Accountability

I'm posting this because I feel it's important, we've been failed by our government, a government that put the economy and money before the well-being of it's people, before their actual lives, and as such peoples lives have been destroyed and sadly many lives have been lost, made even sadder due to their avoidability, and that the ledger on the death toll is far from closed. What this guys says is true, it's what many of us have been thinking and saying for over a month now. When this is done the government must be held to account for their failures, none of this is on us, and we must ensure that we never find ourselves so unprepared and slow to act when a similar epidemic/pandemic develops...and it will, our current behaviours in both the human and natural world will ensure that.  As Michael Rapaport puts in his rather sweary tirade, and he's right, we have to survive and advance. Stay strong, stay safe, endure, as there's work to be done when the storm has passed.  

Protect Purbeck!

To me Purbeck is a magical landscape through which ancient voices echo, I hold it special, sacred. Purbeck is a rare and beautiful natural jewel, World Heritage Site and geological wonder, which for the most part has avoided the destruction of modern times. Now though it's under threat from oil prospectors, who plan to start exploratory drilling in the coming months. And, even though there is plenty of local opposition, and the continued pursuit of fossil fuels can only lead to accelerated climate change, those greedy hollow-men who stand to profit, wish to continue down that dark road and spoil our land. An exploration licence has been granted and the prospecting defilers plan to move in soon. In light of which a protection camp has been set up to what can be done to defend this beautiful land from desecration. 

Below is a link to the protection camp page, if you can and if you want to, please show them what ever support you can and that their actions to protect this beautiful environment are appreciated. If you pass that way you could pop in nd show them your support in person, I'm sure they'd like that. Thank you. 

Swanage Protection Camp

I support the NHS

The British NHS is amazing and the envy of much of the world, although successive governments have sought to undermine it, underfund it and implemented policies of creeping privatization to completely destroy it. We talk a lot here in Britain about our national pride, rule Britannia and all that guff. But when looked at it in a cold light there are very few things to be proud of: rising child poverty, spiraling homelessness, growing inequality, social care cutbacks, attacks on the poor and disabled. Are we 'really' proud of that? Of illegal conflicts, dodgey arms deals, corporate excess and exploitation, or our support for numerous despots. I'm not. But I am proud of our NHS, of a cradle to grave assurance of high quality free healthcare for all. The government want to take this from us, sell it off in chunks, just as they have our other public services and national assets. We're faced with a stark choice. The NHS, verses, the American style commercialized horror story of health care? Millions exluded from medical care. An NHS free at the point of use for everyone, inclusive and beautiful or a privatized system where if you can't pay you suffer or die, and even if you can pay, you'll be in hock for the rest of your lives. If you have to think about it there's something wrong with you. Support the NHS and its staff!

Anti austerity march in London

A day of two halves, of positives and negatives, uplifting and depressing in equal measure... equilibrium.  I'll try and balance both sides as I go along. Well, firstly there weren't as many participating as I'd have liked or hoped for.  That said, those who attended came from diverse organizations, were from across the country and were of various ages, genders and cultural backgrounds, representation was diverse; one aspect that I was particularly heartened by were the amount of young people who took part, it's often cited that young people are apathetic, and yes, many no doubt are, but maybe it's more that they've not had the opportunities or scope to participate and that decent is not condoned.  I was happy to see that there was more media coverage for this protest than usually given to the multitude of weekly demonstrations somewhere in the country and most of it quite fair, even generous when citing '250,000 protesters', there was no way that many people were there; though the mainstream media coverage still focused on the celebrities rather than the issues, that said, online coverage was very good and many of the celebrity speakers were great, Charlotte Church, Mark Steel and Jeremy Corbyn in particular, Natalie Bennett too was for more articulate in person than on radio or tv.  The Police, ones I saw anyway, acted with good humour, one even posing for a less than flattering photo with his ice cream. Many clearly understood who the enemy was and why the people were marching; front line officers weren't tooled up for war, the riot types were kept in back roads so not to insight no doubt, and you couldn't feel an overly oppressive ominous atmosphere which was refreshing, even the exploits of the Black/Red Flag types received the minimum of attention. There was a positive atmosphere with performers, music, some imaginative placards and general good spirits, it was uplifting to be with others of similar minds, knowing you're not alone in the fight, giving some glimmer of hope and maybe a chance of change; though I had to steel myself for the facts: hope can be a dangerous illusion and change is never easily won, I had to fight hard to keep my nihilism at bay. Still, on reflection I saw more to be positive about than negative, though I'm under no illusion that things are going to get a lot worse before, or if, any positive changes are to manifest. We need to engage in more protests whilst we still enjoy that right, show our dissent, we need to make the government fight for every policy they try to foist upon us; not only to stem their assaults on all we hold dear, but for our own sanity and dignity. This doesn't only have to be on mass rallies in capitols, more importantly it has to be locally, on local issues. If one thing has firmly established itself in my mind it's that the only chance we have to facilitate the changes we want to see, is by taking local actions is our best prospect and that's where hope will be kept alive and nurtured.