Don't be paralysed by white guilt: Teach yourself & your children about racism

My article published in today's Irish Independent:

https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/dont-be-paralysed-by-white-guilt-teach-yourself-and-your-children-about-racism-39277149.html

Full blog version below 👇

The night before George Floyd was killed, I watched the scene in Normal People where a group of attractive young white students sat around a table somewhere fabulous in Italy sipping champagne. One of the assembled made a racist remark, which was laughed off by half the gathering and ignored by the other two, who fled the scene leaving a contrail of white privilege in their wake.

What bothered me, even more than twenty somethings swilling fizz, was the missed opportunity of a contemporary drama, written at a time when fascism is on the rise globally, to call out racism. The wherewithal and moral conviction just wasn’t there.

Knowing how everyday racist remarks can lead to everyday job discrimination, everyday racist abuse and sometimes murder, I was vexed. I thought of all the normal people whose lives have been brutally torn asunder by racism. Such as Stephen Lawrence, whose mother Doreen, I met when I was advising the Metropolitan Police on institutional racism. The grief laden eyes of a woman whose life was normal until her teenage son was murdered by racists in London, haunt me.

I built a life in England which ended ten months ago when I returned home as a Brexit refugee. The epidemic of far right bigotry unleashed by the EU referendum morphed into daily race hate attacks directed, not against immigrants like me, but those of a darker hue.

A Leave voting mother approached me at the school gates assuring me that “people like me” (white), didn’t vote to kick “people like you” (also white) out. It’s the “other” foreigners she had a problem with. The juxtaposition of Brexiteers issuing imaginary asylum passes to white immigrants while concomitantly ordering black and Asians, many of whom were born and bred in Britain, to “go home” was as surreal as it was sinister. I replied, “If the black and brown immigrants get kicked out, I’ll be right behind them”.

Racism exists in Ireland too and, with black voices amplified in recent days, we are hearing heart-breaking stories, such as that of Trés Jones. The 11 year old who recounted racist abuse, from adults and children, calling him the “n” word and telling him to go back to Africa.

The words of civil rights activist, Angela Davis, have been widely invoked since George Floyd’s death.  “In a racist society, it’s not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist”. For white people wanting to know what to do in this moment, anti-racism groups are urging us to educate ourselves and our children about black history and racism.

I’ve been teaching my twelve old about black history, mostly through stories, since he was four. When his teachers talk about Florence Nightingale, he says, “What about Mary Seacole?”. In the last year, we’ve watched The great debaters (not suitable for younger children), Just Mercy, the spectacular dramatization of Malorie Blackman’s ground breaking novel, Noughts & crosses and Dr Who’s re-enactment of Rosa Parks’ story.

None of the above made it easier for my son to comprehend how George Floyd could die under the knee of a white police officer who ignored his anguished pleas, “I can’t breathe” and “Momma, I’m through”. It just helped him understand the anger that comes with generations of pain and oppression.

There’s a plethora of educational resources online but these are no substitute for listening to black voices in this country, now. For leaders of institutions like Trinity College, for example, that involves hearing the everyday racism experienced by black and ethnic minority students on campus, and stamping it out. For agents and publishers, it’s about commissioning black stories and talent.

As well as educating and enabling, anti-racism requires the courage to tirelessly challenge racist behaviour, wherever we encounter it. Our children watch how we respond to racist “jokes”. Silence is tacit approval.

Not sure if someone is racist? The following is a useful litmus test.

Racists punch down on the powerless, be it “Nigerians coming here for a better life and sending all their money home” (unlike generations of Irish emigrants…) or “the sponging asylum seeking racketeers living it up in 5 star hotels, while “our own” are abandoned in the streets”.

Anti-racists punch up at those in power, calling out systemically racist policies that pit “our own” against asylum seekers.

Anti-racists might be inclined to think that the sponging racketeers are the private contractors who trousered an estimated €1 billion of taxpayers money for operating often substandard, unsafe, direct provision accommodation, that some residents liken to prison.

Anti-racists will have done their homework and know that the United Nations described the system as a “severe violation of human rights” and will be calling for an end to a barbaric, inhumane policy described as the Magdalene Laundries of our time.

Our black friends are frightened and traumatised. Now is not the time to be paralysed by white guilt. It’s a time to educate ourselves and our children and to call racism out. It’s a time to speak up, reach out and show people of colour that black lives do matter.

Black Lives Matter. RIP George Floyd

The night before George Floyd’s racist murder, I watched the scene in Normal People where a group of attractive young white people are sitting around a table somewhere divine in Italy sipping champagne. One of the assembled makes a racist remark which was laughed off by half the gathering and ignored by the other two who fled the scene leaving a contrail of smugness in their wake.

Knowing how everyday racist remarks can lead to everyday job discrimination, everyday racist abuse and murder, that scene made me angry. It’s bad enough that the Dublin street shots airbrushed out the homeless people in its quest for cinematic beauty but glossing over racism in a contemporary drama at a time when the far right is on the rise, set in a country where racism is brushed under the carpet?

When I saw the video footage of George Floyd being choked to death under the knee of a white police officer the next day, I felt sick, outraged, horrified and scared. Meghan Markle’s words resonated when she said, at times like this the only wrong thing to say is nothing (except if your name is Lawrence Fox).

I thought of all the normal people whose lives have been abnormally, brutally torn asunder by racism. Such as Stephen Lawrence, whose mother Doreen, I met. The grief laden eyes of a woman whose life was normal until her son was murdered by racists, haunt me.

Black history isn’t taught in British or Irish schools which makes it difficult to explain to our children how generations of systemic racism, dehumanisation and marginalisation of black people enabled the murder of an unarmed black man by a white police officer. Worse, that it’s not an isolated incident.

I’ve been teaching my 12 year old about slavery for years. A friend organises black history walks around London so my son knows that London was built on the back of the slave trade. When his teachers talk about Florence Nightingale, he says, “What about Mary Seacole”.

None of the above helped him understand the barbaric, racist, killing of George Floyd. It did help him understand and share the anger that comes from 400 years of pain and oppression.

Education is important but so is having the tools and courage to call out racism. The best way to learn this is by role modelling anti-racist behaviour. My son has seen me challenge everyday, Brexit bolstered, racism in the local Shops, at the school gates and on public transport. So when his teacher in the UK said he’d stood up to racist bullying in the playground last year, I wasn’t surprised.

His role model is the daughter of a Sudanese friend who came to Britain as a refugee and, at 10 years of age, asked for my help challenging a private school that denied her a bursary place. She knew her grades were good enough, so did I. When I called the school they admitted her grades weren’t the problem and when I asked what the “problem” was, they couldn’t answer. When I asked how many black kids from council estates they had granted bursaries to in the last 5 years? None. 

That little girl got the place that she earned, on merit. I explained to her that getting in was the easy bit. That life as the only black kid surrounded by rich white kids and white teachers would be tough. “Are you sure that's what you want?” Without missing a beat, this kick ass 10 year old said, “Why should their racism stop me from becoming a doctor and not many kids from my school get accepted into medicine?”

That was 15 years ago. Last week she started working as a doctor in an NHS hospital and although I’m so proud of this inspirational young woman, I’m also worried sick.

While 20% of the NHS workforce is BAME, just 7% of NHS leaders are from BAME backgrounds. Meanwhile, more than 50% of healthcare workers who have died with the Coronavirus are from BAME backgrounds. 

A black man is four times more likely than a white man to die with the virus.

There is no evidence that black lives matter to the alt right Tory government. This month marks the third anniversary of Grenfell Tower. 72 mostly BAME men, women and children were burned alive. The ‘Hostile Environment’, despite being lambasted as a racist policy designed to rid Britain of the Windrush Generation, continues today but without the pretence of remorse. 

The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, was elected despite describing Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’ referring to Africans as ‘piccaninnies’ and ‘watermelon smiles’.

There’s a protest planned in Dublin tomorrow in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. I share Amnesty International's view, that peaceful protesting is a human right and should not be banned. Outlawing peaceful demonstrations is undemocratic and adds fuel to the flames, as seen in Trump's increasingly dystopian America.

 A great many anti-fascists, anti-racists, like myself, will not be physically present, in Dublin, or elsewhere. I made a personal choice not to put my family at risk by attending. I also have loved ones who are front-line workers, some of whom are BAME and vulnerable to coronavirus. 

That said, I respect the right of those who chose to attend and make their message heard. Black Lives Matter.  It would be a good use of Gardai resources, in my view, to work with the organisers to ensure road closures so that there's enough space to facilitate social distancing. The organisers, Black Pride Ireland, has set out clear safety precautions on social media for those attending.

There are many ways to protest but protest we must. Put posters in your car and house windows, donate to Black Lives Matter or other anti-racism groups. Start the process of educating yourself and your children. I took my 12 year old to see "Just Mercy" in January and we watched "Noughts and Crosses" together. "The great debaters" is a powerful film but not suitable for younger children.

Now is not the time to hide in a bunker, or to be paralysed by white guilt. Don’t turn a deaf ear and a blind eye. It’s our collective responsibility to fight for a society that values all lives equally, where our BAME family, friends and neighbours aren’t deprived entry to elite schools and universities based on their colour or creed, where they’re not demonised and scapegoated by despots who whip up hatred and divide communities to distract from their own failings.

Our black friends are frightened and traumatised. We have to speak up, reach out and show our solidarity.

Black Lives Matter 💓✊

RIP George Floyd.

I'm staying in lockdown at an undisclosed location somewhere in county Galway until my hair grows & the second wave passes

My article in this week's Connacht Tribune👇
https://connachttribune.ie/mastering-the-art-of-walking-and-cutting-in-straight-lines/

“Who’s that?” says Gobnait (not her real name) whose house I used to pass on my pre-lockdown walk. “It’s me”, I’d say, lifting my sunglasses to prove I’m not Lady Gaga incognito.

It’s her way of telling me I should catch myself on for wearing sunglasses in the middle of January. I could tell her I have light sensitive eyes but she doesn’t suffer fools gladly and I admire her astuteness.

I’ve changed my route since lockdown because the road isn’t wide enough to accommodate my ego and social distancing. That’s what Gobnait would say and I miss our daily dalliance. Despite that, and with the easing of lockdown imminent, I find myself reluctant to relinquish my newfound bubble, for various reasons.

My DIY haircut with blunt scissors didn’t go as planned. Just cut in a straight line, what could possibly go wrong? Everything. One side was shorter than the other and in a scene reminiscent of Father Ted’s dented car sketch (I’ll just give it one more tap), I kept cutting until one side was aligned with my upper ear while the other hovered in follicular limbo just below the chin.

Panicking ahead of a Zoom meeting, my options included the following: a bandana (a la Duran Duran), a balaclava (a la bank robber) or a baseball cap (a la who’s that eejit?). I went with the latter and kept my head down until someone said, “who’s that in the baseball cap”?

I also haven’t mastered the art of making sourdough bread (my heart’s not really in it) and, while the rest of the country has been spring cleaning since March, I haven’t even started.

I’m not ready to stop listening to the sound of the cuckoo, carried in the wind from the Burren across the bay and the butterflies of giddiness it unleashes, leaving endorphin infused contrails in their wake.

Whilst I cling to lockdown like Paschal Donohoe clings to his ministerial salary, many are chomping at the bit for freedom.

A vexed psychologist on RTE, warned of the psychological impact of children not being able to hug their grannies. If there’s a second wave, as already seen in Germany and China, what about the psychological impact on the child if granny dies of coronavirus?

What about the psychological impact on the doctor working with dwindling resources who has to decide who gets the last ICU bed and/or ventilator? And what about the psychological impact on the nurse who has to tell the family that their loved one has died.

At time of writing, 30% of the people diagnosed with coronavirus are previously healthy Health Care Workers. What of the psychological impact on them and their families who risk their lives to save ours? The shortage of PPE is an ongoing worry for healthcare staff with reports of post-traumatic stress disorder emerging, unsurprisingly. If there is a second wave, our capacity to respond could be significantly depleted.

Meanwhile, having spent six weeks in lockdown, leaving many financially destitute, it emerged that people continued to enter Ireland and the safeguards, such as self-isolating and filling in contact tracing forms, weren’t actually mandatory and therefore as effective as a chocolate tea pot.

Data from one week alone revealed that more than a third of passengers arriving at Dublin Airport and a quarter of those coming in at Dublin Port who were asked to self-isolate did not respond to follow-up calls, many were untraceable.

When confronted with this revelation in the Dáil last week, Leo Varadkar said that mandatory quarantine might be forthcoming but warned about the impact on tourism. The elephant in the room of course is Britain. Our nearest neighbour, which has the second highest death rate from coronavirus in the world.

In non-lockdown conditions, one contagious person can infect, on average 3 people, who will then potentially infect another three. By the time you multiply that variable 10 times, exponentially the original person could have infected over 88,000 people.

That’s why New Zealand’s premier, Jacinda Ardern locked down early, quarantining everyone entering the country and rolling out rigorous contact tracing and testing regimes. After one month and twenty deaths, she reduced the infection rate to zero enabling the safe easing of lockdown.

As long as Ireland’s border strategy against Coronavirus remains that of voluntary quarantining, I’m staying in lockdown. 

Gobnait and I have started a Zoom book club and our first book is, “Who’s that” by D.O Lally. It’s about a girl with lopsided hair who wears dark glasses in January and goes cuckoo trying to make sourdough bread in a ramshackled kitchen, somewhere in county Galway (recommended reading age 0-3mths).

Lockdown insomnia is a nightmare & it's keeping me awake at night

This was published in today's Connacht Tribune:
https://connachttribune.ie/insomnia-mixed-with-nocturnal-terrors-of-simon-harris-mummified-in-loo-roll/

As a parent, there’s always something to keep you awake at night. The existential questions, such as, “What if my child falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes a serial killer”?

There was a time, when he was six that I worried about his moral compass. We had a stand-off outside a food bank which had been brewing since before we left home. He was having second thoughts about “donating” some of his toys, which were thrown in (by me) to make the box of food look less meagre.

In child development terms, he was still at the “id” stage (world revolves around them) meaning guilt trips are futile. Nonetheless, I gave it a go.

 “Think of all those children whose parents can’t afford to buy them toys. Don’t you want them to have a toy to cuddle when they lie hungry and cold in bed”? “And”, holding up exhibit A, “You’ve never even played with this one”.

He thought for a moment and replied, “Yes, I want them to have toys to cuddle but not mine and I did play with that toy (exhibit A) once when I was 5 AND by the way, you said Santa brings presents to ALL children so it doesn’t matter if their parents can’t afford to buy them any, does it?”. In that moment, I thought, he’ll either grow up to be a prosecution lawyer or a serial killer.

During lockdown, he has gathered kindling, bought Easter eggs with his pocket money and made cards, all for cocooning neighbours. He also has a proclivity for harvesting mint from the garden to make tea with tepid tap water and because I’m his mother, I drink it. Not the modus operandi of a serial killer and yet sleep, like the ability to crochet, escapes me.

Coronavirus has seen the rise of insomnia and “lockdown dreams”. My problem is the recurring google induced face visor nightmares. I never share my real personal data when solicited in order to access apps. I input something different every time.  

As a consequence, I get ads targeted at a transgender 19-70 year old, which can be anything from denim hot pants to dentures.

Since the pandemic, I’ve been aggressively targeted by a face shield advert that follows me as I scroll down the screen and is so ubiquitous it has become the stuff of nightmares.

The other night, I dreamt of being chased by a visor clad Simon (“I made an awful boo-boo”) Harris, mummified in Lidl toilet rolls and rapping: “Stay at home, read a book - get wizer. Don’t bulk buy the aul’ hand sani-tizer” [If a mic drop emoji existed, I'd insert it here].

Our immune systems depend on sleep so that became this week’s mission. As someone who only has to sniff alcohol fumes to be inebriated and knowing that it’s a depressant and therefore not helpful dealing with insomnia, I went for the toddler cure instead: Tire yourself out during the day and wind down before bedtime.

My YouTube workout in the garden had to be aborted having been sabotaged by my son mimicking the American instructors, “Go Barbara”!” and “Gimme 5 more of your best Betsy”, resulting in me rugby tackling said child to the ground with an uncontrollable attack of the giggles.

Next was a family ball game of HORSE (what bright spark changed the name from DONKEY)? When himself and son with English accents shout, “You’re a “HOR” at an Irish woman, it didn’t go down well with the older neighbours who were walking past. “She dropped the ball – 3 times” the lads explain in unison, but the neighbours only ever played DONKEY so they walk away mumbling, “That’s no reason to call her a whore, like”.

The thing my son misses most about school is his friends, who are particularly important if you’re newly arrived from England and your Irish accent needs breaking in before secondary school. He had just nailed, “Cawld” and “I’m the fineisht”, before tutorials were cut short.

When he first started school he thought his teacher was picking on someone. He didn’t know who it was, just that she kept shouting “Wrong O’Shea!”. I explained that she was saying, “Rang a Sé, which is Gaelic for 6^th Class”!

In the evening, I did a few laps of the garden before practicing meditation, then, noticing the clear night sky, I woke my son and, lying barefoot and in pyjamas, wrapped in a blanket looking up at the Milky Way, I thanked my lucky stars for these stolen magic moments of childhood.

That night, safe in the knowledge that I hadn’t spawned a serial killer, I slipped into sleep like a stockinged foot into a silken slipper.

Negotiating public spaces in a pandemic

This was published in today's Connacht Tribune
https://connachttribune.ie/negotiating-shared-spaces-in-the-midst-of-a-pandemic/

I lost a friend to Coronavirus this week. That’s a sentence I wasn’t planning to write and one I hope you never have to say.

My deceased friend is survived by his partner, who is also my friend. They only had each other and now her soul mate is gone. No doubt a walk on the beach would do her good but she has to settle for a backyard the size of a postage stamp, the walls of which close in with each passing day, in lockdown. In agonising grief.

Another friend is a medic living in a flat with no garden and is going stir crazy. She’s afraid to use the park 50 yards away because of unleashed dogs approaching her dog and toddler. Once, after 7 days of 12 hours shifts, she broke down in tears pleading with someone to put their dog on a lead.

I told a mutual friend that I was worried about both of the above women being isolated and vulnerable, but he was more concerned about his own mental health.

He lives in a house with a garden in the countryside. Yet, is “compelled” to drive beyond 2km to take his dog “for a run off the lead,” on a beach where unleashed dogs are not allowed. Ever.

As empathetically as I could muster, I pressed him to reflect on his behaviour. What about dog owners and parents with children in high rise flats in cities? Is your mental health more important than theirs”? “If everyone behaved like you the roads and beaches would be full…”

Realising that he wasn’t responding to the intravenous dose of compassionate truth I had administered, I pulled the plug on our friendship.

This isn’t dog owner vs non dog owner. It’s irresponsible dog owners vs everyone else. The above (former) friend’s justification for not using a dog lead was, “There’s no evidence that dogs can infect humans”.

There are far more unknowns than knowns with regard to Covid-19 but we’ve always known that this is a highly contagious, deadly disease for which there is no vaccine or cure. This should have triggered what scientists call, the precautionary principle, which means erring on the side of caution to prevent widespread infection and preserve life.

Instead, our politicians unleashed 3 words which I believe, served to fuel the deadly pandemic: “There’s no evidence.” At various times, these words have been used in relation to the following, all of which have since proved gravely mistaken: the apparent lack of community contagion, there being no need to restrict nursing home visitors, racegoers returning from Cheltenham not being advised to self-isolate unless they show symptoms despite warnings that people can be asymptomatic and contagious for 14 days. I could go on.

The absence of evidence should not be confused with evidence of absence. It just means the testing isn’t happening and/or data isn’t available. With residents of nursing and care homes representing almost 60% of all Coronavirus related deaths, this is surely evidence that the precautionary principle should have been invoked sooner by Tony Holohan.  

The World Organisation for Animal Health warns, “Now that COVID-19 virus infections are widely distributed in the human population, there is a possibility for some animals to become infected through close contact with infected humans. Studies are under way to better understand the susceptibility of different animal species to the COVID-19 virus and to assess infection dynamics in susceptible animal species”.

A number of vets have cautioned that dogs’ coats, like any other surface, can carry viruses to humans and the ISPCA, the Dog Trust, Veterinary Ireland and Galway County Council are all stipulating that dog owners keep their dogs on leads at all times in public spaces. In the same way that social distancing and unnecessary travel is obligatory (not discretionary), so too is keeping dogs on leads in public places during this pandemic.

Not all laws and rules can be policed. For society to function, it requires shared social norms, collective responsibility and community compassion. Never before has our behaviour in shared spaces had a more profound impact on the lives and wellbeing of others. At a time when space is so limited and freedom of movement so restricted, encroaching on that of others is no longer just selfish, it’s reckless and anti-social.

Either lockdown applies to everyone or no-one. The choices we make today will determine the extent to which lives and friendships will be lost to this pandemic tomorrow.

This article is dedicated to the people worldwide, my friend included, whose lives have been claimed by Covid-19. Suaimhneas síoraí dóibh uile.

My covid car kit came in handy at a Garda lockdown checkpoint

For the past 4 weeks I’ve managed to studiously avoid going beyond 2kms of my house. I would rather have root canal treatment – without anaesthetic – than venture further than my garden right now.

The thought of collecting the shopping conjures up traumatic childhood memories. When I was five, there was a nun from the Sisters of (no) Mercy, who made us sit in the wicker rubbish bin if we got a maths question wrong. I spent an inordinate amount of time in that bosca bruscair, sitting atop peeled banana skins and Agnes Mc Ginty’s congealed tissues, legs akimbo, feeling, in equal measure, mortified and petrified. Every morning, I clung to my mother’s coat tails and begged her to let me stay at home.

I recounted this story to himself, sitting in my office wicker paper bin for dramatic effect (not the best look in an Easter Bunny onesie) but he, like the Sisters, showed no mercy. “It’s your turn to collect the shopping”. It was indeed.

When I saw the check point, I slowed and noticed there were two gardai standing shoulder to shoulder talking to the driver of a car coming in the opposite direction. They weren’t standing back, let alone 2 metres. One of the officers gestured for me to open my window. I was so close to the other car, I could have shook hands with the driver, so, complying with the gardai’s instruction would have exposed the two officers and both drivers to the risk of  Covid-19 contagion, as well as breaching social distancing legislation.

Smiling, I reached for my Covid car kit and held up my handwritten sign asking the Garda to step back 2 metres. He tried, but realised there was no space to move. Bizarrely, he then gestured for me to get out of the car, but the other vehicle and officer were still there so I shook my head and held up my sign again. He eventually went around the passenger side, which was better, but not quite 2 metres.

Disconbobulated, I opened my mouth and out came the jarring twang of a Donnybrook banker. There’s only one thing worse than having a D reg car (luckily I don’t) at a lockdown check point in Galway and that’s having a Dublin accent (which is ill advised in Galway, irrespective of lockdown) and even more hazardous again is being found in possession of a D4 inflection, at a lockdown checkpoint in Galway.

Having split my childhood between a housing estate in Santry, where Doberman Pinschers doubled up as fashion accessory and personal security, and the rest of the time tramping hay and footing turf on the grandparents’ farms in Loughrea and Charlestown respectively, it was far from D4 that I was reared. Yet, there I was with my frazzled head saying “grewsareees” (groceries) and “gorda” (which is Spanish for “fat” and potentially offensive).

To be fair to the garda, he was doing his job in incredibly stressful circumstances. I have family and friends who are gardai, nationally, and my thoughts turned to them and their safety. They, like all our essential workers, have fears like the rest of us, but they still have to go to work every day. They reassured me that they either stand back 2 metres or speak to drivers through closed windows.

They were more concerned about PPE, which was requested by the Garda Representative Association three weeks ago for Gardai on patrol, a lifetime in a pandemic, but distribution has been slow and haphazard. Some officers said they had to buy their own hand sanitisers and wipes initially to clean the patrol car before and after shifts.

Even in Britain, where the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been shambolic and where PPE is like hen’s teeth, frontline police officers have received face masks. The police federation of England and Wales has issued guidance recognising that social distancing cannot always be maintained, such as when apprehending criminals, presenting an infection risk to officers, the public and the health service. Therefore, “Face masks, gloves and hand sanitisers are the absolute basic we would expect our colleagues to be provided with in this current crisis”

The gardai are fathers and mothers foregoing their children’s bedtime stories – indefinitely - so that ours can sleep soundly. They’re delivering food parcels to our vulnerable and checking in on our elderly, so that we can stay safe at home. While we’re waiting for Charlie Flanagan to catch up with the rest of the world and protect our gardai who, like the other emergency services, are putting their lives at risk to protect us, we can do our bit by staying home and avoiding unnecessary journeys.

Míle buíochas, a Ghárdaí Síochána. Fanaigí sábháilte.

"Good enough" Parenting will do in a pandemic

This is the latest in my series of lockdown chronicles for The Connacht Tribune. Warning: contains disturbing examples of very bad parenting. Do NOT do this at home....

https://connachttribune.ie/good-enough-will-do-for-parenting-in-a-pandemic/

Lockdown drug heist on Gort High Street!

This 👇 was published in this week's Connacht Tribune. The newspaper I read as a child & inspired my career path - as a journalist, as opposed to a drugs mule. If you're ordering your groceries online, might be worth bunging in a copy 😊

“Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today”. That was one of my mother’s many mantras. One day into lockdown, I realised the wisdom of those words. When my son looks back on the photos, he’ll never forgive me for missing his barber’s appointment. He already looks like a cross between Terry Wogan and Che Guevara and he’s only twelve.

Bad hair is one thing, but running out of medication is another. The prescription that could have been renewed anytime in the last six months, was about to expire. Given that I’d rather poke my eye out with a sausage than cross the threshold of a pharmacy in the midst of a global pandemic, the oversight unhinged me.

We parked in front of the chemist, which was opposite the bank. As I alighted the car, donning dark glasses, a snood pulled over my face and a hat bearing unfortunate similarities to a balaclava, I shouted at my husband, “Keep the engine running. It’ll need to be a quick get away!” (we had a click and collect slot booked in Eurospar afterwards).

There I was, in the middle of Gort high street, looking for all the world like a drug addled bank robber on the verge of a panic attack, wondering why people were staring at me.

I had emailed the prescription in advance and explained that I didn’t want to go inside, so the pharmacist kindly arranged to meet me at the door when she opened after lunch, at precisely 2pm. For the deal to be done as precipitously as possible, I just had to keep a cool head and have the exact money ready.

Grappling with coins in gloved hands is a bit like Carlow’s quest for the Liam MacCarthy Cup. If you stick at it long enough it might happen, but the odds aren’t great. Knowing that Covid-19 can last on surfaces for several days, touching the coins was not an option. 

At 1.55pm, I upturned my purse on the pavement and got down on my hands and knees to count out €7.30. Onlookers weren’t sure whether to call the guards (the balaclava) or the men in white coats (all of the above).

By 1.57pm, I was upright again and, although I thought I had clawed back a semblance of composure, people were still staring and I’m pretty sure I caught my child exchange a conspiratorial eye roll with a passer-by, as if to say, “Who’s your one”.

I wasn’t always embarrassing. There was a time, pre Covid-19 (and motherhood), that I was borderline cool. I once blagged a meeting with the British media’s equivalent of the Dali-Lama, by telling his PA that I was a Colombian drugs mule. Like all white lies, there was an element of truth to the story.

I did live in Colombia, where I had ridden a mule and, on my return, I was stopped by security at Gatwick for acting suspiciously. I was wearing dodgy dark glasses and surreptitiously sniffing suspected narcotics in the baggage area. Fortunately, Vicks nasal spray is not deemed a class A drug in Britain (though that could change after Brexit), so I was released without charge.

At 2pm sharp, the pharmacist gingerly made her way to the door and the deal was done. Inexplicably unable to move, I stood there, unravelling like my granny’s woollen shawl, when a middle aged woman smiled from afar and said, “You’ll be grand, love”. That was another of my mother’s mantras and I realised that, in the panic of lockdown, I had forgotten the anniversary of her death. That gnawing, barbed wire feeling in my belly was unadulterated grief, which, buried under and exacerbated by Coronavirus, was debilitating.

I can bribe my family for hugs, so I’ll be grand, but what about friends, neighbours, homeless and those in direct provision, who are alone? The world is in lockdown but isolation, though crucial, amplifies loneliness, which presents the humanitarian challenge of finding new ways to reach out to the vulnerable in our communities. Be it a smile, a phone call, a kind word or deed. “There...”, as my mother would say, “...but for the grace of god, go I”.

Mother's day in isolation is doable, but Paddy's day in lockdown, In Ireland? That was tough

Ireland went into lockdown proper on Saturday. For the past 2 weeks, we were practicing - with semi-lockdown. The main difference is that, now, we can’t go further than 2K from our home to exercise. Fortunately, for us, we have two beaches within that distance, so it’s not exactly purgatory.

I used to tune in to the WHO daily updates, so I was ahead of events and the urgency, or lack thereof, in which they were reported here and the UK. Because of that, I didn’t wait for the government to shut schools, I took my youngfella out before then. When the country belatedly went into semi-lockdown, I stopped tuning in to the WHO daily updates & I don’t listen to the news anymore. All that matters now, is staying safe - & sane. I never underestimated how lethal Covid-19 was, so I don’t need daily reminders. The constant background noise, a bit like house music on acid, just feeds free floating anxiety that takes all of my energy to subdue.

That said, we managed to celebrate Paddy’s day, albeit in a fairly sedate manner. Windows in the towns & villages were adorned with homemade posters wishing passers by a “Happy St Patrick's day”! But, the kids needed/deserved something more, & Paddy’s day can’t go by without getting dressed up & parading about in sch-tyle. So, some clever clogs organised doing a couple of circuits of the village in our cars, with posters & shamrocks & leprechauns dangling out of the windows!

My yougfella spent over an hour sketching & painting this to go on display in our window 👆👏👏

We have a tradition in our house, when it comes to celebrating Paddy’s day, & we kept to as much of it as possible. We wore green & I dug out my Aran cardi from hibernation. My youngfella filled all the vases in the house with Daffodils from the garden, lit a candle, helped me bake a green cake & we danced a jig around the table. We also normally have a Paddy’s day party, inviting the youngfella’s friends.

This is our first year back in Ireland and the youngfella’s first time to celebrate the sacred day of all things green and vaguely Irish. A couple of years ago, in the UK, one of my yougfella’s friends said he couldn’t go to a Paddy’s day party in an Irish person’s house because, according to his mam, we’ll probably all get drunk, sing rebel songs and watch IRA films! I laughed & invited the mammy to come & help. By the end, I had her dancing a jig with me around the kitchen table. As God is my witness (as my mam would say), not a drop of drink was taken!

This year, there was no party & the cake was only vaguely green (there was only a dreg of green food colouring left 🙄. Other than that, it was wall to wall rebel songs & IRA films! Well, more jigs & reels, followed by a few episodes of Father Ted.

We also managed to celebrate Mother’s day, which was no different to other years, except that I’m in Ireland, in the midst of a savage pandemic.

More daffs & a beautiful hand crafted card by my youngfella, brought to me in bed. He slunk in beside me & I drew his head to mine & breathed in the distinct and increasingly, unwashed, essence of my child. Being his mammy is my best achievement. Even-though, 70% of the time I'm rubbish at it, the other 30%, I smash it & I'll take that, thank you very much...

I wonder: how much longer can I steal away these childhood moments, before the mother/son bond we share morphs into something else. The intense inter-dependency of a mother and child relationship is at once the most grindingly head messing and yet heart burstingly joyous thing ever. I know I only have him on loan and that one day I’ll have to hand him over to the world but, I don’t want to think about that now, so I don't.

As a daughter who has lost her mother, this day will always be laden by that loss. The candle on the table is lit in my mam’s memory & I remember her by telling my youngfella stories about his brave, determined, grafter of a granny.

T’was a lovely day, spent walking in the Burren, where we didn’t meet a soul, followed by a solo swim in the sea as the sun set over a Mother’s day that none of us will ever forget.

This was done, totally freehand in a matter of minutes. Job at the Beano beckons! 💖⭐

An "outbreak" of Coronavirus in my Irish village exposed how the containment phase was squandered. But, the community is rallying & there's nowhere else in the world I'd rather be

As a human rights journalist I’ve been in a few tight spots, so I’m not easily fazed. Finding myself living in a village with at least five cases of Coronavirus, several others in self-isolation and an asthmatic child, I don’t mind admitting that I’m mild to moderately unsettled.

It’s not so much the outbreak itself, but the realisation that the regional infrastructure isn’t in place to deal with it. Government advises against travelling to affected areas overseas, but they clearly didn’t plan for “affected areas” being here in Ireland. So, for the past week, they just pretended it wasn’t happening. The more the community cried out for advice, the deeper into lockdown the agencies went.

The measures announced by the Taoiseach on Thursday, whilst welcome, amount to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. On Wednesday, while the WHO urged aggressive action in order to avoid Italy’s mistakes, the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, reprimanded hospitals and care homes for restricting visitors, undermining their attempts to keep our vulnerable safe.  

Last week, the WHO warned that the window of opportunity to prevent a Coronavirus pandemic was rapidly closing and urged governments to take drastic and immediate action. At the same time, 20,000 people travelled from Ireland to Cheltenham and were not tested nor isolated on their return.

On Wednesday, the pandemic was official. Containment had failed and a conversation I had with the regional Public Health Team, on Tuesday, left me in no doubt how this crucial phase was botched.

In a community where there are at least 5 confirmed cases of Coronavirus, the actual number is likely to be significantly higher. Analysis of Wuhan’s retrospective trajectory, shows that on a day when 444 cases were recorded, it had 27 times that number and, in the UK, where there are officially 1,140 cases, Boris Johnson admitted the true figure could be around 10,000.

I asked the public health official why they hadn’t closed the local schools as a precaution?

No need. A risk assessment had been done and there’s no evidence that closures need to take place.

But, I reasoned, one week ago, there was only one confirmed case in the country, today there are 24, 18% of which appear to be in my community. Surely that’s evidence that the schools should be closed to prevent further contagion within the community – as a precaution? Isn’t that what containment means?

No, there’s nothing to see here, move along please and wash your hands on the way out.

That was last Tuesday, one week later, there are 292 confirmed cases and two deaths from Coronavirus in Ireland.

I raised concerns too about the robustness of the contact tracing system locally. People who think they should have been contacted, haven’t. This issue was raised in the British medical journal, The Lancet, recently. The system relies on infected people remembering all of their interactions for up to two weeks when they were asymptomatic but contagious.

Even when people presented with symptoms, up until Friday, GPs were prevented from testing for community transmission. If it’s not tested, there’s no official record and if there’s no official record, Dr Holohan can continue boasting about the low number of community transmissions.

When dealing with a virulent disease with high mortality rates and no cure, prevention is the only effective weapon in our armoury. If we don’t stem the spread of contagion now, our already fragile health infrastructure will collapse.

All schools and universities are now closed but it’s not enough. Our case exposed the lack of regional capacity to act rapidly in response to community outbreaks, enforcing lockdown where high incidences occur. Instead, the contagion was allowed to spread.

Our community is rallying. Weaving a patchwork quilt of kindness and compassion. Social media is awash with offers of support, the local shop is providing free, confidential deliveries to people self-isolating, Extinction Rebellion are running errands and walking dogs and my son forages for kindling to leave at elderly neighbours’ doors. Every single act of kindness is another square in the collective quilt and, for everyone that falls ill in this community, there is comfort in the knowledge that there’s someone there to catch them.

The BBC is backing Boris Johnson. Tactical voting is the only way to beat them & beat them we must

For a man who plotted to rough up a journalist, Boris Johnson has got an awful lot of mates in the media.

In 2007, when I was pregnant, I got an anonymous phone call. “Boris Johnson will be in Thame tomorrow as part of his Mayoral campaign. You should stay away”.  He referenced articles I had written about Johnson’s refusal to insist a local Tory councillor, in his Oxford constituency, remove golliwogs from his upholstery shop window, despite complaints that they were causing offence. A racism row was brewing. An embarrassing backdrop for a London Mayoral campaign.

The caller wouldn’t be drawn on whether he was acting on Johnson’s instructions and I have no evidence that he was. There is no shortage of evidence elsewhere/everywhere, that Johnson is unfit for public office, let alone, the highest office in the land. If he is still prime minister on Friday, it won’t be a feat of Johnson’s merit, but an indictment of the British media’s abject failure to scrutinise him.

There was obvious media bias against Labour throughout the 2017 General Election, but I advised against challenging it, during the campaign. It would have been a huge energy and resource drain. The scale of the bias we’ve seen this time, though, is on an unprecedented scale, and needs calling out. Especially, as we enter the final hours before polling. If 2017 is anything to go by, an orchestrated campaign of character assassination against Jeremy Corbyn, will be unleashed and electoral rules will be broken, with impunity.

What’s different about this election is, it’s not just the usual Tory backing media barons that Labour is up against. If Johnson wins, forensic historians will scour the rubble of a broken Britain, robbed of its NHS, welfare state, humanity and dignity. As well as finding Tory DNA, the BBC’s finger prints will be all over it.

On Tuesday, a global organisation that tackles disinformation online, reported findings that 88% of all adverts by the Conservatives during this election campaign have been misleading, while not a single advert produced by Labour (a big fat 0%) has caused concern. Most news outlets' headlines ran with that shocking statistic. Not the BBC. It went with, General Election 2019: Ads are "indecent, dishonest and untruthful". Implying that all parties are as bad as each other. The truth buried beneath blatant BBC bias.

On Monday night, a fake news story, wrongly accusing a Labour activist of punching a Tory aide was reported by four political journalists, including ITV’s Robert Peston and the BBC's, Laura Kuenssberg. Kuenssberg’s coverage has been singled out, rightly in my view, for the following reasons; a) as licence fee payers, we hold the BBC to the highest standard, b) she has 1.1million followers all over the world who take, on trust, what she says as truth and c) the language in Kuenssberg’s reporting dispensed with the usual journalistic safeguards when reporting a story that hasn’t been verified. Two of the other three reporters prefaced their claims with “alleged”. Kuenssberg just reported the Tory fake news as fact, despite strict impartiality rules governing General Election coverage.

Ms Kuenssberg has form. Earlier in this election, she sought to discredit the father of a sick child when he dismissed Boris Johnson's hospital visit as a PR stunt and, in 2017, the BBC Trust found that she breached BBC guidelines of impartiality in a report about Jeremy Corbyn which was deemed inaccurate.

It was only when footage from the ground emerged, clearly showing that there was no punch, just the Tory aide walking into a protesters hand, that Kuenssberg and Peston apologised and corrected the record. 

What if the mobile phone footage to rebut the Tory lie, didn’t exist? The fake news story would have been seen by millions of people and, coming from the BBC, had the potential to influence the outcome of the most important election of our life time.

A senior BBC political journalist allowed the Tories to manipulate her into burying one of the most shameful moments in this campaign. The ITV interview (which went viral), where Boris Johnson, refusing to look at a picture of toddler Jack, suspected of having pneumonia, lying on a bed of coats on the concrete floor in A&E, grabbed the journalists phone and pocketed it. 

The same night, Tory trolls and bots spread fake claims that the photo of the sick child on the floor was staged, even though the hospital had already confirmed it was true. It spread quickly across social media and messaging services, potentially reaching millions of people after being amplified, again, by mainstream journalists, including The Telegraph’s Allison Pearson and Enoch Powell fan, Julia Hartley-Brewer. At least five Conservative candidates are also known to have spread the fake story.

The billionaire Tory elite send their sons (mostly) to exclusive boarding schools, like Eton, which Boris Johnson attended, in order to indoctrinate them into Tory ideology. Social interaction with working class people poses a risk of contagion and, God forbid, empathy. It is only by dehumanising vulnerable people that Johnson could come to perceive  "the poor 20%" as “chavs, losers, burglars" and "drug addicts". And, it is only when this narrative has been hardwired, that the Tories can inflict, what a UN report in March, described as causing “great misery” on people in the country with, “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous” austerity policies.

Boris Johnson knows that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. The well-being of democracy depends on the media pursuing truth with the same determination as those in power seek to obscure and distort it. 

With just hours to go before polling, it’s worth reminding voters of the truth about Johnson’s insults to just about every group in society (except his rich, white, Bullingdon boy mates). His greatest hits include: Referring to Africans as “piccannines with watermelon smiles”, gay men as “tank top bum boys”, comparing Muslim women to “letterboxes” (which led to a spike in hate crimes) and depicting Jews as “controlling the media and being able to “fiddle” elections” in his book, 72 Virgins (I'm not kidding). There’s more. So much more, but such little time.

Our NHS, our planet and our communities cannot survive 5 more years of Boris Johnson. The sick child on the floor of A&E could be your child. The only way to stop the Tories is to unite against them. Splitting the progressive/Remain vote will gift Boris Johnson victory. I’m a Labour supporter and I’ve never voted tactically in my life. But this general election is different. The stakes have never been higher. It’s time to put country before party and vote the Tories out.

The greatest gift that you can give your loved ones this Christmas, is your vote. 

Post election update: Another 5 years of Tory rule. The right united to win while the Remain/second referendum vote was split 3 ways. 52% of the vote went to Remain parties proving what some of us warned for months, i.e. an election won't resolve Brexit. The country is just as divided now as ever. Labour & Lib Dems should not have agreed to a general election without getting a second referendum first. And to do it without agreeing a pact to stand candidates down in marginals was utterly reckless.

The SNP did well & has the mandate to press ahead for a Scottish independence & Northern Ireland returned a majority of nationalist MPs for the first time ever. That bodes well for getting the Stormont assembly up & running again. Don't be surprised if a united Ireland referendum is on the agenda.

Labour MPs that back Johnson's rights robbing, asset grabbing Brexit deal, must lose the whip

Boris Johnson will put his “do or die” Brexit deal before parliament on Saturday. With safeguards around worker’s rights, food standards and environmental protections, present in Theresa May’s deal, now scrapped, any help from the Labour benches to get this hard right Tory Brexit through, would be unconscionable.

According to analysis carried out by the FT, Johnson’s deal would make the UK significantly worse off than May’s deal, with an estimated loss per person of £2,000 a year and a hit to  public finances of up to around £49 billion a year.

Rami Cassis, chief executive of hedge fund Parabellum Investments, recently warned that the Brexit deal that Johnson covets, offers little benefit for millions of ordinary people who voted Leave . “The real prize is to create an environment with fewer protections for workers, no controls on banker bonuses, lower corporation taxes and, most likely, further privatisation of public services”. The UK may be trading one master - the EU, for another – the US.

Despite this, 19 Labour MPs could help Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, man of the [rich] people, get his asset grabbing deal through.

Here’s the codswallop they will invoke as justification. “My constituents voted to leave, anything else is a betrayal,” and this old chestnut, “It’s the will of the people”.

But, those of us who hold privileged positions, in which our guidance holds sway over sometimes, vulnerable people’s lives, we have a duty of care to tell the truth.

I’ve spent three years listening and talking to people about Brexit, many of whom have come to me for help with Brexit induced crises. When Leave voters regurgitate the lies they’ve been told as justification, I don’t passively nod in agreement. Apart from being patronising, it would make me complicit in the lie. I tell them the truth. The only hostile reaction I’ve had was when a racist shouted at me in my local Spar, protesting their right to lie, loudly, about my Turkish neighbours being illegal immigrants.

So, when all the forecasts indicate that Brexit will make your constituents poorer, impacting the poorest and women (who are already bearing 86% of the burden of austerity) the hardest, the defence that your constituents voted to self-harm 3 years ago and you’re holding them to it, won’t wash. It’s akin to me, as a therapist, responding to a suicidal patient by handing them a gun.

For Labour MPs struggling to combat common Brexit lies, here are some truths by way of conversation starters on the doorstep. When your constituents say they voted Leave for the £350 million a week for the NHS. Tell them that Brexit has exacerbated the NHS crisis. That 5,000 nurses and midwives from EU27 countries have left the NHS since 2016, most of whom identifying Brexit as the trigger.

On immigration, tell them what I told Caroline Flint, MP (also one of the Labour 19) at conference in 2018, when she said her constituents had “genuine concerns about immigrants taking their jobs”,

“Your constituents concerns might be genuine, but they’re not true. It isn’t immigrants who are depressing wages and imposing zero hours contracts and job insecurity. It is unscrupulous businesses (like Weatherspoons) exploiting cheap labour.

Tell them, immigrants are not responsible for plunging 14 million people into poverty, the 169% rise in homelessness and 700% rise in food banks. It was 10 years of Tory austerity that saw the richest 5% increased their wealth by 40%.

When your constituents parrot Dominic (smash and grab) Cumming’s meaningless sound bite, “Let’s get Brexit done”. Tell them that, even if Johnson does get his deal through, businesses will face ongoing uncertainty and erratic upheaval in trading arrangements for years to come.

Stephen Kinnock, one of the Labour 19 and MP for Aberavon, this one’s for you. Gifting the Tories a win ahead of a general election, will make your constituents wonder where your loyalties lie. Especially in light of recent analysis that predicts Wales will lose 2.3 billion as a result of Brexit, a loss per head of the population of £743.11, between 2021 and 2027.

For some, it's easier to fool people than convince them that they have been fooled. When it comes to this dog's dinner of a deal, any Labour MP that backs it, must lose the whip. They will do so knowingly causing harm to their constituents, their country and their party. There’s no coming back from that.