Christmas greed and material need

As much as I tried* I simply couldn't get into the spirit of Christmas this year. The BBC's festive ad-filler that seemed to involve every BBC TV personality alive, dead, or yet to be born, did little to cheer my spirits. It's not that I'm a miserable codger - don't get me wrong; I've been perfectly happy for the last month, but Christmas could just as easily have been cancelled without dampening my mood.
I guess one of the things that gets me is that I've spent the last year protesting against corporate greed and tax avoidance, against a financial system that is as much use to our country as a chocolate teapot, and against a way of life that we've fallen into so easily where we obtain what we want because we can afford it without a thought for the people that made it so they could afford to buy what they need. For me, Christmas represents the epitome of this culture.
"But you're just angry at the commercialisation of a religious holiday!" I hear you cry. Well, no. I'm not particularly religious, if at all, but what strikes me about the Nativity story is that Jesus certainly was in no need of gold, frankincense and myrrh before he was out of nappies, if at all. "Worship him like a King!" they cried, lavishing him with all of the stuff that we associate with the lives of those more akin to (*cringe*) the "1%" than the rest of us. It's true that Jesus did indeed attempt to live his life as modestly as possible, but the important thing about Christmas was the premonitions of those around him.
Now that I've justified the theological side for my antipathy with Christmas, we shall mention it no more.
Having spent the festive period in relative solitude - visiting my family on Christmas day and then going home - I can honestly say that I wasn't really that bothered.
Like the next person, I enjoy receiving nice things from time to time, but if you've ever been on Oxford St on Christmas Eve, you'd probably feel like an accessory to murder for receiving, let alone wishing for, gifts bought in what appears to be a frenzy of feeding animals, where the fittest survive and the weakest end up with a high heel through their left eyeball, or worse, empty handed.
And for some strange reason, every news channel was obsessed with Christmas sales figures on Britain's high streets. "Overall, profit is down 10% on last year so far, but we're expecting tomorrow to be the biggest and busiest shopping day ever recorded!" one practically foaming-at-the-mouth pundit informed bleary-eyed Breakfast viewers sometime last week. As if I care.
I'm frankly more concerned about the NHS being privatised, social housing becoming scarcer and more subject to discrimination in its allocation, education becoming more expensive than a reasonably priced car, all of which was caused by exactly the same firms having nightmares about their sales forecast. Arcadia and Philip Green's massive tax dodge alone could've paid for thousands of students to go to university at a reasonable cost, or thousands more homes to be built, or the NHS to be funded properly. Yet for some reason, we're expected to be sitting there on the edges of our seats worrying about how Philip Green might make a bit less than last year - not that it would matter after tax owed is duly unpaid - or that Vodafone are selling fewer phones this Christmas.
Somehow the fact that people do need a place to live but don't need a £130 coat, or that people do need healthcare that won't cause them to remortgage the house, the car, the children and granny, but don't need 25 different pairs of shoes seems to have escaped us. I'm not saying people can't have nice things. I'm saying that our culture should be first and foremost about providing for people's needs before their wants.
As if to add insult to injury to the whole pile of steaming turd that our system is, when a very rich and important-by-heritage man gets ill and goes to a public hospital, he is provided for within 5 hours of his rolling through the doors. While the average waiting time for the same procedure in the same situation (i.e. an emergency) is 5 WEEKS for the rest of us mere plebs. I am of course talking about our royally racist dear old Prince Philip. A man who we have heard all about for the last 5 days. I do wonder if the story would have garnered any attention had it been "90 year old man in Cambridge hospital having main artery unblocked". Somehow I doubt it. But somehow, this barage of utter tripe just kept on coming. "BREAKING: Old man's family visit him in hospital!". Oh, wow.
Can you tell me about something important now? Like the thousands of people being killed in Syria by their own Government? Or how about the Christmas bonuses being paid out to stock traders and market cowboys for royally fucking over the poorest in society? Or perhaps, just perhaps, about the tiny little fact that unemployment will reach nearly 3 million next year?
Clearly, the Prince takes precedent. Because once again, we're so obsessed by our infatuation with anything that takes the reality of life and places it in a little corner of our heads that we'll lap up any old crap we're presented with. "Ooh, it's the Prince! In hospital!". I do hate to remind you, but the royal family are people too. Albeit incredibly rich, taxpayer funded ones.
Much like most of our country's bankers.

I'm not really sure where I was going with this.
I don't think it really matters.
Many of you have said the same things in much more eloquent terms than I.
But I just wanted to say I agree with you.

Let's change it.



*watched TV, browsed ASDA, pulled a christmas cracker, wore a christmas hat, got very drunk.

One way to waste £18 million

Here’s my problem: if someone tried to kick me out of my home and knock it down I’d tell them to fuck right off. As, I’m sure, would Tony Ball, leader of Basildon council. So, quite why it comes as a surprise that those living on the Dale Farm site don’t want to move after 10 years, I really don’t know.

It’s true that there is no planning permission for building on the site. It is also true that around half the site lies on land that’s designated as green belt. These two facts count for little however when you know that the entire site was a scrapheap (this is certainly not how to preserve green belt land) and that around 60% of sites without planning permission are approved retrospectively. Even more shocking is the fact that around 80% of planning applications are approved immediately. Only around 20% of applications from traveller communities are approved at all.

Dale Farm is only an illegal site on account of these two issues. It’s entertaining to think that at it’s core, the government’s current planning reforms which the National Trust so vehemently oppose will probably make a mockery of Tony Ball’s attempts to evict a group of relatively peaceful and good natured travellers.

It will also make a mockery of the £18 million that Basildon council have spent on their attempt to evict the Dale Farm community. To put this into perspective – Basildon council is cutting it’s disability support service by £505,000 a year. The amount the council has spent on this eviction could pay for this service for about 9 years.

We’ve seen that a lot of the facts about the Dale Farm site create morally and factually dubious grounds for this eviction – I can’t see any of Dale Farm’s neighbours being particularly fond of living beside a scrapheap either. So, exactly why Basildon council are still attempting to evict the Dale Farm site leads me to believe that this is an attack on a community and a culture. Because as we all know, gypsies and travellers steal our telephone cables, don’t pay tax, destroy land, eat puppies, worship the devil and regularly steal from homeless people. It’s these ridiculous prejudices that have created a culture which discriminates against travellers and other minorities. It’s a culture of fear and misunderstanding. It’s this culture that we have to target if we want to get rid unfair evictions, extremist groups and racism.

This doesn’t mean branding those who support the eviction as fascists and leaving them to it. It does nothing for us in the long run. They’ll pass on their views and the problem remains and increases. Our job, as reasonable and sensible people is to inform and explain the facts. This holds just as firm whether we’re talking about EDL sympathisers or religious fanatics. The majority of people who support the evictions do so on the basis of prejudice and the belief that it’s “people like these” who have created the bad position that we’re in as a country. This logic sounds familiar when I remember talking to a woman on the EDL march a couple of weeks ago who told me she supported the EDL because her son couldn’t get into university because, she believed, they were full up with Muslims and other immigrants. The simple facts are that there is a shortage of university places because we have an enormous amount of young people with a lot of aspiration. This is something to be celebrated, but also something that needs to be catered for. Instead, the consequences have been used to fuel somebody’s hate.

We have travellers because that’s their culture, not because they’re trying to con the state. What a lot of people forget is that travellers do pay council tax when living on authorised sites. The Dale Farm site is not authorised, so travellers there can’t pay council tax. They most likely would do so if the council would agree to authorise it; once again, Basildon council losing money because of their obsession with breaking up a community.

Many travellers do have jobs – in fact there are quite a few travelling communities that travel because of their jobs (for instance road construction workers) and therefore pay income tax (assuming they’re over the tax threshold). They are as much members of the community and way-paying citizens as the rest of us.

If Dale Farm is evicted, it will be a shame, and absolutely devastating for the community. But it will not be the end. The campaign for the rights of minorities will go on. I don’t think people are fundamentally full of hate. I think people look for someone to blame when things go wrong. They wrong people. That’s how groups like the EDL flourish. That’s why the travelling community have been targeted for generations. These people should be called out on their ignorance but not alienated and allowed to continue. Campaigning for equality is about getting people on the same side, not creating an opposition. There will always be a few fundamental extremists, but with nobody to follow them they’re nothing.

What doesn't help is when our politicians come out and say that they agree with the evictions. Only last week, Harriet Harman told us all that she thinks the Dale Farm site should be evicted, along with Priti Patel and Vince Cable on BBC Question Time. When a government and the opposition both support throwing families out of their home for no apparent reason, it's time to be shocked. When small state libertarians who traditionally think the idea of planning laws are an infringement on freedom agree with the evictions, then there are serious questions to be asked. 

If you're not already asking those questions, it's probably time to start.

Prison, Pies and Petulance

It's been a curious few weeks for our judicial system. I don't mean that in an "isn't that funny" sort of way. I mean that in a "[insert moral outrage here]" sort of way.

The last time I checked, the primary purpose of prison was to protect society from dangerous people and secondarily to make those people safe to re-enter society. Punishment comes into it, yes. But it's not the priority. So I have to wonder how throwing a pie gets you sent to prison. Unless my good friend Jonnie intended to go on a violent pie throwing rampage across the streets of London, perhaps throwing the odd grenade as well, I find it very difficult to comprehend how it's justifiable to waste a perfectly good prison space on him. 

In a country where we're constantly being told that the prison population is far to high, in which thousands of prisoners are released early because of overcrowding, and in which a rapist can serve as little as two years, I fail to see how sitting on a car bonnet and poking a posh lady with a stick is worth 18 months in jail. Don't get me wrong - if I were a posh lady I wouldn't like to be poked with a stick either, and if I were a media oligarch I wouldn't appreciate having a pie in my face. But if my little sister was raped and the rapist served only 6 months more than a bloke who poked a lady with a stick, I would be seriously pissed off. Not because I see prison as a place to punish people, but because in my eyes rapists are more dangerous than blokes with sticks or pies.

This isn't about Jonnie or Charlie, or really any of the anti-cuts brigade who've been sentenced and imprisoned. It's about a biased judicial system putting the public in real danger by improperly using prison spaces and wasting taxpayers money at a time when that money is needed more than ever. Jonnie could have been given 6 weeks community service and a hefty fine, and I strongly suspect that if he had pied anyone else in the face that that is exactly what he'd have got. If Mr Gilmour had sat on the bonnet of my car and smashed one of my windows I expect he'd had also gotten off with a hefty fine and an ASBO. Of course, if you don't believe me, you're welcome to read the Daily Mail which is often full of stories of how unjust the criminal justice system is when Chaz from Southend dodges a prison sentence after an episode of serial vandalism.

If Chaz's serial vandalism had been somehow politically motivated, it may of course be a different story. The problem with political sentencing (and that is exactly what it is - there's already enough empirical evidence to draw that conclusion from) is not that it is unfair, which it undoubtedly is, but that it is dangerous to the public who end up having more violent criminals left on the streets because the places where they should be are full of anti-austerity demonstrators busy reading left wing literature.

Then of course, there was today. An overwhelming wave of stupidity seems to have rippled throughout middle-England, urging thousands of people to log on to the Government's new e-petitions system to demand the re-introduction of the death penalty. Of course, this demand could be helpful if they're willing to follow through the whole eye-for-an-eye punishment thing - Jonnie Marbles pied by Rupert Murdoch would make incredible TV. Rupert Murdoch and the Clown Prosecution Service. It could be an instant hit on Sky 1. Unfortunately, I suspect that the thousands of deranged lunatics who were presumably drawn to their computers this morning by an impending full moon are far too devoid of rational thinking to follow that logic.

I mean, apart from the fact that it is fundamentally inhumane for a state to murder it's citizens, the death penalty doesn't really work as a deterrent or a punishment. Murder rates are no lower in countries that retain capital punishment, and it's hard to feel remorseful when you're dead. Unless you come back as a zombie and join the hordes of other Zombies baying for more blood - but that's hardly remorseful.

Can we stop being silly now, please?

Philip Davies is an arse, but that's not a surprise.

There aren't a lot of MPs who I find truly disgusting. I disagree with an awful lot of them, I'll say they're misguided, misinformed, stupid, arrogant, out-of-touch, a bit of a dick, a massive dick, or a bit spiteful. But really, how do you deal with a man who once wrote to the Equalities Commission to ask them "is it racist for a policeman to refer to a BMW as 'black man's wheels'"?, or who slated a school production of  'Romeo and Julian' during LGBT week (incidentally I actually saw the play and it was very very good). How do I describe a man who thinks it's fine to suggest that disabled people should work for less than those who aren't disabled? How do I describe a man who argues against tax credits because they cost the UK too much, when he himself relied on them during his time as a cashier with Asda? A man who objected to the UKYP using the House of Commons once a year because "it would set a precedent whereby organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain could use our House"?

Voters, I am of course referring to the not-so-Honorable Philip Davies MP. A man whose attitude to people less fortunate than himself is much like the attitude I have towards people who spit on my face. 

Davies' comments aren't all that surprising when you remember that he believes the minimum wage should be scrapped altogether, so I'm not going to make a big fuss out of slamming him for it, despite the fact that he is a vile creature. What he has reminded us of, however, is that there is a culture of discrimination against those with mental or physical disabilities. Davies is right when he points out that most employers will employ someone without a disability. Mainly because they believe that person will be more productive, and often because it's cheaper - they don't have to install lifts or ramps, or adjust computers etc. A lot of this is down to the perceptions of employers who don't actually know an awful lot about what a person with a specific disability can or cannot do. Sophie Corlett from Mind, the mental health charity, is right on the money when she says that what needs to change is our culture - she says that employers should be educated better when it comes to those with disabilities. 

Of course, it isn't acceptable to simply say that we have a culture that discriminates, it's not Mr Davies' fault that he's a massive steaming turd. The fact is that the Disability Discrimination Act (2004) and later the Equality Act (2010) were designed to protect the most vulnerable from being screwed over. The fact that it is still demonstrably happening is testament to the lax enforcement of legislation surrounding equality. Employers regularly get away with overt discrimination without being fined or prosecuted because

a) Those who are discriminated against on grounds of disability don't necessarily know what powers there are to protect them - this needs to change.

b) Law enforcement doesn't take cases of discrimination anywhere near as seriously as they should, and

c) Employers often can pay for a good defense team, can fiddle facts and are in most cases in control of any evidence there might be that would work against them.

It is, of course, ridiculous to suggest that any group (whether they're disabled or below 21) should work for less than anyone else doing the same job. Life is no cheaper for a disabled person than it is for me (in fact in most cases it's probably more expensive - try getting a wheelchair on the Piccadilly line and you'll see what I mean). The Minimum Wage was designed to protect the most vulnerable from workhouse-like conditions. Arguing to allow some people to work for less than it is quite clearly at odds with this. 

Given that people with disabilities actually make up a disproportionate amount of the most deprived 10% of the population it hardly seems sensible to exacerbate the problem. 

Instead of listening to Right Wing bullshit from a miserable git, let's actually look at ways we can do the best for disabled people who are either directly or indirectly discriminated against. Let's see transport made cheaper for wheelchair users by allowing them proper access to public transport instead of forcing them to use taxis. Let's see employers educated better so that they can make an informed judgement about what someone with Asperger's can actually do, instead of making a blanket discrimination. Let's see a change in the way people with disabilities are treated, rather than changing how much they're paid. 

And, voters of Shipley, can we see a change in who you vote for in 2015, please?