Kelly-Marie Blundell2013-06-19T19:09:25-04:00Kelly-Marie Blundellhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=kellymarie-blundellCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Kelly-Marie BlundellGood old fashioned elbow grease.Who Would Want Fruit Cakes Running Their Council?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31751252013-04-28T15:34:07-04:002013-04-29T07:53:07-04:00Kelly-Marie Blundellhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/kellymarie-blundell/
As a UK political party who have had success with their anti-European messages at, ironically, a European level in the UK, Nigel Farage's character-driven project is significantly underwhelming when it comes to the diversely challenging area of local politics.
UKIP's recent political polling surge, presiding as an attempt to deliver pluralism into UK politics, translates into very little more than a protest vote in a time of economic downturn, which historically leads to right-wing trending in political polling. This is most clearly demonstrated by the by-election at Eastleigh, which has journalists hot-under-the collars because UKIP achieved a resounding 14%.
The reality is, any by-election exists in a vacuum, providing a vehicle for stronger protest votes than are seen at general elections. When presented with the options of the Coalition parties, a policy-weak Labour Party and other smaller parties which depend almost solely on local grass-roots movements such as the Greens, the voter's sole choice to protest in Eastleigh was UKIP. In contrast, Bradford West demonstrated that the better protest vote was George Galloway's Respect party. Such a result cannot be translated to a wider general election, where the voter would also be considering who would be running the country.
When electing European Parliament MEPs in 2009, members of the British public, sucked into misnomers from tabloid headlines, were keen to support a single-issue parties such as UKIP whom they felt would represent their rights best in that setting. Of course, the irony is,the 11 UKIP MEPs very few actually turn up to represent their constituents views. All the while, of course, absorbing vast amounts of the MEP expenses that Nigel Farage is so quick to criticise.
But, as a single issue party, and personally being pro-pluralism, I suppose UKIP have their place in the European Parliament.
Where they don't have their place is in local politics.
With UKIP candidates in every County Council seat in my local area, the option to vote purple is ever present. In photographs taken by the local paper, representatives are noticeably male and pale and had no history of representing people's views on a local basis.
As if to confirm this, the literature that they have been distributing to every household has a strong anti-European, national theme which does not translate well in terms of local economy, education or public services.
The mock-tabloid is keen to push the message that the EU is destroying jobs in the UK, and immigration is a running theme.
However, their local angle is intent on stopping all public services until every pothole in the county is fixed.
A noble aim, one might say. But the effective translation is that children won't have teachers, traffic lights won't work, the police will not respond to call outs and doctors surgeries will be closed while repair work takes place. It is typical of UKIP messaging, a quixotic short-term fix with no example or understanding of managing budgets, businesses or society as a whole. Much like UKIP anti-European policy, it's a single issue campaign.
To further evidence their lack of experience, understanding and potential are the council positions the UKIP actually hold. Looking through their website, they boast 138 councillors in England. This includes parish, and, in two-tier authorities, district and borough representatives. However, most of these are defections from other major parties and independents. As a councillor, only six had actually been elected.. Even Diane James, of Eastleigh fame, was elected as an independent councillor in her district of Waverley in Surrey. While she now leads the opposition group, a group of three consists of herself and two Conservative defectors. It is up to democracy to decide whether their positions will continue in 2015.
When quizzed, the local UKIP party were unable to produce anything more substantial as the policy and schools other than "putting a grammar school in every town", something that won't answer the overcrowding issues we face on the local level nor assist with the delivery of the Pupil Premium nor maximising classroom assistants to ensure that SEN education is maintained.
Far from being solution-focused politics, UKIP seem only able to criticise, and lack in planning, preparation and delivery of action that will actually benefit society. Their raison d'être remains being anti-European, the majority of which is grounded in fallacies about income and benefits to being a member state.
UKIP provide a range of headline quotes degenerating the EU, applying basic marketing techniques of repeating something in the hope that it might become true. But when it comes to local politics, they seem to have no understanding of the work, process and support that is required in order to be a locally elected councillor. They remain a single issue party who attracts a protest vote at a time when confidence in politics and the economy is poor. But nobody in their right mind would want the party now famous for being referred to as fruitcakes and loonies managing their dustbins, roads, schools or libraries.]]>Time to Review Treatment of Disabled Peopletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18479032012-08-31T17:10:56-04:002012-10-31T05:12:02-04:00Kelly-Marie Blundellhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/kellymarie-blundell/protests against government contracted ATOS Healthcare and the Department of Work and Pensions, many people have come together to declare their unhappiness at the current proposals around benefits for the disabled.
People who are completely anti-cuts, fighting for their own or someone else's rights as a disabled person, or demonstrating 'solidarity' alongside others, have gathered to demonstrate their growing unhappiness at the treatment of disabled people.
The Paraolympics provides a strong platform for demonstrating a need to readdress proposed government cuts to disability benefits as well as a review of the current system employed by ATOS in measuring fitness to work.
The flip side of the paraolympics, a festival of determination, heroic and athletic feats, is the growing negative representation of disabled people in Britain.
Around two thirds of disabled people have been subjected to abuse, including physical attacks and name calling, by complete strangers. In fact, two thirds of adults admit actively avoiding disabled people, 40% admitted to viewing them as a burden of them society and a third had ill feeling towards them for the perceived extra support given to disabled people.
Even more disturbingly, it is a situation which is not improving either. In fact, a recent survey revealed that disability hate crime has risen by 75% over the past two years.
This has not been helped by consistent inaccurate portrayals of disabled people in the media and by politicians. Editorials such as:
"Hundreds of thousands of scroungers in the UK are robbing hard-working Sun readers of their cash. They cannot be bothered to find a job or they claim to be sick when they are perfectly capable of work because they prefer to sit at home watching widescreen TVs - paid for by YOU."
This, and memorable tabloid headlines including the entirely bogus claim that "three quarters of disabled people are fit to work" (the actual fit for work figure was 29.6%), alongside derrogotary language labeling disabled people "scroungers" and "cheats" is creating a horrendous legacy for anyone who has "an impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to perform normal day-to-day activities".
But aside from the difficulties of facing abuse from complete strangers merely being out in public, sick and disabled people struggle in many other ways as well.
When it comes to something as seemingly simple as getting around, disabled people are still heavily restricted by a society which, despite equality legislation, has failed to improve accessibility for disabled people.
It is completely unacceptable that that, in London, provision for disabled people remains woefully inadequate. While several underground stations now have step free access to the platforms, no more than a handful have step free access from the platform to tube carriages themselves.
Above ground, the situation is little better with most bus stops being at a different level to the bus doors and with many disabled people recounting shocking stories about bus drivers driving off at the sight of them and of cab drivers refusing to transport them.
If this is the situation in the most disabled accessible city in the country, you can easily imagine for yourself how bad the situation is outside of London, particularly in rural areas.
But the picture only gets worse for disabled people. Nearly a quarter of disabled people have no qualifications, compared to less than 1 in 10 able bodied people. And of the 1.3 million disabled job seekers, unemployment stands at nearly 50%, compared to about 20% for able bodied job seekers.
Furthermore, roughly a third of disabled people are living in poverty - often because of the greatly increased living costs that sickness and disability cause.
Benefits such as Disability Living Allowance are meant to help with this but the government has passed reforms which mean the money spent on DLA will be reduced by 2015/16 by 20% compared to what it was in 2009/10, despite the fact that the fraud rate for DLA being just 0.5%.
While it costs three times more to raise a disabled child as an able-bodied one, the coalition government is cutting children's disability benefits for new claimants to the tune of £1,400 a year.
And changes to Employment Support Allowance, which supports those who's sickness or disability prevents them from working, are set to force hundreds of thousands onto an income related version of the benefit which cuts off all support when household income rises above as little as £7,500 a year, meaning that many more disabled people will be forced to be almost entirely dependent on their partners.
When you look at all this, you begin to understand why so many people are demonstrating against the Department of Work and Pensions. In short, sick and disabled people still lack anything approaching full equality, that they are still side-lined and that they are still unable to enjoy the full independence and equal citizenship which pretty much everyone else is able to take for granted.
I myself am also taking positive action. Working with Liberal Democrat Colleague George Potter, we are challenging the Liberal Democrats to review the current approach to disabled people.
Not only through benefits, but also to attempt to tackle the systemic attitudes that underpin comments like Iain Duncan-Smith MP who considered that disabled workers at Remploy factories just sat around all day "making coffee".
As a party, the Liberal Democrats are committed intellectually to equality and inclusion for disabled people.
This is why I will be debating the Equal Citizenship motion at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton this September, thanks to the support of Liberal Democrats from constituencies up and down the country.
At the heart of the motion is one crucial concept: empowering and enabling sick and disabled people to finally have equal citizenship, removing barriers to disability equality, confronting prejudice head on and tackling policies which force them to be dependent on others - particularly some of the more retrograde Tory policies implemented by this government.
By challenging the party to address the wide reaching issues within the current approach to disability, we hope to achieve a full independent review of the Welfare Reform Act, more defined public consultation on PIP, DLA and ESA, and expand schemes such as Access to Work.
If we achieve this, perhaps we can finally start to turn around attitudes in society and build equal citizenship for millions of our fellow citizens - just as we did and are still doing for sexual, racial and gender equality.
We are seeking full support for the Equal Citizenship Motion - both in the Liberal Democrats and externally. If you can assist in any way, or would like to pledge support to this action, please contact me at kellymarie.blundell@gmail.com]]>The Royal Madonna/Whore Dichotomytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15640342012-06-01T19:23:09-04:002012-08-01T05:12:19-04:00Kelly-Marie Blundellhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/kellymarie-blundell/Madonna whore dichotomy has never been more prevalent in society. From Jerry Hall's now ubiquitous statement;
"to keep a man; you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom."
to endless articles debating whether or not women "have it all", gender divide has never been so prevalent.
Perhaps the most exquisite representation of this in British society is the projection of such a complex, the virtuous maiden and the exciting Aphrodite, on to the newest members of our Royal family.
Whether you are pro, anti- or indifferent towards the British monarchy, their presence and evolution into "celebrity" culture cannot be denied. In the 2010s, the focal point has not been the Royals themselves, but the celebrity status and archetypal representation of women entering the Royal family.
Kate the Chaste
Free fashion magazine The Stylist published an article entitled "Why we all want to believe in Kate". The article reads like a shopping list of what a woman must do in order to secure a reputation as feminine, modest, conservative, reticent and, critically, ideal wife material. After all, when one becomes a wife, one must surrender to her husband's wishes, ambitions and needs.
The reader is informed that
"Kate, with a dignified elegance, is providing a much-needed role model"
and
"we crave a solid and dependable role model who acts with decorum and makes us feel safe. And Kate fits that mould perfectly"
and not to mention
"we're almost biologically programmed to buy into a fairytale ending... Kate is radiant in the certainty that William loves her just the way she is, and that one day he is going to make her his queen"
If you are concerned at all about the misogynistic premise of this article is made so far, don't fear,
"on a primitive level, we all have fantasies of finding the perfect person, so will inevitably respond positively to the narrative that fits within that parameter"
It's not clear from the article whether this refers to a biological predisposition for romantic, rose tinted preconceptions established by fairytale literature, or is in fact, and are much more likely, bunkham. Indeed, as Mariette Nowak observes in Eve's Rib, biology and sociobiology can only identify the importance of female choice, which, despite the biological investment in the ovum, may still result in the male walking, swimming or flying away after copulation. Far from a predisposition to "the one" and other subjective patriarchal concepts designed to maintain the predominantly religious institution of marriage, this is an almost purely social evolution which cannot be attributed to biological or spurious references to primitive inclinations.
The description of Kate continued to embrace the representation of a "Demure Duchess", representing purity, virtue and chastity, which, as every girl knows from fairy tales depicting Madonna/whore dichotomies, is the only way to "ensnare" a man.
Like most young girls, I had always been vaguely longing for my' Prince Charming' to come and awaken me with his magic kiss"
And indeed, this is the crux of the issue. The nation's latest sweetheart, Duchess Catherine, has married a real-life Prince. Despite the light years of progression feminism has achieved, we are never truly relieved the pressure to be Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White et al, especially when such hegemonic representations and social construction require one to follow a pattern of austere and decorus behaviour in order to capture a chance at happily-ever-after.
Not only does the UK have it's own fiction to tide us through a global recession, but the personal brand of Kate Middleton is helping to perpetuate social myths and gender exclusion for another generation; from self identification
"Kate made clear her fashion intentions early on... this makes us warm to her... we view her as an idealised version of ourselves"
to how life should progress once married;
"Kate is pulling off her professional duties - be that accompanying her husband... (making) numerous public appearances either alone or with the Queen and Camilla, or visiting Birmingham"
There is nothing egalitarian about this representation, Princess or not.
Prodigal Pippa
The epitome of promiscuity, or certainly painted so by the tabloid media, Pippa Middleton represents the other end of the scale of the representation of the idealisation of women.
Pippa represents all that is attractive, accessible, and above all, condoned, of the current 'sleb' fixation on the newest additions to the Royal Family. Unlike Kate, Pippa's behaviour often contends that of her demure sister, and would be considered shocking behaviour for the wife of a Royal.
However, Pippa is not constrained by the same rules and regulations as Kate. Therefore, if she is allowed to break the rules, then the media, and the public, are also allowed to break the rules by lusting after her.
Whether Pippa intentionally courts such attention is up for debate. One could argue that sitting in a friend's convertible when he is holding a toy gun in the air is certainly provocative. But such behavior also helps condition our understanding of her as deliciously dangerous and licentious.
Adorning a variety of clothing, Pippa can be found across the Internet on celebrity gossip pages, on dedicated blogs, on fan pages and in every newspaper. The slow build of the concept of her as the "sexy one" has resulted in her name becoming synonymous with synonyms for the rear end.
But alongside Kate, the polarised sister is as much of a two-dimensional, duplicitous image.
Detrimental to Society?
Patriarchal overtones of rendering women as two sides of a meaningless coin stretch back centuries. The battle between the virgin and the slut is perpetuated on a daily basis and yet has no real rendition in the animal kingdom.
Kate and Pippa may be the current representations of entrenched misogynistic behaviour, and it is necessary to challenge them as much as possible. Ultimately, they are both sexualisations at opposite ends of the scale. Neither woman presents a challenging career, you never hear about their personalities, their wit or their intelligence; only about their attractiveness and inferences gained from this.
Establishing another generation of happily-ever-after could set back equality crusades even further. Many people who read the vast amount of feminist literature that is available generally agree to identify the falsehood of fairytales and the liberation from repressive hetero-normative behaviours.
Kate may represent an antidote to the increasingly overly sexualised advertising that new generations are exposed to, but she is in fact just another example of a female stereotype to be aspired to. And almost as if to emphasise this, her sister is the other end of the scale, just an alternative form of objectification.]]>Wasting Time on Sacking Stafftag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15350392012-05-22T02:47:23-04:002012-07-21T05:12:12-04:00Kelly-Marie Blundellhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/kellymarie-blundell/unfair dismissal legislation is gaining in interest, but do nothing but a sideshow to resolving any real problem that exists.
Even if, as the paper leaked to the Telegraph suggests, Employment Law is preventing companies from flourishing, capability and so-called slackers are only a percentage of people dismissed for range of grounds.this does not automatically equal tribunal cases, these are generally only bought on the basis of diversity (discrimination against a particular strand), bullying and unfair dismissal procedures. As these would not be altered by the law, the so-called bureaucracy that is preventing companies from hiring and firing and therefore preventing them from flourishing would not be removed.
However, it appears that this alleged red tape is a complete fiction in the effect on businesses. Channel fours Factor Check observes here that companies do not consider the burden of hiring and firing legislation to impact on the hiring and firing choices.
It would appear that this is very much a piecemeal reform to appease the business owners that donate to the Tories and reassure them that despite those "terrible Lib Dems", the Tory heartland is very much in control and getting rid of all of the left-wing Labour excesses of the last 15 years.
Quite simply, while Labour may have made significant inroads on Employment Law and ensuring that employees are treated fairly, current Unfair dismissal regulations don't go far enough.
I have never understood the justification for protecting diversity strands above other members of the workforce. Surely is just as difficult for a 'normal' employee to be dismissed and have to seek work elsewhere as it is the someone who has been discriminated against on the grounds of gender, disability, race or age. While bullying and harassment amendments cover the majority of employees, and in a much wider context, signifying a more well rounded approach, moving legislation governing unfair dismissal to two years instead of one was simply further discriminate against people that do not have a diversity basis.
The onus should always be on the organisation to ensure that they do not treat someone unfairly, do not dismiss them on false grounds and provide appropriate management and training opportunities to prevent unfair dismissal occurring in the first place.
Further to this, as Vince Cable observes in the Guardian, removing people's security in their jobs will do nothing to promote growth. People will just continue to save and not spend to protect their own financial positions.
Therefore this very piecemeal approach to allegedly resolving the law will in fact resolving nothing will do nothing for the economy, will do nothing for employers, and will certainly not do anything for employees.]]>The Home Office: Right as Rain?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14774822012-05-04T10:57:09-04:002012-07-04T05:12:04-04:00Kelly-Marie Blundellhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/kellymarie-blundell/
As one of the most important offices, the Home Office manages security, order and immigration, fundamental parts of a civil society. These are also highly contentious issues between a left/right coalition, as we currently have in the UK, so any issues which arise are likely to spark a large amount of media interest.
In the last week, as chaos develops at British airports, The Home Office has sought to dictate the reason for such problems is rain. That's right; quintessentially British rain is the fundamental problem resulting in not enough staff, excessive elaborate and futile security checks and lengthy delays at international airports.
This is the most recent in a long line of errors in the Home Office that seemingly being excused with spurious comments. Failure to extradite Abu Qatada must also be down to the rain. Issues with deporting dangerous terrorists from London during the Olympics? Well if it wasn't for the rain, The Home Office would be able to.
Perhaps rain is also the reason for Theresa May's inability to fact check her own speeches.
The problem is that this host of contrived excuses are a mask for what appears to be a slowly unravelling senior government department. The reality of so many errors, each on it's own seemingly innocuous, have severe implications about the safety and security of the UK.
Infringement of civil liberties was a practice many demonstrated again and again throughout the Labour administration, from their fixation with introducing identity cards through to their insistence on using terrorism as a stick with which to beat campaigners and protestors. In alliance with the George Bush's government in America, Blair's insistence that iris scanning would reduce the risk of another 9/11 has lent plausibility to such excuses by governments in order to appropriate data.
Repeated rhetoric from the Home Secretary that black is white has made it credible to insist on placing missiles on peoples' roofs for the olympics. Frighteningly, the introduction of stop and search powers deemed illegal by the European Court of Human Rights alongside apparent fraying edges of The Home Office with the Border Agency now going on strike, a significant lack of staff and the readiness to extradite anyone anywhere on less than culpable offences there is a significant lack of protection for the individual citizen.
All of a sudden, the man walking on the street may be searched without due cause, extradited to the US or detained without charge. As with all civil liberty issues, the issue is often not the justification for introduction, rather, the people that are handling it. And if the people that are handling it are blaming their own mistakes on rain, there are some serious problems.]]>Reforming the House of Lords is Not a Progressive Debatetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14492772012-04-24T12:27:20-04:002012-06-24T05:12:01-04:00Kelly-Marie Blundellhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/kellymarie-blundell/
To widen the perspective, let's examine the military intervention Britain has become involved in in the last decade. Much of the justification for Britain and NATO involvement in a no-fly zone in Libya was to protect people's rights and ensure the power of democracy. The invasion of Iraq was founded on the basis of bringing democracy to the people. And don't forget Afghanistan, the establishment of a democratic state in the Middle East.
Here we have, on a plate, a coalition government proposing that we re-form an entire third of the executive to introduce a fully democratic government. While other countries are bravely contemplating Civil War in order to gain democratic representation, the press in this country considers that reform of the House of Lords is not of public interest. Or indeed in the public interest.
All we also be forced to set ourselves on fire to demand democracy?
The arguments presented against reforming this chamber of government are spurious at best. Rather like the arguments presented against AV, they are at best arbitrarily dogmatic and at worst, rhetoric from the two major parties.
Money
This shouldn't even be a consideration. Money should not be a barrier to democracy. But if you need an argument against spending money on reforming a major political institution for the better, let's not forget the financial burden of corruption that the House of Lords currently represents.
Then of course, you have to take into account the vast amount of money that people appointed to the House of Lords first paid political parties. The Conservatives may have detracted from their Number 10 Dining Street scandal with some blather about baked goods, it should be noted that those who dine regularly with the Prime Minister have all made significant donations and many of whom have been granted peerages.
But the very point is that it is broken. The current system is the House of Lords represents an archaic institution that once advised the king and was comprised of wealthy landowners. If we've moved so far from such an antiquated system as feudalist society, why should the last remnants of a powerful nobility still exist?
Rather than representing a body of experts, its history seeks to define it, the Houses of Lords represent the epitome of all that is wrong with a capitalist society; people who pay to be there. If you have any doubts, examine Lord Alan Sugar.
Again, it is not a progressive idea to reform the House of Lords. It is not progressive to suggest that democratic representation is essential to society. It should be commonplace that such a system exists in an advanced Western country.
Political Persuasion
This should not even be in argument between major political parties. It shouldn't matter whether you're red, blue or yellow as to whether or not you support this idea. Ultimately, to not support this idea on a political bandwagon demonstrates further everything that is wrong with the democracy in the UK. It is in the interest of the people to have a fully elected democratic representation governing their country. Every political party should support this.
And indeed, every political party did call for reform of the House of Lords in their manifestoes in 2010. Tony Blair made significant inroads on reforming the House of Lords. However, his work is unfinished. It is necessary for the left to push forward in changing things now, when the opportunity arises. Not waiting until a member of the public is forced to emoiliate themselves in Trafalgar Square.]]>