The Thessaliad Redux

I ganked this from redstapler's journal. Keith Olbermann is more or less awesome, anyway, but this got to the heart of things in a way I couldn't, and I thought as many people as possible should see it.

Okay, Gobama, yeah, yeah. Except.

WTF, California?!?!?*

I live in a country where one can be accosted in a pub toilet by a drunken BNP reject and lambasted about not wanting "some fucking coon" in the White House, and we allow same-sex marriages. So did you, not so long ago. Were heterosexual marriages damaged in any way? Did anything about your life change all that much just because two people of the same gender who love each other decided they wanted to make a lifelong commitment to each other? Really? Seriously? Because I don't fucking well see how. And yet you voted to make the lives of people who have done nothing wrong just a little bit harder.

Congratu-fucking-lations. You're arsehats.

Here's a news flash, people. IT CANNOT HURT YOU JUST BY EXISTING! Fine, you have morals and you are welcome to them, but foisting them on other people just because you feel that it's OMGTEHAWFUL is NOT ON. It is not your job to dictate who people can love, who they can have sex with and who they can marry. No, it isn't, fuck off! It does no harm to you! It does not threaten your marriage, or the marriage of any heterosexual couple that wants to go that way! Same-sex marriage is not a threat! And you can't force people to 'go straight' just by restricting their rights to be a couple in the eyes of the law! Gods, when the UK allowed gay marriage, there was a news blurb about a male-male couple that stayed together when the very act of being with another man was illegal; do you think you're going to stop people from being with the one they love just by passing a couple of bigoted laws on the matter? Dream. The fuck. On.

And so what does this achieve? It just makes life harder for decent people who aren't hurting anyone? Why does an idea offend people so much that they feel they have to prevent it? I'm so fed up with this concept of, "If I don't like it, it has to not exist". If there's a concept of law that isn't hurting you or anyone else ... fucking well ignore it!!! You won't even know it's there, you know!

Thanks, California, for renewing my faith in humanity only to shatter it into a million jagged pieces in the span of a single day.

* - by California, I do not mean beepbeep, happypickle, nightskywarlock, msgeek, dburr, mer_moon or any of the other sane people I know there. I mean the rest of you. The ones who voted for STUPID.

I am lucky. I have been lucky for a very long time. Why? Because I have lived almost all of my life in countries with nationalised healthcare.

It's not perfect, I grant. I need to go to the dentist but can't actually afford to. I'm reliant on my mother to keep my glasses prescription current. However, I know enough to be grateful. Grateful that, when I was four and got hit in the nose with a wooden swing, my single working mother didn't have to worry about insurance issues and all of that stuff - her focus was on my health and well-being, not the guilt of having to wonder, "What is all this going to cost?" Grateful that I can go to my GP whenever I need to without worrying about what it's going to cost me and, the next time I have the time spare to explain that my migraines are not going away and the features are starting to worry me, I can push for a neurology referral and not worry about what a specialist is going to charge. I don't panic about copays and what'll happen if I or my friends get sick or injured.

...Well, except I do, because a lot of my friends live in the US. Some of them have medical insurance of some description. Some don't, and I worry about them. Particularly beepbeep, who has lupus and whose state government will stop paying her Medicare Part B premiums in about two months.

I've had a lot of rants over the months and years, but I can't rant about this yet. I'm too worried and scared for my friend. I grant I don't talk to her in real time much these days, but the fact remains is that she is one of the sweetest people I know and I do not want her to die of greed and stupid. But I can't do anything about it, because I can't afford to pitch in financially and I'm not eligible to vote in the US and thus cannot have my voice heard that way. And I have this niggly sort of conscience-based logic-voice telling me that killing the person responsible wouldn't actually solve anything because paper covers rock and I don't like making martyrs. But I'm as angry as I am scared and sad, and that's always a bad combination.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go back to work. I'm going to type up the rest of this tape until my lunch break rolls around. Then I am going to take my lunch break, and during said lunch break I am going to sit and consider whether there is anything I can do. I'm sick of reading about someone I care about not being able to care for herself when she's unwell and her own government screwing her over. I can't make my voice heard for change in the US in any meaningful, vote-related way, and I thus can't help everyone ... but I can damn sure find a way to help one. She would do (and has done) the same for me.

(And also, I am not going to cry. The moos I work with would have a field day.)

NHS patient records may be sold to private firms.

There are no words to describe the horror I am feeling right now. There are some serious confidentiality issues here - often, post codes will be given along with the anonymised records, which is enough to trace somebody (apparently, all you really need to get a letter delivered in this country is a post code and a house number). Other times, patient names will be given along with the information one trusts to be confidential. And in order to get out of getting your medical information used as some sort of market research study, you have to apply for it under the Data Protection Act. Since when has patient confidentiality been something that you had to apply for? Isn't it one of those things that is supposed to come as standard, and it's for you to choose who to tell about the details of your illnesses?

I can understand the reasoning behind breaking patient confidentiality in some instances, to be fair - and those entirely in the case where a report has to be given to the police for the patient's well-being, one way or another. If a patient comes in with a gunshot wound, for instance. If someone comes in showing the signs of domestic violence. If someone admits to comission of murder to their therapist. But I don't believe that drug overdoses should be reported to the police (not sure if they are or not) or if a therapy patient admits to shoplifting or something. And if I don't believe that all medical cases that involve an instance of breaking the law should be reported to the police, you know I don't believe for a second that patients should have to fill out paperwork (likely difficult to get hold of, requiring a GP visit they don't actually need, so time out of their work week, and liable to be 'lost in the system') just to make sure their personal health data doesn't fall into the hands of money-grubbing yahoos.

This. Isn't. Right. I mean, don't get me wrong - I am profoundly grateful for the public health service we get in this country. For the most part, it works - patients get seen. People who couldn't afford treatment at least get the basics. I can see a GP whenever I need to without being charged for it, and the cost for most prescriptions is reasonably low. I don't like how dentistry is still shriekingly expensive no matter what you do, and I don't like the fact that I need to pay through the nose for a pair of glasses that actually help me, but on the whole, I've got it a lot better than a lot of people I know in the US, trying to get through with serious medical conditions and no insurance.

However, while I am grateful for what I have, I am seeing alarming turns for the worse in this system. Primary Care Trusts refusing to prescribe life-saving medications for patients because they don't want to justify the expense, just for a start. And this? This is beyond the fucking pale. I'm sorry, but the government is going to have to understand that the NHS is not a business. It is not meant to make money. It is not meant to turn a profit. It is not supposed to be crawling with middle management arseholes sucking up the money to set meaningless targets for people who then don't have the time or resources to actually meet the targets because all the time and money is going to the middle management arseholes. I don't mind paying taxes for a system that works reasonably well. I do mind the NHS using my personal details as a saleable commodity.

Now I need to figure out who to ask to make absolutely godsdamned sure that when this kicks off (and I don't kid myself that it's going to be an 'if' situation - protest in this country isn't for shit), my records aren't going to be among those handed over to private firms so they can tailor what they sell to the NHS to best suit their profit margins. No. Thank you.

It's days like this I wish the world really had got sucked into a black hole.

There are places you can't even take a walk anymore without being harrassed. It's amusing that, according to the newsletter, Telford Town Park staff will 'approach adults that are not associated with any children in the Town Park' (but how can they tell?) 'and request the reason for them being there'. And apparently, "If someone is acting in a suspicious manner or acting in an inappropriate way, then of course our staff reserve the right to ask questions". Fair enough. But protesters dressed in penguin suits handing out leaflets about climate change were thrown out of that park last month under this stupid system and I'm sorry, but I get the impression that a) they were a little busy promoting their cause to go kiddy-fiddling and b) nobody but furries would go trolling for jailbait in a penguin costume because c) it's hard to run away in a suit like that. The Home Office says that Telford Council is abusing its powers and people are calling it draconian but the Council is sticking to its guns.

I'm getting a little sick of this zero tolerance culture we're apparently living in. Kids fined or jailed for using swear words in public or wearing potentially offensive T-shirts. The See-Saw Stasi over in Telford. And meanwhile, we've got linguists saying that text-speak is the wave of the future and we should all be encouraged to write like LOLcats. And of course, let's not even get started on book-banning, which I'm sure any number of schools and libraries across the Western world still take part in - I know full well the US does. I wish councils and the like were more concerned with the intellectual growth and development of their younger constituents than they were about the moral fibre of those young people or whatever the hell. So we don't give the young any eloquent means to speak out against persecution and then persecute them at every turn - maybe it's no wonder that this generation of teenagers is turning into a band of ASBO-collecting thugs. And if this shit keeps up, it's only going to get worse.

Dear gods, there are worse things in the world than your children using swear words. There are worse things than walking through the streets wearing a band T-shirt proclaiming that "Jesus Was A Cunt". There are far worse things than standing in a park in a penguin suit handing out leaflets about global warming. (Okay, mildly ironic unless said leaflets were printed on recycled paper, but still there are worse things.) There are worse things than reading books that make a person think. And there are far worse things in this world than being obliged to learn to spell.

On the really depressing whole (and I acknowledge that most of the people who read my journal aren't like this, but let's face it - We Are The Minority), the world's given up on its own future. Parents don't parent, expecting everyone else to do it for them and then getting aerated if the 'everyone else' teaches the children things the parents didn't want them to know - that includes the TV and games console they'll park their kids in front of instead of interacting with them. Things are so dumbed down for everyone at the moment that brains seem to be more or less atrophying. This, I suppose, is why we get the US presidential election turning into a smear campaign on both sides and instead of looking at what behaviour an potential leader of their nation will stoop to to get what they want, will simply treat it as reality TV for their own amusement. So few people think anymore.

There needs to be a flood or a plague or a zombie invasion or something. There needs to be some sort of restart. Because I do not see how we are going to get ourselves out of the hole that's been dug unless the majority of people start thinking (or, to use dodgyhoodoo's words, 'adopt the contraversial policy of giving a shit about more than themselves'). But since the majority is being actively encouraged not to (I hear Bill Hicks in my head saying, "Go back to bed, America...", only that applies more or less worldwide), I think we're screwed.

We desperately need a reboot.

What the FUCK is this?!?

I'm sorry. There's no other way to express the sheer gibbering I have right now. Okay, so the US Department of Health and Human Services looks set to ... well, really not live up to their name. They basically want not only to deny funding to hospitals and clinics that won't allow their staff to withhold what they term 'abortions' to their patients, but also to redefine 'abortion' to include methods of contraception such as the IUD, the morning after pill and, worst of all, the contraceptive pill and its variants (patch, shot etc). Because, apparently, a human being begins at some unknowable point when sperm meets egg.

It occurs to me, therefore, that the figures on miscarriage are badly, unbelievably low, if that's the case. If pregnancy begins at fertilisation rather than implantation, what about the relatively high (if I understand it right) percentage of fertilised eggs that just don't implant for whatever reason? Technically, every period a woman has is a potential miscarriage, if she's not practising safe sex. But no one considers that. Particularly not the women it's happening to. Women trying for a baby may be depressed when their period comes, but they're not grieving for the potential life that just wouldn't take hold - it's disappointment, not grief for a lost child.

In any case, getting back to the actual news item - my big problem with this is that none of it's based on fact. It's all about polling numbers, and that's just plain insane. Seriously, even the doctors on the pro-life side are saying that there's no proof that the oral contraceptive pill and other hormonal contraceptives prevent implantation and therefore, by the definition of those who believe that pregnancy begins at conception, count as abortifacients. Yet no one who's putting this proposal about actually seems to care about the facts of the case. 49% of Americans believe that a human being begins at conception? Therefore they will cater to those 49% above all others.

They say that the withholding of funding from those hospitals and clinics who won't allow their staff to deny advice and information about abortion and these various methods of contraception that suddenly seem to count as abortion is some sort of strike against discrimination. Pardon me, but what about the patients that are being discriminated against? It's not like the pill hasn't been around for decades or anything - pharmacists, doctors and nurses know that a high percentage of people will likely be going to get a prescription for the OCP filled. If they don't like the idea of doing that, their medical degrees will get them no end of jobs in other places; if they don't want to find another job, they should ... you know, do the damn job. Fill the prescription, and quit fucking whining. But no, the government is now proposing to shield people who want to inflict their morality on countless others and letting them do so not only with impunity, but damn near by mandate.

Where human life begins is one thing. Where a human being begins is another. I respect people's opinions and everything, but I personally don't see how a collection of undifferentiated cells counts as a human being. I don't think I could go through with an abortion at the end of the day, but it's not entirely certain. And if I was ever in that position and did have an abortion? You know, because right now I could not give a child any kind of decent life? I'd be mourning the potential, not the collection of cells, and it wouldn't be anything like what would happen if I had to deal with a still birth. I am of the opinion that any time in the first trimester is more or less fair game, and the sooner after conception it happens, the better it is. So ... you know, preventing a fertilised egg from implanting? Particularly given that our bodies do it all the time, from what I understand? Not exactly baby-killing, in my view.

I honestly don't mind the pro-life sentiment. I get that this hypothetical collection of cells has the potential for life. However, since I'm not exactly going out and forcing people to go out and have abortions or take the pill or whatever, I don't see what gives the government the right to dictate that the pro-life movement should be able to force people to not do these things. I worry about a day when people seeking an abortion for any reason find themselves looking at a murder charge - more so when there seems to be a move towards deeming the OCP an abortifacient, rather than a contraceptive.

The world's overpopulated enough, and there's enough people in the world having children they can't afford, can't raise and don't actually want. Yes, there are adoption agencies in those cases, but how many people actually give their infants to such places? No, they're generally less than keen to admit failure and would prefer to half-arsedly raise or outright abuse a child they didn't ask for. I don't think that abortion should be used as a contraceptive, but I do believe that there is a difference between contraception and abortion, and if this goes ahead, that line is going to be drawn in a very stupid place. Imagine the overpopulation issues. Imagine the families who suddenly can't get the pill anymore - broken condoms lead to a larger family than they can afford, with a recession moving in? Does anyone want this, really? More neglected, underprivileged children running around with no particular raising bar a bad example? If this keeps up, we're back to the rhythm method, so essentially this is a government trying to dictate how and when people can and should have sex. How they should control (or not) the number of children in their family.

I am put in mind of George Carlin (who is probably in whatever afterlife exists, sitting at a bar with Bill Hicks, and both of them having a field day with this one) saying, "If you're pre-born, you're fine! If you're pre-school, you're fucked." You think the government is going to give a shit about these 'pre-born' kids once they're actually out of the womb? I don't even get what they're trying to do bar appeal to the vocal majority of right-wing pro-lifers who don't actually consider the well-being of the children that will result from all this and certainly don't give a shit about the women who will have to carry said children. I've said this before too - we are not baby machines, people! Women are human beings too, and they have rights! They are not just ambulatory wombs wandering around to perpetuate the species. Can we get real for a few minutes?

Long story short - man, if it was happening over here, I'd be picketing by now. I'm not hugely politically active, but I protested the introduction of university fees, I protested the war in Iraq (for all the good any of that did), I wrote to my MEPs about that shit about having ISPs police people's internet usage and ban people who have done what they deem to be inappropriate downloading from their internet access (not taking into account that some filesharing is perfectly legal, or the fact that this is punishing whole households, and in the case of someone accessing an unprotected wireless connection, possibly not even the right households), and this? This would have me up in fucking arms.

Nick Eriksen got sacked!

So from those of you who remember my last entry, Nick Eriksen went around on a blog a couple of years ago, saying some really horrible shit about how "rape is a myth" and "career women are vile and unnatural". And it only came out recently that he was, indeed, the Mad Misogynist Blogger. And the uproar that ensued was, I gather, fairly severe, because the BNP, obviously at least knowing when things have gone entirely out of hand with one of their front-runners, basically went, "Erm ... no" and cut him out of the running for the London Assembly.

While I'm glad this man has no chance of actually getting in on the London Assembly, I sort of have to go through various levels of cynicism about this. On the one hand, I tend to think that if people had been quiet in their disapproval of this guy and his views, they'd not have bothered to remove him from the running. Therefore, on some level, my belief in the power of vocal protest is somewhat restored. But then I remember when the war in Iraq started (gods, that was so long ago) when there were massive protests and all Blair did was appear on telly from some conference in Blackpool, looking nervous and saying what boiled down to, "I know you all don't approve but I'm doing it anyway". I have no illusions about people making a difference when someone's really committed to being an arsehole. I'm not even convinced that the views on women espoused in that blog aren't fairly common among BNP members. In the end, I figure this all comes down to a bunch of political hacks trying to get rid of a weak link to improve their image (sure, we're neo-Nazi fucks, but at least we're not misogynist neo-Nazi fucks!) and get themselves in the press in some way other than "We're arseholes". Which depresses me, because it combines the worst aspects of politics with the 'no publicity is bad publicity' frame of mind that gets stars and their agents condoning destructive and antisocial behaviour to get their names sticking in the public consciousness just a little bit longer.

On the whole, therefore, I'm happy but I'm not about this bit of news. Odd place to be, mentally speaking, but what the hell. I'd have preferred to see him stand in the London Assembly and get whupped, personally.

In general news, I'm bored. Very, very bored. And wondering why on earth people don't seem to get that only Central Appointments is authorised to make appointments these days. I get that the patients might not know or understand that yet. The consultants, on the other hand...

I forgot what it was like to work for someone who insists that NHS policy ought to work for their personal convenience alone. Damn.

It's moments like this where I wonder where to draw the line - again. I had a conversation with dodgyhoodoo once some while ago where, while talking about I think the BNP, I asked whether it was right to curtail someone's right to free speech. Sure, it sucks that people hold these kinds of views, and that they air them so freely and so vituperatively, but to be perfectly fair, if I turned around and said that people who have nothing better to do than to defend a narrow-minded, bigoted view of sexuality and religion as put forward by a work of religious literature that has been mistranslated, misconstrued, misquoted, had bits left out of it and constantly contradicts itself are sad, sorry human beings who mean nothing but harm for the planet at large and really should find something productive to do with their time (like, for example, a terrible lot of psychotherapy), people who hold the beliefs I'm speaking out against will find it offensive and want me to shut up. It's natural to want someone who's vociferously disagreeing with views you hold as sacred to stop disrespecting your beliefs. However, if we want to live in a culture where free speech survives, we're going to have to live with people talking what we view as total shit.

However, so are they. More to the point, people who hold hatemongering paranoiac bigotry as something to talk about so ... grandly are going to have to live with the consequences of how they use their right to free speech. Example, Sally Kerns.

See, what she doesn't seem to get - or possibly what she doesn't actually care about - is the fact that the media is everywhere. The fact that she didn't say that to the media doesn't matter. The fact that she said it anywhere but in the privacy of her own home, to her own family (and not even that's a guarantee) means that it is open to public scrutiny. It's not fair, maybe, but it's true - if you're in the public eye, you're in it. If you're representing your city, state and/or country, your words and actions continue to represent that regardless of where you are or who you're talking to. That's how it works. You are a representative, therefore you represent.

So if you're a political candidate who stands on a platform of family values and you're sleeping around with your secretary, yes it should be known. I don't think you should necessarily be impeached for it, but it should be known, because you're violating the very platform upon which you're standing and the people have a right to know that you're a hypocrite. It's a part of the decision-making process, looking at the man or woman behind the politician, because the man or woman will always win out over the professional - always. On the flip side of that, if you're not standing on a platform of family values then it's none of anyone else's business necessarily, but you still have to expect that people are going to be interested and judge you on the basis of your actions. That is what you sign up for when you're representing a large body of people. End of statement.

Likewise, if you're going to end up talking shit about not one but two groups of people specifically (in this case, homosexuals and Muslims, though there's scope for saying that Kern's statements were judging any non-Christians and the school system as a whole), you have to expect that people are going to hear about it and make their own judgement calls on your words. If they don't match up with your platform, then you're fucked. If you haven't made a public call on where your political views are in relation to that, you're still fucked because if that's all you've ever said about what you believe, it's now known that that is what you believe. And if you have followed that line all along ... well, people shouldn't be surprised and you've got nothing to worry about - you were elected on that basis and it's therefore nothing to be ashamed of, if you truly believe it.

Truth in politics. It never happens, but it will always come to light in the end, more and more as technology advances and people are easier to eavesdrop on and record. I'm not saying that violation of privacy is right. However, fifty-odd people is not privacy, and if it hadn't been recorded, you can bet one of those fifty would have gone to the papers anyway. People can't hide behind the 'I didn't say it to the press' defence because it doesn't hold water; anything you say to anyone can get to the press one way or another; words have consequences, more so the more power you hold.

So ... Sally Kerns, ladies and gentleman. This is what she chooses to do with her right to free speech.

Hundreds of Anonymous types protest in front of not one, but two Church of Scientology centres in London. This happened all over the world yesterday.

Day-am, but I love the internet.

Okay, there was a time some thirteen/fourteen years ago when I quite literally did not see the point. The internet has evolved so much since then. Oh, sure, it's got more than its fair share of the stupid, and I still don't quite get the appeal of this LOLcats stuff (though I'll admit it's a giggle when people aren't treating it like the epitome of all wit), but at the end of the day, when it can do something like this? Internet memes FTW, as they say.

I've seen Scientologist-baiting before, but this is better. Active, organised peaceful protest, cleverly done, for a decent purpose. And they so obviously had fun doing it, even while they were making a valid point. The only real 'fear tactic', if you want to call it that, involved in this particular bit of meme was the fact that ... well, imagine you're a Scientologist. Here's several hundred people in V masks camped outside your door, speaking in a language that you don't quite understand but think you should, and pelting you with Rick Astley songs for no apparent reason. This is how protest should be. "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em."

Much, much love to Anonymous. That ... that was awesome.

In other news ... the mystery of Daz's all-out creepy comes closer to being revealed. See, recently, he came out of absolutely nowhere and said, "I heard about your idea for Astrid using her new steam-powered prosthesis as a focus - I never would have thought of that!" Needless to say, as I hadn't journaled it on JN, hadn't moodposted it yet and had told maybe one or two people, I was ... in absolute awe of the Terrible Mind-Reading Powers of the Mage ST.

Then I realised ... I'd LJed it.

Recent check shows that yshala has friended me. She and Daz talk a fair bit. Suddenly, things make sense.

...Actually, I'm now obscurely disappointed. Mystery solved, sure, but ... having a psychic ST is awesome. Oh well. I'll have to settle for psychotic, as do we all. *g*

Okay, look. There's a line, okay? There's a point at which political correctness goes totally and completely batshit, and all you get are a bunch of pencil-pushers dicking around with classics for totally inappropriate reasons and trying to make the world look like a fluffy-happy playground when it really is anything but.

Case in point: BBC Radio 1 censoring 'Fairytale of New York'.

Because, okay, you know what? Bite me. Two characters - characters, hello - swearing at each other in a screaming drunken Christmas bitch-fight. Please tell me what the censor-worthiness is here, because I'm not seeing it. This was not an incitement to kill all gay people or anything. This was nothing but an in-character reaction in a freakin' song. And while the four-letter words and almost every other insult remains, that one single word and the bit about 'junked-out old slut' get edited out because it's not 'appropriate' to use that kind of thing as an insult anymore.

Can I remind people that this thing was written in 1987? Can I also ask when the hell personal insults were meant to be appropriate anyway? Can I further ask why the hell the BBC is wasting its time and money hiring people to look at shit like this and censor it for 'appropriateness'? And then - and then, please, can I note that actually, there are homosexuals out there who are more offended about the song getting censored than they are about the word 'faggot' anyway?

It's like 'nigger'; it's just a word until you use it as something other than just a word. It's about intent. More to the point, if you start banning or censoring things for use of those words, you're highlighting them as 'bad' and turning them back into weapons. Dear gods, people, some common fucking sense, please! I can almost understand profanity being bleeped out of things, but it's not like people don't get exposed to this stuff in everyday life anyway. Kids hear words like this - and all the four-letter ones people find inappropriate for small children - all the time, and frankly, it's the ones who are informed calmly that "it's not really a big deal but some people tend not to like it when people your age - or people in general - use them so it's best to not" that are more likely to be less reliant on swearing as a means of expression in later life. Make a big deal of them, and they're going to get used offensively and inappropriately. Don't, and it's likely they won't, because the novelty value's gone.

Shit, fuck, arse, cunt, faggot, nigger, slut, whatever ... they are all. Just. WORDS. Bite me if words have to be erased from public consciousness just because some people find them offensive in certain circumstances. And the day that characters in stories or songs have to censor themselves for appropriateness should, by rights, be the day that real people do, because art imitates life, people use those words as weapons and bleeping those words out of poetry, prose and song will not make that less true. If you can't stop people from using those words that way, leave the art that imitates life alone.

Moroooooooooons.