Privatise the post office
Constitutional reform - reduce number of MPs/constituencies by 50, add loads of Torys to the House of Lords, making it harder for them to be unelected.
End the right for appeals to be launched against boundary changes.
Push through bill for 5 year, fixed term parliaments.
Accept millions in funding from overseas tax exiles - including the brothers who own JCB and Lord Ashcroft.
Introduce the use of unmanned spy drones throughout UK airspace, facilitating an expansion of covert surveillance that could provide intelligence on future demonstrations.
"Militarisation" strategy to counter the threat of civil disorder, involving private defence firms.
Arrange £10bn (and rising) of loans to Irish banks (not to the irish people..)
Kettle under 18s for 9 hours when they try to march peacefully on whitehall.
Then use horses to charge them when they can't get out of the way (the police later swore this hadn't happened until footage made its way onto youtube)
Refuse to limit bankers bonuses or implement the Tobin tax despite clear pre and post election promises that they would do so.
Cut funding to charities
Cut legal aid on divorce, housing, debt and immigration
Cut funding to build social housing
End tenancies for life in social housing
End cheap rents in social housing
Reduce housing benefit to levels lower than rent, then redefine homelessness so that families made homeless won't need to be housed.
Give job centre employees the chance to remove benefits from families for up to 3 years.
Reduce tax credits for working families, including scheme to pay contribution towards child care
Remove child benefit from women whose partners pay higher rate tax regardless of how little they earn themselves
Allow councils to decide whether they will give council tax rebates to the unemployed or not
Remove index link to out of work benefits so they don't go up with inflation
Assume anybody is fit to work if they can move their arms and legs (including people receiving treatment for cancer)
Reduce obligation on Councils to look after seriously ill and disabled people
Redefine "seriously ill" and "disabled"
Take mobility allowance away from anybody living in any type of care home
Cut council budgets by a third putting at least half a million people out of work
Re-brand anybody who is out of work as a "scrounger"
Stop councils from raising council tax or any other funds (except borrowing)
Stop councils from recording performance so that the public can't easily see what services they are losing
Raid the pensions of public sector workers
Put the pension age up
Introduce "NEST" - a compulsory pension scheme for low paid workers with 2 percent in fees, no choice of fund, and no guaranteed income at retirement.
Reduce employment rights
Reduce Health and Safety obligations on businesses
Increase VAT to 20%
Reduce corporation taxes (including letting Vodaphone off a tax bill of over 6 BILLION pounds)
Change planning laws to enable big developers to build all over green belt land
Sell off the country's forests and waterways to businesses
Cut funding to universities and require them to make all of their money from business and students fees..
..resulting in fees of up to £9000 a year and more places offered to overseas students leaving less places for UK students.
Cut funding to Further Education colleges by about 25%
Cut Educational Maintenance Allowance EMA which paid £30 a week for poorer students to buy books and transport.
Stop budget for building schools even though there are not enough places in 20% of schools for children in their catchment area and most schools have at least some lessons in portacabins already.
Break up the NHS and force hospitals to bid against private companies to provide services
Remove NICE, the body which checks that new medicines are safe and work, allowing pharmaceutical companies to directly market to GPs.
Abolish the Food Standards Agency and invite Diago, McDonalds and PepsiCo to help write UK Health policy
Privatise anything public that hasn't already been privatised.

Ambitious lot aren't they.
Have I missed anything?

Dunstable Downs 15 April 2010 Painting on dunstable downs - interesting because of the haze you can see on the horizon - normally you can see much further. I got in from painting and read in the paper that planes had been cancelled because there is a cloud of volcanic ash from Eyjafjallajoekull in Iceland which erupted yesterday - I'm wondering if that is what I saw..? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8622362.stm

the UK Decay gig was fucking epic they're just a wall of sound, I could feel the kick drum in my breastbone. Its such an honour to get to play with them.
Our set went really well too, Loopy and I had this kindof cypress hill thng going on singing, I'm glad now we don't practise much because it was all adlib and came out sounding pretty fucking awesome. Lots of old punks came up afterwards and said they liked us. I wore my tin army hat and jumped up and down. Matt had a policemans hat with a flashing light and Steve had a tiny bowler hat. Loopy was all pink leopard print and mohawk. Sparrow came up on stage to do ASBO kid and there was a lot of camp showboating going on. I'm relying on nicola to have taken photos of it all for posterity.

Haven't done so many gigs recently but they've all been top notch, we don't really make many mistakes anymore and it's so good to just do it and have it work and be able to enjoy it while it's happening rather than concentrating so hard that it's all gone in a blur.

Really good night although I do think in retrospect I might have had a little more energy if I hadn't got twatted at the George last night. These days I need to conserve my energy :)

I have been putting off going to the allotment since before Christmas when it started getting cold and muddy. Yesterday we finally bit the bullet and it looked terrible; the weight of snow on the roof of the shed had broken it a bit and the pigeons had eaten all of the cabbages down to the stumps. We spent the whole weekend digging in soil improver and clearing and steve fixed the roof and built a compost bin and it all looks neat and tidy now. We even bought back a big bag of onions and potatoes which we found by accident! There are also absolutely loads of artichokes which I would dig up but I haven't figured out how to cook them yet. The strawberry plants have gone mental and now cover a huge area so we should get enough for bowls full in summer.

A sharp contrast was going food shopping where we'd spent 30 quid in the fruit and veg section (and that was just for the basics we need for the four of us for a week - the cheapest packs of potatoes, peppers, leeks, onions, cauliflower, carrots, broccoli, bananas, oranges and pears - nothing particularly exciting. I had to tell the kids we couldn't afford grapes or strawberries.

I think this year I'm going to make an extra effort with the allotment, I really resent spending so much money on fresh food :( As Tony was saying.. how can a turnip from norfolk cost twice as much as a pair of scissors which have to be mined, smelted, formed, assembled and shipped half way across the world?!

Ha ha ha we#re in the paper :)

I just went into the bathroom and noticed one of the children had stuck a post it note saying "TURN BACK NOW!!1! on the bathroom mirror..

In a ray of hope though, I have just realised we have a decent independent candidate for Luton South. Young, idealised, and will probably get eaten alive. Still, though, I think he's getting my vote. At least he lives here, and went to our schools, and people already know him from Filmstock.

Fuck off Esther Ransome you patronising cow, you're not fucking wanted.

My beautiful crazy friend nicola has convinced me to make a coat out of teddy bears to auction for the Pasque Hospice at LutonAid in July (which will also be in the local papers as a sort of protest against fur making a comeback in fashion recently).. halfway through the prototype and it looks pretty good!

If anyone has any old teddy bears (or any type of soft toy) they would like to contribute for this noble endeavour please post to 141 Kingsland Court, LU1 3DR. If postage is an issue drop me a line and I can maybe paypal you a couple of quid.

Ta :)

I just made the nicest chicken soup. I don't think i will ever buy chicken soup again!

Radiation and Reason By Wade Allison - if you have time to read this book, there is a limited preview on google which gives you the gist of what he's talking about.. I'd be interested if somebody else would read it and discuss what they think!

This is a very reputable academic who has re-analysed the threats and dangers of nuclear power (ie as a source of electricity) in the light of what we know now, and contends that it is substantially safer than we realise..

I'm having trouble picking holes in his reasoning although I would quite like to as my knee jerk reaction is to be terrified of nuclear power, the same way as everyone growing up in the 60s and 70s was. I used to work designing the logic for safety systems (one of which was used in sellafield - after the meltdown I hasten to add) and the level of care in design, maintenance and calibration was intense.

Anyway, it is interesting - and topical, in that Britain will most likely be getting a lot more nuclear capability over the next few years. Thoughts?

..and another one.. think i'm going to give these instead of christmas cards.. i'm really enjoying drawing at the moment.

From a sketch I did at work this morning

fATHER cHRISTMAS wRAPPING pAPER Don't say I never get you anything..

Harry has decided to call his rabbit "Blaster"...

Fuckin 'ell, I'm shag related to a famous author ;)


Really envious and proud. Well done miss piss you thoroughly deserve it x I hope you sell millions of copies and become a billionairess.

....buy a copy on amazon..

.....The Leonid shower occurs each year when the Earth passes through streams of debris ejected by the comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which often leaves behind dusty trails as it passes through the inner solar system every 33 years.

Earth will cut across the first such stream around 0900 GMT on 17 November, an event that is expected to produce dozens of meteors an hour. But the spectacle will reach its peak between 2100 and 2200 GMT, as Earth passes through two debris trails left by Tempel-Tuttle in 1466 and 1533.

It's 20 years since the berlin wall came down.. I was 12 at the time, I don't think I really understood the immensity of it..

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder treason and plot,
I know no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot...

It's been an exhausting week. Harry hurt himself very badly and I spent 12 hours on Monday with him wrapped in my arms willing him to be OK, and he was. Steve had to have an endoscopy and that is an upsetting proceedure in itself, combined with the worry of whether they would find anything cancerous (they didn't). I had to work.

I've been thinking a bit about the nature of pain, because it's one of those things we all have to confront eventually and one of the things we're least prepared to deal with.

When you're a child, when something hurts, you panic. You want the thing that hurt you as far away from you as possible. You cry, you shout, you flail around. When you get a bit older, you see pain as a spur to action. You become angry. You attack. Both of these are inbuilt reactions.

When you're a teenager, and maybe beyond, you might toy with pain. You might flaunt it as a control that you have over your inbuilt responses. It's a powerful thing. Building up your tolerance to pain is empowering. You might let somebody else hurt you to prove how much you love them, how in control you are. You might let somebody hurt you because you feel sorry for them, and you feel strong enough to carry their pain and your own. It's a powerful thing.

As an adult, as you get older (and I know a lot of people go through their twenties without ever noticing this) you get unwanted, habitual pain, and you learn to live with it. A bad tooth or an old break, ecsema or a lung disorder. It doesn't challenge your immortality but it hurts and you have to put up with it. You develop a barrier in your brain against your natural responses to "fight or flight" and you will yourself to be passive, to carry on with work or your family or having fun or whatever is more important. It wears you down and you get depressed but you learn how to deal with it. If you're a responsible type, you might learn to change your lifestyle so as not to aggravate it - no alcohol, no cheese, no drugs, no wheat. If you're defeatist you will carry on with your bad habits until it is intolerable (i did). Plenty of people live like this day to day for years because they are not ready to face the greater pain and expense of getting it sorted out medically.

At some point, for most of us, you realise that your body is like a car, it needs bits readjusting or replacing, and whether it is bad teeth, stomach ulcer, cancer or arthritis you have to bite the bullet, go to a hospital, and submit yourself to invasive tests and therapy. You have to actively fight the bit of your brain telling you to run away. Love or hate the NHS, it gets you fixed, but it isn't fussy about how much pain you encounter on the journey. If you don't think things are going to hurt before you go in you learn a harsh lesson inside. You have no control over when or what your treatments willbe and you're suddenly in this surreal, "Brazil" - like arena where life runs on a completely different set of rules to anything you've ever experienced before.

I would like to reaffirm - this happens to nearly everybody. If it hasn't happened to you yet, get used to the idea, because very few people live entirely healthy lives, never break a bone, never have a baby, and die in their sleep.

At this point, you can decide how to deal with it. You can fight and squeal, but it won't help. You can get depressed and withdraw, but it will only make you more prone to infection and complications. You can submit, which I think most people end up doing, trusting your doctors because you have no choice, or you can reach out and overcome, bear your pain stoically, do everything positievely, be cheerful and try to help others, be brave. Its the hardest thing of all and something not everybody manages. But if you go to any ward in any hospital there are people propping themselves painfully up in bed joking with the nurses. I think this is the highest, greatest, most spiritual thing that you can achieve. When I die I want to be joking with my kids and their partners and after they've left at the end of visiting hours I will turn over quietly and let go.

I've had a crash course in pain - myself and other people's. When I was small, I broke things and hid them from my parents because they would have been angry with me. Toes, fingers, I bit half through my tongue. When I was at university I got in a couple of fights and had my eyesocket cracked. I let somebody brand me. After I started working I got pregnant (twice) and had natural births (a bit of an eye opener on the pain scale). Harry was 11 lb. I have had my wisdom teeth taken out when I was conscious. Not life threatening things, but I know pain.

I've watched Steve go through pain at levels I didn't know existed through his cancer and the treatment and I have watched in absolute fucking awe as he went from scared to angry to resigned to reslient in a matter of days, to the point where he was checking we had enough money ofr the electricity bill while recovering form stomach surgery with a crap anaesthatist who couldn't get the epidural to work.

I've watched Lillith have her tooth pulled out, trusting me, even though it hurt more than anything she had ever experienced before because her jaw was too small for the dentist to inject the anaesthetic in the right place.

I have watched Harry stumble stunned through the door with his whole face smashed up, covered in blood, unable to focus or open his mouth, baffled and afraid, and fight through it all evening until he finally got enough of a hold on himself to be able to drink water, and go to sleep. And he woke up in the morning asking if I was ok..

And I love and respect all three of them so so much more for having seen what they went through and how they made themselves bigger than their animal responses, because it isn't anything anyone can teach you, it is the hardest lesson of all and everyone learns it alone.


And I think of other frieeds who were in pain before I understood what that meant, who pulled together their energy to have fun with me and interact with me and made themselves larger than their experiences so that they could share the time with me.

And I think maybe it is time we actually talked about pain rather than brushing it aside so our friends don't have to feel guilty.

Date:	2009-10-29 22:53
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	happy

gig went pretty well
so surreal sitting cross legged in a spotlight playing and singing to people you don't know
My fingers hurt
I love steve
He plays bass for me when I sing
He learns all my songs
so I don't have to play alone
we keep the beat going together
exchangign glances
I think thats what love is.
xxx