about comedy here and everyone knows women are just not funny, let alone quick enough to compete with the likes of the hilarious Jimmy (the gang rape joker) Carr or Frankie (have you heard the one about the disabled child...) Boyle. Sarah Millican, Jo Brand, Gina Yashere, Bridget Christie, Sandi Toksvig, what were you thinking when you chose your career paths?

To end on a more sober note. Over two women per week are killed by current or ex-partners, and one in four women in the UK will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Apparently there are those in the criminal justice system who still ask the question, “What did she do to provoke him”.

Not dissimilar to the experiences of women and children who report rape. Former newspaper owner Eddy Shah reportedly said under-age girls who engage in “consensual sex” can be "to blame" for the abuse they experience.

That’s International Women’s Day done for another year. The window for  feminist leaning polemic outbursts has now closed. Fret not though ladies, for the Real Housewives of Haringey season has only just begun.

Mother’s Day: Avoid Toxic Talcs, Flammable Nighties and Anything From The Kotex Product Range

The below was published in the  Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tess-finchlees/mothers-day-gifts_b_9382156.html

 “Look!”, said the HR manager, brandishing a folder as if it was a WMD, “We have equality policies posted on all the Tampax machines but we’re still haemorrhaging senior women”.

The not so human resource manager wondered if women weren’t their own worst enemy. She was irked that the only female executive had left a high profile meeting the day before, to collect a sick child from school. “Why does the school have her work number for emergencies and not that of her husband”? She was luminescent with rage. “How many of your male senior executives have ever left a meeting to collect a sick child”? I enquired. “None”.

This is just one example of the, one rule for women and another for men, culture that’s so entrenched in organisations that it’s rendered invisible and accepted as normal. As long as HR mangers apply double standards in the execution of equality policies (not encouraging male executives to share parenting duties), women will invariably be left holding the baby. 

A recent study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission estimated that around 54,000 new mothers in Britain lose their jobs every year, that’s twice as many as a decade ago. One in five new mothers experienced harassment or negative comments from colleagues or manager when pregnant or returning from maternity leave, 7% said they were put under pressure to hand in their notice and one in 20 reported receiving a cut in pay or bonus after returning to work. 

The recession is also pushing many single parents, 9 out of 10 of whom are women, into poverty. According to Gingerbread, who carried out a survey of members, 47% borrowed money and/or went without food in order to pay for childcare. In 2015 two thirds of England’s Sure Start children’s centres were hit with crippling cuts. Hundreds have been forced to close in the last 5 years and 130 are currently under threat of closure, thus removing a vital safety net from the most vulnerable children and families in society. So much for “early detection”, “making work pay” and “aspiration”. Hollow soundbites, with more bite than tangible substance.

With cleaning up other peoples’ mess as our USP, we need more women at the helm of UK PLC. Seasoned mothers wouldn’t succumb to corporations’ threats to throw their toys out of the pram if they don’t get what they want (avoiding tax on their toys). They would put them on the naughty step to ponder the maleficence of greed. Followed by a lecture on, “you won’t get anywhere in life without mastering the skill of sharing”.

But women are a long way off calling the shots. Among chief executives and chairs of FTSE 100 companies, there are 17 men called John. That’s more than the total of seven female bosses.

But perhaps the most chilling of all the statistics I’ve come across is that 17 % of people forget Mother’s day and, of the 83% that do remember, 79.9% of them think flowers are an appropriate gift. As if a bunch of Dahlias is commensurate recompense for being banished to a hinterland of societal insignificance, wherein moaning about your DH on Netmums constitutes radical political activism.

It’s not for me to say what an appropriate Mothers Day gift would be, but, as a general rule, I would avoid the following: flammable nighties, toxic talcs and anything from the Kotex product range.

Palestinian Journalist Dying For Dignity & Human Rights

Mohammed al-Qeq is a Palestinian journalist, husband, son and father of two. He is about to die a slow, painful death, shackled to an Israeli hospital bed.

Al-Qeq is entering his 94^th day of hunger strike in protest at being allegedly tortured and detained indefinitely, without charge or trial, by the Israeli military. From what can be discerned thus far, his only crime is that of being a Palestinian journalist.

Amnesty International has called on Israeli authorities to release al-Qeq unless he is charged with an internationally recognizable criminal offence and tried in proceedings adhering to international standards.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has expressed concern that al-Qeq has been on hunger strike longer than any other Palestinian detainee or any of the participants in 1981 protest strikes by IRA prisoners held by Britain in Northern Ireland. Ten of the Irish hunger strikers died, the longest lasted 73 days.

Reporters Without Borders and the European Union missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah, have also raised concerns over Israel’s use of administrative detention (detaining indefinitely without charge or trial) and called for al-Qeq’s release.

Writhing in agony at deaths untimely door, Mohammed al Qeq cries out, “Let me hear my son’s voice, please God”. But his dying wish has been denied by Israeli authorities.

With human rights groups highlighting the inhumane treatment of al-Qeq, it should have made international headlines, but it didn’t and still doesn’t. Journalists normally look out for each other and show solidarity when colleagues are targeted.

Less than two years ago, the BBCs head of news, James Harding, staged a protest and a minutes silence with the hash tag, “Journalism is not a crime”.

Harding leveraged his position, rightly, to influence the fate of three Al Jezeera journalists arrested in Eqypt. In his speech prior to the silence, Harding asserted that the treatment of the journalists was unjust and designed to intimidate journalists and inhibit free speech.

Why has Mohammed al-Qeq’s three month ordeal, for the apparent crime of being a journalist, not warranted Harding’s deprecation? Perhaps a clue lies in Harding’s comments as editor of The Times, which were reported in the Jewish Chronicle in 2011, “I am pro-Israel. I believe in the state of Israel…I would have a real problem if I had been coming to a paper with a history of being anti-Israel. And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel”.

Accusations of BBC bias favouring Israel are not new. Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent said, “We have become used to the fact that, in the BBC newsroom, an Israeli life is worth the lives of an infinite number of Palestinian”.  

In 2009, the BBC refused to broadcast an emergency humanitarian appeal in aid of Palestinian children, claiming it would “breach impartiality guidelines”, to the chagrin of many employees. Yet, when the BBC’s then head of television, Danny Cohen, signed a letter criticising a cultural boycott of Israel last year, it wasn’t deemed impartial.

The media’s abandonment of one of its own is brought brutally into focus by the fact that, while the British government made headlines banning BDS last week, Al Qeq’s plight was airbrushed out of the picture.

150 universities and citizens around the world launched the annual Israeli apartheid week in London on Monday. Rabbi David Goldberg of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue said, “When settlers walk on one side of the road of the road and Palestinians have to walk on another and when settlers are governed by Israeli law and Palestinians are governed by military law, you are talking about apartheid”.

Whether it's Jews in the Holocaust, black Africans in Sudan or Palestinians in Gaza, when it comes to oppression and human rights, we must not remain silent.

If brand Israel wants to improve its’ international standing, it could start by showing Mohammed Al-Qeq mercy before it’s too late. As for the media’s shameful abandonment of a colleague, I am minded of the words of the legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, "The more complicated are the issues and the more sophisticated are the ways to disguise the truth, the more aggressive our search for truth must be, and the more offensive we are sure to be to some. So be it”.