I stopped going to Meeting, months ago...

I lost an Employment Tribunal case...I sat and heard people in positions of authority purjuring themselves, bearing false witness and fabricating and concealing evidence. I suppose I was naive to believe that people under oath would tell the truth! It was/is no consolation at all that I was speaking truth to power, since a panel decided my case against me, because it was technically  'out of time'. It was such a bitter experience that a bully…

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If you care about domestic violence, please go to e-petitions, 'domestic violence', and sign the petition.

Because...Domestic Violence has a severe impact on our national life. The NSPCC say that  at least 750,000 children witness it every year. One in three women attends Casualty because of it. There are 1,300 calls a day for help. The government needs to respond with far more more urgent and effective policies and support for the victims. Instead the government is cutting…

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Life lessons

What would you … should you … do with the bully at work?

Remember his rotten childhood, his harsh father in the back country farm,

A mean So and So to his little boy, like his own Dad’s Dad’s Dad…

This family pattern of abuse has been going on right back to the Ark…

The boy’s sleep so often punctuated with drunken curses,

The kicked door, and the loud slap in the dark.

Next morning his Dad grimly filling a…

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My family went to Egypt and saw the violence of extreme poverty for ourselves. Dr Sharp's 198 non violent methods to challenge tyrannies  helped to bring down Mubarak. They are the best way to challenge oppression across the world, wherever we encounter it.

 

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Thank you for being around this year, which has been one of those ‘annus horribilis’, beginning with the death of Lilian, a much loved and eccentric mother. As the year has gone on I have been struggling with the guilt and sadness involved in her loss, the way she was deprived of care from a hospice, and the way the family did and didn’t cope with her death. We were all trying to cope with one of the the most difficult circumstance anyone ever has to face.



The highs of the year have… Continue

Create a public work of art to highlight the right of women not

to be subject to domestic violence. Like Antony Gormley's work

the 'Angel of the North',which has fostered Northern pride,

this could be a reference point to highlight the plight of

women subject to hidden abuse.

When women come accross the statue or a reference to it they will

be reminded that there is a way out of their situation. Currently the

average woman experiences 35 attacksbefore she… Continue

The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square,

Was always an iconic Meeting place.



It has now become a famously empty space.

Where once, for one hundred days

2,400 people enacted thousands of one- hour plays.

When merely sitting brooding in a chair,

Revealed an unacknowledged truth about our national mood,

Identified with the lonely figure, set up there,

Staring down into the thronging square.



Some danced in spangles, or made themselves… Continue

The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square



Is now, as ever, the centre of somewhere...



But as well as being the iconic meeting place



It has now become a famously empty space.



Where once, for one hundred days



2,400 people enacted thousands of one- hour plays.



When merely sitting brooding in a chair,



Became a kind of truth to share,



With the lonely figure, set up there,



Staring down into the thronging… Continue

I went along to the Labour party conference in Brighton, wearing a tee-shirt which said, 'too disabled to be...a social worker?' and handed out the plinth poem, 'For those left standing' to a number of startled politicians to remind them that one in five of the UK population is 'disabled'...by society's low expectations of us. Various journalists also got the poem. Health should not be a determining factor in retention in any of the professions in England, as is currently the case.

The… Continue

POEM for those left standing...



'I am a person stuck with unrequested labels, Northern, female

Short-sighted, red-haired, maladroit

I worked for others, as a student, parent, activist, poet

Some labels I aspired to: Quaker, world traveller, true artist, cook

And others came from cruel authority,

Dispensed regardless…’too disabled’... to be me

That closed some minor official’s little book

Upon my whole life’s purpose…

But I live for human rights… Continue

POEM for those left standing...



'I am a person stuck with unrequested labels, Northern, female

Short-sighted, red-haired, maladroit

I worked for others, as a student, parent, activist, poet

Some labels I aspired to: Quaker, world traveller, true artist, cook

And others came from cruel authority,

Dispensed regardless…’too disabled’... to be me

That closed some minor official’s little book

Upon my whole life’s purpose…

But I live for human rights… Continue