All Lives Matter to G_d

[Image description: a US American white, male & female couple hold a placard which reads:

Christ & Racism

- DO NOT - mix.

You can’t love God &

Hate His Creation ]

This sign from last year´s Black Lives Matter campaign could equally state:

Christ & Disablism (US Ableism)

- DO NOT - mix.

You can’t love God &

Hate Their Creation.

Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, Ageism, etc. have no place in Christianity. If you believe they do, you are no true Christian. Jesus made it crystal-clear that after loving G_d, the next most important commandment was to love one another. He himself averred that he came to fulfil and thus replace the Old Testament (OT), so there is no justification for quoting scriptures out of context. To be quite clear: There is NO place for hate, treading in the steps of JC!

Black lives matter.

Asian lives matter.

Disabled lives matter.

Wimmin’s lives matter.

LGBTQIA+ lives matter.

Senior citizens’ lives matter.

Poor, working-class men’s lives matter.

If you do not understand why any of the above groupings are suffering in British (or US or Oz) society, then do some research - the internet is full of personal stories, histories from differing perspectives and data for those interested in statistical analyses.

We all have our own prejudices. The path of Faith calls us to to challenge ourselves and learn to stretch out the hand of amity, of friendship to all, not just those who are like us.

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Peace & blessings! 🙏🏻

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Vote Tory To Kill Your Disabled Neighbours…

It's been a hard few months for me. Nearly six months down the road, and I still have NO care plan due to the national social care crisis. However, even if my toilette is not regularly seen to, I am now eating more regularly and taking the vast majority of my meds and at the appropriate times. Still awaiting after nearly two months to hear from DWP about PIP decision, after taking me six weeks to complete the claim-form (forty-plus page booklet!). My state of health remains poor and my cognitive abilities weak. There has thus been a dearth of blog-posts. My apologies therefor.

[Image description: white background, black triangle to the left; to the right the slogan -

I will be voting

Against the

Tories

In Support Of

Disabled People

(sic) courtesy of Black Triangle]

This morning I was sent a link to a blog-post by Fiona Robertson aka @knittingquark on Twitter on the Commonspace website.

Fiona has very kindly given me permission to reblog the post in full. Please read and share either the original or my reblog, but please share it as widely as possible on any social media platform the reader happens to use. Fiona's writing is concise and lucid and makes the arguments way better than I could.

If a state "nudges" folk to suicide, then that state is guilty of murder. This IS what has been happening in the UK since 2010 due to deliberate policies of our elected government, policies that have been criticised by the United Nations.

We disablies and our carers & supporters need to let the British populace know that if they vote for the Conservatives they will be complicit in, depending on numbers, democide or genocide.

 

[Image description: blue background, EU ring of stars to the right; to the left the slogan -

Let's make June

the end of May

© n/k]

The article is entitled: 

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Voting Tory in #GE17 is a vote to kill people like me, and you need to know why

 

Disability activist and writer Fiona Robertson says the UK's most vulnerable are screaming for help

IT IS to their credit, and to our collective doom, that the Conservative Party are masters of controlling narrative. 

Although, much of the groundwork was done during Tony Blair’s days of rhetorical tricks and language manipulation to sow doubt about the veracity of a person’s disability, to seed suspicion and harden attitudes. It is these linguistic and narrative tricks which have been used to make people think of the tens of thousands of deaths under austerity as a sad but necessary evil, or to make people ignore them completely.

They speak as if what they say is reality, and we usually just go along with it until it is.

Theresa May’s General Election announcement included a lot of these narrative devices, accusing anyone who doesn’t agree with her of treating politics as a game, and framing the vote as entirely a vote regarding Brexit and the mandate she needs in order to negotiate from a place of strength.
We cannot, under any circumstances, allow the Tories to reframe the concept of a General Election.

This is not just a vote on Brexit, it is a vote on their entire manifesto and a judgement on their policies on everything from crime to social care to housing to international relations. Voting for the Tories may well be a vote for Brexit, but it is also unquestionably a vote for certain death for some, and permanent damage to the health of tens of thousands of disabled people.

Never, ever forget that.

When I and my fellow disability activists woke up on the morning after the last General Election, we spent an unrelenting few days tag teaming as we tried to keep people in our community alive. We were not always successful. Over and over, hour after hour, we saw iterations of the same message: "I do not think I will survive this government."

The day of the election, we had all taken a few moments to remember the people who were not there to vote because of the actions of the coalition government. We took a moment to think of the people who would not make it to the next election if we lost. 

Amid the elation so many in Scotland felt at the sweep of SNP seats, we disabled people also felt utterly betrayed and hopeless, because the population of the UK had voted to enforce extreme, frequently lethal, damage to our health.

If you do it again, if you do this to us again, we will never forgive you. You can't pretend you don't know, you can't pretend that other things are more important, that it’s not the killing of disabled people you’re voting for really; it’s the other stuff. 
 
The point of civic nationalism is that we have to take responsibility for the choices we make as part of a society. We cannot tick a box and say 'I didn’t know', or 'I care about this bit but not the other bits'. 

We have to weigh our decisions, weigh our actions and inactions, and live with the results. We have to accept responsibility, and we have to ensure that others accept their responsibility. We have to not look away.

There were 30,000 extra deaths in England and Wales in 2015 as a result of cuts to health and social care, according to research by Oxford University. There were hundreds of suicides by the very lowest estimates, though we who spend our days working with people who are struggling to survive this government know there are more which aren’t counted; that there are many, many deaths because the stress and fear and pain and malnutrition and isolation exacerbated a person’s condition to the point of lethality. 

More than 50,000 people have lost their motability vehicles and become chronically isolated. Every one of those is someone who was considered disabled enough to require high mobility care until the Tories changed the narrative of who deserved assistance, against all the evidence from expert organisations who responded to the consultation. 

There has been "almost universal" deterioration in and frequently permanent damage to the mental health of people going through the Work Capability Assessment.

We have to be completely clear to the people we speak to. We can no longer afford to mince words or be neutral because, again, the narrative is that neutrality is rationality. In situations like this, anger and bluntness are the only rational responses.

We need to tell them, with no platitudes or appeasement: "You will be voting to allow the government to kill us. We will not forget, and we will not forgive."

Nothing else is more important than this.

Do not let them change the conversation.

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BREXIT is not as yet a fait accompli: it can still be stopped. The rights of disabled family members, friends, neighbours and disabled folk in the wider community can only be safe-guarded for the long-term within the EU and under the Council of Europe. At the moment the UK government blithely ignores international laws and treaties. Outside Europe it will be at liberty to do as it wishes with disabled and chronically sick folk. Please support us.

 

I have lost the credit for the above poster, however the creator stated that she was happy for it to be used and shared.

Simnel-Cake: a Traditional British Confection for Easter

[Image description: simnel-cake on cake-plate]

In commemoration of my Grandma's funeral, today I am posting my simnel-cake photographs. Each Easter my Gran would make us all a simnel-cake. Last year, due to her death, there was none. So, this year I decided I should follow the tradition she set and I baked a cake for home and a cake to give away. I hope I have done you proud, Gran.

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I chose a recipe produced by Waitrose (a high-end, UK supermarket) in March 2012. The recipe is © copyrighted, so I am not permitted to reproduce here. However, I doubled the amount of Cointreau and mixed spice, tripled the amount of nutmeg and increased the butter by 20%.

The ingredients (see image above) include:

mixed fruit containing citrus peel

sultanas

Cointreau liqueur

unsalted butter

caster sugar

Chinese stem ginger in syrup

eggs

plain flour

freshly ground nutmeg

ground mixed spice

marzipan

icing-sugar

This is not a cake that can be made in a hurry. The recipe suggests that the fruit is soaked for an hour. I covered and soaked overnight, having carefully stirred the alcohol through several times.

I am arthritic, so creaming butter and sugar is too difficult without my little trick, which traditional bakers will no doubt bemoan: I melt my butter in the microwave before adding the sugar, which part dissolves into the warm liquid. Beware adding eggs too quickly as one does not want them to curdle in the heat. I also added the roughly grated ginger and the sieved flour.

 [Image description: cake mixture]

Having lined my baking-tin, I spooned in half the mixture. Then I added three-eighths of the marzipan which I had rolled into a ball in my palms and then flattened with the heel of my hand (image below).

The resulting 'circle' is then placed atop the mixture (image below).

Then all remaining cake-mixture is spooned into the cake-tin and smoothed (image below).

The cake is then placed into a pre-heated oven (image below) for between 130 and 145 minutes. My oven seems to work a tad faster than that of Waitrose's kitchen.

  

On this occasion I weighed out and so on ingredients for two cakes. Interestingly the first took a good fifteen minutes less to cook thoroughly than the second. When a skewer comes out clean, the cake is done. The cake then has to cool in its tin (image below) prior to being removed.

Once cooled a further three-eighths of the marzipan are used for a circular topping and the remaining two-eighths to make eleven or twelve marzipan eggs.

 [Image description: the decorated cake]

The recipe goes with the former number, but my Grandma went with twelve to represent the eleven loyal disciples and Jesus. Plus, twelve is an easier number to use for slicing the cake!

Then the simnel-cake is ready to be toasted, just long enough to brown the topping and eggs (image above).

By the time I had finished my simnel-cakes, my kitchen smelled divine.

 

The recipe suggests Madeira to accompany. My guests however will be offered the half bottle of Cointreau not used in the cake-making! %P

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Finally, for anyone wondering what the heck "simnel" means, it comes from an Italian word for semolina, which meant "fine flour".

 

 

Britain's Global Rôle?

Today the Independent on Sunday, a British broadsheet, published an article on the most warmongering nations. Forty of the eight-one states reviewed are at war. Uganda headed the list:

The US came second, followed by Rwanda and then the UK

The publication is strangely co-incidental as only yesterday I had started a post on the UK's international missions.

For many years I have been a proponent of the UK reducing its international rôles & responsibilities commensurate with our actual size, unless those EU countries that rely on the United Kingdom and France financially support our armed forces and international escapades. As the latter is unlikely, then we ought to let the big players take over.

We are a very small island with delusions of grandeur harking back to an Empire that has long since gone.

Time to face up to our reality and look after our own: the hungry; the homeless; the injured & maimed; the sick; the disabled; the elderly; the young; the undereducated; the unemployed; the underemployed; the workers. In short: care for all our citizens, not just the rich and the arms-manufacturers.

Please do not misinterpret me: I am not saying we should not support foreign aid. Personally, I should like to see our soldiers being used to help construct infrastructure using the taxes set aside for international assistance rather than monies being handed over to corrupt governments, agencies and businesses.

I am a pantheist: which means I revere the natural world.

I am a humanist: which means I value all human life.

I am a Quaker: which means I try to respect life, all that contains & supports it.

I am a pacifist: which means I try to walk the path of peace.

I am a holist: which means I believe we are one, that everything is interconnected.

[Image description: Earth from space. © freeimageslive.com]

Any thoughts, folks?

BBC Fails Again to Cover Disability Issues

Inter alia the Huffington Post, The Daily Mirror, The Independent and numerous bloggers have managed to put out information in respect to the mortality rates of benefit recipients. This information has been subject to freedom of information requests and a ruling by the Information Commissioner, but the notorious Department for Work & Pensions has fought the release of the data every step of the way. Today, some information was published, concealed apparently within immigration data. Odd perhaps, one might think. However, not unusual for the Ministry of Truth that is renowned for feeding so-called propaganda to the neo-liberal press and sympathetic reporters (hardly journalists!).

The national broadcaster, the BBC, (paid for my a licence fee, a de facto tax on every TV-using household in the UK) has thus far failed to publish any item thereon. Or if it has, it has hidden it from accessible sight. I could find no mention on their main news page, so I searched elsewhere. Below are the timed screen-caps.

Nothing under "UK" news:

Nothing under "Politics" news:

 Nothing under "Science" news:

Nothing under "Health" news:

Next I though I should try specific searches. Here is how I fared.

Nothing under "mortality statistics":

Nothing under "death statistics":

Nothing under "DWP statistics":

 Nothing under "ESA statistics":

Nothing under "Employment & Support Allowance":

 Nothing under "WRAG":

 Nothing under "Work Related Activity Group":

 Nothing under "Iain Duncan Smith" (Minister in charge of the DWP):

 Nothing under "Fit for Work":

 Nothing under "WCA":

Nothing under "Work Capability Assessment":

I consider this yet another Auntie Beeb failure and snub to a large demographic section of British society (about one seventh of the population per ODI figures.). We chronically sick &/or folk with impairments, aka the disabled, deserve better. We also pay for our television licences and deserve for serious news that concerns us to be covered by one of the largest news-gathering organisations in the world.


***UPDATE***

An article appeared on BBC website an hour ago: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34074557?post_id=959487854098217_969804189733250#_=_

Schloßcafé im Palmenhaus, Schloß Nymphenburg, Munich

Munich is a city I shall be returning to again and again, assuming I am blessed with a few more years. There is so much to do and see there, that even were I living there, I imagine it would take me years to see all its attractions. We sent the lads off to BMW-Welt and my friend and I headed off for Schloß Nymphenburg. We had determined that the tram could drop us off really close to the entrance, so popped on one of Munich's very accessible trams, Straßenbahn. Unfortunately, the wherever one goes ubiquitous road-works meant a change of trams. Nonetheless, we were dropped off at a bridge over one of the palace's waterways, the Schloßgartenkanal. We strolled towards the famous edifice and our jaws dropped. Instead of the building we had seen in an image all over Munich, we discovered an immense complex of linked palaces and mansions surrounding ample formal gardens and waterways. Both my chum and I struggle to walk due to disability and this huge spread daunted us. Still there were plenty of benches dotted hither and thither. Indeed, we had to sit for quite some time. We discussed viewing the palace; but given its immensity it was quite impossible. We decided to find a spot for a wee nibble.

[Image description: one corner of the spralling palace; the birds on the lawn are geese]

The Schloßcafé im Palmenhaus, the 'Palace Café in the Palm-House', was a delightful spot on a bright, warm day. Our quietly spoken, handsome waiter handed us menus after taking a drinks order. Our coffees came, and he made a note of our choices. Whilst awaiting our brunches, the terrace outside the eatery gradually filled up, mainly middle-aged Germans but even a gay British couple after their morning hit of Kaffee und Kuchen and a young in-love pair.

[Image description: laid tables under parasols]

I opted for the Schloßcafé's eponymous plate: ham; cheese; salami; smoked chicken breast; scrambled eggs; a fresh fruit kebab; butter; jam; and, a basket of freshly baked breads. This I washed down with a freshly squeezed orange juice.

[Image description: brunch set out at table]

The whole ambience of the place was hushed, peaceful and tranquil. Service was a tad slow, given when we arrived there were so few diners. However, the day and environment was glorious and we were in no hurry to move along. The quality of the food compared to price was very good. I also have to admit that the coffee served was one of the best I tasted in München. The table, as can be seen from the photograph above, was set perfectly with a vase of cut blooms.

Just delightful! %D

Perfidious Treachery

[Image © Another Angry Voice]

The NHS is important to me;

Social Security is important to me;

Social Services are important to me;

Social Care is important to me;

End-of-life care is important to me;

Justice is important to me;

Public transport is important to me;

Energy is important to me;

Water, drainage & sewage are important to me;

Fairness, equality & equity are important to me…

None of these are important to Tories, save for any profit to be made.

I cannot find any comfortable way in which to say this…

If you vote Conservative you are a TRAITOR:

to British values;

to your community;

to your neighbours;

friends,

family

and ultimately to

yourself!

Well, that's certainly what I think and feel at the moment. %///