Sometimes we have to say something

Why all the articles I’ve posted below?  Well, sometimes we do have to say something….   I’m new neither to blogging nor to politics, but I am a bit outside the profile of your average www aficionado.  Not too many bloggers as yet are women of a certain age, perhaps even matriarchs of a sort, still determinedly if reflectively progressive and using the internet to try to make their point. So I hope here to help these matters along.  And I shall call myself ~ PinkPolitika.

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Ed Miliband is concerned about immigrant workers; he should also worry about large, wealthy families and dwindling resources

Posted on June 24, 2012 by

Rick of Flip Chart Fairy Tales has written a very thoughtful piece about Ed Miliband’s recent speech on ‘ordinary’ people’s concerns around so-called immigrant workers.  Miliband and Rick are both absolutely right that this needs to be discussed; and also correct that if proper discussion doesn’t occur, improper (by which I mean unpleasant, unfair) commentary will fill the gap instead.

I have suggested in a response to Rick’s blogpost, however, that there’s also another dimension to be factored in, viz, population in the demographic sense, and the economic / resource demands especially of large, wealthy indigenous families.

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H.M.Government e-petition on FGM rejected

Posted on May 29, 2012 by

A number of us recently co-identifed as sharing very serious concerns about the continuing nightmarishly high levels of female genital mutilation (FGM or ‘cutting’) in the UK.  We therefore set about lobbying as citizens to ensure everything possible is done to bring this unthinkably grim child abuse to a halt.

The decision was made to set up an e-petition on the H.M. Government website, a website where signatories must indicate whether they are British citizens / residents - which factor we judged important, given that our demand is in effect that enough UK taxes be allocated to eradicate fully the practice of FGM in Britain. The wording of our e-petition was very carefully considered, and we also checked thoroughly that it did not duplicate any other petition on the website.

Imagine therefore our dismay that the petition has now been rejected with no apparently coherent explanation.

Is this a case, as some have suggested, of ‘protecting adult embarrassments, rather than protecting small children at risk of devastating harm’?  The full original text of the e-petition follows, along with the HMG (Cabinet Office) response; so you can decide for yourself…  But one thing is certain. There will be another attempt at this HMG e-petition very soon.

UPDATE! Please sign and forward this e-petition (for UK citizens), posted 25 June 2012 on the HM Government website:

STOP Female Genital Mutilation (FGM / ‘cutting’) in Britain

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM  and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

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Campaigning will shift the climate, to end FGM in Britain

Posted on May 21, 2012 by

FGM (female genital mutilation or ‘cutting’) is embarrassing for us in the mainstream of British life even to consider; but it’s excruciating and debilitating for its young victims.

This is one topic where grown-up people must not permit their queasiness to over-rule their sense of decency.  FGM, both as a procedure and as procurement (whether in the UK or elsewhere) is unequivocally illegal; but as yet no prosecutions have been secured. And this despite the chilling fact that over 20,00 babies and girls in the UK are thought to be at risk annually.  That’s over 50 every day, or 2+ an hour, and the number rising.

Politicians and others in authority may shamefacedly shy away, but enough noise from the rest of will make it easier for them to do their job, protecting defenceless small children – the two British girls and babies who every hour are not receiving the protection to which they are so fundamentally entitled.

Please sign and forward this e-petition (for UK citizens), posted 25 June 2012 on the HM Government website:

STOP Female Genital Mutilation (FGM / ‘cutting’) in Britain

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM  and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

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Age-related sexism: women candidates for council, mayor and commissioner elections?

Posted on May 3, 2012 by

Age-related sexism is a real obstacle to progress in getting more women to the political frontline, and it’s well time that political parties began to realise that and act upon it. The repeated failure in the UK and beyond to achieve more women in Parliament and elsewhere is a fundamental obstacle to meaningful universal suffrage.

Nonetheless, the continuing tendency is somehow to blame women themselves for not standing in sufficient numbers where there are winnable seats.  This is neither fair nor honest. Insofar as ‘fault’ is the issue, it lies rather more specifically with the present power elite (mostly male) than with ‘women’ in general.

The current belief is that ‘training’ will address the gender deficit in candidate lists, but this averts attention from some central issues.  One size does not fit all.  Inflexible programmes of induction can diminish rather than enhance the standing within their party of better experienced and qualified candidates; and this is especially true of mature women candidates entering the fray.

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FGM is a universal horror, including in Britain

Posted on April 22, 2012 by

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a truly dreadful topic, and we all wish there was no reason, ever, to consider it.  But there is. Whilst we in the UK see endless (and correct) concern for upholding the human rights of alleged dangerous extremists such as Abu Qatada,  we also permit without murmur hideous violence to female British minors, and sending thousands of small girls abroad every year expressly so they can be mercilessly mutilated, sometimes killed or murdered, in the name of cultural difference.

Today’s (22 April 2012) report and first leader in the Sunday Times reminds us how widespread and unspeakable – almost literally - FGM actually is, even in Britain.  Under their front page headline [paywall] “Revealed: Britain’s 100,000 mutilated women” the Sunday Times reports that a few very brave victims of this barbarism, such as the model Waris Dirie (founder of the Desert Flower Foundation), continue to speak out in the UK to demand immediate action to halt this atrocity.  But nobody does anything.

It’s estimated that in Britain about 20,000 girls are at risk of this nightmare very year.  That’s more than 50 desperately vulnerable children on any given day, and 20,000 neglected UK prosecutions annually for a very serious and especially horrific criminal offence.

Please sign and forward this e-petition (for UK citizens), posted 25 June 2012 on the HM Government website:

STOP Female Genital Mutilation (FGM / ‘cutting’) in Britain

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM   and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

Continue reading →

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Regional pay: how to increase the North-South divide and weaken the ConDem coalition?

Posted on April 21, 2012 by

As anticipated following Chancellor George Osborne’s budget, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has now declared that ‘regional’ pay for health workers is on the agenda.

Needless to say, those in the South-East will earn more under this arrangement than colleagues further North.  This is not however ‘only’ a question of health-care inequity and the salaries of health workers.

The wider issues, such as housing, are pressing and grim.  And the political fracture points for the Conservative-LibDem coalition may soon start to reflect these tensions.

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Government ‘incompetent’? Not when it comes to DE-governance…

Posted on April 10, 2012 by

Increasingly, we read that the present UK government is ‘incompetent’.   But I’d suggest the Government is ‘only’ incompetent in things it reckons are fundamentally unimportant for the longer-term.

David Cameron may make the occasional attempt to appear cuddly but George Osborne really doesn’t bother.  And why? … because the fundamental intention is to raze all social / public provision and pass it on to someone else, anyone else but the government.

DE-governance is the name of the Tories’ game.  And fast is the way they want to play it.

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