...I'm a realist... most of us don't have love lives like that...

Those folks down at The Guardian have been getting pretty frisky of late, with a recent in depth (!) article on Britain's oldest lap dancing club, a story about dateline love and a piece telling us that 100,000 condoms have been shipped into London 2012 to keep everyone safe and unfertilized between competition heats... 

My visits to The Guardian website are mainly confined to the Health, Children, Social Care and Voluntary sections - no  team is more dedicated to keeping the plight of the most disadvantaged in the spotlight.  Friends and associates must surely bore of me tweeting my praise for Polly Toynbee, Patrick Butler and their colleagues, but really, at times The Guardian's been more of an opposition than the official opposition!  (Actually I'd be quite content to have Polly and co moving into Downing Street in 2015!)

But I digress, back to the business in hand...

So today I stumbled across their Sexual Healing section, where you can get interesting advice from Pamela Stephenson Connolly (yes, her from "Not The Nine O'clock News" who married that comedian guy who goes on about prostate examinations).. You can share your concerns about wives who don't want sex, boyfriends who've never had sex and father-in-laws who are addicted to watching internet sex on your sofa!

She's pretty liberal.  I'm no Mary Whitehouse, I think human sexuality is something to relish and celebrate and explore and talk about and write about and generally feel great about.. sex is an intrinsic part of who we are, as adult humans... 

But it does concern me, as a feminist (with a little "f") the nonchalant attitude to pornography Pamela Stephenson along with many others, seem to convey these days.  I mean pornography, that's like the sex industry isn't it... that's using people..  women.. like pieces of meat... That's encouraging men to see women as sex objects.. I thought we tried to enlighten men about this sort of thing back in the 90s...

Erotica on the other hand is incredibly sexy I would argue.. and doesn't involve the exploitation of women or anyone else...

So now you might be thinking.. Hang on... pornography.. erotica... what's the difference?  Isn't one just a more acceptable word?  Aren't they exactly the same thing??

And I would argue no, they're different in an important way but it's never easy clarifying that difference...

The Oxford dictionary defines pornography as:

printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate sexual excitement

 

and erotica as:

erotic literature or art

 

That seems to be saying that pornographic material involves actual people having actual sex for the purpose of sexually arousing other actual people...  And it appears to be saying erotica is more of a portrayal of sex.. Characters are not physically engaging in sex, they're acting out a role, as if they were and the sex in fact happens in the audience's imagination...

 

So a medical textbook containing photographs of the naked human body is not pornography because its purpose is not to sexually arouse the reader...

 

A passage of text describing a sex scene, even quite a graphic sex scene, is not pornography because the sex act doesn't ever happen in reality...

 

A homemade video of two people making love, distributed around for others to watch is pornography because they really did have sex and they really meant for others to get turned on watching them have sex, as gentle and loving as that may have been...

 

Erotica should never involve itself with human trafficking, slavery, prostitution and the exploitation of children...

 

Pornography all too often does seem to be entrenched in that very murky world.

 

In an ideal scenario, none of us would ever think of using porn or erotica of course... we'd be so busy having mind blowing exploratory sex with our devoted lover, we couldn't imagine desiring something outside the relationship to turn us on...

 

But I'm a realist... most of us don't have love lives like that... or if we do, not for very long...

 

There is a strong argument perhaps for relationship therapists suggesting the use of material to spice things up if things have got a bit boring in the bedroom department...  I'd question how long a couple can really go on like that though... with him thinking of Billie Piper and her thinking of Mickey Rourke (OK.. a young Mickey Rourke!)  I think there's likely to come a point in time when they'd both just realise their love life was a bit of a sham.. and that wouldn't be any different whether our couple was watching "Lady Chatterley's Lover" or "Drink My Pee"...

 

All the same, for ethical reasons, I'd personally still prefer therapists to suggest fictional material and not porn but the debate will I'm sure continue to rage on because sex, as I said, is such a vital and healthy part of our lives........

Danny Boyle's beautifully crafted London 2012 opening ceremony might prove to be as potent as the '68 Black Power Salute...

Like many, I was far from excited at the prospect of London 2012, mainly because it was clear this Olympics more than any other before, had been hijacked by huge corporations such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Adidas and BP and promised to be a very ugly celebration of capitalism more than anything else. Ironic too, I thought, that these big organisations tend not to embrace the idea of competition in their own field of flogging crap to us...

After a relaxing day spent wandering around Bath in the sunshine, I found myself in a very good mood yesterday evening and thought I'd watch a little of Danny Boyle's opening ceremony before heading off for a shower and early night... I'd heard a bit about the live farm animals and country bumpkin setting and to be honest it all sounded a tad twee... boring even... But nonetheless I thought I'd watch the first ten minutes or so...

Like everyone else of course I remained glued to my sofa for over 3 hours as Boyle's portrayal of everything that has made Britain great, unfolded before our eyes...  No glorifying of wars and empire days, instead it was a tribute to the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary working class people whose labour and love has tirelessly strived to improve the society we were born into...

Some Tories were apparently incensed that they seemed to be watching a £27m Labour Party political broadcast - it wasn't of course... if Labour Party broadcasts were as good as this, Labour wouldn't be in opposition and we wouldn't all be suffering in David Cameron's miserable vision of society...

It is fitting that "Danny Boyle" "London2012" and "NHS" have all spent the day trending on twitter and public opinion has been almost unanimously positive of last night's show as people relish the opportunity to unite in a sense of pride and appreciation, made all the more potent against a backdrop of current Conservative cruelty...

For all the opposition to the Coalition's cuts to vital services and benefits, it has sometimes felt like those of us who endeavour to hold the government to account would still struggle to get people out to vote en masse come the next general election... spirits are battered through stress and fatigue and cynicism about politics seems to prevail among the general public...

But last night was a masterclass in how you connect with ordinary people... how you tap into their sense of identity, their values and their dreams and evoke empathy and a deep desire to belong to something they can believe in. 

A few weeks ago I tweeted that this Olympics was unlikely to offer us something as magical as the 1968 Black Power Salute...

But last night Danny Boyle used art and culture to enlighten and inspire and unite people across the country... He's probably sealed the fate of the Tories and Lib Dems come May 2015, and they probably know it... 

Bless that man, and everyone who played their part in bringing his vision to life.

The Camerons enjoy Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony...

Happiness report exposes government's lack of concern for people's wellbeing...

The government's "Measuring National Wellbeing" report  seems to reveal, as we might expect, that the people who have the highest sense of happiness are those who are physically and psychologically well, enjoy the benefits of a secure relationship and home and don't live in fear of debt or have to suffer the tedium of doing a job they can't stand. 

So why then is this government implementing policies which clearly jeopardise the health and wellbeing of so many. 

Attacks on the NHS clearly have a detrimental affect on people's physical health. 

The housing benefit cap has already seen thousands of families losing their homes - the very stability The Office For National Statistics concludes is important for a happy society.

The highest rate of unemployment since Mrs Thatcher's time in office has left families unable to pay the bills and increasingly turning to "pay day loans" just get through to the end of each month. 

Attacks on education mean that vast numbers of talented people are now denied the opportunity to fulfil themselves academically and increase their chances of doing a job they enjoy and feel rewarded by.

And all of this unnecessary pressure is inevitably causing stress and anxiety in people's relationships, making a happy marriage much harder to achieve than ever before, with all the negative impacts that has on children in those families.

The epic failure of David Cameron's Big Society project has led to charities being starved of vital resources under the naive belief that wealthy individuals would simply step in to take that responsibility on. It hasn't happened - established charities which have been supporting people in their local communities for many decades are closing on a weekly basis!

And the epic failure of George Osborne's economic policy is embedding misery into the lives of millions while those very highest earners, the people the Tories love so much, are enjoying the luxury of a tax cut!!

The time is fast approaching for us to unite behind a single message - this government is waging war on it's own people simply to satisfy the greed of those who are already obscenely wealthy.  Their weakness though, is their arrogance.  Like any playground bully they don't believe anyone's got the balls to stand up to them for fear of having themselves attacked next.

The sun is very hot this morning but soon enough the school holidays will be over and all our thoughts will turn to christmas and those dreadful winter bills including that fuel duty rise.  We need now, more than ever, to work together to get this coalition out of office before they damage the nation's wellbeing any further.

You need a cuddle? There's an App for that!

For all the amazing, sometimes life-changing, gadgets we have in our everyday lives to keep us connected to others - mobiles, laptops, tablets, gamestations, iPods - as human beings we're becoming more and more remote and isolated. Studies show this, but also most of us are aware of it to some degree in our own lives.

There was a piece in the news recently about a generation of Japanese teenagers who are opting for a reclusive existance.  They chose to interact with other humans digitally from the safety and familiarity of their bedrooms rather than going out and meeting up and experiencing the joy of having a good time in the physical world with other people you get on well with.  They're  living under the illusion that all their human needs can be adequately met by machines.  You need a cuddle?  There's an App for that!

As society becomes less friendly - more rules, more surveilance, more perceived dangers - people inevitably turn inwards for a sense of wellbeing rather than reaching out and attempting to physically connect with others but of course that leaves us feeling unfulfilled on a very deep level because for over a million years man has been a very social creature.  Our brains are hardwired to attach from birth, to other humans who will care for us.

This change in society and the way people connect with one another has all come about very fast.  Ten years ago most of the people I knew only used the internet for looking up specific information or sending emails to companies or a very small number of friends who had embraced the technology.  A few of us used social network facilities like the AOL chatrooms and joined in with debates on forums, but on the whole most of my friends and family had no idea what those things were or how they worked. 

These days almost everyone under the age of 80 is on Facebook - and a growing number of retired people are joining all the time. 

And of course it's been a dream for the advertisers - they now have access to consumers virtually 24/7 - feeding our insecurities, suggesting we're not quite good enough as we are, but if we just dye our hair this colour or start wearing these trainers or have an operation to correct things that are wrong with our bodies, such as breasts that aren't as big as men fantasise about, then we'll be more likely to attract affection from others.

The very opposite is true of course.  As people descend into a cycle of attaching emotionally to objects, they inevitalby feel less loveable for who they really are without all the exterior wrapping.  They come across as shallow as they start to judge others also on what car they drive, what mobile they have and how much they earn.

And for all the material possessions and relative wealth compared to say, our grandparents era, depression and anxiety keep rising.  Figures show it's now one in three of us who will suffer an episode of depressive illness at some stage in our lives, so it's very similar to the statistics for cancer!

But we can do a lot to start to reverse this trend.  For instance, in becoming aware of how much significance we attach to the things we buy, the things we absolutely must have and the example we might be setting our children.  Do we need the latest iPhone as soon as it comes out? - Do we need expensive shoes we struggle to actually walk in because the heels are so high? - Is that new BMW really going to get us a fantastic girlfriend?

Look at your life and ask if the possessions you own are genuinely giving you a sense of wellbeing that will take you into old age.   Or do you actually just crave something as simple as a real cuddle from a real person who loves you for who you are?

When this coalition government wages war on parents, particularly poorer parents, they also wage war on the children growing up in those families...

A study by american psychologists a number of years ago, revealed that 85% of the messages adults give toddlers are negative...  "you can't manage that"..  "you mustn't say that".. "you horrible naughty child".. "do you want a smack?" etc...

A child's brain, in the first 3 years of life, is soaking up information like a sponge.  With very little experience of life to challenge the views of parents and other adults, the child absorbs and internalises messages as absolute fact.  Children are looking at this stage, for the adults in their lives to give them essential information about themselves as little individuals and the world around them.  If mummy says I'm disgusting, then I must be disgusting...

Parents don't mean to be so cruel, but most of us will deliver roughly the same type of parenting we received as little ones.  Traditionally if you came from a middle class family that was likely to be a nurturant form of parenting.. lots of attention and encouragement to develop as an individual.  

If you were born into a working class family you were more likely to receive an authoritarian form of parenting where children are pressurised to conform to the rules around them and are more likely to be controlled with smacking for bad behaviour than offered an explanation for why something is wrong...

Most of the parents I know have made a genuine effort NOT to be like their own parents, and that works fine when life is ticking along happily and everyone in the family is well.  But under stress, parents find themselves suddenly reverting to the old models of parenting they got and they're less likely to be patient and understanding and more likely to lose their temper...

John Bowlby, back in the 50s, offered the insight that if you don't make sure the parents basic needs are met, then they will struggle to meet the needs of their children, which of course makes total sense...

And when this brutally heartless coalition government wages war on parents, particularly poorer parents, they also wage war on the children growing up in those families, which I'm sure they know very well.. and they do it anyway!

Rise in suicides as the government continues to slash services.....with a smile

Official statistics show that 4,517 people took their own lives in England and Wales through 2010.  Around 75% of those were men although studies show that men and women think about suicide in roughly equal numbers...

Working class men who have more than one child and who are over 45 years old are at particular risk and the government had actually planned to launch a suicide prevention strategy last week, but sadly decided to postpone this until September.  I guess they felt they were too busy making sure the bankers and lords were OK to worry very much about working class fathers...

The coalition's cuts are having a particularly devastating effect on men.  The loss of jobs and slashing back of tax credits hits them particularly hard for a number of reasons.

• Studies show that men tend to gain self-esteem from getting respect from their peer group, in other words going to work - Women are more likely to gain self-esteem from their personal relationships than from the work they do - our brains are hardwired quite differently in this respect.
• A man in his 40s who loses his job can experience not only the sense of shame of not being able to provide for his family and maintain everyone's living standards, but also the loss of a sense of purpose.
• Men who lose their jobs also often experience a loss of identity as their whole lives have been geared up to being a good reliable family man who provides the things needed for a comfortable stress free life.

As Polly Toynbee keeps reminding us, we've still only seen the tip of the austerity iceberg, there's around 85%  of the cuts still to come!

Wait till we get to winter and added to all our current worries will be those rocketing fuel bills... and petrol duty of course set to rise in January.  They say that people only overthrow governments at the point where a significant number are struggling to feed their families and keep them warm. 

It feels like we're actually edging ever closer to that day...............

Kamikaze Cameron's Big Society Scam...

"Aspirational waffle designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable." This was how the Archbishop of Canterbury described David Cameron's flagship Big Society project back in 2010.  Two years on, and I imagine most people would completely agree with the view held by Rowan Williams.

At best, The Big Society sought to take us back to a pre-war era when charitable causes were set up by incredibly wealthy individuals and institutions (there are inevitable questions about whether these people accrued their wealth through ethical means!) and a community's poor were expected to feel grateful for these acts of charity.  But the wisdom of hindsight has shown us that all too often these unregulated, unaccountable organisations set up to help the disadvantaged, harboured a host of dirty secrets such as the wholesale abuse of innocent children.

At worst, The Big Society's mission has been to deliberately starve established worthy causes of funding, so that today's obscenely rich can sweep in and exploit the poor, the disabled and the unemployed for their own selfish financial gains. 

It's as if Cameron has become so obsessed with gratifying his obscenely wealthy friends, he's lost the ability to be rational.  He's becoming quite kamikaze in fact (watch any recent PMQs) and ultimately that lack of rationale is likely to bring about a downfall as dramatic as Mrs Thatcher's in 1990. 

Politicians have no idea how unfair life is for those at the bottom...

I was a real loner at school...

A pretty smart kid from a pretty poor council estate I just didn't fit in anywhere - my middleclass fellow students seldom included me in their social gatherings and frankly I was glad about that...

Like most of my classmates I had dreams of going to university -  I wanted to study Psychology and Politics, I thought I would make a good war correspondent (analyse that one!)  But there was little encouragement for girls from working class homes to take that path and instead I was ushered into college to learn how to type and do shorthand - still clinging to my dream, I told myself these were essential skills to learn for the career I had ahead of me...

At the end of that year there was still no talk of uni... instead I was assigned a Youth Opportunity Programme advisor who quickly got me a job in a local factory answering the telephone and typing memos.  It didn't fulfil me at all but everywhere around me were the messages that this was what girls like me did.  More than once I was told "don't get ideas above your station" so I didn't...

As a Labour Party member through the 80s and into the 90s I fiercely defended free education for those who did have the opportunity to go to university, this was such a fundamental principal I'd always held dear - people have a human right to as much education as they desire -  This would have been around the time David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband were getting their free degrees, funded by my taxes while I was working in jobs with poor pay and conditions.  I always told myself I would have children one day who would be bright enough to go to university - so in my mind, it all seemed kind of fair...

Last summer my own son got excellent A level results... Raised by a single mother who works part time and living for most of his life in a run down private rented house at the rough end of town, he deserves so much credit for his achievements and proves all the Daily Mail bigotry quite wrong...

Having thought long and hard, and despite all my encouragement, he decided not to go to university but instead to get a job and pay his way...

Politicians have no idea how desperately unfair life is for those at the bottom...

Or perhaps they do..............


Piss Factory - Patti Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6aUbrZYjYE

What would you do differently?

Someone sent me one of those email questionnaires recently, you know the sort of thing:  What's your favourite pudding, What book would you rescue in a fire etc...  it was all very interesting, and then I came to a question that just stopped me in my tracks really; it said "If you knew the world was definitely ending on the last day of 2012 what would you do differently?" 

Now at first, rather flippantly, I thought well nothing, obviously!  If there were things I desperately wanted to do and experience, I'd be doing that now, wouldn't I! Silly question!! But I left the answer blank, and it really got me thinking...

Would I really just carry on as I am, if I knew I had only 175 days left to live would I spend those days doing my job as manager of a mental health support centre? Would I spend my evenings persuading.. no hassling my son to get his history assignment done risking an argument about the futility of homework?  Would I continue to tread on eggshells around people I have to interact with, who actually piss me off quite a lot?  Would I be very level headed and see an opportunity!? - I mean think of the thousands of people who would suddenly be looking for a counsellor to help them come to terms with the idea their lives were certain to end in less than 6 months time? Do I have the right people in my own life to help me come to terms with the prospect of The End? 

I've always looked after my body and mind, but would I suddenly think fuck it! and become sexually promiscuous and take all the drugs I currently spend my days warning clients about?  Would I race to get the novels I've written published in the hope that some advanced species of human a million years from now would discover and appreciate my talents?  Would I join an organisation to sit around intellectualising about The End?  Would I become more politically active?  Would I start risking my life for the things I believe in?  Am I fulfilled as a human being as I am, or are there gaping holes which I largely ignore and tell myself that bit will come when the time is right.  I guess if I only had 175 days left to live that time would be... right now, wouldn't it?

Thankfully the world isn't set to end on December 31st, 2012 but this question got me thinking really hard about the way most of us fritter away our days as if there is never going to be The End for us, as individuals.   The way our culture is going it looks as if people in their 40s like me will be working longer than ever, at the moment it's said the retirement age will settle at 67, 68, 69... but it might well be over 70 by the time it comes around, depending on the governments we elect along the way. Actually, tragically, many my age will die before they get to retire; in terms of the way we treat people who become vulnerable in our communities, we seem to be going backwards as a society. 

Will I be so busy day after day, month after month, year after year... working.. to get the bills paid.. to help my kids through university.. and then one day I wake up and I'm 75 and it hits me with all the brutal fear of an impending doomsday.... where did those days and months and years go?.. I wanted to discover beautiful corners of the world as yet untarnished by the ugly greed of capitalism ..  I wanted to make a difference politically and inspire others to do the same..  I wanted to be consumed with sexual passion and wake up every morning ecstatic with the very concept of living....... What happened to that woman?  At what point on my journey did she take a fork left and I never even noticed because I was so busy worrying about the gas bill or fretting that my hair was starting to go grey?...

How often do we hear "life isn't a dress rehearsal", with nothing remotely like evidence for some sort of existance beyond death we have to conclude and accept, this is probably all life is.. but there really is no limitation to what we make it, other than our own nonchalance...................