Monday 31 December 2018

2018 in Bisexual

Something I wrote for the BCN website wrapping up loads of bi news from the past twelve months...


So, 2018 has been and gone. Here are our bi-lights of the year past.

Seen On Screen

We had more bis on TV than ever including shows with bisexual leads The Bi Life, Sally4Ever and The Bisexual, as well as bis in shows like Riverdale, The Good Place, Jeremy Thorpe drama A Very English Scandal, bi poly life in the 1940s with Professor Marston & The Wonder Women, and the Freddie Mercury film Bohemian Rhapsody.

Research

Research showed bisexuals are far more closeted than gay and lesbian people – and more likely to experience violence and abuse. So much for the ‘best of both worlds’. The BiReCon (bisexuality research conference) events that have happened each even-numbered year since 2008 took a break but there was a day-long event in a similar vein in Manchester.

The government published the findings of the biggest LGBT survey ever conducted in the UK – and pulled out the bi findings where they were interesting, and often sadly reflected how bi people face additional challenges compared to gay and straight people. Among the resulting work programme they promised to ban ‘conversion therapy’ – the discredited practice of trying to persuade people into being straight or gay rather than gay or bi.

Politics

Political life in the UK is in a bit of turmoil, but in some parts of the union more than others. While the Conservative-DUP not-a-coalition struggles on in Westminster, and the Sinn Fein-DUP deadlock sees nothing happening in Stormont, there’s a working coalition in Cardiff Bay, and a minority government in Holyrood similarly getting on with its own agenda.

And so Scotland and Wales both announced improvements in sex and relationship education in schools – thanks in part to SNP education minister John Swinney and Lib Dem education minister Kirsty Williams but importantly thanks to long lobbying campaigns by individuals and campaign groups like TIE. Working for change takes time but the changes set for classrooms in Wales and Scotland will make all the toil of recent years feel worth it. England and Northern Ireland may be waiting a bit longer for equivalent improvements. We got our fifth equality minister at Westminster in the space of two years: I suppose they last longer than Brexit secretaries.

Referendums continued to be a poor way to decide human rights: while Ireland voted the right way on abortion, giving people rights over their own bodies rather than over one anothers, Taiwan rejected same-sex marriage, and Romania debated redefining the word ‘family’ to exclude same-sex couples.
Meanwhile in the US midterms the voters put Kyrsten Sinema in the Senate alongside other LGBT winners in other races while the Republicans’ most prominent out bisexual defected to the Democrats. The Danish minister for Education came out as bisexual, and Colombia got its first out-bi Senator.

Looking Back

Many events for LGBT History Month in 2017 had focused on 50 years since a bisexual MP (Home Secretary and later SDP leader Roy Jenkins) had enabled the partial decriminalisation of sex between men.  This year we had other key anniversaries with round numbers involved – 40 years since the Rainbow Flag, 30 years since Section 28, and 20 years of the bisexual flag.

Proud Allies

There were bi stalls at more LGBT Prides than ever (we reckon) with BiPrideUK’s campaign of publicity stalls reaching much of the smattering of prides that local groups like Bothways, BiPhoria and BiCymru don’t reach in an average year.

It was a summer where a small clique of transphobic people disrupted Pride in London and inspired many other Prides to show their rejection of transphobia.

Bi events

BiCon came to Salford for the first time – and went rather well. Next time it’s in Lancaster. Smaller BiFest events were successes in Birmingham, Swansea, London and Stirling.

Bi Visibility Day (and that does seem to be gaining ground as the name used for it worldwide now rather than just in the UK) was huge once again – with its children, BiWeek and BiMonth growing in usage as well.  Twitter joined in with a special BiWeek emoji. and BiVisibilityDay trended hard in the UK on September 23rd.

Big Bi Fun Day‘s future was left in doubt with no-one coming forward to run it in 2019.

Us


And there were of course six fabulous issues of BCN magazine. Subscribe to get the next six now.

The future

It turned out there will be a sexuality question in the census in 2021, along with a trans question – but they’ll be optional and people will still have a blunt “are you male or female” question, so there is still more work to do. Making it optional implies a degree of shame about the answer, if you ask us.



And so to 2019, whose anniversaries include 50 years since the Stonewall riot in the USA, 30 years since the UK’s LG(BT) lobbying group named after it was launched, and 25 years since BiPhoria formed – the UK’s oldest extant bi group.

We might even see progress on making Civil Partnerships more equal. And, of course, there’s Brexit

Sunday 23 December 2018

Paddy Ashdown

My first proper Paddy Ashdown memory was in the 1992 election. Paxman was giving him a manifesto grilling about whether the voters of Yeovil were crying out for the abolition of section 28 and equalisation of the age of consent.

At a time when it was far from popular - the ink was still wet from Section 28 coming into law remember - Paddy put him back in his box as "we don't campaign for these things based on whether they are popular but because they are the right thing to do".

I already knew I was too left wing for Labour and the Tories, but it helped nail down which way to vote a couple of weeks later.

Friday 7 December 2018

Yellow Peril

France has protests about fuel prices.  The "yellow vests" are out in force across the country, bullying and attacking not just their enemies but their friends in a delusional, blinkered rage against the world.

Except, like the ones we had here circa 2000, they really aren't the spontaneous grassroots types they have been spinning themselves as to the media. To a great degree, they're puppets whipped up into entitlement by profiteering forces we saw then too - big oil, terrified of its own future and trying to prevent the actions needed to keep most of the planet liveable in an era of man-made climate change.


This time though there's another force at work - one that wasn't clearly a part of the UKanian fuel protests. Russia hates that they failed in their efforts to control the French presidential election - they were hit by a double whammy as the Macron campaign knew they were coming for them and took appropriate measures, and Putin's choice of President was unappetising to too many French people.

Militant capitalism on one side. A failed state on the other.

It suits both the traditional christian-democrat and social-democrat groups for Macron to come a cropper - will they happily be Putin's puppets or stand up against the 'gilets' and their demand for a shittier planet and subservient Europe in the interests of financially and politically motivated outside forces?

Tuesday 20 November 2018

International Action

Pink News reports that in North American trade negotiations, Liberal Party leader and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau is standing alone to defend the rights of pregnant US citizens.

They say that:
the draft text of the deal includes a pledge to enact “policies that protect workers against employment discrimination on the basis of sex, including with regard to pregnancy, sexual harassment, sexual orientation, gender identity.”

The Republicans are up in arms about this of course. How dare there be protection in the workplace against being groped by a predatory tosser, eh Donald?

Though of course that kind of gutting of employment rights is just what Theresa and her personal sidekick Jeremy are working tirelessly to deliver for the people of Britain. And our trades unions have already carefully expunged the Liberals from UK politics almost completely so there won't be a powerful Trudeau-like figure here to intervene. Aren't we lucky? Thanks Unite, thanks Unison, thanks Call-Me-Dave.

Saturday 22 September 2018

The 20th Bi Visibility Day is here!

...well, Bi Visibility Weekend then. I'm going to be rather busy the rest of the weekend so I thought I better get my blogpost in early: the Big Day is tomorrow.

It’s the 20th annual Bi Visibility Day this Sunday, September 23rd.

The date highlights bisexuality and the challenges posed by biphobia and bisexual erasure, as well as celebrating the work of a growing number of local, national and international organisations around the world which champion bisexual visibility and equality.

Last year there were around 130 events marking the date, from exhibitions, talks and film screenings to picnics and socials in bi-friendly bars. A host of public buildings around the world flew the pink, purple and blue bisexual flag. So far this year that tally has already hit 160.

Since 2001 I've been running BiVisibilityDay.com as a listings website, and I try to note everything happening to mark the date around the world. We usually get some 'late arriving' listings to add that we didn't get to hear about in advance so that 160 will most likely rise further.  They are spread across 31 countries, with some welcome new additions - I always love uploading a new flag to the website.

It's not just a numbers game though. I’ve been organising events marking Bi Visibility Day since the start in 1999 and the transformation in that time is huge. We are more talked about and more heard as bi people than ever before; yet also the challenges and particular needs of bisexuals have been thrown into sharper relief over that time.

Back then, bi was often seen as a kind of ‘gay lite’ with bis experiencing less impact from social homophobia, but research increasingly shows bi people have greater mental and physical health challenges than gay or straight people. We’re more likely to experience domestic violence from our partners, too. And just as there's a 'pay gap' between men and women, bi people on average earn less than their gay and straight friends.

So, far from the ‘best of both worlds’ cliche, the challenge of either persistently reasserting your bisexuality or having part of your life erased proves wearing for many bi people. Where lesbians and gay men have one closet to escape, many bi people find that leaving the one closet leads to being put in another.

Greater bisexual visibility is the best solution to that problem, so in the many many forms that this year's Bi Visibility Day events take I hope they will all be helping more bis find a space where they are neither in the ‘straight closet’ nor the gay one.

Thursday 20 September 2018

Reporting back on Cake

For anyone who was unable to attend the Liberal Democrat Friends of Cake Annual General Meeting last weekend, here are the notes the Underbaker circulated on Facebook a couple of days ago:


CONFERENCE POLICY IN FULL: at our AGM in Brighton, the following composited motion was passed reflecting the current values and direction of the party, including the proposed "friends of friends of someone who once met a Lib Dem at a train station and she seemed fairly nice" system of selecting party leader.

This AGM Notes:a) CAKE;
b) biscuits;
c) tarts;
d) pies and what have been termed "other sundry Liberal Carbohydrate groupings" by writers for the website Liberal Cakeocrat Voice;
e) that these now form the so-called "broad church" of Liberalism, despite many of them (and we mean the biscuits) coming from separate and fundamentally illiberal ideological traditions.


This AGM is Proud of our Record:
a) That the Old Age Pension was devised by the Liberal MP and part-time Prime Minister David Lloyd George after young Megan pressed him to ensure that our nation's elderly would be able to afford a nice bit of cake now and then.
b) That the NHS was invented by the Liberal MP William Beveridge to assist anyone who needed help in having their cake and eating it.

This AGM Believes:
a) In licking your finger and using it to pick the last crumbs up off the plate when no-one's looking, as first publicly proposed by John Stuart Mill to be the logical conclusion of Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism.
b) But that it was most likely Harriet Taylor's idea as she was a very sensible woman.

This AGM Recognises:
a) The fine tradition of Moist Liberalism on which this Party was built.
b) Our traditional membership system, which consists of sending a cake not less than six inches in diameter to the Treasurer annually, who brings any leftovers to executive meetings for the rest of the team to polish off.

This AGM is Deeply Troubled by:
a) The entryist Biscuitty Tendency, who have sought to annex the Jaffa Cake and redefine Liberalism from its Moist roots, and the implications this has for what will be on the menu at Betty's Tea Rooms at York Spring Conference.
b) The status of Brussels And European Friends Of French Fancies And Danish Pastries in a post-Brexit world, and whether it will still be entitled to send voting representatives to Federal Conference.
c) The Party Leadership's suggestion of a "friends of neighbours of close personal acquaintances of Friends Of Cake" supporter scheme, under which eating a cake without first offering the Executive a slice would still count as showing somehow adequate commitment to the cause, which to us is frankly about as convincing as the adding up in a Labservative Party manifesto, I mean CRUMBS.

This AGM resolves:
a) To put the kettle on and have a worry about it all over a cuppa and a lovely bit of velvet cake at the first opportunity.

Wednesday 19 September 2018

Interview-ette for Foundation

A little piece Foundation did with me about BiPhoria and Bi Visibility Day 2018...



How can people get involved with your services?
BiPhoria does lots of things all through the year – social spaces, sending speakers to events, running bi outreach and visibility stalls.  The best place to start is at our monthly “talky space” meetings which are at LGBT Foundation on the first Tuesday of each month at 7.30pm – so the next one is on Tuesday 2nd October. Or drop us a line on bis@biphoria.org.uk

What events are you holding this year for Bi visibility day?
By the time people read this we’ll have unveiled our bi visibility banner on Canal Street – on Sackville Gardens roughly opposite Via.  Go take a look! 
On Saturday 22nd we’ll be at LGBT Foundation from 12.30 having a chatter and making #StillBisexual videos – bring along your bi story to share! 
On the day itself – Sunday 23rd – we will be in Bolton running a street stall as part of Bolton Pride, and joining Salford Uni as part of their freshers week student programme.  And we’ll be all over social media about the date alongside the @bivisibilityday team.

What are your hopes for the day?
It’s the twentieth year and we’ve seen so much change in that time, including many more organisations and institutions marking the date as a part of bi inclusion and challenging biphobia – back in 1999 it was just BiPhoria! 
I hope the attendant publicity and things like the bi flags flying and Canal Street banner will prompt conversations that help bi people feel more able to be open about who they are and find one another, because invisibility and the resulting sense of isolation is one of our greatest challenges.
And that we remember our comparative visibility now is built on the work of generations of bi and LGBT+ activists who worked when things were so much more difficult.

Sunday 16 September 2018

The LGBTphobic Tory 'stalking horse'

With the party conferences season in full swing there is open plotting and rebellion in both the Conservative and Labour parties. Today an implausible MP has broken cover as a potential "stalking horse" on the Tory benches, offering to run against Theresa May for the party leadership should his colleagues back him.

George Freeman, a venture capitalist who became an MP in 2010, was a trenchant opponent of same-sex marriage. His opposition extended not just to opposing the right to marry but also that the Treasury should cover the minor costs of the legislative changeover.

Of course, research has confirmed in recent years what we knew all along - that discriminatory marriage laws have a huge impact on young LGBT people growing up.

So while his record signals George to be a supporter of higher rates of teen suicide and self harm we should remember that Theresa was a late convert - championing similar causes through laws like Section 28 up until the formation of the 2010 coalition government, when as Home Secretary she was persuaded of the case for same-sex marriage by junior minister Lynne Featherstone.

We can only hope that, if George's career suddenly acquires some momentum, there is a similar voice nearby to drag him towards the 21st century too.

Monday 10 September 2018

Anti-fascist surge in Sweden

The clickbait media narrative is all to predictable in this weekend's Swedish elections.

The fascists are up, and that it is by less than presaged doesn't matter: they "won the election" declares the internets. Funnily all those times I watched the Liberals come third in votes and seats here they never said that. 1997 wasn't "Ashdown sweeps to power", Roy Jenkins wasn't hailed the victor in '83. Clegg swept up 24% of the vote in 2010 and was declared a busted flush.

But no, from the same journalists as cheerled the BNP to their Euro-seats it's they have "doubled their vote at every election". Which is sad news, naturally, but also says they have started to stall and hit a glass ceiling as their vote rose by half rather than 100% this time around.

But while the fascists did well, you can't helpe but notice that there were almost the same number of seat gains for their diametric opposites.

It's the wishy-washy parties, the Swedish counterparts of our inbetweeny Jeremites, Lucaseenies and Maybottles, who lost ground.

Tuesday 24 July 2018

Changing Trains

Few coherent people entirely support the policies of just one political party and one of the Labour policies I warm to is the proposal to renationalise the railways.

Despite being old enough to remember how much worse they were before privatisation than they are now, the idea has deep emotional appeal.

Trains really don't make sense in a privatised-for-competition kind of a way: just like the water and sewage companies, it's all a bit peculiar.

Buses work out badly under competition but you can at least conceive that on the profitable routes at the busy time of day three or four operators can whisk a bus along a bit of road and compete on frequency, price or the like.

But trains can't so easily weave around one another. On the odd route where they can compete, the demand that you buy tickets before travel and while trying to crane your neck round to look at a departure board on the other side of the station from the ticket office to check whether you want this ticket or that ticket if you are to be able to board a timely train. But for most of us, rail competition is a work of fiction, as we have a monopolistic supplier for whatever commute or common trundle up the line to the big town we most often make.

But this is a bit of a heart versus head kind of a subject. And the more I think about it, the more I struggle with two things about renationalisation, even ignoring the potential impact on private pension provision and the like.

First - that I think most people cheering on the idea of rail nationalisation believe it will put an end to the ridiculous fares we pay in the UK.  "The rail companies make millions off of us!" goes the cry. 

The trouble is that's millions in profit from billions in turnover: take the profit out of the system and you free about 2% of the money involved.  With annual fare rises officially of the order of 3%-4% and actual fare rises* locally ranging between 10% and an outrageous 45% in recent years, 2% is not a lot to take out of the system. It's not even one year's worth of fare rises.

A fare freeze for a year and you've taken all the profit out of the system.  I think when the fare rises then go back to their usual painful pattern there would be a lot of public disappointment.

The second problem is taking rail investment into the hands of the government. There are two parties who mostly take turns having power in the UK - and to be blunt, one of them is about twice as effective at winning elections as the other.

Thinking about the agendas of recent Chancellors, do we want to go from the ongoing programme of new rolling stock being added to the network in the past twenty years to a situation where two years out of three there would be scant investment because public spending is "bad" and the rail unions bankroll the 'wrong' party?





* How do they keep getting away with this lie by the way? They claim 3% or the like in the headline figures but then every damn ticket gets rounded up by another 9p.

Monday 16 July 2018

Change for the better?

The Beeb have announced changes to political programming on TV. I wonder if they will be for the better?

Certainly, UK television needs better political reporting. Like our newspapers, even the bits that like to think of themselves as responsible grown-up reporting are frustratingly lazy and present a narrative that has its flaws and its sparkle but is crucially devoid of attention span. 

On the left, think back to when Clegg became the leader of the Liberals in 2007 and he announced his aim was to double the number of seats the party had. Never mind what became of that for now: nowhere was there any analysis of what that would actually mean for the party and for politics. A simple grasp of maths tells you that Liberal force with a quarter of the seats in the Commons rather than an eighth would have meant a hung parliament or one of the Establishment parties being deposed from their cosy duopoly. Exploration of what that might mean prior to May 2010: nil.

Moving our lens to the right, at the start of this decade when Ed Miliband became Labour leader and sought to capitalise on the wave of unpopularity of the increase in student tuition fees from £3500 to £6000-9000, the BBC lacked even enough attention span to challenge this with the fact that a few months earlier he had stood on a manifesto that promised to raise them to £15,000 a year and beyond.

And continuing on our rightward trajectory, the BNP were cheerled to popularity by a media that thought they were exciting, newsy and edgy and was happy to help them to a brace of MEPs, and that for UKIP did the same in spades. Society paid and will continue to pay a price for those things, but not the people who enabled it.

I am perhaps kidding myself but the rose-tinted memories of Brian Walden's forensic interview approach on Weekend World in the 80s would surely have had the kind of background reading done thoroughly that seems to be missing now.

It's not just a problem at the BBC, as we saw last year when Channel 4's homophobic news anchor was left to run riot despite the station's pretensions to liberal values. And as for Sky Fox News...

The Beeb are determined to cut expenditure. That's going to happen through cutting broadcast hours. Surely better to save through getting rid of the deadwood presenters. The airtime is all there in the digitally multiplexed broadcast world, after all.

A press release from Auntie promising a shift to a more "conversational, unstuffy approach" that has less screen time and drops the party conference season from the roster doesn't sound like one that will lead to the kind of paying attention we need from our political reportage class.  If anything the reverse. Go on, Beeb, prove me wrong.

Thursday 24 May 2018

Rid of it

It's an emotionally resonant date to mark but I probably can't improve on my summary of the Section 28 affair from two years ago here. But as we mark 30 years since Section 28 came in, worth remembering that it is also 15 and 18 years since it was got rid of, depending where you live. Yet its shadow lingered on - and as the current government drags its heels on reform of sex and relationship education for England that shadow gets to linger a little longer. And we have this bold parallel taking place around us as voices just like those that warned of the danger of allowing children to know that bi and gay people existed then, now warning of the horrors that will be unleashed if children get to know about gender diversity. I might just live long enough to see what the next stupid scare story is in thirty more years.

It was heartwarming to see the news from Wales yesterday where the Lib Dem / Labour coalition is striking out in the opposite direction from Section 28, giving young people age-appropriate information to give them information and skills around gender, sexuality, consent and bodily autonomy. I grew up in Wales at the height of clause mania and it is nigh impossible to imagine such things. Yet here we are: hurrah.

For Scotland, the clause went three years before the rest of the UK, reflecting how the Lib Dem / Labour coalition government there had different priorities from the Labour majority government at Westminster. One of the frustrations of the 2010-2015 Lib Dem / Tory coalition was that it was almost always critiqued against what had been before, rather than what would have happened had the Brown government won another term. That's a misleading prism to look at things through - a logic that would wind up with asking why the 1974 Labour government did so little to roll out broadband internet access to rural areas - but with the SNP running Scotland and Labour running Wales there was no easy and direct comparison. But with tuition fees, the evil clause and a smattering of other things, from 1999 we got a clear reflection of exactly what difference the Liberals were making compared to having a single party administration.

For the rest of us it took another three years, and I'd forgotten that when it was at last brought to an end by an amendment tabled by Ed Davey - one of those Liberal MPs who lost their seat in the big lurch right of 2015 but who is now back in parliament. There's a neat symmetry that both sides of the border it was kicked out by Liberals, as the only party to have opposed it in those early days of 87/88.

Monday 23 April 2018

Bi Erasure at the Beeb

Sadly little surprise that the BBC politics team is erasing bisexuality again.

It's over a decade since they were taken to task over reporting about another prominent left-wing bisexual MP, Simon Hughes, as John Pienaar declared that someone who had talked about having relationships with men and women was therefore gay. 

Expect a lot more of this as a retelling of the Thorpe saga is heading for TV screens (carefully timed, you note, for publicity just ahead of a round of elections).

There is a simple yet remarkable story that his career was ended by the demands of his ex, which spiralled out of control winding up with the bizarre dog shooting incident. Or there are the takes on it which reflect on how he was seen as a growing threat to the establishment in the UK and to the South African apartheid regime. Choose the level of conspiracy that suits your tastes.

Thorpe was - insofar as one can tell from much distance in time and social strata - a bisexual man whose life was shaped in an era where that had lots of social and legal implications. Like Nigel Farage, a great self-publicist, though with diametrically opposite views.

But as he seems to have had long happy relationships with women, erasing many years of marriage and other relationships away on a "just one man makes you completely gay" basis is below the standards of reporting we should expect from Auntie.

The "bi" part of the word bisexual gets falsely accused of meaning "2" from some quarters, but there are sadly still BBC journalists not capable of counting even that high.


(Not unique to the BBC, of course. Here in the Times for instance.)

Wednesday 14 March 2018

At last, the 2010 show

So in today's news the Daily Express front page cries out "AT LAST! TAX CUTS ON WAY!"

We have had chunky tax cuts every year since 2010. It started thanks to the Lib Dems (arguably thanks to one Liberal parliamentary candidate, who from what I recall didn't even take first or second place in her seat) and after five years of being grudgingly allowed by the Tories as part of the left-right coalition deal it had proved so popular that Cameron and May carried on with it in their starring roles as Prime Minister With A Plan To Properly Sink The Economy and Prime Minister Who Will Never Take A Walking Holiday In Wales Again.

Top journalism. I look forward to their upcoming feature on who the entrants might be in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest. As it's the Express they'll probably even let us know which song Princess Diana will be voting for.

Friday 9 March 2018

"Just a Phase"

This started as a comment on someone else's blog post but I feel like it's a big enough a Bi Thing to be worth a blog post of its own.

One of the things people say to us when we come out is "oh, you're just going through a phase". And it's a silencing thing, to get us to shut up about something they maybe don't like hearing or discussing. Or something they say just because it's the only thing they know as received wisdom about being bisexual and they haven't thought it through any further. Either way it's like being patted on the head and told to shush our silly little heads.

Now, one of the things we used to say and write on placards when I was first out and involved with my local bi youth group was "it's not a phase!"

Only I have to admit: sometimes it is. I've known people who for instance when I first met them were lesbians, had a time of identifying as bi, but these days if you asked them they'd most likely say they were straight. Other mixtures other ways round - straight to bi to straight again, or bi to lesbian to bi again, or all round the houses like the slow bus that stops everywhere in a loop round your town. For those of us who are trans that bus route can include identities as gay, bi and straight in several genders. Pokemon sexuality!
 
The thing is though: people who are bisexual for the whole of their lives are bisexual for the whole of their lives. People who are bisexual for only part of their lives are bisexual for that part of their life. And if you're "only" bi for months or years or decades, where your head and heart are at that time are totally real. Those crushes?  Real crushes.  Those kisses?  Real kisses.  Those orgasms?  Ho yus, And how. Ahem.  Where was I?

Dismissing it as "just a phase" so something that doesn't need to be taken as real? Well, being a teenager is a phase but it doesn't stop you being a mardy git for a few years. Being pregnant is a phase - a year from now you won't be! - but a plan of just ignoring it and pretending it's not happening isn't a good idea.

Some of us are bi the whole of our lives, while for some people it's a phase - yet if it's a phase so is whatever comes before and whatever comes after and no-one dismisses those as "just phases".

"It's just a phase"? 
"Well, maybe it will turn out to be a phase, but it's the truth about who and where I am right now."

Saturday 3 March 2018

#30

There'll be lots all over the internet today celebrating 30 years of the Lib Dems. I am struggling to use the computer just now so only a short blogpost to mark 30 years of the latest iteration of The Original Left Wing Party And Still The Best (copyright battle with Kelloggs' ongoing) to reflect on how I came to join.

Growing up where and when I did I got to see two things at once about politics growing up: the Tories are - collectively, with individual exception and all that - selfish venal people interested only in their own well-being and as a party with that of the people who bankroll them. Whereas Labour are - collectively, with individual exception and all that - selfish venal people interested only in their own well-being and as a party with that of the people who bankroll them.

The introduction of Section 28 - as supported by Labour and Tories alike and its repeal blocked repeatedly by both - made me move from "I am interested in politics" to "I will have to get involved then". Moving to England narrowed the choice down: having started to see the kneejerk transphobia in the Greens and with Plaid off the table both due to geography and my ongoing leftward drift, the Liberals were the only remaining option of note.

Then Paddy told Paxman to get the fuck out of here* on a Newsnight grilling about whether "lesbian and gay rights" was a popular cause ("we don't propose these things because they are popular, Jeremy, we do it because they are right") and - at last having just reached voting age - I was sold.

But it then took finding someone who gave me a bit of paper with how to join on for me to take that last vital step. It's much simpler these days, you just click here to get at the form.

I quit the party for a while in the mid 90s but had to come back in the end because - like in a cheap sci-fi alien invasion film with a wonky spaceship possessing an unreliable laser cannon and a steering column that wobbles all over the place at critical moments in the plot - for all of us at the bottom it's our last best hope against the relentless onslaught from above.


* he was a little more civil about it than that - though it would have made great telly...

Friday 23 February 2018

False flags

In America the latest (that I've heard of at the time of typing) school shooting feels like it has picked up a little more momentum in the calls for action afterwards; not least because of the bisexual boss of the school's Gay/Straight Alliance group and how her extensive use of the term "BS" while explaining how the US' gun laws look from the perspective of some of the groups most likely to be killed as a result of the NRA's diligent purchasing of politicians was an ideal clip for going viral.

Naturally there's a pushback with someone - possibly someseveral, but you know how it is with server farms full of fake social media accounts and people paid to work full time on them - claiming that the whole thing is a 'false flag' operation with no children really dead and paid actors working for shadowy organisations faking the entire thing to acheive political ends.

Maybe that's true! It's not. Of course it bloody isn't. If you think it is, go wash your head in a bucket of water, come back and think it over some more. But suppose this weren't another case of the lying liars who lie about such things telling porkie pies to try and have the most contorted conspiracy theory out of their entire gang.

Well, it's like climate change and the related proposals that we move from unsustainable stinky polluting life-shortening energy production to clean renewables really isn't it?

What if it is all a lie. Maybe if we took a few million guns out of circulation in the USA it would all be in response to some staged pretend disaster. Maybe the sea levels will be just the same whether we use wind turbines or coal power to keep the lights on.

Imagine how awful it would be to be living in a nicer, cleaner, safer world, all for no particular reason.

Decades from now you'd be kicking yourself as you sat in your retirement home, years after you would have otherwise been dead. 

Terrible.

Friday 12 January 2018

Strange Obsessions

The local paper reports a handful of danger-to-their-own-children type parents up in arms because Altrincham Grammar School for Girls has advised staff to call pupils "pupils", "students" or the like, rather than "girls".  The thinking being that it makes the place more accommodating for pupils who have been at the school for some time and then start to either question their gender identity or to come out as trans or enbee.

"But if they aren't girls, why do they want to go to a girls' school?" is the first silly question being knocked about. If you were starting out afresh as a prospective first year pupil and were male you'd be rather unlikely to apply, but if you are five years into your time at a school and about to sit your TGAUs, swapping schools and having to leave your friends and familiar spaces behind as well as dealing with your own gender vertigo may all be a bit much to cope with.

Persistent misgendering damages lives in many ways including those all-important-to-schools exam results, so it's in the school's enlightened self-interest to not have gender variant pupils under more stress than needs be the case.

It also has the fringe benefit of inculcating in the pupils a sense that they aren't "girls", the subtly belittling diminutive which gets used for women so much further into adult life than is the case for boys. So a bit of a boost for the cis kids too.

The other bloody stupid question being punted is: "but what shall they call the school?" This one carries on into extended drivel which boils down to:
"If it's now a school for girls and people who we thought were girls right up to the middle of their A levels and then found out we were wrong, and all of a sudden we've decided that people who are legally able to leave home and live independently, pay taxes, get married, have children or join the army and die in a war overseas are now also allowed to have an opinion as to what name they should be called, well, the sign on the front the school will have to be changed because PC Police."

I can't help but think that the schools I attended between 10 and 17 both had signs on the gates with "Saint" in them, and there was precious little in the way of saintly behaviour amongst the attendees be they staff or student. I suspect the students of AGSG will cope...

Tuesday 2 January 2018

2010 and 2017

2010: Lib Dems provide enough votes to let Tory PM have a majority.
Faux-Left Twitter: OMG Everything in the Liberals supposedly believe in must be delivered because they provide the extra 17 vital votes so clearly they must be able to dictate everything this government does and anything that happens was the Liberals' policy.

2017: DUP provide enough votes to let Tory PM have a majority.
Faux-Left Twitter: The DUP provide the extra 7 vital votes but must be allowed to dictate absolutely nothing, and this in no way goes against our previous stance.