Tag: politics

broadcast # 1

di-di-dit…dah-dah-dah…di-di-dit………………..follow that star…………………………………….keep up with the paperwork………………….boiling water and a sachet………………order nemetodes if you have money……………….a bucket and secs work just as weIl………………..if you deny death then life takes its toll……………………..stick the knife in to open the packet………………………………….does not make you the provider……………………………an intermediary………………………in a retail racket………………………………the cupboard is bare………………..stir

In the Swim

I have been finding it tougher than ever to combine study and being a mother. The MA is absorbing and I am learning plenty but struggling to find the time to do it justice.

Sam is settled into school and enjoying it immensely but is also exhausted, needing his mum’s attention, as a four-year-old should. As well as my own paperwork I now have a file for school forms and am way behind with Sam’s school ‘admin’ and need to buy material for and make him a King costume for his nativity play.

Mothers everywhere are doing the same juggle in varying formations the world over. As we ride one financial crisis after another, not knowing whether we will sink or swim, only being sure of being sold out on a daily basis, literally, by our current ‘Call Me Dave’ poor excuse for a government, I can only feel lucky to be where I am and be grateful that I can continue to study for now…

This time last year I was diagnosed with post-viral fatigue, also known as M.E or chronic fatigue syndrome. I’ve never felt so poorly in my life, or concerned about if and when I would recover. I seem to be ok  – if I get tired I am more likely to stop or have an early night. I have more or less given up gardening this year, cut back on the booze and caffeine and tried to live a more steady life and all of those things have helped.

In the last few weeks I’ve started going swimming again and it’s been fantastic to do some proper physical exercise. I swam twenty lengths this afternoon and came up with the structure of a new, long poem I am currently working on, and a few lines of verse too. Swimming as poetry methodology-who knew?

And Happy Birthday to William Blake.

Nadine Dorries “I am pro-choice and pro-women’s rights” Really?!

Take a deep breath before you read this by Dorries in the Daily Mail today-it goes for the emotional jugular- and then imagine how you would feel if you had to have ‘independent’ counselling of the kind Dorries is advocating. Dorries thinks there are too many abortions happening and the amount could be reduced significantly if this second tier is introduced:

Dorries: “I am pro-choice and pro-women’s rights”

Now think about the ‘support’ being offered to mothers by this ‘government’: cuts in housing benefit, cuts in support for childcare costs, cuts in working tax credits, forcible return to work that doesn’t exist, benefits taken away completely, scapegoated if you are a single parent for all the ills of ‘broken Britain’…

Here is a quote from a recent Daily Mirror piece on what the ‘coalition’ have done for women:

“..Since coming to power the Coalition has cut the childcare element of tax credits, abolished the health in pregnancy grant, raised the threshold for child benefit and put hundreds of sure start centres at risk.

Chancellor George Osborne’s deficit reduction plan is taking £4.20 a week on average from men and £8.40 a week from women says Labour’s equality spokeswoman Yvette Cooper. Campaigners say women are also unfairly penalised by the Government’s cuts to public services. Women make up 65% of the workforce in schools, hospitals and local government. And in the NHS 73% of the staff are women…”

Mixed messages?

Here are two extracts from Zoe Williams’s recent interviewing Dorries:

“It’s only a few days since I heard Anne Marie Carrie, chief executive of Barnardo’s, bemoan the fact that the proposed universal benefit cap will actively force large families to split up and live as two households. “I’d want to check that before I commented on it,” Dorries says. But it’s obviously true: if you cap benefits by household, it’s only logical that a family with, say, four children, would be better off as two single-parent units of two children each. “Well, Iain Duncan Smith would never introduce a benefit that would break up a family,” she insists. “I know Iain well, and everything he champions, pursues, pushes, is to create and support and reinforce relationships.” So that’s all right then.”

And this-

“…To return to those measures: moving guideline responsibility on abortions from the RCOG (Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists) to Nice sounds fine, but validates the claim that the RCOG is motivated by profit and not female welfare, which I am amazed members are not more furious about. I’m also surprised they’re not better defended in parliament, because it is a slur. In any case, it’s not their fault we keep getting pregnant by accident. They bust a gut to give us contraception. This “independent counselling” amendment insults the BPAS and other abortion providers on the same grounds. I remain sceptical Dorries really is pro-choice, and I’m even more sceptical 20 weeks is really the limit she’d like to stop at. She is eroding the good name of people who support abortion and, if she succeeds, this will leave women’s rights, in years to come, poorly defended…”

We can’t let this happen. Women fought long and hard for reproductive rights and health…there are good reasons for the system we have currently in place. Don’t let it slip…write to your MP today- this could be voted on next week!

In my opinion this is just another part of this ‘government’s’ concerted attack on women.

Time to fight back!

Click here and spend 2 minutes telling your MP what you think.