In Which Jamie Oliver Needs to Take a Day Off

So, Jamie Oliver is back on his high horse. Not content with bringing in a sugar tax, driving up the price of popular beverages while doing precisely nothing to combat the diabolical amount of sugar in food, and wading in to tell us how BLOODY EASY breastfeeding is, he has now targeted Tony the fucking Tiger for promoting sugary breakfast cereals at children.

You see Jamie, who is clearly a man who struggles with not eating enough to feed the Five Armies, appeared in the Guardian this weekend claiming that the real issue with trying to get families to eat healthily is as old as the industrial revolution:

The Observer, 3rd June 2018, "Jamie Oliver: I like to laugh and that's all that matters at my age". Good job, really.

Let's...let's UNPICK THE STATEMENT SHALL WE?

The industrial revolution did not hit harder and earlier in Britain, it fucking STARTED here. Nor was it the first recorded time that families went out to work. There is this ridiculous idea that before the age of machines, the common folk of Britain were like Summerisle, all folk tales and flowers, dancing and singing, romping in fields. The picture of health, the picture of idyll. And then came machines, all steam and smoke and the RUIN OF MANY A POOR BOY. It's a lovely idea, and complete horseshit.

If you were in the lower ranks of British society at any point in the last thousand years, you worked. You got up with the sun, you put in a fifteen hour day, and then you went to bed, interspersed with an awful lot of bread. Men? Ploughing. All fucking day, dawn til dusk, ploughing. Women? Everything else. Making fabric, making and fixing clothes, feeding animals, making butter, making bread, making cheese. All this in addition to childcare, education (because how else would children learn all these life skills?), cooking and cleaning.

The difference wrought by the Industrial Revolution is that suddenly, women went out to work. Rather than working at home, or on lands they had some right to, women were employed in mills, in foundries, at coal faces. The idea that women gave up work on marriage to cook and clean and sew is a fallacy - in industrial centres, they kept on working. Pregnant? Working. Maternity rights? Lol, no. Maternity leave? Nope - you were expected to be back at work within days of delivery or you lost your job. After all, there were plenty of other women happy to take it.
Outside of major industrial towns, unmarried women worked in domestic service, and married women worked at or around the home: lace making, straw bonnet making, cleaning jobs, laundry work, nursing and maternity services. Some of these jobs (particularly lacework) earned them more money than their husbands, especially in rural places which mainly relied on agriculture, like Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. And these women would be churning out a child every eighteen months or so. The average family size in the 1840s was eleven children. It had gone down to seven by 1911.

So Jamie, in his infinite wisdom, thinks that these Original Hardworking Families used acquired or innate knowledge to feed their children well. At least, that's what I think his point is, with the follow up about 'fairly humble communities'. LOL. Nope.

A woman working in a factory who had a child had no hope of being able to sustain breastfeeding. If she was fortunate, she might be allowed to bring her baby into work for the first few weeks - I found a great, if terrifying, tale of a woman blacksmith working in the Black Country who rigged up a cradle attached to her smithing apparatus, so she could rock the baby without leaving work. But ultimately, it wasn't going to work, and these babies were fed on cows milk if they were lucky, and cornmeal mixed with water if they weren't. Cows milk was likely to pass on tuberculosis, if the unsterilised bottles didn't give the baby dysentery. Cornmeal and water is not exactly a beneficial diet without any supplementary milk. The baby would typically be left with a day nurse, often an infirm female relative or an older child, and often fed opiate based medication to keep it quiet - hungry babies cry a lot. This combination of mild neglect, overmedication and poor diet was the principle cause of the horrifying infant mortality that blighted the nineteenth century.
A woman working away from town had slightly more chance of keeping her baby with her and well fed, unless the poor thing happened to be born at a time when the women all went into the fields to work. A study of rural Kent (Microhistories by Barry Reay) showed a surge in infant deaths coincided with harvest time, most likely because of unsterilised bottles and improper childcare.

But they knew how to cook? Right? They could cook? Yeah? Pukka?
No.

A girl who was raised working in mills, from around six years old, would not learn to cook. She might see her mother cook, but it's as likely that she grew up in a house with no kitchen.
No kitchen!?!?, I hear Jamie cry, clearly having had visions of every house being like Bob Cratchit's at Christmas, copper aglow, turkey bought with careful savings. The problem is that Bob Cratchit was reasonably well off for a working class lad - born in approximately 1810, he could read and write well long before compulsory schooling was introduced, and had the connections to get him a job for a banker.
A kitchen was a waste of space for most poor factory workers, living in a few rooms of a shared house. They might have access to a kitchen, they might equally not. Their food would have been bought from day to day, and mostly consisted of bread, oatcakes, cheap fatty bacon offucts, and thin porridge. The occasional meat pie would bulk it up, once the man of the house had his share, and fuck knows what the meat pie seller had used to fill it with. These children's main meal might be part of their daily wages, and consist of little more than some oatcake eaten while working. Yum! Better that than some Frosties, eh Jamie?

A girl who went into service did so at around eleven years old. She might learn to cook from the housekeeper. She might teach herself to cook. She might already know how to cook if her mother had taught her. She could take these skills into a marriage. But if, as many did, she lived in rural areas, their food budget would depend on factors as fickle as the crops, the weather, and the whim of the landowner. Bad harvest? No money. Crop failure? No money. Too much labour? No work, no money. If you cannot afford fuel, what are you supposed to eat? A bit of corn stolen from the land, a few potatoes grown in the garden, it amounts to nothing without the heat to cook it.

And then, consider the motherless children, which considering the high mortality rate in childbirth were manifold. Those men who couldn't marry quickly sent their children to other family, or the workhouse. And if food was bad out of the workhouse, it was diabolical inside it.

There was no golden era where working women could fit in a fifteen hour working day, come home and cook a nutritious and cheap meal for their kids from scratch. It has never been a thing. I suspect what Jamie is thinking of is the early twentieth century, when women not having to work once they married was a badge of honour. And with the development of labour saving devices like economic ovens, twin tub washing machines, and the ilk, women had time to cook. The Book of Household Management was a ubiquitous wedding gift for the new brides of the 1920s and 1930s, full of useful recipes, among other slightly aspirational articles on how to get ready for new babies, how to diagnose a rash, and how to accept a wedding invitation. This was a luxury compared to their grandmothers' married lives.

We cannot compare our working lives today to those of 250 years ago. We don't go to work hungry and half expecting to die. Our children don't have to go to work to earn their keep at six years old. We have proper maternity protection and are unlikely to die in childbirth. We have PENICILLIN for god's sake. But we still don't always have the time to spend four hours in the kitchen after everything else, whether it's a full day at work, or whether it's a full day of juggling children. Or both.

Jamie Oliver needs to take a day off. Or better, Jamie Oliver needs to get up, make all his kids fucking granola or whatever he thinks they should be eating instead of Frosties, make their healthy lunch boxes, do a twelve hour hospital shift, go home, cook his kids a meal from scratch, do their homework with them, get them to bed without resorting to opiates but also in time enough to make sure they get enough sleep for school, and do this for seven days. I look forward to his findings.

The DWP's Valentine's Day Message

On Valentine's Day, the DWP charmingly sent this tweet out:

Claiming to be living alone is one of the most common types of benefit fraud – don’t ruin #ValentinesDay by failing to declare your true circumstances https://t.co/tZuNYZ5fer pic.twitter.com/ahutOO6NUy

— DWP Press Office (@dwppressoffice) February 13, 2018

And my friends, I took umbrage.

Long ago, in the distant mists of 2012, Tom moved down from Newcastle and in with his parents. He didn't move in with me straight away. We hadn't ever spent more than a week together in one go. We hadn't been together two years. He had just got a job but we didn't know it was going to work out at that early phase. It would have been foolishly optimistic to move straight in together. When you already have two very small children, you do not want the upheaval of a 'new daddy' moving in only to move out a few weeks later when you realise that actually, you can't fucking stand each other.

So, we lived apart. I assiduously tried to find out the cohabiting rules from the DWP, about what counted as living together and what didn't. This was ludicrously difficult information to obtain. You cannot just phone the DWP and ask them because this will arouse suspicion, and provoke scrutiny and you get enough scrutiny on income support as it is. You can find the current rules here. You may notice that they are OBSCURE AS HELL, and there is no more palatable version for the recipients of affected benefits. These rules can be used to define almost any sexual relationship as living together as a married couple, whether the sexual relationship persists, whether or not money is shared, whether abuse is present, whether the relationship is happy. I wouldn't let Tom sleep here more than three nights in seven, I wouldn't let him keep any of his stuff here, I wouldn't let him contribute to any of the household expenses. Even though he categorically was not resident here, I was still terrified that the DWP would decide he was and force that arrangement to become permanent before I was ready, or worse, prosecute me.

When Tom did move in, after a year of this anxious situation, I cancelled my income support the same day. It was the greatest relief.

Here's the thing. There is no room in the DWP's rules to allow you to have a trial run, to make a mistake in relationships and undo it quickly, unless you have considerable external financial and practical support - the sort where your boyfriend can live with his parents without issue, or where you can afford to run two households while you get to know each other. You either declare that you're living together immediately, or you break the law.

It is overwhelmingly single mothers who are prosecuted for breaking this law, as they are claiming the benefit in the first place. Those who are prosecuted are usually in abusive relationships. The partner is not prosecuted. The partner is blameless according to the law.

Single mothers are a great target for abusers. Income support doesn't really give you much money, and usually the shortfall is made up in tax credits when you begin to live together if your income remains low. However, income support automatically entitles you to maximum housing benefit for your house in your area, free school meals for older children, and maximum tax credits as applicable. It is a useful gateway benefit. And it can be held over you by a man who wants to live under your roof for free, abuse you, spend your money, and then threaten you with "If you try and leave, I will shop you to the DWP". This is not recognised or allowed for in DWP rules - they are very clear about an abusive cohabiting relationship still counting as living together as a married couple. Financial abuse is often one of the first signs of an abusive relationship developing, and being on benefits means you are additionally vulnerable to partners exploiting the anxiety and dependence inherent in that way of life.

Since the two child tax credit rule was brought in, there is an additional very real risk of declaring cohabitation too early in a relationship if you have more than two children and have been single since before April 2017. You WILL lose tax credits for any more than the older two. You will NOT get those tax credits back if the relationship fails.

There are some advantages to being on income support. There is reassurance in knowing that you get a certain amount of money at the same time every week or month. There is reassurance in that safety net, particularly when the rest of your life is a mess. You don't get much, and there is almost no financial room for anything to go wrong in this situation. You can't save up for a crisis. But it's more reliable than a zero hours contract, more reliable than hoping someone will swoop in and save you, particularly when someone you loved has let you down. It may be the first time you've ever had to manage your own money, the first time you've truly lived independently.

But in return, you surrender your freedom to run your romantic life as you choose. You surrender your freedom to decide when to make a casual living arrangement permanent. The state decides if you're living as married, according to a set of rules that could apply to almost every single relationship I know; serious or casual, with children or not.

It's a hell of a price to pay for being a single mother.

Stewart Jackson: Redux

It's election time once more! Last time, despite my pleas, Peterborough foolishly elected Stewart Jackson as MP once more by a scant 1950 votes. And, as his leaflet dropped on our doormat the other day, let's take a look at the Life and Lies of Stewart Jackson.

So, the front page. Stewart Jackson stands with Theresa May, as you'd expect really, considering he's a Tory. He's hardly going to claim he hates the bitch and would make a much better PM. There's also a photo of him beaming in front of Peterborough guildhall and supporting a bee protection charity. That's ironic since he's consistently voted against climate change protection measures.

Within the leaflet, he marks out the work he's done for the area, like blocking the solar energy farm that was going to be built on Newborough fen; raising a petition about Werrington freight line  - he doesn't mention it submitted before GE2015, went unanswered, and the plans went to the secretary of state three months ago - and trying to improve the A47, which is underway, notably with the FUCKING AWFUL traffic lights at Wansford A1 junction. Such a trooper. In fairness to Stewart Jackson, he does write to the cabinet with questions pertaining to Peterborough (most of which already have answers available in the public domain), and voted in around 85% of all votes. He pushed for Brexit, which is no surprise, and he's even curbed his expenses a little. He's very proud of Peterborough's low unemployment rates. He also claims that the NHS is his top local priority, which is an absolute joke considering his voting history.

His voting record remains a catalogue of misery for anyone who isn't an older, healthy, white, heterosexual, salaried, homeowning British citizen.
He has consistently voted against gay rights, race laws, benefits being raised in line with inflation, and increasing jobs for young people. He has voted for the bedroom tax, for restricting disability benefit, for restricting disability benefit to those who have been disabled from birth/youth. He has voted against limiting letting fees for tenants. He has voted against people with cancer receiving extended ESA, He voted for the tuition fees raise, for the academy system, and for the various bills undermining the NHS. He has voted against ID cards, but for mass data retention (the Snooper's charter). He voted against a right to remain for EU citizens. He has voted against special provision for military families in the welfare system. He has voted against slowing the rise of rail fares. He has voted against nationalisation of public transport.
Of course he has, he's a Tory.


The rest of the leaflet is given over to the words of The Great Leader Theresa May. Theresa swears she has set out a clear approach to Brexit, which...has she? Really? She says she has a strong negotiating hand. The Tories have been openly mocked by the rest of the EU and Theresa May has demonstrated that she couldn't successfully negotiate a child's bedtime. We have nothing to negotiate with, except tax haven status,
And then, in a rehash of the last election, we are told our election choice is Strong and Stable Leadership in the National Interest OR A COALITION OF CHAOS with Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron. DO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME, CONSERVATIVES, THAT A COALITION GOVERNMENT WITH THE LIB DEMS IS A BAD IDEA???

The leaflet then tells us that Trump winning was a shock, even though Theresa May fell over herself to rush over there and hold his grubby, orange mitt. Brexit was a shock, even though the Tories definitely wanted it and it's gonna be amazing, honest guv. And Corbyn winning two leadership elections was a shock.

Maybe Britain is fed up of your lying bullshit about caring, Theresa. Maybe hardworking British families, who are also apparently irresponsible benefit scroungers, have had enough of your shit, of your punishing the economically weak for the faults of the strong, of being told if they would JUST WORK HARDER, they too could be RICH. Maybe normal British people fancy someone with a bit of integrity, someone who is decent, who inspires faith in the politically inactive. Someone who hasn't promised on national TV to NUKE THE WORLD, you fucking bloodthirsty maniac. Maybe the national debt going from five hundred billion pounds under Gordon Brown to a staggering ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY BILLION POUNDS in just SEVEN YEARS of Conservative government doesn't inspire a lot of confidence about your FUCKING ECONOMIC NOUS, which has always been the Tory selling point.

People are dying under this government, unnecessarily. The NHS is being stealthily dismantled, as is the social care contract. We go headlong into Brexit, fronted by a vindictive racist who couldn't lead herself out of a paper bag; who thinks you will vote Tory because you think they're a safe pair of hands. They aren't.


All voting information from They Work For You. Economic information from UK Public Spending. Leaflet published by Matthew Dalton on behalf of Stewart Jackson. Vitriol my own. 

Privilege

The thing that pisses me off most about Tories (and there are a lot of things that piss me off about the Conservative party, but I'm talking about Tory voters) is their fast belief that anyone, ANYONE, who works hard enough can succeed, and a lack of success is an individual's fault. In summary, poor people are poor because they have failed as a person, on some level. Rich people are rich because they are inherently better.

I mean, it's bollocks. You don't need a sociology degree to know it's bollocks, AND YET it forms the background of so many Tory policies. There is an a total lack of insight into how society works. When we are born, we are effectively a blank slate. What we are born into affects every aspect of our development and future.

If your parents are better off, they might be able to pay for your driving lessons, buy your first (and subsequent) car, pay your student living fees, house you while you save for a mortgage, lend or gift you money for your mortgage. And all these things are taken for granted by you, the privileged one, as enjoying the rights afforded to you by birth.

On the other hand, if your parents have little spare money, you might not learn to drive, or go to uni. This might severely restrict your ability to get a job, particularly in deprived areas. Your parents might be keen for you to move out because they can't afford to house you anymore. You might end up paying a rent that takes up most of your income, leaving you no spare cash to save for a mortgage. And this, according to the Conservative party, is your fault. You should have tried harder.

Even things like having parents available for free childcare can massively affect your career trajectory and income potential. And these are not conditions that most individuals choose, they are accidents of birth.

It was different when my parents were young, and you could get a 100% mortgage by just asking, and business loans were a thing, and university was free, and jobs didn't require you to have a degree and three years experience just to work in retail. It was different when their parents were young, in the immediate postwar era when the welfare state was born. But in the current economic climate, it is bloody difficult to get going into adulthood without some financial backing.
And so you get a cycle of poverty. Poor parents have poor children who become poor parents who have poor children. The Tories are trying to stop this by stopping the poor reproducing (and just for the record, THIS GOVERNMENT THINKS YOU ARE POOR IF YOU EARN LESS THAN £35k P.A SO WIPE THAT SMUG SMILE OFF YOUR FACE) but ultimately, you have to invest in people to make them thrive. You would think the Tories would know this - they know you have to invest in a business to make it succeed. But no.

But when Jeremy Corbyn starts talking about investing in normal people, in redirecting wealth, the Tories throw up their arms in despair, crying Marxism and trying to re-institute fox hunting. Fox hunting - a sport that occupies a few hundred people at a time, each paying a massive subscription, exclusive by definition - is far more important than dealing with any form of social inequality, because the Tories simply fail to acknowledge that it exists.

Tax Credits

So, I signed the petition to repeal the 'rape clause' that forms part of the tax credit policy now. And today, I received a government response which amounted to "you should have complained about this eighteen months ago, tough shit". But one paragraph absolutely INCENSED me:

LET US PARSE THIS STATEMENT

"Families supporting themselves solely through work" are either not claiming the tax credits they are entitled to, or earning more than the income threshold (£25000 for one child, £35000 for two). Look at those thresholds: they are Quite High particularly as the average annual income is £27000. The vast majority of working class families qualify for tax credits. Remember the 'hardworking families" trope? That's them.

"do not see their incomes rise automatically when they have more children". No, but by earning more than the income thresholds for tax credits, they already have a considerable scope for a much higher income. Two children on £35000 a year is very different to two children on £45000 a year. There are always people who fall into the cracks of being just over the threshold, but frankly if you struggle on £36k p.a. with two children (as one who has been doing so on much less for years) learn to budget better. A great deal of necessary public sector jobs have low and locked in salaries - an MAU staff nurse in Peterborough can expect a starting salary of between £22 and £24k; a newly qualified teacher's income is capped at £22k in their first year - which automatically classifies them as both poor and according to this government, an idiot with no idea how to control their fertility unless you threaten them financially.

"The policy encourages families who receive benefits or tax credits to make the same financial decisions about the number of children they can afford to support as those families who support themselves solely through work"

WHERE TO FUCKING BEGIN? The fucking PATRONISING language - "we ENCOURAGE the IDIOT POOR PEOPLE to STOP BREEDING". The whole idea that Only Rich People are sensible enough and rich enough to have more than two children. The idea that people have children for tax credits - yes, the difficult pregnancy, birth and eternity of care I invested in my third child is definitely worth the £50 extra a week. And separating those who claim tax credits - 4.43 million households out of approximately 18 million in the UK at the last ONS count - from those who don't need to as though that is a fair and just way of dividing the nation's fertility choice. Previously, those who were on income support or JSA were the Undeserving Poor of the nation. Now, apparently, it's to be extended to anyone on a low income regardless of how much they work or what classification of job they have.

"while protecting the vulnerable by retaining extra support for families with disabled children." DON'T MAKE ME FUCKING LAUGH. I have a disabled child, and believe me, I had to TAKE THE DEPARTMENT OF WORK AND PENSIONS TO COURT AND THEN THREATEN TO DO IT AGAIN to get them to pay the money rightfully owed to my disabled child. They don't give a single solitary fuck about disabled children.

None of this stops me or anyone else from having thirty two children if I want to, but the fact is that most low income households have included tax credits as part of their forecast income when deciding to have more children, and now they will have to stop doing that. There is an uncomfortable element of eugenics inherent in this policy that reminds me of the Victorian era when it was widely believed that poverty and poor moral behaviour were genetically linked. Stop the poor people having loads of kids and maybe there won't be any more poor people to worry about! Never mind fixing the causes of poverty and social inequality, just financially sterilise them!

But for a whole host of women, this family cap is going to be a real fucking issue. You see, it is applied to children born after 7th April 2017 and to "any new claims". So, if your circumstances change in the near future, and you suddenly find yourself applying for tax credits for the first time, little Imogen the Third Child won't be counted. If your partner moves in, or out, that counts as a new claim, so you may be absolutely fine now as a single parent of four, but if your boyfriend moves in, you will suddenly find two of your children are apparently not eating all your food, requiring clothes, using energy etc.

My situation six years ago was nothing uncommon - boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy impregnates girl, boy fucks off without a backward glance. I only had two children when I was dumped, but had it been another two years down the line, it could have been three. We could have easily afforded three children - indeed, we both now have three children - but I cannot stress enough how terrifying it was to suddenly lose 4/5s of my household income. My monthly wage didn't cover the mortgage, nevermind anything else. I relied on tax credits. Nobody should have children they cannot afford, but having children when you can afford them does not act as insurance against any financial or personal misfortune in the future. Women with more than two children in abusive relationships will have to think long and hard over whether they can afford to leave their partner.The Tories have also cut bereavement benefits, so if your husband or wife dies leaving you with more than two children, you are doubly fucked.

It will be women who suffer the most through this tax credit amendment. Two million lone parent households exist in the UK - that's just under half of all tax credit claims - and 91% of them are headed by women. Not only do women suffer the brunt of single parenting, they also have this fucking rape clause bullshit to overcome, where their third child only gets benefit if they are a product of rape. Never mind marital rape, never mind the ethics of being obliged to report your rape just to secure a little extra money, what sort of fucking government decides the only reason a poor woman might have more than two children is because she was raped?

It is a toxic, classist, eugenic and misogynist amendment and I loathe it and the party that instituted it with all my heart and soul.

WHAT? AGAIN?

So, there's to be a general election in less than two months. This is...unusual, but perhaps not unexpected.

The last general election was almost two years ago, and one of the myriad electoral promises made was that there would be a referendum on EU membership if the Conservatives won. This was a promise made partly to appeal to some Tory (and other party) MPs who were threatening to defect to UKIP, and to appeal more generally to UKIP voters. Despite a lot of hand-wringing about the possibility of a hung parliament and another coalition government, David Cameron won, Nick Clegg was told to sling his hook, and the possibility of a referendum loomed large.

David Cameron announced the EU referendum in February 2016, and it was held in May 2016. It was a dirty fucking scrum of a campaign, with the remain side not really bothering until it was too late, assuming that nobody would want to leave, and the leave side using racism, xenophobia and outright lies (often painted on the side of a bus), shrieking about democracy and sovereignty when challenged. We voted to leave, by 51.9% to 49.1%*.
Uproar. David Cameron resigned. The initial leadership of both the Conservative Party and Britain seemed to be Boris Johnson's for the taking, except he decided not to run (my theory: didn't want the shitty Brexit baton). His fellower Brexiteer Michael Gove ran, and came dead last. And so the race was left to Andrea Leadsom, who had little inter-party support and shot herself in the foot by suggesting women without children had no feelings, and we had a new PM with barely any fanfare. Theresa May. Former home secretary, supporter of the Remain campaign, first female PM since Thatcher. And Theresa May decided fuck it, she would go for a hard Brexit.

What is a hard Brexit? A soft Brexit? A buttery biscuit Brexit? Nobody seems to know, and considering that is what our country hopes to pursue in the next two years, it really is time someone came up with a fucking plan beyond "Brexit means Brexit". Instead, we have had Jeremy Corbyn enact a three line whip to make sure Labour agreed to trigger the Brexit process, the SNP announce another independence referendum for Scotland** and SHIT GOING DOWN in Northern Ireland, our only land border with the EU, which is worrying because we have a reasonably fraught relationship in general with Ireland and Irish independence. There have been eleven by-elections in sixteen months. Only the Lib Dems are offering any resistance to Brexit, so it's kind of a shame they only have nine parliamentary seats. UKIP have imploded, giving each other brain injuries and shouting about Douglas Carswell being a blood traitor, like they're fucking Dementors. It's been a trip.

Then there's the great fucking Wotsit over the sea trying to start a nuclear war with North Korea for shits and giggles.

The NHS continues to be underfunded, with staff at breaking point. Teachers are on the verge of striking again. Bereavement allowances are being slashed, because fuck knows the widowed need more hassle. Tax credits: don't even get me fucking started. Nobody can afford a house unless they're minted. Worker's rights are being gently eroded ready for the lifting of EU labour laws. It's a mess.

So, why call a general election now? Elections are expensive to run. They take a lot of administration. There's usually televised debates, which have normally been done by now. There was major election expenses fraud last time, which still hasn't been fully investigated. There's an act of parliament specifically to stop PMs calling a general election early. Why not just wait three more years and do it then, like everyone expects?

As it stands, the next general election should have been held in May 2020. The Article 50 protocol states that we should leave the EU by April 2019. Those two dates are quite close together, politically speaking. You, the voter, will remember quite clearly how fucking shit or amazing Brexit has made your life come 2020.

I expect that what Theresa May wants is a majority government without strong Brexit opposition to sail through the process, come out the other side and then bow out in 2022. I expect what Theresa May wants is for her government to stop bickering about the terms of Brexit, agree with whatever deal she can come up with, and crack on. I expect she wants to be elected by the people rather than just her party, so she can say she has been Chosen. I expect she doesn't want to have to fight an election the year after Brexit completes.

There was an awful lot of wailing immediately after the announcement that this will just make life easier for her. So don't. Vote. Vote for who you want to run your constituency. Brexit is happening unless the Lib Dems win by a landslide, so what we need is strong opposition to get us the best deal. Find out who your candidates are, and vote for the one who gives a shit: 90% of the time, it won't be a Conservative. There's a website here where you can see what your current MP votes for and against.

If you've recently turned 18 or will before June 9th, you need to register to vote. If you've recently moved house, you might need to register to vote. If you've recently graduated, you might need to register to vote. And since this election has been called with so little notice, you need to do that now: you can do it here. If you are a student, you are likely to be at home on June 9th - find out where you're registered to vote and apply for a postal vote if it's in your university constituency, and do it within the month. If you're going to be on holiday on June 9th, have a great time, but register for a postal vote first.

Young people, those aged 18-24, have the greatest stake in the future of the country, and they vote the least. So, boring as it can be, educate yourself and vote. Apathy changes nothing.



* Interestingly, this small victory has been quoted as a reason to pursue a 'hard' Brexit: when Erdogan won his own referendum by 51% to 49% in Turkey last week, this was described as "the smallest of margins" by the Torygraph no less. 

** When Brexiteers start complaining about this, I laugh and I laugh and I cry for their hypocrisy

Rape and Sweden

Oh Farage, leading trumpet of disinformation, has told the nation via LBC that Sweden has the highest rate of rape cases in Europe. He's said this because President Idiot told the world that Sweden had suffered a terrorist atrocity...and it hadn't. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in Sweden since 2010, unless you count the attack on school children by young, white, male Nazi in 2015. But OBVIOUSLY, that doesn't count. THAT was the work of a lone gunman...

Sweden takes in a staggering amount of refugees, because Sweden's social model is based on fairness and generosity. And, Nazi terrorist attacks and other hate crimes aside, it works out fairly well. And that RANKLES. You see, it suits the right to have a common enemy and that common enemy at the moment is refugees. From David Cameron calling them 'swarms', to Teresa May stopping unaccompanied children coming here, to Donald Trump closing his borders to some Islamic countries apparently chosen by sticking a pin in a map of Africa and the Middle East. The rise of the right across Europe is a chilling reminder that all this has happened before, and can easily happen again. But that's not why I'm RANTING AWAY TODAY.

So, Sweden hasn't had a terrorist attack. Trump looks like even more of an addled idiot. How then to make Sweden look bad? Especially as it's one of the few genuinely left-wing countries in the world? I can picture the scene, Farage on the Trump Hotline promising he will sort it out on his widely watched TV show, shown every night on the single British channel. And that very night, on LBC with its listenership of 1.7% of the market share, Farage hold forth. THEY'RE ALL RAPISTS. THAT'S THE PROBLEM.

Now, in a sane world, Farage would be ignored and us lefties would have less ulcers. But for some reason, the media hangs on to his every word, waiting to either praise him or deride him. Like a little Enoch Powell, but without the Parlimentary seat or gravitas, his words have been repeated all over Twitter, to the disgust of Sweden. He cites this graph as proof:

So, it tells us that Sweden has a very high rape record rate, or at least it did in 2012. Remember that date, it becomes important in a minute. Now, the important question is "what does Sweden count as rape?"
The definition of rape is never simple - in UK law, for example, it has to be penetration with a penis or it's *just* sexual assault. They have just about got around to agreeing that unconscious people cannot consent. In contrast, this is the Swedish definition:

A person who by assault or other violence or by threat of a criminal act forces another person to have sexual intercourse or to undertake or endure another sexual act that, in view of the seriousness of the violation, is comparable to sexual intercourse [...] This also applies if a person engages with another person in sexual intercourse or in a sexual act which under the first paragraph is comparable to sexual intercourse by improperly exploiting that the person, due to unconsciousness, sleep, serious fear, intoxication or other drug influence, illness, physical injury or mental disturbance, or otherwise in view of the circumstances, is in a particularly vulnerable situation

This is a far broader definition than most countries. In Jamaica, where the second most rapes are reported, rape law broadly corresponds to the British tradition, but they don't recognise male-on-male rape because all sodomy is illegal. So, how come Sweden has such a high rape rate?
In Britain, between 5% and 25% of all rapes are actually reported. The rest are concealed, out of fear, out of shame, out of conviction that you will not be believed. Unless you are raped at knifepoint by a stranger on CCTV, there will always be an element of his word against yours, and your past sexual activity will be used against you. It is not easy to report a rape, whether you are male or female. It is not easy to be examined immediately after such a physical trauma. It is not easy to give a statement, to go to court, to defend your honour as well as your word, when you have done nothing wrong. About 85000 women are raped each year in Britain, and about 12000 men, out of a population of 64 million. The majority are not reported. Of those that are, the conviction rate is around 5.7%. About 2500 men were convicted of rape in 2014 in Britain.
Let us compare to Sweden. About 6700 rapes (in a population of 9.5 million) were reported in 2014, with around 190 convictions. But it's not the broad definition that makes Sweden appear more rapey - it's the culture. The culture of equality, the culture of believing victims and the culture of victims believing they will be helped. This is what is lacking in British policing culture - for all the claims that the raped will be believed, the trial of Ched Evans, to name just one, has demonstrated quite the fucking opposite.


But this isn't really about the rape statistics at all, let's be honest. It is the barefaced bloody cheek of Nigel Farage and Donald "pussy grabber" Trump pretending they give one solitary fuck about raped men and women. That graph is from 2012, before Syrian refugees had begun to come to Europe in anything like the number they do now. If Sweden has a rape 'problem', it long predates the refugee crisis. Rape is a serious crime, that tears the heart of its victims for years. It's a crime of power, used by men to subjugate and humiliate, to make sure their victims know that all they are for is sexual gratification. It's a crime committed by all races, by all faiths. It is not a refugee problem now any more than it was a Jewish problem in the 1930s. The threat of rape by invading forces as propaganda is hardly a new one:

           

Polish propaganda warning about the Russian army, and Italian propaganda warning about the French. Notice how the soldiers are both black, despite coming from predominantly white countries? The first one warns you to defend your women and girls, the second about your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter. Coz fuck knows, men don't care about rape unless it's happening to someone they love. 

Rape has long been weaponised. It has long been used as an incentive to fight. But we are not at war, whatever Farage and Trump think. At least, not yet.

Fascism

Yes, I said it. Fascism. Not the alt-right. What the fuck does that mean? The alternative to what? It's not an alternative to standard conservative right-wing politics, it is going further than it. It is fascism. I wish we could ctrl-alt-del that term out of existence. People dislike the term fascism, you see. For some reason, can't think why, it reminds people of Hitler, and no political movement likes to be associated with Hitler even when he should be their idol. Hitler is so internationally reviled across the West that identifying with him is a bit of a faux pas. So, they call themselves the alt-right, and they act all affronted when you call them fascists, or snerk about Godwin's Law, and somehow they go on.

The greatest divisions in society are religion, ethnicity, and perhaps most importantly, class. Everyone likes to think they are a slightly higher class than they are, to give them a comfortable feeling of superiority. This can manifest in many different ways - from doing the odd shop at Marks and Spencer,  to trying to get children into the better schools, to judging single parents, to generally hating immigrant workers. Fascism loves it. Fascism wants everyone in their place, and holds a hand out to the aggrieved and lacking in social mobility, and it says "This is all their fault". They can be the poor, the sick, the foreign, those of different faith. This is what Hitler excelled at - he told Germany that it's severe economic distress was not caused by poor government and war reparations, but by Jews, disabled people and gypsies. Switch out Jews for Muslims and gypsies for Eastern Europeans, and doesn't that sound familiar to UKIP and others rhetoric?

We have struggled economically as a nation since the banking collapses of 2009 onward, although our economy is one of the strongest in the world. We bailed out the foolish banks with public money. Ever since, we have been suffering under austerity budgets that cut and cut and cut. It is not the rich who particularly feel the brunt of this, because they are protected both by status and wealth. It is the Average Joe. It is you. It is me.
The NHS, an institution founded on socialism and the need to reward a ravaged nation with security, has been cut and cut and cut since the banking collapse. The Conservative government are destroying it, on purpose, because it is absolutely contrary to their ideology. But the news stories are about requiring passports at point of treatment to prevent health tourism. The people believe that the NHS is failing because of overdemand, not underbudgeting. The people believe that it is immigrants taking the NHS away, not a concentrated effort by the incumbent government to rid themselves of an outdated, unwieldy and expensive edifice. And 'the people' buy into this, because they aren't immigrants. They might go to the doctors every time they have a sniffle. They might have four months worth of unused medication in a cupboard for a rainy day. They might go to A+E after yet another punch up on a Friday night. But it's those damn immigrants ruining the NHS.
By the same logic, that idiot woman on Question Time who voted Conservative and was shocked when her benefits were cut. Surely only OTHER PEOPLE will suffer from cuts? The undeserving poor? The foreign? Not...normal people? Not, to quote the government's favourite phrase, hardworking people? Our government has no issue with insidiously implicating that the Others are to blame for all its problems, be they the chronically sick, the chronically underemployed. Muslims, immigrants or refugees.

And so fascism extends its greasy paw across Europe and the USA, promising results where centrist governments have not been seen as a success. Fascism promises that the immigrants and the Muslims will be dealt with, and the common man will rise again, and our country will be great again. Doesn't matter which country, they all promise the same thing: Take Our Country Back. Make America Great Again. Au Nom Du Peuple. Österreich Zuerst. Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer.

But we only have to look at the example of 1930s Germany and Italy to know what happens when Fascists are democratically elected. Democracy goes down the pan. The poor stay poor. The rich stay rich. Civil rights are eroded or dispensed with altogether. Immigrants 'disappear', but this does not magically improve working lives. Religious dissent is not tolerated, regardless of what religion is adopted nationally. The only way out of poverty is through military service. Class is not eradicated, but entrenched even further. There is no social mobility.

It vexes me when the lower social classes adopt fascism as a cause. I can understand it among the wealthy - after all, fascism was very popular in Britain prior to the outbreak of World War II, primarily because the rich missed their servants and didn't like all these upstarts being independent. But the lower social classes, and that's the majority of my readership, are deluding themselves if they think that going further right will benefit them in the slightest. Balls to the alt-right. Balls to fascism. Recognise it. Shun it.

Two Child Rule

In the turmoil of Brexit, I had completely forgotten about the forthcoming changes to tax credits. From April 2017, only the first two children in a family will be supported by tax credits, and children born after April 2017 will not. I cannot find anything about what happens if you have more than two children and are already claiming tax credits for all of them. Perhaps the government haven't thought about that. Maybe I will have to choose a child to stop claiming for, a Sophie's Choice. Also, when my eldest ages out of payments, do I get to claim for the other two again? How is this going to work?

I mean, there are other rules that are frankly ridiculous like single parents now having to look for work when their youngest child turns three (from January 2017). It's ridiculous because you only get 15hrs free childcare per week and childcare costs literally cost all your wages - the reason I don't have a job at the moment is because I cannot get a job that would pay more than the FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY POUNDS it would cost me for 40 hours childcare in an educational setting per week. There's a reason the old rules required parents to look for work after their youngest child was in primary school - the school-age children account for a mere £60 of that.

The pension age has also gone up, which means the scope for grandparents offering free childcare to the working is much reduced. And yet the government's broad family policy takes for granted that there is a reciprocity of care in family units. The idea that Mummy and Daddy have two children, Daddy goes to work, Mummy looks after the kids until they are a set age then finds a job for 'pin money', while Granny picks up the children for her and then, later, Mummy uses the first years of her retirement to look after Granny and Grandad and Granny and Grandad in law is still very much the typical scenario visualised. If informal care was taken out of the equation, the cost to social services would be astronomical.

Take, for example, my mum. Mum has been eligible for hospice care now since approximately 1st September (probably a little longer than that). Instead, my wonderful dad has taken a sabbatical from work and is looking after her himself. If we children were older and had less tiny children, we would be doing more to help. Inpatient hospice care costs £446 per day, on average. That's almost £20000 my parents have saved the government simply by coping. The hospice care provided at home costs approximately £20 a day, a very different price indeed.
When older people go to nursing homes, they now usually have to sell their homes to fund their care (approximately £2000 a month, depending on care home). Those who have never owned homes have their care entirely funded by the government. It is much cheaper for the government to rely on familial care, and people staying in their own homes: the population of older people in nursing homes is around 295000 out of a potential population of eleven million.

The tradition of intergenerational caring is as old as humanity, but is rapidly being outpaced by modern life. Since the 1970s, the average age of childbearing has increased as women pursue careers and, indeed, are expected to pursue careers. My mother had me at 23, which was about the average at the time. I had my eldest at 23, but I am a young mother among most of my peers. I cannot care for my dying mother because I am tied to very small children, a thing that would have been less of a concern if my mum had developed this illness in ten years time. My mother, still working until her bowel exploded, has never been able to offer free childcare because of her own career.

But back to my original point. I had forgotten about tax credit changes, but was reminded last night of it by this article in the Independent. Women who have their children as a result of rape will be exempt from the two-children rule. That is the right thing to do, but it very much frames the idea that poor people have children for benefits at the feet of...women. What of men? Take, for example, my middle son. Conceived within a marriage where both parents worked and barely qualified for tax credits (NEWSFLASH: the vast majority of families claiming tax credits are working), yet born into a single parent, workless family. It's not his fault that things changed so quickly. It's not my fault things changed so quickly. It certainly wasn't something I anticipated when I got pregnant with him, although he wasn't conceived in abuse. I don't know whether I should have aborted him, as to not to cost the taxpayer money. It is women who will continue to suffer the brunt of these cuts. The woman happily married with three children until her husband leaves, or dies, and suddenly only two of her children are acknowledged by the state as actually costing money to raise. The woman whose contraception fails her, but can't bear to have a termination. The woman who loses her job.

The proposal that women who have more than two children and claim tax credits ARE EVIL unless they are RAPED is so offensive to me. I don't understand why more people aren't talking about this.

Another Brick In The Wall

The stories in the news at the moment about selective education has made me ruminate on my Grammar school education.

I had the fortune to grow up in a town that had two secondary schools - a standard co-ed high school and a co-ed, no-fees grammar school. At the beginning of year 6 (I think) we all went and sat the 11+. I assume it was an optional exam, but it's not an option I can remember discussing. It was my first experience of a proper exam, all formally spaced tables in a large and alien hall on a Saturday morning. It terrified me. The stress of waiting to find out if I'd got in or not was ruinous to my mental health, as an already anxious 11 year old, but when I passed, I got one of the highest marks in the school. The following September, off I went in my expensive uniform clutching my expensive and heavy set textbooks that I never used.
Now, we didn't have a lot of money when I was little. We weren't on benefits because my dad earned a little too much, but that money was spread among a lot more people than is standard. We were very working class, and most of my friends' parents were horrified at this tall, sweary, untidy and hideous urchin befriending their special snowflake. Conversely, my mum absolutely HATED all the posh  friends I made. Until I was in year 9 or 10, I didn't have friends round very often, but neither did I make the friends that I kept for life until then, so no great loss.
School, for me, was something of a hideous nightmare. There was the bullying - daily do I give thanks that I never had to catch the bus to school. There was the bullying from staff, who occasionally joined in. There was the constant feeling of not being quite good enough. I have an old school report which says that I got 75% in a geography exam, and I was 22nd out of 25. This all got ramped up considerably running up to my GCSEs when all staff decided that the best way to get good results and finally beat Louth to the top of the county league tables was a campaign of demented terror. Every teacher became fucking Saruman, standing at the front of the hall, gravely intoning the awful fate that would befall those who could not be arsed. We might end up...poor.
I got 11 GCSEs. I went on to do five AS levels, but again was hobbled by a mixture of anxiety, discovering sex, and being taught in half my subjects by my nemesis. This teacher, in hindsight, was fairly innocuous and trying to get work out a woman who was far more interested in gigs and sexting and whose grandparents were dropping like flies. Alas that her main way of getting work out of me was to humiliate me in front of the class pretty much every week, in small ways like refusing to believe I had read a Nobel prize winning book in one evening, or just giving me the evil eye. I was never going to be a good student, but being taught by her meant I just didn't go to half my lessons all year. Then I got a B in her main subject, by essentially teaching it to myself.
But it was too late by then, I had given up, quit, and left after AS study leave. What I should have done was dropped a couple of subjects or switched to the other teaching group, but being teenage and grumpy and dramatic, I thought my only option was carrying on miserable or quitting. I had an idea I would go to college and become a nursery nurse, and even had a placement secured, but then my mum said I should stay at home and look after my sister instead. I agree, and also applied to do a nursing diploma at university, against some opposition from my boyfriend and family at the time. I was rejected, which fair broke my old heart. I ended up looking after my sister for over a year, and then moved away and got my first and only real job. The only reason they offered my shy, teenage self the job was because I'd been to Grammar school,

I'm still poor. I still ended up divorced. I still ended up on benefits. My kid's still disabled. I still live in a hovel. These are things that are supposed to be assuaged by a better class of education.

I mean, aside from getting a decent job by dint of being employed by a Grammar snob, I met my future husband at school. I learnt to write persuasively there, and I learnt to be intensely critical of everything, particularly myself. But my love of learning, of academia, of pushing myself did not come from school. That came later. I didn't go to university when my peers did, making me feel inferior, not to mention lonely. I remember going to a careers advice interview in year 12 and telling them I wanted to do a nursing diploma, and they stared at me aghast. Why not...go to med school? Why be a nurse when you can be a doctor? What sort of fucked up attitude is that? It is a blessed miracle I have a high-grade maths GCSE at all; there's no way in a thousand years I could get the grades for med school, even if I wanted to.

I now live in a city that doesn't have a Grammar, but does have a private school that takes a minimal amount of students on scholarships. It has twelve other mainstream secondary schools. There is fierce competition over which secondary school children go to, as there was in the area I previously lived in, where there were only three secondary schools and a private Grammar covering an enormous rural area. Our local secondary school is over the road, and I would no more willingly send my child to it than send him to a lion pit. That's my prejudice, my snobbery, but also based on its appalling GCSE grades. This is despite the fact that I KNOW that GCSEs grades do not necessarily equate to a good school experience. I was the most miserable girl on my throne of good grades.

The problem was succinctly put in a tweet I saw this morning from Professor David Andress of Portsmouth Uni: "What we see in the 'grammars' debate is an underlying certainty that it is impossible to educate everyone well, & a waste of time to try." It is so difficult to maintain any sort of standard in secondary education, whether because of appalling staff culture, the problems of academisation and having schools run as PR campaigns, or simply having too many students without motivation to try. Whichever area you live in, whether it be an area where having a two tier system is normal, or an area which is awash with average high schools, league tables are still used. Performance is still rated. Schools are compared by parents, who strive to get their children into the objectively best schools, hoping to give them a better start. Parents like the option of a Grammar school, not always because they are snobs or victims of class culture, but because they want to give their children a better education and they perceive that to be beyond the scope of standard high schools. Maybe instead of bollocking on about Grammar schools, the predominantly privately educated government needs to raise the profile and status of standard secondary education. Children do not deserve to be written off at the tender age of 11 because they went to the 'wrong' school, or failed to pass an entrance exam because they were stressed, or anxious, or upset about something else entirely.

Hospitals - Not For Tripadvisor

When you have to visit the same department of a hospital several times, you memorise the signs. I now know that domestic violence spikes during sports events, and what different nursing uniforms mean. I know that if you dare try and get NHS treatment fraudulently, Teresa May herself is coming round with the boys. I know that, despite brexit, we can still get EHIC cards. And I know whether or not I would recommend the department to my nearest and dearest.

Wait, what?

We have spent a lot of time in ambulatory care at Peterborough hospital of late. It's a strange, useful department, designed for people who are too poorly to be seen in outpatients but who don't require an inpatient bed. A lot of people in there are being followed up from A+E, or having transfusions. Almost everyone in there feels like shit and a lot of them look it too. It's not the sort of place you go for a picnic, or the stunning view of the car park and Macmillan unit next door. The water's cold, the outside benches were designed for people with waves for arses, and they really need more reading material, but I'm not about to go on Tripadvisor and leave an excoriating review of the amenities. It's not somewhere you go for a jolly - we are there because Mum has to be there.

And yet, would I recommend this department to my friends and relatives? What a bizarre thing to ask people in an acute care centre. A few years back, I had a brain injury and about two weeks later, someone rang me up and asked me how I would rate the A+E dept. I can barely remember being in A+E, so how I was expected to rate it, I do not know.

The NHS likes to bang on about choice, namely choice of provider. Sometimes this can be really useful - I was able to get my son re-referred to his old hospital for an operation despite being out of area - but mostly it is meaningless, particularly in terms of acute care. When dripping blood everywhere, who has time to ponder to which A+E they are going to drag their detaching limb? Who has that level of local choice outside big cities? Where I live, there is Peterborough, which is five minutes away, but the next nearest large hospital is Hinchingbrooke, which is half an hour in good traffic. In an emergency, there's no question of where I'm going to go. Offering choice in acute care is illusory. Being asked to rate it is meaningless.

Treating patients as customers within the NHS is a real bugbear of mine. A good patient experience is very difficult to quantify. For example, excellently executed palliative care still results in a dead patient. Conversely, a live mother and baby is considered the best outcome in maternity care (as well it should be) regardless of trauma suffered. Patients experience the same illness in very different ways, every clinician has a slightly different approach to treatment, illness progression and injury healing can be very difficult to predict. How high patients are likely to rate departments surely depends on their mood, their particular problems and their experience on that day.

To give an example, when my mum was in Scarborough hospital (rated as requiring improvement by the CQC), some of her care on the ward and in transit was substandard from a professional point of view, but we are all so grateful that they saved her life that we wouldn't consider complaint. If asked whether I would recommend their emergency care team, I would give them a very high rating despite seeing some negligent care later on, because of that gratitude. However, when we have been sitting in ACU at Peterborough for six hours, waiting for medication that seems to take days to dispense, while Mum cries and dozes on a bed, I am disinclined to rate them highly. It's not their fault, their care is always excellent, but my mood is never good there.

To rate patient experience requires more detail and nuance than a simple "How likely are you to recommend us to friends or relatives? 1-5" rating, like you get in bloody Argos. If my curtains take thirty minutes to come down the chute in Argos, perhaps I have cause for complaint. Perhaps my giving them a 2 rating is justified. But giving a hospital a low rating because I had bad news that day? Because a poorly toddler was screaming and it made my migraine worse? Because some drunk vomited all over the waiting room and it took a while to clean up? Because I was scared? Because I was in pain? No. That's not a fair way to rate a department.

When I worked in general practice, we had to do patient surveys. For a month a year, everyone on reception would sick of the sight of this stack of questionnaires, ignored upon the desk because nobody coming to an urgent GP appointments wants to rate the surgery - they want to get their medication and go home. So what ended up happening was that all the regular patients would fill them in, rating us generally highly because they absolutely loved the GP or rating all the reception staff poorly because everyone hates GP receptionists. It never felt like a particularly fair way to assess patient opinion, least of all with all the staff fearful of what they might write (I believe now the CCG sends questionnaires direct to patients).

The NHS is not a shop. It is not Argos. It's not even Amazon. It's a public service. Hospitals are not theme parks, or holiday homes, or somewhere you can reasonably expect to enjoy yourself (unless you're some sort of fetishist). Rating your care is so subjective as to be almost meaningless outside of detailed debriefs after the event. Complaining is one thing: I am a seasoned complainer, usually because of instances of negligence or misconduct rather than bitching about a receptionist's tone, and the NHS needs to be open to justified complaint, but giving a flash rating subject to emotion at the point of care is ridiculous. Make it stop.

Ageism

The old are being blamed for leaving the EU, based mainly on pre-election data.

Now, as you might well know, statistics are really easy to present in a misleading fashion. For example:

5% of people do not own a television
vs
95% of people STARE AT THE ELECTRONIC BOX IN THE CORNER NIGHT AFTER NIGHT
The statistic is the same. The context makes the difference.

So...this chart:

Firstly, the poll asked less than 1700 people. The electorate was 46.5 million people. The actual number of voters was around 33 million. 1700 people is literally nothing. 0.003% to be precise. I don't know enough about statistics to know what size of survey you would need to take for it to be statistically relevant, but I am guessing it is significantly more than 0.003%.

Second, you have to be a member of yougov to take part in their polls. Are you a member of yougov? Anyone you know? I was, but they pay fuck all for participation, so I left.

Thirdly, we are not told how many people in each age group were polled. The cohorts are unfairly sized: (6 year cohort, a 24 year cohort, a 14 year cohort and then a 25+ year cohort). They've basically taken nearly 20% of the population, asked 0.003% of them what they think of something and decided THEY ALL THINK THE SAME.

As for how many years they have had to live with decision! CHRIST! Why not just have a mass cull right now, since they'll all be dead soon anyway!

And most importantly, it was a secret ballot. We don't know WHO voted what. For all you know, I actually voted leave and am getting strange pleasure from writing pro-remain blogs (I'm not). What we do know is that over half of those who showed up to vote voted to leave, and not all of those were racist old women.

Ah, the many tales of racist old women on twitter, exhorting the line for the polls to vote to leave to 'send the buggers back'. My husband actually ended up talking to just such a racist old lady at the polls, so they definitely exist. But remember something important before casting off the entirety of the old as useless...

If anyone should have a right to vote, it's people who (just) lived through World War 2 and rationing. Nobody has earned their civic rights quite like them. The same people who voted for the only socialist government we've ever had following World War 2 also voted for us to remain in what would become the EU in 1975, by an overwhelming 67% to 33%.

I cannot abide this idea of baby boomers stealing all the wealth and leaving the young crumbs and arseholes. How many old people die alone in a freezing house every year because they can't afford to put the heating on? The reason the young are fucked is primarily because of the 2009 recession, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. But that's too difficult to comprehend. Far easier to blame the old, because they're easy targets. They're vulnerable. They're not contributing. They're death waiting to happen.

Youths, get a grip on yourselves. One day, you too will be old and your children will pay not one bit of attention to anything you say and call you a dinosaur. One day, you will talk about this referendum and they will yawn and say how everything's different now, LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW BECAUSE YOU ACTUALLY WATCHED IT HAPPEN. One day, you will exercise your right to vote, and people will blame you for the result because you're a shapeless grey mass of demographic with no perceived individuality. And you will be pissed off about it.

Why?

Why am I so upset about the result?
Why aren't I applauding the Leave voters? Congratulating them on a hard won game against the odds?
Why aren't I quietly accepting defeat and moving on?

Well, for a start, some brief figures. 17 million people voted for Brexit. There are 60 million people in the UK. That's a little over a quarter. That's not a ringing national victory. That's way less half of the total electorate (46.5m). In short, there are far more people in the UK that did NOT vote to leave the EU than did.
That is irrelevant, in the grand scheme of things, because democracy requires people to exercise their right to vote or miss out. It also requires the electorate to take part in civic and political life, but as people on facebook keep pointing out, they only really care about politics for one day every few years and then it gets boring.
I don't think a re-referendum would achieve anything, mainly because a referendum is not legally binding and the government can ignore it. The government would be fucking silly to disregard it and stay in the EU regardless (although the more Boris Johnson speaks, the more it seems that is precisely what he wants to do), but they still have to begin the legal process and that is something the Great British Public will have nothing to do with. It is going to be a long, painfully drawn out process to the leave the EU. We have not left yet. We have not even begun to leave.

So, why am I personally upset? I have spent years now, particularly the last two, studying structural inequality. Before you run off, structural inequality is the reason why people living in shitty areas tend to live shorter, poorer lives than people living in better areas. It is the reason there is a nine year gap between expected lifespan in the poorest and richest boroughs of the country. It's the reason poor areas have crappy job prospects and lack amenities. I discussed all this with reference specifically to my area in this post, if you want to see how that directly affects someone.
Now, the Tories (according to their ideology) prefer to think that people make their own luck. That your circumstances of birth have nothing to do with your future potential, that you can break the glass ceiling. And I'm sure for a few people, that's true, but for the vast majority, you remain stuck in the same social and wealth sphere you are born into. Hence why politicians tend to be rich, from the south and privately educated. And this belief has led to them cutting all forms of social infrastructure over the last few years.
To give an example, covering Labour, coalition and Tory governments: in the town I grew up in, a giant housing estate was planned, with a view to doubling the town's population. They began to build it in 2002. They didn't think to provide it with a primary school for twelve years. It didn't get a supermarket until 2010. It still doesn't have a doctor's surgery, or anything you might think is essential to increasing the population of a small town by 50%, and is so far away from most amenities or adequate public transport that a car is absolutely necessary to live there. Infrastructure is no longer considered important. The selling off of schools to become academies is another sign of this: an attempt to privately fund important public amenities without any real accountability.

So, what is accountability in this context? Well, it's being socially responsible. It's admitting when you get something wrong, and trying to fix it. It's having a higher power that you have to report to when things go right and when things go wrong. In the NHS, accountability is very important because if you cock something up, people die. But in government, accountability is also extremely important because if you cock stuff up, thousands die. Perhaps not the same day. Perhaps not even the next day. But over time, life expectancies drop, national wealth drops, opportunities fall away.
I see a lack of accountability in the government farce that has followed the referendum. Cameron has resigned basically because he doesn't want to sort leaving out, despite being the one who held the referendum in the first place. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are both swearing up is down when it comes to promises made in the run up to the referendum. Corbyn's entire cabinet has fallen away, not wanting to face leaving the EU and blaming him for the whole thing, rather than Cameron.

The EU may be a bureaucratic nightmare, but it also provides a protective framework of legislation that aids the common man. To give an example often cited to me as a reason to leave the EU: the European Working Time Directive. Do you really want to be hired on a 70hr week contract? Do you not want to be paid for overtime, or have your overtime recognised as such? Do you think this government have any interest in protecting working rights? Our government has taken a decided slide to the right in policy of late, more right wing than even Thatcher managed. In response, Labour has also taken a rightward slide and bizarrely, UKIP and their nationalistic bordering on fascist policies, are attempting to become the party of the working classes. Politics in this country is all over the place. I don't trust them. I don't trust them. I don't trust them.
I am filled with fear about what happens when we lose the layer of accountability offered by the EU, when our democratically elected government, democratically elect to fuck the poor some more because they haven't been punished enough yet.

I see no triumph here. The EU have funded so many projects to try and reduce the inequality in our society and now it will be our government's responsibility to try and replicate that. It will be our government's responsibility to try and equal and distribute EU funding into the arts, into science, even into cancer research. And I don't trust them to do it. Our government have not had to deal with this type of organisation since the 70s, when many of them were children. It's one thing to say "We were fine before we joined the EU" but that was two generations ago and people forget.

Yes, this is a cynical and negative view, but I find it difficult to be positive in the wake of such a total government breakdown. Perhaps it will be OK. I hope so.

Next time: on ageism and voting and why judgemental youths need to check themselves before they wreck themselves

Education. Not employment.

When I was a child, my dad was obliged to work for most of August, which meant our family holidays generally took place in May or June. We were pulled out of school en masse (there's seven of us), and returned, slightly sunburnt, a week later. The school probably complained a bit to my parents, but gave us consent to go and we didn't suffer for it. Quite the opposite, in fact. My childhood holidays are some of my happiest and most vivid memories, moreso against the backdrop of my primary school experiences.

Now, of course, this is forbidden BY LAW and also THE COUNCIL. If you take your children out of school in term time, you and their other parent can be expected to be fined £60 each per child. In my family's case, that would have meant a £840 fine, doubling to £1680 if my parents hadn't paid within three weeks. Most people don't have seven children, so for an average family with two children in school, that's a £240 fine.

Compare that to the cost of a holiday in term time vs a holiday in August. Here's a handy price comparison for a week's holiday, for a family of four. The first price is the second week of June. The second price is the second week of August. 

CENTREPARCS ELVEDEN:  £1138 vs £1878

STATIC CARAVAN IN YARMOUTH:  £173 vs £599

BUTLINS SKEGNESS: £382 vs £1234

PRIVATE COTTAGE IN ST IVES, CORNWALL: £464 vs £769

CARAVAN IN SOUTH OF FRANCE: £190 vs £1081

MAJORCA WITH THOMAS COOK INC FLIGHTS: £1506 vs £3142

LEGOLAND RESORT (two nights, midweek) : £889 vs £1121

DISNEYWORLD FLORIDA INC FLIGHTS: £2550 vs £4114 

(Prices correct on 18th May 2016, identical accommodation compared)

Suddenly, that £240 fine seems a fair price to pay for an affordable holiday. Or a tax on parenthood. Whichever.

The government have become obsessed with attendance in schools. My eldest son got sent home from school yesterday and isn't allowed to go back in until Friday because he had a small episode of diarrhoea and is now absolutely fine (and driving me mad). But every week, the newsletter tells us to send our kids to school even when they're ill, because apparently teachers will send them home if they're not well. It shouldn't be a teachers' responsibility to either judge the severity of a child's illness or to have to shepherd a load of unwell children through the day. More to the point, it should be a parent's prerogative to decide when their child is too poorly for school.

Primary schools do not employ children, yet the rules of employment seem to apply more and more to kids. Too much sickness: BAD. Too much holiday: BAD. They can't SACK the children for persistent absence, but they can persecute the parents, fine the parents, make the parents harass doctors, and take the parents to court. 

The jargon of the board room is even filtering down to the taught content. I flicked through the sample KS2 English SATs paper earlier. What is the relative clause of a sentence? What is a prepositional phrase? I don't know and I studied English Language at A Level. Do 11 year olds need to know what an antonym is? What's wrong with saying opposite? What's the active voice? What's a determiner? 

I was stunned last year when my six year old told me about split digraphs. He meant 'magic E' as taught by Wordy and Look and Read. I suppose Magic E is too rave culture for the modern Department of Education. 

Jargon is most commonly used as a signifier of special knowledge, to exclude others and exalt the group who understand it above others. A good example is medical jargon, frequently used to talk about patients without them understanding it, as well as to give status to the medical profession. After all, a fracture of the 5th metatarsal sounds a lot more interesting than a broken little toe. Jargon is frequently used in office conversation to try and improve the status of relentless administrative meetings. "Let's touch base, yeah, before the close of play" sounds like something interesting, something...productive, unlike "we need a meeting before you go home". Jargon is endemic in academia, which is perhaps part of the problem.

English is now taught to little kids in linguistic jargon. Now, there's some stuff like synonyms that don't really have a simpler form. Verbs and nouns are just that. But the present perfect tense? When parents - well educated parents with relevant qualifications - don't have a fucking clue what children are being taught anymore, then perhaps it's time to have a rethink and stop treating children like they're in higher education, or work, already.  

Where History Is Annoying

I love history. It is a weekly regret that I didn't do a history degree, although I have done a history module. I'm seriously considering doing either an MA or a postgrad certificate in history next year, depending on funding/grades/confidence. In the mean time, I am voraciously reading primary sources and history books. I think the census, for example, is one of the most beautiful resources our country has, particularly the 1881. God I love the 1881. This makes me strange, allegedly. I also have a penchant for royal history and biography, chiefly because the sources are such good quality. 

But there are a few things that really HACK ME OFF. I'm a total amateur, and may be entirely wrong, but bear with me here.

1. Ye is NOT A FUCKING WORD.

There were extra letters in the Old English alphabet. One of them was thorn, which was shaped like this: Þ. Thorn was pronounced 'th', like in thick and they and THE. In Middle English, which was pronounced very similarly to modern English, despite looking like gibberish, thorn was retained in some dialects, and on into early modern English. However, it began to be written more like a y than a Þ. It looked like this (apologies for teeny tiny picture)

Doesn't that look just like a y? WELL IT BLOODY ISN'T and the amount of times PROPER HISTORIANS translate it as ye instead of the makes my BLOOD BOIL.

So think on, Ye Olde Tea Shoppe.

2. Life Expectancy Is Unrelated to Biological Ageing

In 1900, the average life expectancy of a man was 50. In the middle ages, it was around 35. For women, it was a little less. Some people have taken this information and conflated it to mean that a 35 year old man in 1500 was absolutely WITHERED with age. This is bollocks. A natural lifespan, without accident, severe illness or birth defect, has always been around 65-70. Modern medicine, better midwifery, and improved living conditions means our present life expectancy is around 81.

The biggest factor in the difference between life expectancy and natural lifespan is infant mortality. When you have one in five babies dying in infancy, that drags the life expectancy right down. When you add to that the very high childbirth mortality (one in ten) for women, and then the lack of safe working conditions, monotonous and vitamin-strapped diets, no antibiotics, frequent battles, poor heating and inadequate medical care after injury, it's not surprising a lot of people died in their prime. But plenty of them did not. Edward III lived to be 64 in 1377. His mother lived to 62. These were impressive ages for the time, but mainly because of the vast amount of things that could kill you then. 

3. Fertility and Childbirth Were As Complex Then As Now

I recently read a biography of Isabella of France that stated that she had no more children because she was too old at 34. NO. WRONG. The same book (by Alison Weird) makes the assumption that Isabella and her husband, the much derided Edward II, had infrequent sex because Isabella only had four known children. Fertility, as many women know, is a capricious beast. In my opinion, Isabella was not a terrifically fertile woman who is known to have suffered a slow recovery from the birth of her last child. It is far more likely that she suffered some sort of birth injury that compromised her fertility than she went through the menopause at 28. Fertility is linked to living circumstances - menarche happens earlier in well-nourished women, and menopause a little later - and the menopause certainly didn't happen nearly two decades earlier in the middle ages. Isabella's daughter in law Phillippa had her last child in her 40s, as did Eleanor of Aquitane (who lived to the exceedingly ripe age of 81, in the twelfth century), Eleanor of Castile, and Elizabeth Woodville. Except where women were widowed, infertile, or died young, this seems to be the rule rather than exception. 

No, you've got PMT. 

Being bullied

TW: Sexual assault, violence, self harm.

When I was five, I looked like this.

Then, when I was eleven, I looked like this:

Now, I look like this (on a good day):

But in my head, I will always look like this:

You see, I was born with a malformed top jaw. Not something you notice much when your milk teeth come through, but my god, when I got my adult teeth, it was about as noticeable as you could get. I developed trichotillomania when I was 11 and scalped myself. So, going into secondary school I had the teeth of a deformed chipmunk and the hairline of Friar Tuck.

I suppose, all things considered, bullying was inevitable.

But this is the thing. I was bullied from starting school.

I don't know why. I was a fairly innocuous child. I was probably fucking annoying and a know it all because some things never change, but for some reason, a few girls in the year above me took against me and took up arms. I remember, aged five, being held, face-first, against a wall. I remember them telling me to come to the toilet with them in lunch, to be told a secret, and instead called names until I cried. 

Then my adult teeth came and lo, the bullying went up accordingly. I was already an easy target, probably because I didn't have many friends and didn't socialise outside school. But it's one thing to be targeted by a couple of bored girls, and something else to be targeted by everyone. They even stole my fucking lunch. It reached something of a nadir in year six, when I was first sexually assaulted on school grounds, and later had the shit beaten out of me by four boys, on the local park for the crime of being there. It followed me everywhere. At least when I was on holiday or at home, I could get my older brother to come and look threateningly at people. At school, I was mostly on my own. 

No wonder I ripped out half my hair.

And then. Secondary school. Oh the endless fucking DELIGHT of starting school looking like a morlock and having six foot tall, sixteen year old boys think nothing of calling me names across the playground, because all year seven girls need that on their plate. I developed a cruel and crude sense of humour to deal with it, and tried to give it back as good as I got. It occasionally got me into trouble, and being called names is not the worst thing that's ever happened. Of course, it felt like it at the time. Nobody ever had a crush on me, for example, because of the awful shame associated with being attracted to a morlock. I used to get in fights outside school, because I didn't want them to call me names anymore. There was a small crowd of 'cool' boys, who really took umbrage at my existence, particularly in shared lessons. One of them decided the best way to make his mates laugh was to put a piece of the cheesewire we used for cutting up modelling foam in DT around my neck. I couldn't breathe. I nearly knifed him in the face with a handy craftknife. I believe they left me alone after that.

I developed a few bad habits to deal with the constant angsty pain of existence. A bullied teenager is a most unhappy sight. I drank. I drank a lot. I drank often. I used drugs, now and then, mainly to deal with crippling social anxiety (sorry mum). And I beat myself bloody, because I hated myself so much I wanted to be anything else. 

Now. I am 31 years old. I have grown up. I have three gorgeous children. Despite being so hideously ugly, it has been constantly remarked on since I was five, I have got through two husbands. I know! The greed! Three years ago, I went back to my old secondary school for a reunion. I didn't want to go. I got so drunk the night before, I ripped a hole in my stomach lining. Then I got drunk in the car park before we went in. I couldn't bear the thought of being back in the torture chamber. I drank more as we went around to deal with it, disguised as orange juice. Then we went to the pub. It was that sort of a weekend.

And do you know something? There were quite a few of my former tormentors there, and none of them said a thing. They smiled. They nodded. They moved on. They remembered me, because I'm fairly memorable, but they don't remember every word they said to me fifteen years ago. That would be silly. They have moved on.

I have not.

I will never be wholly comfortable with the way I look because I was told every day for twelve years that I was hideous, either directly, or through a look, or a snigger, or a whispered comment. I will never really believe that I am worth a second glance. I hope I will stop hating myself for the way I look, but then worry that my children will be bullied in turn when people tell me how much they look like me. I doubt I will ever be cured of the anxiety I now recognise has been part of my life since I was pre-pubescent. Anxiety that people will shout at me, that they will follow me down the street threatening me. Anxiety about walking through a group of teenagers, because even at 31, they make me feel fourteen and a target again. I rarely go back to the town I grew up in, partly because it's a shithole, but mostly because it's full of memories. That's the alley I ran down when those boys were chasing me. That's the street those men threatened me on.That's the part of the park I was beaten up on. That's where I used to sit on my own with the dog because I had no friends. That's my loneliness. That's my pain. That's my lack of safety. That's my teenage years in a shitty nutshell. 

And therein lies the problem with bullying. Kids will be kids. Kids will shout names at others. Kids will take against what is different. Kids will hurt. Kids will fight.  Kids don't mean it. 

They didn't mean it.