Sister Act

This week I got my hands on the hot ticket, Sister Act with Whoopi Goldberg, I and the girls enjoyed the show. It was bloody brilliant! I strongly recommend it, go and see it. I laughed my way through the whole thing.

As we left the theatre we passed a night club, next door to Palladium, where some clubbers were out for a fag. The girls, in their early twenties, were dressed in skimpy dresses and 6” stiletto heels. The boys on the other hand were dressed in baggy jeans and scrubby shoes! How fair is that on a scale of one to ten?
When I came to London I was surprised to realise that the F-word was bad, if you say you are a feminist, people look at you as you said you eat shit or kill people for a hobby! When I said that I am a feminist in a session at my rehab, I was told by the counsellor that I had extremist views! Bloody hell, feminism only means that you believe that men and women are equally worth. Oxford dictionary explain feminism as “the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes”. Not exactly extreme thinking, is it?
All humans are equally worth and should therefore have the same access to education, housing, pensions, pay, work and freedom to choose their lifestyle etc. The equal human rights are absolute, which means that each person’s individual worth stands above any religious or political opinions.

So sisters and brothers do not be afraid to use the f-word. Use it and be proud!

My sis sent me some photos from her last night out crayfishing, as you do in Sweden. Argh, how I long for the Swedish nature and the summer nights...

Abolish stoning!

Apparently, a woman in Iran is waiting to be stoned to death for adultery! I just can't believe that barbaric tradition is still going on in the 21st century. In 2008 I read an article, in the Metro (Oct 29 2008), called “Woman adulterer is stoned to death”. The article told about an execution of a woman that allegedly breached Islamic law in Somalia. To be stoned to death means that the woman’s feet and hands are tied up and then she is buried to her neck and then stoned to death. It's a savaged practice. You can read more about the Iranian woman, and what you can do to save her, by clicking on the link to the Iran Solidarity blog that I follow.

The scary thing is that people are trying to make sharia courts legal in the UK. The suggestion is that sharia courts should be given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases such as divorce, domestic violence and financial disputes, if both parties’ voluntary complies. However, the question is, given the practice of social control of women, can Muslim women really have a free choice around the sharia law, without being a victim of social exclusion or even worse, honour killing? I find it repulsive that a so-called democratic state might allow such practice within its borders. Who will defend the women who are forced to follow the sharia court against their will? Where is the democracy in that? Who will guard their human rights?
The fact that the idea of sharia laws has even been discussed in the parliament is astonishing. The fundamental base for an equal and democratic society is that there is only one law, equal to all. The thought that people could choose legal system according to individual preference is ridiculous.
Sharia law is not dealing with minor issues, it is about women’s human rights and that the same law for all is a democratic principle. Read more on the One Law for All website.

Blues

I have started to paint, using acrylic paint on canvas. I absolutely love it! Not too sure my friends do though since they have to live with my masterpieces on their walls. I tell them they will be valuable once I get famous and rich!

This week I had to go back to my young and handsome pharmacist again to measure out my third set of support stockings. He and I are quite good at measuring stockings now and he is the closest I get to physical intimacy. Talk about being desperate, looking forward to get “physical” with your pharmacist!

I am still waiting for things to turn around for the better and for my new life, after rehab, to materialise itself in front of my eyes. However, things are not quite moving forward as fast as I would like it to. Especially when it comes to my health.

I just can't get my head around the fact that I am pushing fifty; personally, I feel fourteen going on fifteen. Sadly my body does not!
I have now developed some arthritis in my hips and possibly fingers. Working the keyboard is painful and so is it trying to walk after sitting down for a while. I crouch, like a cavewoman, until my joints softens up and starts to work properly. I make me feel really old and infirm. Not to mention, unsexy. My biggest worry is that this will make me unable to shag, being unable to spread my legs.
I thought ageing was only about getting a few grey hairs and wrinkles. Nobody told me it is so bloody painful!

This week an old boyfriend of mine turned fifty one, blimey, it feel surreal. To me he is still twenty eight or something, as he was when we were together. Not some old geezer without hair. However, I don't know whether he has or has not lost his hair though since I have not seen him in seventeen years or so. Since he is an American and I am a Londoner, we only communicate via emails and the odd phone call. His voice still sounds the same though...

I did my first chair in an AA meeting and it went well. So maybe, after all, I am slowly changing and moving forward. A year ago, I would not have been able to talk for fifteen minutes in front of a room full of strangers and still feel confident about whom I am. Today I like myself. That is an achievement in its self. I am doing okay.

Tribunal

My friend Brenda moved into my house this week, hurray! Now we are in and out of each other’s flats several times a day. I can so see myself running in the staircases in my pyjamas and slippers with a tea cup in my hand. It’s only two doors down the corridor. I will try not to stalk her too much; Brenda might like some privacy...

I went to a Tribunal this week regarding my appeal against the department of Work and Pensions, Employment and Support Allowances (ESA). I was so nervous. In my head the people on the tribunal would be something similar to Stasi officers, with grim faces and suits. As I entered the room there were two cute old ladies at the table, looking like two grandmothers, smiling friendly at me. I won my appeal and the whole process took less than five minutes! I seriously have to stop worrying about silly things like tribunal hearings etc. Life is too short for that shit. To help me stop my obsessive worrying I am having CBT once a week. I am sure I will be cool as cucumber one day - Jah, Man!

On the way to the Tribunal I read the Metro (Tuesday 3 August 2010, page 15) and there was an article about ESA. The story told about a man that got his ESA support stopped two days after his brain surgery! ESA said he was fit to work despite the doctors saying differently. ESA is taking the piss!
I presume, the whole idea with ESA is to stop the benefit fraud in the UK. The state thinks that most people that say they are unable to work due to ill health are lying in order to live on the state. Mind you, ESA gives you 65.40/week and in London you can't survive on it. So it's not a particular cunning plan for the lazy benefit fraudsters.
I am pretty sure that you can find a fraudster or two amongst all the people claiming benefits, possibly even 10% of them. But that does not give the state the right to treat the other 90% as fraudsters! In a modern democracy you are presumed innocent until proven guilty, not so?

As I see it, ESA must be the most ineffective and costly Governmental department in the history of mankind. They have offices up and down the country with ESA officers, making decisions of the cases. They also have call centres, manned by a private company taking queries, not able to give you any answers, from the public. There are another private company that does the medical assessment of all applicants, which must be a goldmine for the company in question. This private company just ignore the medical assessments the applicants’ GPs already made (on the cost of NHS, which then becomes a waste of money since their judgement is ignored by ESA!).
Then there is a private company that does all the obligatory seven “Pathways to Work”- sessions you have to attend. Each meeting takes 30 minutes and is basically a chat about how you are and in practice completely pointless. Not to forget the cost of the new section within Home Office that has to process all applicants with foreign background to make sure they are legally in the country despite the fact that you have to show a passport and your immigration documents when you apply for the damn thing in the first place. If they don't believe the passport to be proof enough, why ask for it then?
The worst thing of it all is that ESA almost always refuse to allow the support on the grounds that the applicant get zero point on the medical assessment by the private company, this results in that everybody has to lodge an appeal against ESA, including myself. This can explain why it took ten months before I got my appeal hearing and why the waiting room at the tribunal was jam-packed with people!
All this money is wasted just to get the 10% benefit fraudsters in the country. It would probably be cheaper to just give the bloody £65.40/week to the few benefit fraudsters and spend the money saved on education or NHS!

The Politics of Eugenics

My sis was visiting me this week and we went to Tate Gallery and saw an exhibition, Photographic Typologies, by a German photographer called August Sander (1876-1964). Most of the pictures were from the 20-ies and 30-ies and a stalk reminder of the chilling obsession to typology people in to different categories that were so common during that era. I got a bad taste in my mouth as I looked at the different types of people, like 'unemployed' and 'idiots'. Sander’s son was a socialist and as a result he were imprisoned during Nazi Germany. I viewed Sander's photos as a political criticism of the Nazis.

The exhibition reminded me that we still haven't moved away from the stereotyping Nazi Germany was built on, the political eugenics.
In Sweden for example, the ruling party, Moderaterna, is talking about decreasing, Folkhälsotalet, the amount of people on sick benefit. The terminology Fredrik Reinfeldt uses brings my thoughts to the eugenics of the Nazi Germany.
People are forced to rely on sick benefits to survive because of ill health or unemployment, not because they have moral defects!
Fredrik Reinfeldt is making drastic cuts in the welfare state and building an unfair society similar to the poverty stricken societies Charles Dickens portrays in his books. Reinfeldt's politics is regressive and will bring Sweden back to 19th century.

The political climate in Tory’s England is also talking about the poor, sick and unemployed as being less worthy than the rich and respectable people. Cameron's solution to this problem is to get rid of the poor by excluding them from any assistance from the state welfare system. I guess he hopes the poor people will just drop dead and disappear so he can live in a new, and better, society cleaned up from trash and riff-raff. A society that only includes well educated, healthy and rich people. I guess the next stage is to put the poor in a pauper house or poor house so that they don’t walk around freely in the society and makes it ugly by their appearances. Cameron, like Fredrik, wants to bring UK back to 19th century.

I get so tired when I think about the global political climate. How quick people forget the history. Democracy and the welfare state grew from a hard political struggle. How can you give it up so easy?