Hello, rabid readers!
Recently, I have had some truly spiffing times, as Enid Blyton would say (incidentally I have discovered the awesome Famous Five parody Five Go Mad In Dorset - for someone who has read rather a lot of Blyton, it is very entertaining!) Anyway, I have gone off track. Yesterday was great because I took part in two very exciting demonstrations. The first was the big strike concerning the public sector that I talked about last week; the second was a fantastic demo outside the BBC building on Whiteladies Road in Bristol to complain about their bias in Israel's favour when reporting the Israel/Palestine conflict. And with regards to the second, I attended another event this evening, and will be working on the project again tomorrow. I will discuss all of this below.
First of all, the strike. I was out in the early morning outside Amelia Court in Bristol, picketing, selling Socialist Worker newspapers and gathering support. I have to say, to start out with I did not sell as many newspapers as I would have hoped, but by the time the rally actually started at 10.30 I was gathering a lot more interest. I think it was because at that point I had the 'Stand Up To UKIP' petition to generate interest. It's actually a lot easier to sell newspapers if you have a petition or something else to engage someone. If you approach people on the street and say, 'Excuse me, would you like to buy a newspaper?' a lot of the time people are saying no before they even find out what you're selling. If you have a petition, you can say, 'Would you like to sign my petition?', you can get them talking about that for a while and at the end say, 'By the way, would you like a newspaper? They're only £1.' Getting signatures is more important than selling newspapers anyway. As I was saying, the one I was publicising yesterday was to get people from every party to say no to UKIP. I think that a lot of the mainstream parties are channelling UKIP's ideals now, as they have proven to be such a force to be reckoned with. It was quite comical actually, because quite a lot of the time people started to walk past me, only to double back when they found out what the petition was for!
Another thing that came up a lot was that people said that they are part of other political parties that the Socialist Workers. This made me question my own values quite a lot. Over the last year or so, I have been very supportive of the Socialist Workers - I have been to a lot of their meetings in Bristol, sold their newspapers and been actively involved in their campaigns. However, this does not mean that I consider myself to be a part of the Socialist Worker party, not that I have anything against it - as a matter of fact most of the things that I have seen about it so far has been very positive - but because my stance as a political activist is that I must remain entirely independent, and therefore I will not be loyal to any party. I support the Socialist Workers in their campaigns because so far their campaigns have tended to be things that I would support anyway, and they are a platform from which I can keep myself informed about things and work with people in order to help the situation. It is difficult to make a difference on your own, and in this sort of work keeping contacts is crucial in order to move forward. So I respect the Socialist Workers, in the same way that I respect some other parties such as the Green Party, and I will continue to support their campaigns for as long as their campaigns are about things that I personally agree with. If I'm collecting signatures and someone says that they are hesitant because they don't really like the Socialist Workers or they belong to a different party, I say that generally I don't think that the person who created it matters so much as the issue that we are fighting for. If the Conservative Party or UKIP created a petition for something that I actually agreed with, of course I'd sign it, despite my general feelings towards those bodies.
Now to discuss Israel/Palestine. Recently I have found that a lot of my news feed on social media sites has been taken up by people complaining about the BBC's reporting of the conflict, saying that they are entirely biased in favour of Israel. I don't personally watch the news very much as I source much of my information about current events from the Internet, but I am aware from personal friends and colleagues of mine that in this situation, Israel is a lot less innocent than the mainstream media makes it out to be. Two days ago, I was called to an emergency three-day demonstration outside the BBC to protest about the way in which the news portrays Palestine in an overwhelmingly negative light and Israel in a generally much more positive one. Personally I am very much on Palestine's side in this, as I believe anyone who actually knew the facts would be - I used to be a lot more neutral about things, but having spoken to people who were a lot more informed than I am, I have been made aware that Palestine are very much the victims here. This is rightfully their land, and whilst I do not personally have any issues with Israeli people being there on principle (just as I do not object to people of any nationality being anywhere), it is quite clear that the state of Israel is the instigator of all of the violence, and that any violence that comes from Palestine in response is a proportionate reaction.
Yesterday, I arrived and there were about forty or fifty people there. We led some fantastic chants, we got a lot of support from passers-by and I really hope that the BBC sit up and take notice. It culminated in us raising two Palestine flags right above Broadcasting House, which I thought looked amazing! It certainly upset someone at the BBC, who shouted 'Can you take it down please?' from a window, but of course no one paid attention. It was naturally gone by today, but frankly I would have been astounded (but delighted of course) had they left it up.
Today, it was even more successful. We had an even better turnout than yesterday, and I feel a lot more enthusiasm for what we were doing. I led a lot of chanting, and quite a lot of people made speeches - we had an open microphone, so anyone who wished to could talk to the group. I also read out a list of the 98 people that have been killed in Palestine since Tuesday, and their ages when they had been compiled - I'm sure that I mispronounced a lot of the names, but I did the best I could and I feel that the message had come across. At the end of it, I revealed that since the list had been submitted, there had been 9 more deaths - I am sure that there will have been more by the time I have written this blog. There was a lot of emotion involved, but also a lot of optimism and team spirit which is marvellous. We received so much positivity from passers-by, I think the BBC were listening and it really felt like we were getting somewhere. There is another event tomorrow, where we are protesting against supermarkets selling products that are either made in Israel or in Gaza under apartheid rule.
I am so proud of everyone who has attended any of the events that I have talked about here, but in particular the Palestine demonstrations as this is something that I am particularly passionate about at the moment. I will blog again soon about the next event, and about any other political projects that I work on.
Take care, readers!
Friday 11 July 2014
Friday 4 July 2014
TTIP resistance and Henry Miller
Hi everyone
As I'm sure many of my readers will know, at the moment the door is open for something called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which will allow corporations to sue elected Governments for decisions which affect their profits. This is obviously an appalling idea, and I have talked about it in the past. There is currently consultation available about this, but it closes within the next day or so. On the off-chance that anyone sees this who has not yet responded, please do immediately.
http://action.sumofus.org/a/ttip-comments/3/2/?akid=6025.1153623.ar134p&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=1
Just click on the link, enter your details and your comment. All of the text on the left will explain more about it. I won't go into it here, because I have discussed it in the past and the website explains it all anyway. But please be assured that this could be a terrible onslaught on British democracy, and I strongly urge anyone to do whatever they can to prevent it.
Now that that is out of the way, I want to move on to Henry Miller. Now, two months ago Henry Miller made international headlines - he was a 19-year-old gap year student who took a substance called ayahuasca whilst holidaying in Colombia, had a very severe reaction and tragically died as a result. This was a very big news story and many people know that I went to sixth form with Henry. I knew him, not especially well, but I spoke to him a few times and he was always pleasant and friendly, we were friends on Facebook and we have quite a lot of close friends in common with one another, so despite the fact that I did not know him especially well, I was deeply saddened by his death and this has been on my mind for a while.
I had considered writing a blog about Henry's death, but I never have until now because I don't feel that there is anything really that I can say that has not already been said. I didn't know him well enough to comment on him personally save for saying that he was always polite to me, and anything else I think has already been said on other media. I am writing this blog to clarify something about Henry's death that has not been reported in the news at all. I obtained this information from a personal source, and I feel that it should have been reported, but by the time it came to light, Henry was yesterday's news.
I was recently informed that Henry Miller died purely because of an allergic reaction to the ingredient in the ayahuasca that he took. This is something that the post-mortem revealed. I think it's important for this to be recognised, because a lot of the comments on various forums suggest that Henry was foolish and stupid, and that whilst it's a sad occurrence he got what was coming to him. The fact is that ayahuasca has very spiritual properties and prior to Henry, there was very little information on it causing harm to anyone, so I feel that these comments are very unfair. Not that I can blame the people who made them, because the news media suggested that it was something that could have been predicted, and the results of the post-mortem were not reported. I am writing this blog because I feel strongly that in these situations, the full story needs to be told so that people do not misinterpret what happened. I don't expect this blog to change very much because I don't get a huge readership (although hopefully it is increasing) but if it changes the opinion of one person, it is in my opinion worth it.
I will just say one more thing. Another thing that I found out is that the news media have been very intrusive towards Henry's family, and have employed tactics which involve secretly approaching his house and hiding in the area watching and listening to things that people are saying. Personally, I think that this is an absolute disgrace. No one should employ tactics like that, and especially not on people who are grieving for their loved one. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is a way to legally prevent this from happening without it being abused - freedom of the press is very important, and I think that any attempt to regulate them will ultimately lead to the truth not being told in a political context. On the whole, I think it is best to allow the press to do what they like. But I would hope that journalists would use their professional integrity and personal sense of human empathy not to do that sort of thing. It is absolutely disgraceful, it hurts people and I think it is generally very unfair.
Anyway, that's all for now. I haven't written as much as I usually do, but then I didn't really intend to. I just had a few subjects that I wished to speak about. I will write more soon.
As I'm sure many of my readers will know, at the moment the door is open for something called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which will allow corporations to sue elected Governments for decisions which affect their profits. This is obviously an appalling idea, and I have talked about it in the past. There is currently consultation available about this, but it closes within the next day or so. On the off-chance that anyone sees this who has not yet responded, please do immediately.
http://action.sumofus.org/a/ttip-comments/3/2/?akid=6025.1153623.ar134p&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=1
Just click on the link, enter your details and your comment. All of the text on the left will explain more about it. I won't go into it here, because I have discussed it in the past and the website explains it all anyway. But please be assured that this could be a terrible onslaught on British democracy, and I strongly urge anyone to do whatever they can to prevent it.
Now that that is out of the way, I want to move on to Henry Miller. Now, two months ago Henry Miller made international headlines - he was a 19-year-old gap year student who took a substance called ayahuasca whilst holidaying in Colombia, had a very severe reaction and tragically died as a result. This was a very big news story and many people know that I went to sixth form with Henry. I knew him, not especially well, but I spoke to him a few times and he was always pleasant and friendly, we were friends on Facebook and we have quite a lot of close friends in common with one another, so despite the fact that I did not know him especially well, I was deeply saddened by his death and this has been on my mind for a while.
I had considered writing a blog about Henry's death, but I never have until now because I don't feel that there is anything really that I can say that has not already been said. I didn't know him well enough to comment on him personally save for saying that he was always polite to me, and anything else I think has already been said on other media. I am writing this blog to clarify something about Henry's death that has not been reported in the news at all. I obtained this information from a personal source, and I feel that it should have been reported, but by the time it came to light, Henry was yesterday's news.
I was recently informed that Henry Miller died purely because of an allergic reaction to the ingredient in the ayahuasca that he took. This is something that the post-mortem revealed. I think it's important for this to be recognised, because a lot of the comments on various forums suggest that Henry was foolish and stupid, and that whilst it's a sad occurrence he got what was coming to him. The fact is that ayahuasca has very spiritual properties and prior to Henry, there was very little information on it causing harm to anyone, so I feel that these comments are very unfair. Not that I can blame the people who made them, because the news media suggested that it was something that could have been predicted, and the results of the post-mortem were not reported. I am writing this blog because I feel strongly that in these situations, the full story needs to be told so that people do not misinterpret what happened. I don't expect this blog to change very much because I don't get a huge readership (although hopefully it is increasing) but if it changes the opinion of one person, it is in my opinion worth it.
I will just say one more thing. Another thing that I found out is that the news media have been very intrusive towards Henry's family, and have employed tactics which involve secretly approaching his house and hiding in the area watching and listening to things that people are saying. Personally, I think that this is an absolute disgrace. No one should employ tactics like that, and especially not on people who are grieving for their loved one. Unfortunately, I don't think that there is a way to legally prevent this from happening without it being abused - freedom of the press is very important, and I think that any attempt to regulate them will ultimately lead to the truth not being told in a political context. On the whole, I think it is best to allow the press to do what they like. But I would hope that journalists would use their professional integrity and personal sense of human empathy not to do that sort of thing. It is absolutely disgraceful, it hurts people and I think it is generally very unfair.
Anyway, that's all for now. I haven't written as much as I usually do, but then I didn't really intend to. I just had a few subjects that I wished to speak about. I will write more soon.
Thursday 3 July 2014
Preparing for revolution
'If you're feeling low, stuck in some bardo, I, even I, know the solution: love, music, wine and revolution.'
Stephin Merritt in the song World Love from the album 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields
Hello! I thought I'd start off with that quote from one of my favourite songs (will put a link at the bottom of this blog) as I thought it was appropriate, because today I have been preparing for revolution. On 10 July 2014 there will be a huge strike by numerous people who work in the public sector across the country. I myself am rather independent and do not have a union or anything active to strike against, but naturally I very much support the work that is done in the public sector, I will be attending the demonstration and I entirely condemn any suggestion of pay cuts, pension restrictions and any other measure which is harming the lives and wellbeing of those who provide the vital services that our present Government is privatising in back rooms. In this blog, I will discuss the events that I have taken part in today, talk a bit about some of the people I have met and listened to and possibly go a little into my own interpretation on things.
My action concerning this has really taken two forms. Firstly, this morning I stood opposite Bristol Royal Infirmary with a petition to raise awareness of the strike, encouraging people to sign and show support and hopefully leave their contact details if they are interested in taking part. I cannot say I achieved a huge number of signatures, but I think I collected a reasonable amount for the amount of time I was there - the petition drive was wrapped up quite quickly so I did not get as many as I would have liked, but I think I did raise some awareness. One woman in particular really intrigued me by saying that she actually supports the cause and is a member of the Socialist Party, but was in two minds about whether or not to sign because she does not feel that striking is the way to go about making a difference. Her approach is more concerned with discussion and negotiation. This interested me in particular because that is exactly my stance when discussing whether it is ever ethical to go to war. I am very anti-military, and I think that negotiation is a far preferable approach than bombing or sending drones. If someone says that that isn't feasible because people won't listen, I say that it is down to those in power to make them listen. Having said that, I support striking if work or pay conditions are not being met. I wonder why that is? I must confess that I have never really considered the two standards before. My argument in favour of striking is exactly the one that I counter when discussing war - that the powers that be are actually not prepared to listen, so sometimes a strike is necessary for the greater good. I suppose I think of striking as being a less drastic measure than going to war, but now that I have considered the two, I hope that as I grow older I do not become cynical enough about such things that I will ever condone war, because I think that that is immoral. Anyway, I think I have possibly gone slightly off-topic there. Ultimately, the lady in question did sign the petition, as did many other people, which I very much appreciate.
The other relevant thing that I did today was attending a planning session for the rally next week. At this event, numerous people tuned up at the Create Centre in Bristol to listen and contribute; these people represented various unions around Bristol and the surrounding areas such as South Wales, as well as independent people who just wish to get their voices heard and to make a difference to this world, such as myself. There were five key speakers whose speeches I shall comment on a little below, and then guests were allowed to speak. I did not contribute anything myself, partly because we were very pushed for time and partly because I did not feel that there was anything that I could say which had not been said. I did not take written notes, as I do not usually do that at this sort of event; I find that notes are more effective when taken mentally, as to me at least, anything written down tends to look a bit out-of-place afterwards, and hard to put in a sentence. I must stress that it is impossible for me to sum up everything that the principle speakers said; I will comment on the things that stand out, but I am not physically able to express their sentiments in quite the way that they did. I will also post links to the blogs of all of the bodies which these people represent.
The first speaker was Steve Timmins of Protect Our NHS. I had spoken to Steve a little before the meeting began, and I found him an intriguing and politically and morally aware individual. In his speech, Steve talked about how the Protect Our NHS campaign started through 38 Degrees in 2012, how confusing the changes that are currently being made to it are and how it needs to be protected or else we will lose what we have. I have done a lot of work in the past for the Save The NHS campaign, including two invisible theatre spoofs, one in which I played the embodiment of the NHS being wheeled from an ambulance, and one in which I played a junior manager at Virgin called Dick Price, involved with publicising healthcare services that Virgin would be offering post-privatisation.
The next speaker was Jim Delaney from Lambeth College. If I remember correctly, he talked about raising awareness of the rally, as many companies within the public sector have not been balloted about it. (If that was someone else who said that I apologise - it was definitely brought up and I think it was during Jim's speech, but it could have been a different one.) I find Jim's to be one that I cannot recall as much about as some of the others - I have no idea why, it has no reflection on Jim Delaney's speaking abilities or the subject of his discussion, it just did not resound as personally with me as some of the others.
Third to speak was Anne Lemon of National Union of Teachers (NUT). Anne was another one that I spoke to before the meeting - I helped her set the chairs up! - and I was very impressed by her speech. Anne spoke passionately about the plight of teachers today, which is something that I can entirely understand, it being not so long since I was in the education system myself. She discussed how a lot of schools, particularly those in more working-class areas, are getting barely any applicants for jobs, because of shortages of teachers due to many new student teachers dropping out of the system within the first five years. The Government says that this is due to unruly children, which not even going into how insulting that is to people of my generation and slightly younger, is entirely incorrect. The real reasons are to do with payment, retirement ages and targets. In the past, teachers could retire at 60 with great pensions, which naturally attracted many people to the job. Now, teachers retire at 68. Naturally, it will be hard for a teacher of that age to have the same amount of energy and charisma in the classroom, so many will be laid off long before that, but they will still not be able to access their pension until 68. Also, head teachers are free to pay teachers according to their own systems, and many are assessed on performance and targets. Anne discussed how some teachers have a certain number of classes per week observed, and if it does not reach 'good' or 'outstanding' (in short, if anything at all goes wrong, which anyone who has ever been in a classroom knows can happen to the most fantastic teacher) they are not performing up to standard, which is of course extremely stressful and leads to teachers doing a worse job as a result. I myself happen to have a friend who was training to be a teacher and left because of the immense stress that he was put under, and I think that is an absolute disgrace. Not to mention teaching assistants, who are in my opinion the unsung heroes of our society - even more so than teachers really, as they are the ones who will work with the students who are having more problems with certain things and help them overcome any learning difficulties that they have. I think that they could certainly do with more appreciation. (I actually feel a little bit awkward that I remember this much about Anne's speech compared with how little I remember about Jim's! I think education is just something I am extremely passionate about, and Anne's speech touched a very personal note with me.)
Steve Preddy of Unite the Union was the fourth person to speak. He talked some more about the NHS and other bodies affected which are striking. He also touched on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). I talked about this in my blog of 30 March this year (http://actorandpoliticalactivist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lord-kitchener-edith-cavell-and-ttip.html); it is something that I have signed numerous petitions against, and I would encourage others to do the same, if they would. Steve said that if this goes ahead, our NHS will be gone forever as it would open the door for parts of it to be involved in international trade agreements, and no future Government would be able to prevent this from happening. Whilst I am sure that Steve is more informed than I am on this issue, I'm not sure that it could never be prevented in the future, as I think that anything can potentially be made law if someone powerful enough wants it to me. However, that's a moot point, and I'm sure we can all agree that none of us want this to happen in the first place, so that is definitely something that we should include in our campaign.
The final speaker was Huw Williams of UNISON South Gloucestershire. This was undoubtedly the most engaging speech of the night. It was very much a speech of encouragement and motivation, and I felt that Huw did a sterling job on this. The overall points were that we need to get out there, force the Government to back down, and that this needs to be the start of something, not a one-off. Next week's event will hopefully be massive, but ultimately it won't be successful if it stands on its own. Beyond it, there need to be more strikes, more protests and ultimately we will have control. I probably cannot express it quite as well as Huw did, but I think that his words echo a notion that I have been feeling and expressing for some time, in that progress can be made if only people remember that and make an effort to make it. Going back to how I felt when I started getting involved in this sort of work, I realised quickly that people will only protest if they feel that progress is happening quickly, and if it feels futile, they will stop and the group mentality will be lost. Of course, that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, for it is thinking that way that prevents progress from being made. If it is something that I care about and am passionate about, I will continue to fight for it even when all seems lost. That is how political and social progress gets made. Nothing happens overnight; it takes time and persistence to achieve these things, and if people don't have that motivation to work over an extended period of time, nothing is going to get better.
There was a little more discussion beyond this, including a mention of how if Labour win next year things probably will not change a huge amount, but I think that that is something for another time. I'd like this blog to focus primarily on the rally next week. I don't know a huge amount about what is happening nationally, but the Bristol one will start outside City Hall (the new name for the Council House) and be moving in a circular direction. (I believe it starts at 10.30, but I'm not sure on that - I may have to get someone to clarify that.) I'd advise anyone who is around to come, and to publicise it as much as they physically can. It's a fantastic cause to get involved with, something which will affect each and every one of us.
Before I sign off, there is one comment that came up that I'd really like to talk about. I believe it was either Jim Delaney or Steve Preddy who commented that it is very motivating for young people to take part in a march like this. That really struck a chord with me, because I can personally identify. I'm 20 years old, which is unusually young for someone to be this involved with political and social change projects; a lot of my peer group are neither as informed nor as involved as I am, and I am very used to attending events where I am clearly the youngest person there (I think I was tonight, in fact) and people come across as a little surprised that someone as young as I am is this passionate and this opinionated about things. I think back to how I started all this. I was 17 years old, just starting my A-levels, not really any more politically aware than anyone else my age, and someone asked me if I wanted to come to the student demonstrations with them, and I just agreed because everyone was going and it sounded like fun. At that first demonstration on 24 November 2010, it suddenly struck me how much I cared about what we were doing, and how angry I really felt about being screwed over by the new coalition Government. I realised, then and there, that I wanted to be a political activist, to have my say in this world and to change things for the better. Of course, after the fuss around that died down, my friends just went back to their lives. But I continued to get involved in whatever projects I could, I soon started this blog, I met and talked to relevant people and I did a lot of informing myself about the various issues going on in the world today. It all started with that one demo, and it is really quite surreal to think about how much that changed the course of my life. I think it changed my life for the better, and I would encourage anyone to get involved with these kinds of things. It may feel sometimes like nothing is changing - and you know, if nothing changes the only person you can blame is you for not making them change. Anyone can make a difference. I wish more people would remember that.
Okay, now I have a few links to post.
Protect Our NHS: http://protectournhs.wordpress.com/
Lambeth College's position: http://lambethcollegestrike.wordpress.com/
Information from NUT's perspective: http://www.teachers.org.uk/campaigns/protect-teachers
Unite the Union: http://www.unitetheunion.org/
UNISON, South Gloucestershire: http://www.southglosunison.co.uk/
And, as promised, a link to the song I referenced at the start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE_5eI7g3Cg&feature=kp
Thanks for reading!
Stephin Merritt in the song World Love from the album 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields
Hello! I thought I'd start off with that quote from one of my favourite songs (will put a link at the bottom of this blog) as I thought it was appropriate, because today I have been preparing for revolution. On 10 July 2014 there will be a huge strike by numerous people who work in the public sector across the country. I myself am rather independent and do not have a union or anything active to strike against, but naturally I very much support the work that is done in the public sector, I will be attending the demonstration and I entirely condemn any suggestion of pay cuts, pension restrictions and any other measure which is harming the lives and wellbeing of those who provide the vital services that our present Government is privatising in back rooms. In this blog, I will discuss the events that I have taken part in today, talk a bit about some of the people I have met and listened to and possibly go a little into my own interpretation on things.
My action concerning this has really taken two forms. Firstly, this morning I stood opposite Bristol Royal Infirmary with a petition to raise awareness of the strike, encouraging people to sign and show support and hopefully leave their contact details if they are interested in taking part. I cannot say I achieved a huge number of signatures, but I think I collected a reasonable amount for the amount of time I was there - the petition drive was wrapped up quite quickly so I did not get as many as I would have liked, but I think I did raise some awareness. One woman in particular really intrigued me by saying that she actually supports the cause and is a member of the Socialist Party, but was in two minds about whether or not to sign because she does not feel that striking is the way to go about making a difference. Her approach is more concerned with discussion and negotiation. This interested me in particular because that is exactly my stance when discussing whether it is ever ethical to go to war. I am very anti-military, and I think that negotiation is a far preferable approach than bombing or sending drones. If someone says that that isn't feasible because people won't listen, I say that it is down to those in power to make them listen. Having said that, I support striking if work or pay conditions are not being met. I wonder why that is? I must confess that I have never really considered the two standards before. My argument in favour of striking is exactly the one that I counter when discussing war - that the powers that be are actually not prepared to listen, so sometimes a strike is necessary for the greater good. I suppose I think of striking as being a less drastic measure than going to war, but now that I have considered the two, I hope that as I grow older I do not become cynical enough about such things that I will ever condone war, because I think that that is immoral. Anyway, I think I have possibly gone slightly off-topic there. Ultimately, the lady in question did sign the petition, as did many other people, which I very much appreciate.
The other relevant thing that I did today was attending a planning session for the rally next week. At this event, numerous people tuned up at the Create Centre in Bristol to listen and contribute; these people represented various unions around Bristol and the surrounding areas such as South Wales, as well as independent people who just wish to get their voices heard and to make a difference to this world, such as myself. There were five key speakers whose speeches I shall comment on a little below, and then guests were allowed to speak. I did not contribute anything myself, partly because we were very pushed for time and partly because I did not feel that there was anything that I could say which had not been said. I did not take written notes, as I do not usually do that at this sort of event; I find that notes are more effective when taken mentally, as to me at least, anything written down tends to look a bit out-of-place afterwards, and hard to put in a sentence. I must stress that it is impossible for me to sum up everything that the principle speakers said; I will comment on the things that stand out, but I am not physically able to express their sentiments in quite the way that they did. I will also post links to the blogs of all of the bodies which these people represent.
The first speaker was Steve Timmins of Protect Our NHS. I had spoken to Steve a little before the meeting began, and I found him an intriguing and politically and morally aware individual. In his speech, Steve talked about how the Protect Our NHS campaign started through 38 Degrees in 2012, how confusing the changes that are currently being made to it are and how it needs to be protected or else we will lose what we have. I have done a lot of work in the past for the Save The NHS campaign, including two invisible theatre spoofs, one in which I played the embodiment of the NHS being wheeled from an ambulance, and one in which I played a junior manager at Virgin called Dick Price, involved with publicising healthcare services that Virgin would be offering post-privatisation.
The next speaker was Jim Delaney from Lambeth College. If I remember correctly, he talked about raising awareness of the rally, as many companies within the public sector have not been balloted about it. (If that was someone else who said that I apologise - it was definitely brought up and I think it was during Jim's speech, but it could have been a different one.) I find Jim's to be one that I cannot recall as much about as some of the others - I have no idea why, it has no reflection on Jim Delaney's speaking abilities or the subject of his discussion, it just did not resound as personally with me as some of the others.
Third to speak was Anne Lemon of National Union of Teachers (NUT). Anne was another one that I spoke to before the meeting - I helped her set the chairs up! - and I was very impressed by her speech. Anne spoke passionately about the plight of teachers today, which is something that I can entirely understand, it being not so long since I was in the education system myself. She discussed how a lot of schools, particularly those in more working-class areas, are getting barely any applicants for jobs, because of shortages of teachers due to many new student teachers dropping out of the system within the first five years. The Government says that this is due to unruly children, which not even going into how insulting that is to people of my generation and slightly younger, is entirely incorrect. The real reasons are to do with payment, retirement ages and targets. In the past, teachers could retire at 60 with great pensions, which naturally attracted many people to the job. Now, teachers retire at 68. Naturally, it will be hard for a teacher of that age to have the same amount of energy and charisma in the classroom, so many will be laid off long before that, but they will still not be able to access their pension until 68. Also, head teachers are free to pay teachers according to their own systems, and many are assessed on performance and targets. Anne discussed how some teachers have a certain number of classes per week observed, and if it does not reach 'good' or 'outstanding' (in short, if anything at all goes wrong, which anyone who has ever been in a classroom knows can happen to the most fantastic teacher) they are not performing up to standard, which is of course extremely stressful and leads to teachers doing a worse job as a result. I myself happen to have a friend who was training to be a teacher and left because of the immense stress that he was put under, and I think that is an absolute disgrace. Not to mention teaching assistants, who are in my opinion the unsung heroes of our society - even more so than teachers really, as they are the ones who will work with the students who are having more problems with certain things and help them overcome any learning difficulties that they have. I think that they could certainly do with more appreciation. (I actually feel a little bit awkward that I remember this much about Anne's speech compared with how little I remember about Jim's! I think education is just something I am extremely passionate about, and Anne's speech touched a very personal note with me.)
Steve Preddy of Unite the Union was the fourth person to speak. He talked some more about the NHS and other bodies affected which are striking. He also touched on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). I talked about this in my blog of 30 March this year (http://actorandpoliticalactivist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lord-kitchener-edith-cavell-and-ttip.html); it is something that I have signed numerous petitions against, and I would encourage others to do the same, if they would. Steve said that if this goes ahead, our NHS will be gone forever as it would open the door for parts of it to be involved in international trade agreements, and no future Government would be able to prevent this from happening. Whilst I am sure that Steve is more informed than I am on this issue, I'm not sure that it could never be prevented in the future, as I think that anything can potentially be made law if someone powerful enough wants it to me. However, that's a moot point, and I'm sure we can all agree that none of us want this to happen in the first place, so that is definitely something that we should include in our campaign.
The final speaker was Huw Williams of UNISON South Gloucestershire. This was undoubtedly the most engaging speech of the night. It was very much a speech of encouragement and motivation, and I felt that Huw did a sterling job on this. The overall points were that we need to get out there, force the Government to back down, and that this needs to be the start of something, not a one-off. Next week's event will hopefully be massive, but ultimately it won't be successful if it stands on its own. Beyond it, there need to be more strikes, more protests and ultimately we will have control. I probably cannot express it quite as well as Huw did, but I think that his words echo a notion that I have been feeling and expressing for some time, in that progress can be made if only people remember that and make an effort to make it. Going back to how I felt when I started getting involved in this sort of work, I realised quickly that people will only protest if they feel that progress is happening quickly, and if it feels futile, they will stop and the group mentality will be lost. Of course, that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, for it is thinking that way that prevents progress from being made. If it is something that I care about and am passionate about, I will continue to fight for it even when all seems lost. That is how political and social progress gets made. Nothing happens overnight; it takes time and persistence to achieve these things, and if people don't have that motivation to work over an extended period of time, nothing is going to get better.
There was a little more discussion beyond this, including a mention of how if Labour win next year things probably will not change a huge amount, but I think that that is something for another time. I'd like this blog to focus primarily on the rally next week. I don't know a huge amount about what is happening nationally, but the Bristol one will start outside City Hall (the new name for the Council House) and be moving in a circular direction. (I believe it starts at 10.30, but I'm not sure on that - I may have to get someone to clarify that.) I'd advise anyone who is around to come, and to publicise it as much as they physically can. It's a fantastic cause to get involved with, something which will affect each and every one of us.
Before I sign off, there is one comment that came up that I'd really like to talk about. I believe it was either Jim Delaney or Steve Preddy who commented that it is very motivating for young people to take part in a march like this. That really struck a chord with me, because I can personally identify. I'm 20 years old, which is unusually young for someone to be this involved with political and social change projects; a lot of my peer group are neither as informed nor as involved as I am, and I am very used to attending events where I am clearly the youngest person there (I think I was tonight, in fact) and people come across as a little surprised that someone as young as I am is this passionate and this opinionated about things. I think back to how I started all this. I was 17 years old, just starting my A-levels, not really any more politically aware than anyone else my age, and someone asked me if I wanted to come to the student demonstrations with them, and I just agreed because everyone was going and it sounded like fun. At that first demonstration on 24 November 2010, it suddenly struck me how much I cared about what we were doing, and how angry I really felt about being screwed over by the new coalition Government. I realised, then and there, that I wanted to be a political activist, to have my say in this world and to change things for the better. Of course, after the fuss around that died down, my friends just went back to their lives. But I continued to get involved in whatever projects I could, I soon started this blog, I met and talked to relevant people and I did a lot of informing myself about the various issues going on in the world today. It all started with that one demo, and it is really quite surreal to think about how much that changed the course of my life. I think it changed my life for the better, and I would encourage anyone to get involved with these kinds of things. It may feel sometimes like nothing is changing - and you know, if nothing changes the only person you can blame is you for not making them change. Anyone can make a difference. I wish more people would remember that.
Okay, now I have a few links to post.
Protect Our NHS: http://protectournhs.wordpress.com/
Lambeth College's position: http://lambethcollegestrike.wordpress.com/
Information from NUT's perspective: http://www.teachers.org.uk/campaigns/protect-teachers
Unite the Union: http://www.unitetheunion.org/
UNISON, South Gloucestershire: http://www.southglosunison.co.uk/
And, as promised, a link to the song I referenced at the start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE_5eI7g3Cg&feature=kp
Thanks for reading!
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