How sinister is this?

The boiler guy downstairs has local radio on (so I'm going to be humming various power ballads for the next few days - sorry Openspace/friends). But Foreigner aside, the radio station keeps running adverts for something called Quest For Truth, a company which offers polygraph - yes, lie detector - tests. It presents these as being 'fascinating,' but then goes on to suggest that people can use them for finding out if their partner is cheating or if someone they know has nicked stuff off them. Given the very questionable reliability of polygraphs this just sounds massively dodgy all round. As dodgy as that place in Chorlton that does extra scans of your foetus for you? Dunno. But still highly dubious.

Be Very Afraid, and some updates...

Firstly, thanks to OA again for striking fear into my heart when I opened my email to this excerpt from a Financial Times book review:

The most shocking tales are about Sarah Palin, who last week took up a new role as a Fox News commentator, and whose recent book, Going Rogue, is selling in the millions. So uninformed was McCain's running mate that advisors had to give her junior school tutorials on the first and second world wars, Vietnam and the cold war. Palin insisted that Saddam Hussein launched the September 11 attacks. As the depth of her ignorance sunk in, as well as her total lack of interest in rectifying it, McCain's senior staff members were “ridden with guilt over elevating Palin to within striking distance of the White House.

And a couple of updates.

First, wahey! My boiler scrappage scheme voucher has arrived, and as I type the cats are cowering in the bedroom as the rest of the house descends in to a chaotic mess of disconnected pipes, lifted floorboards and men in boiler suits wielding bits of machinery. But that doesn't mean I'm retracting any of my comments on the equally chaotic implementation of the scheme, which I put down to the EST's political masters trying to create a bit of a warm (literally) fuzzy feeling before the electioneering really gets going.

The second one is a corker. Remember Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling declaring that Moss Side was like the Wire? A couple of journalists - a freelancer from Manchester and a crime reporter from the Baltimore Sun - decided to swap cities and see if he was right. So Baltimore blokey, from a city with several hundred murders a year, gets to spend a night with GMP in sunny Moss Side. Simon Binns reported the result in Crains:

Justin Fenton, the Baltimore Sun crime reporter, spent a week on a job swap with Northern Independent hack Mark Hughes in order to see if Moss Side really was like hit TV show The Wire, a recent claim made by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling. Fenton was positively disappointed at the lack of excitement, however, after 14 hours with Greater Manchester Police. “The lack of action on my ridealongs has been quite ridiculous, especially since the press and the officers I rode around with in Manchester insist that these are tough streets,” he said. “Here's what I witnessed first-hand: a car full of teens who had just finished smoking marijuana; a kid whose furious bike riding raised suspicions but turned out to be nothing.” Furious bike riding is a suspicious activity now? Good news for Manchester's public image, though, and proof that cycling really has taken off since the Velodrome and Sir Chris Hoy's Olympic success.

Gaza book - fundraiser for ISM and FreeGaza

For anyone considering buying Gaza: Beneath the Bombs by credit card, if you use the Pluto Press sales website and enter the code FREEGAZA or ISM GAZA during the payment process the relevant organisation gets a cut...

The Boiler Scrappage Scheme: pt II

So, the Monday After the Saturday Before (see this rant), I get a phone call in response to the message I left for the Energy Savings Trust. I will not, for reasons which will become obvious, be divulging anything at all that might identify the person who rang me. That's the problem with slagging off organisations like this - some of the people working for them are actually genuinely dedicated and lovely. It's their bosses that are the problem.
So, Nice Person from the EST (NPEST from now on) gives me a call and establishes that what I would like is to apply for the effing Boiler Scrappage Scheme. They then helpfully offer to take down all my details for the application form, while admitting that they haven't actually seen the form before and certainly haven't filled it in. There's a first time for everything. But NPEST does warn me that this might result in my application going in several times, as they've already been told that "although the form looks like it doesn't work it actually has."
Maybe.
So, NPEST goes through the form, filling in the details as I read them off. They get a bit stuck trying to fill in the address section, since, as they comment, the fields are a bit confused and all over the place and it's not totally clear which bit of one's address is meant to go where.
NPEST also divulges (which I'm guessing they shouldn't have) that there was supposed to be a dedicated team staffing the phone lines to deal with the boiler scrappage scheme. I don't know if these are secondees from somewhere else in government, or what. But, says NPEST, for some reason they're not actually being trained until this week, ie won't actually be staffing anything for a few more days at least, and the EST's normal staff were significantly dischuffed to find this out when they came into work this morning, expecting to be able to farm this particular weight off onto someone else.
So, according to the computer screen in front of NPEST, my application has actually gone through this time. I haven't had any kind of confirmation email to that effect (and this must be six hours ago now), which is a bit worrying, but given the standard of form building which seems to be standard at the EST they probably just haven't remembered that people might actually want some kind of receipt.
The saga continues... (or, hopefully, it doesn't, but I get a nice voucher in the post).

The Boiler Scrappage Scheme: a tale of bureaucratic hell

In my bimbling innocence, I have been sucked into a bizarre parallel world of quangoese cockups that could drive a woman to... oooh believe that the state is incompetent and corrupt...
Gordon B announced with much fanfare a couple of weeks ago a boiler scrappage scheme, like the car scheme, which would replace G rated boilers with A rated ones, allegedly reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount as taking 45,000 cars off the road, and - the buzzword of the moment, create British jobs! Woohoo! What can go wrong, one asks.
The answer, of course, is that one can give the job of administering this scheme to the Energy Savings Trust, a clunking bureaucracy which isn't apparently up to anything more complex than sending out a few leaflets about changing your lightbulbs. It certainly managed to screw up the solar incentive scheme a few years back. Trying to make contact with this organisation is like dealing with some little organisation with three staff and a doggie on a string - you'd never guess its budget runs into tens of millions and it gets to second dozens of staff from government departments.
The sorry saga so far is that on the 6th January, my very on-the-ball boiler installer rang my at about nine o'clock at night to tell me to apply for the scheme. I went to the EST site next morning and, as per the instructions, emailed boilerscrappage@est.org.uk with a 'registration of interest' which included the make of boiler being replaced, the new one etc. I heard nothing back. So on about the 12th or 13th I rang up to chase this. The very nice, if somewhat woolly and confused-sounding woman on the phone told me they'd been 'snowed under' with interest (although I managed to get through straight away on the phone - obviously a good thing but not necessarily a sign of stretched capacity). She informed me that 'Steve' (not the name she said) would get back to my email - which rather (and worryingly) implied that a single bloke was actually dealing with this landslide of email interest.
Needless to say, by Saturday 16th I've heard nothing back. I tried ringing the national number, only to find that it's only staffed Monday-Friday 9-5. So how are people in work supposed to access a) the boiler scheme and b) the wealth of energy efficiency information the EST claims to be able to bestow? Not through the online forms on the site, that's for certain. I clicked through the same series of links I'd followed on the 7th, only to find that the instructions page has changed, and there is now a link to an application form for the scrappage scheme. Wahey! I thought. Yes, there is a question as to why everyone who sent in an expression of interest couldn't have been auto-emailed to tell them that this form was now up, but never mind. Now I can just apply...
Can I buggery. I fill in the form, not one but three times. Each time it all seems to go fine, I fill in the requisite fields - some of them dropdown menus, some typed fields. I tick the necessary disclaimer boxes. I press 'submit.' And then every single field on the form sprouts a kind of burgundy-purple message saying 'Please provide some information for the above field it is a required field,' or similar. It's not my browser - I fill in online forms all the bloody time.
So, I think, I'll at least let them know their form isn't working, and maybe I'll get something back telling me when it is. Or some such vain hope. So I go to the EST's standard contact form and write a little message to this effect. I also have to fill in a bunch of fields with my name, address, phone number etc, including one of those ones where you fill in your postcode and it finds your address for you. This works successfully. But when I press 'submit' - it all goes tits up again. Despite the form identifying my postcode enough to find my address, it's refusing to admit it is actually a postcode for the purposes of submitting the form. Great.
My last salvo is to try and email my message to the generic email addresses, which appear on various EST leaflets, ads etc, mail@ and info@. Neither of these are working either. There are completely unfunded organisations campaigning for the preservation of species no-one's ever heard of with more efficient communications than this over-funded shower. Withholding tax because irresponsible governments will just spend it on nasty nuclear weapons is a fab idea. But withholding it because their quangos are completely unable to perform basic tasks feels like an even better notion at this time...

Writing: Gaza, Freelance Hackery

Sharyn and I did our first book event this evening, to a small but warm and interesting audience at Manchester Muslim Writers – hopefully a good intro for Sharyn for the substantial tour she has booked all around the UK.
One of the audience was a guy who, on his Manchester Evening Snooze blog, has done a neat analysis of the Sky TV 'documentary' about Ross Kemp's trip to Gaza. Congratulations to Azaad on sitting through the whole thing. I should make it clear I haven't seen the programme. But I'm putting inverted commas around the word documentary because it has Ross Kemp in it. Maybe I'm a crashing snob. Probably. But I've never quite gotten the point of him.
Anyway, our advance order of the books turned up last week, and what a strange experience that was. A real book, rather a nicely designed one and on nice looking-paper. With our names on the front. Bizarre. Both of us had similarly bemused, slightly stunned reactions, and then have had to keep going back and remind ourselves that the product of that frenzied chunk of work last summer really happened. I had another Oh! moment today when I had to find something from the book and realised I could look in the index. It has an Index. Somehow that made it more real too. As did having people buy it and ask to have it signed for their friends and mums. Very odd.
Reading the accounts of the same days a year ago, from the depths of the hellish bombardment and invasion, is also very odd. But not in a good way.

On a completely different note, I came across a link to this more parochially depressing article today, analysing the state of the freelance writing market. Last week one of my regular (and better-paid) sources of work informed me that they have had to impose tight constraints on their freelance budgets, so no more work for me for the moment. It's not a surprise – it's a publication which is substantially dependent on public-sector advertising for its revenue. But it's happened sooner than I expected.
So the LA Times overview of some of the developments in freelance writing markets is interesting, looking at the risible sums paid by many of the contractors on freelance job sites like oDesk or peopleperhour, or by pay-per-hit 'news' sites like Allvoices. Many of the advertisers on the contract sites make it abundantly clear that they're not interested in the quality of the writing they commission – they simply want search engine-friendly-text that will lure people to their websites, selling whatever kind of tat they're in the market for. And the huge amount of free stuff on the web means there is no incentive for them to pay anything approaching a proper rate. But, as the LA Times writer points out, it also behooves writers who actually want to make a living out of their writing to see themselves to some extent as business people, offering a service, rather than as creatives who are owed a living for churning out our chosen art form. Hmm.

Copenhagen

Thanks to my little-ray-of-sunshine husband for the cheerful, if accurate, image.

Brave John MacLean has come hame tae the Clyde!

Ten days ago I was privileged to be invited to the Christmas party for people who've contributed to the work of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford. The afternoon included a range of fascinating readings and songs from some of Greater Manchester's left-wing greats, including the mighty Ewan MacColl, and songs performed by Aidan Jolly (who did a great rendition of a part of Leon Rosselson's very funny Ballad of Spycatcher), Bernie Murphy and a fantastic pair whose names I caught only as Ben(?) and Emily.
One of the songs covered by the latter was the haunting, deeply moving John MacLean March, a song to the Clydeside trade unionist who was the origin of the phrase 'a bayonet is a weapon with a working man at boths ends.' The song itself, written by Alistair Hulett, relates to his imprisonment for three years for sedition in urging the working men of Glasgow to see that fighting in the First World War was not in their interests as a class and that the empty nationalism of the war was a matter for the ruling classes and not those who would simply become their cannon fodder. The song, performed by Dick Gaughan, is here:

Climate change is not funny...

... obviously. It's deeply, deeply scary and unamusing.
But sometimes a certain grim humour can be found in it. Firstly I have to spread the word on one of the genius Marc Roberts' latest cartoons, the script of which was written by my lovely husband from a Copenhagen fantasy I'd had of the members of some of the most evil delegations - USA, Saudi Arabia etc - being eaten alive, very slowly and painfully from the feet up, by the polar bears who are being so painfully wiped out by the impacts of climate change. The cartoon is here.
The second dark little chuckle I've had this morning is at the eejits in, presumably, a) the PR agency hired by cheap flight website Nowfly, and b) Nowfly's own PR department which presumably passed its latest press release. It's headed "A Restive Festive," which is presumably meant to mean 'restful' and somebody thinks they've been terribly clever using the rhyming word instead. Unfortunately 'restive' actually means:

1. impatient of control, restraint, or delay, as persons; restless; uneasy.
2. refractory; stubborn.
3. refusing to go forward; balky: a restive horse.

and, as Dictionary.com continues, derives not from the same verbs as words like rest and restful, but from the Middle English restif meaning "stationary, balking" or the Old French for 'inert.' Which I guess is how many people do end up spending Christmas, but not in the way the advertising wonks intended...

Adsales job! (all in a good cause...)

From MULE...

is looking for someone to bring in advertising revenue through both the website and the newspaper.
The work will involve contacting local businesses and ethical organisations, building a database of contacts and being a point of contact when adverts are submitted.
You will be supported by MULE volunteers and can choose to work from home, or in our city centre office. No experience is necessary but could be an advantage.
To discuss rates of pay, or to arrange an informal interview, please contact Jenny on jen.nelson [at] themule.info, or 07934 699 223.

More Onion genius

Some people will hate this. But I think it's hysterical. And it's my blog.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/new_study_reveals_most_children

Redwood and barmy things

John Redwood declared on his blog this week that "We will benefit from the better weather for tourism, agriculture and outdoor sports." This, of course, is his in-depth analysis of the impacts of climate change. Genius. This of course happily balances out massive species loss, widespread loss of human life, resource wars - and something that Mr Redwood should really be worried about, given his views on non-Vulcans being allowed to reside in the UK, mass migration.
Another reminder of why the Tories must never be voted for, like we needed any more.
And on a migration tangent - I love Moss Side. I love it's mixedness. Especially when it throws up multicultural wonders like Donner in a Barm. No I won't be eating that (ever), but I'm glad it exists...

Moss Witch

I keep saying I've reached the end of my tether with the BBC - particularly with its repulsive and growing tendency to report the views of scum like Migration Watch and the Taxpayers' Alliance as if these loons are purveyors of reliable research data - but then Auntie keeps doing something to vaguely redeem itself. This time it's support for the National Short Story Awards, which I probably wouldn't have taken an awful lot of notice of if it wasn't for the presence of the marvellous Sara Maitland on the shortlist. And her story, Moss Witch, which touches on some very pertinent tensions between maintaining wild places vs studying them, can be downloaded here (beware, it's nearly half an hour long and the file is 26mb). Sara's three decades of writing seem to manage to touch on many of the Big Questions - gender, sex, nature, religion - with humour and breathtaking lightness and sadness. Personal favourites - novels Virgin Territory and Brittle Joys, and one of my current reads, A Book of Silence. There's something terrifically, terrifyingly wise about much of her writing, especially the last-named book, although it also makes me want to up sticks and become a hermit in the Sinai (if such a thing is possible. I suppose it is in the desert proper, albeit that's still peppered with landmines, but last time I was on Mount Sinai itself the experience was somewhat marred by a Belgian evangelical Christian accordionist who insisted on playing in the dawn with deeply unspiritual wheezings and blarings, despite the other people on the mountain trying to appreciate the heartbreaking wonder of the sun rising over the desert mountains.)

Urban Research, urban refurb, urban renewal

So, interesting (maybe, to someone out there) bits and bobs going on around my corner of South Manchester at the moment...

Went to the Urban Research Collective launch at Zion Arts on Wednesday. A very interesting new CIC which aims to try and drag left-wing researchers like muggins kicking and screaming into the activist arena - whether via its own projects or letting other people use it as a fundraising vehicle or networking tool. I love researching, and I'm much more comfortable producing stuff that other people can then go and do things with. But I'm looking forward to working with these guys and being prodded out of my comfort zone.



My office at Openspace is currently a building site - hence the pictures. But it will give our tenant-managed workspace co-op more room to rent out and a meeting room. Images nicked from my colleague Jonathan Atkinson. I'm not sure why Polyp seems to be doing Bill & Ben imitations in the second one... oh, and we got a plug from Ed Mayo the other day, so the marketing team should be happy.

The genius Marc Roberts and my lovely husband have their cartoon masterpiece, the Great Climate Slamdown, on the New Internationalist website. Will Copenhagen bring us a settlement on climate change which will save the world? Will it fuck. Will trogging off there to run around being chased by riot police achieve much beyond some nice activist bonding experiences? I refer you to my previous comment. Ho hum. Hopefully certain of my friends won't notice that and hate me for it...

Information seems to be slowly spilling out of the Council about the proposed regeneration of the area of Moss Side adjacent to the doomed bus (formerly tram) station on Princess Parkway and Claremont Rd to the south and north respectively, and between Princess Parkway and my allotment patch on Caythorpe St to the east and west. At one time it looked like everybody was getting compulsory purchased and shifted out for a major demolition job, but I think the recession had squished that plan (to the annoyance of at least one friend living in the middle of a semi-derelict street, as the housing associations with properties round there moved their tenants out months or even years ago, creating at least the beginnings of a wasteland of rats, rubbish and temporary druggie squats). Instead many of the old 2-bed Victorian terraced houses will be knocked through to create homes more in keeping with the needs of Moss Side's families. Sadly, though, Bishop Bilsborough Primary School is still in the path of the bulldozers, despite being recently squatted for an alternative arts festival. It's a lovely building and could have been a great location for some kind of community centre (something we're a bit short of in Moss Side if you don't count various religious buildings and the hideous Powerhouse, although there's still the West Indian centre).

Oh, and with marketing ahoy on the Gaza book, I've also finally finished the bloody Leila Khaled biography. A considerable relief, to say the least, and I'm looking forward to slowly re-emerging into the sunlight (just in time for it to disappear beneath a wintry horizon) and start attempting to re-engage with my social life. I'm sure I had one, once. The post-book holiday in Brighton, while pleasant, wasn't the relaxing experience it was meant to be - it seemed to involved inordinate amounts of work and the idea for Book Number Three popped into my head, almost fully-formed. But that's as much as I'm saying about that - if I let the idea out of my head before it's all written down properly it might go all liquidy and spill out of my ears or something. So watch this space.

Gizza lift!

An appeal for help from News From Nowhere, the wonderful women's co-operative bookshop in Liverpool:

News From Nowhere’s lift has broken down and will cost £4000 to repair! This will be very hard for us to find from our regular income. The lift serves our 5-storey building and users include our tenants, elderly & disabled visitors to the 2nd floor Methodists and Liverpool Social Centre in the Basement.
We had a wonderful response to our Appeal earlier in the year – we raised £10,000 for our running costs, which has put us on a much more even keel. And the building is now fully tenanted which will help over the longer-term.
If you are one of those who supported us, THANK YOU! We don’t wish to impose on you further, but if you missed the boat or can pass this on to others, then this is your chance to support Liverpool’s Radical Bookshop.
We are looking for 40 people to loan us £100 each (anything larger or smaller also gratefully received)
This can be as an INTEREST-FREE CASH LOAN to be repaid over the next 2 years. (We can repay some, but not all, earlier.) Or as a CREDIT LOAN – to be reclaimed as books from December onwards – save now for those Xmas/Hanukkah/Solstice presents!
Many thanks from News From Nowhere Collective
96 Bold St, Liverpool, L1 4HY 0151 708 7270 nfn@newsfromnowhere.org.uk

P.S. The best support, of course, is to keep buying your books (& other goodies – world music CDs, DVDs, Cards, Calendars, Diaries, Crafts etc) from us!

Zombie apocalypse maths

A little late for Hallowe'en, but this genius Venn diagram is so wrong... and yet so right. Thanks to my beloved husband for the spam.
And for some wise advice on coping strategies in a stressful world, see here. Although my favourite coping strategy is in action right now, about a stone of slightly fluffy b+w cat, asleep on the duvet, stretched out alongside me from hip to shin, snoring slightly and occasionally twitching as she chases dream rabbits. Not that she's ever seen a rabbit - Delilah is a Moss Side urban kinda kitty. But she's a damn good mouser.

Gaza book!

Obviously I'm supposed to be slogging away on my Leila Khaled book at this moment, but everyone deserves a little displacement activity and I'm overexcited about Sharyn and my book being on Amazon now. That kind of puts it out there in the real world – it's been getting more and more real, with finalised cover designs (including an afterward from Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and blurb quotes from Jeremy Hardy: ‘An honest, forthright account full of compassion and insight. It plunges the reader into Gaza.’) and page proofs. But that's behind doors; Amazon is out in the real world. Woohoo.
This also seems like an appropriate time to flag up that people in the UK can get the book for £10 direct from Sharyn or me – that's £2.99 discount on cover price and includes P&P. From Sharyn, see http://talestotell.wordpress.com. I think she's taking cheques only at the moment. From me, people with Paypal accounts can transfer the tenner to Paypal account ID mail [at] sarahirving.net (that needs typing out as a proper email address but I'm not writing it out as one for anti-spam purposes). Don't forget to include a postal address in the Paypal message field. Cheques, made payable to Sarah Irving, should be sent to my Openspace address, which is Unit 1, 41 Old Birley St, Manchester M15 5RF – and again, don't forget a postal address. I know from my days at Ethical Consumer how many people manage to send cheques without adding information on what they're for or who they're from... and please note that Sharyn and I won't actually be getting our stocks of the book until early January, but if anyone wants them as Christmas (and other seasonal celebration) presents we can do vouchers to give to people.

Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust - bottling it under right-wing pressure

Last week, representatives of Physicians for Human Rights - Israel, an internationally respected human rights organisation, were scheduled to speak at MRI. As a result of threats by the Zionist Central Council, MRI bosses cancelled the meeting at just a few hours' notice and disseminated false information, ie that the meeting had been cancelled rather than just moved across the road. This was an invitation-only meeting for health professionals on a topic of concern to them as health workers. Below is the story, from organiser Asad Khan, of what happened and what action people can take to congratulate the Pennine Acute Trust which refused to bow to Zionist bullying, to highlight the pathetic cowardice of Central Manchester Trust and to condemn the racist lies of the ZCC.

PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN MANCHESTER: AFTER THE EVENT, WE NEED YOUR HELP

Dear all
A big thank you to all who attended, publicized or supported Miri Weingarten's day (The Right to Health in a Conflict Zone: a Rendezvous with Physicians for Human Rights-Israel) in the Greater Manchester area.
I think you need to know the full story of how it nearly didn't take place.
The MRI lecture theatre was booked on 14 August and the Grand Round at the Education Centre at Bury on 14 Sep- both by local consultants and well in advance of the date of 22 Oct.
Everything seemed to be going well with the organization of the day, and we were getting a phenomenal level of interest. Nobody at either institution expressed any doubts/disapproval.
However on the evening of 20 Oct I found this on the website of the Zionist Central Council of Greater Manchester:

START
Urgent Call To Stop Anti-Israel Meeting at Manchester Royal Infirmary and Fairfield Hospital
The anti Israel Group, Pysicians for Human Rights - Israel are arranging a talk called 'The Right to Health in a Conflict Zone' at 1830 on 22 October 2009 at Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI) and at Fairfield General Hospital, Bury at 1230.

An example of their anti Israel sentiment can be found on the website below
( http://www.facebook.com/l/fccbc;www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/07/israel-gaza-human-rights-report)
and an example of one of their sponsors is as below:
http://www.facebook.com/l/fccbc;pimapalestine.com/site/Cats/view_main/80

If you are upset that an Institution like MRI or Fairfield Hospital could allow such an organistion to speak on its premises.
Contact (this is followed by the contact details for both hospitals' press offices)
and let them know in your own words that their reputation will be tarnished allowing such a group to speak.
END

Needless to say, I was worried sick. First thing on the 21st, we made some enquiries which revealed that someone had already contacted the Press Office of Pennine Acute Hospitals (of which Fairfield is a part) to complain and demand that this 'anti-Semitic' talk be cancelled. We managed to meet the Chief Executive of Pennine that day and he was appalled at this interference in the hospital's affairs by an external agent. He reassured us that he would investigate and within hours he gave orders that the talk was to go ahead.

That day, enquiries to the MRI revealed that they had received a few complaints but the Education Centre were not prepared to bow to pressure and the talk was going ahead.

On the 22nd itself, the talk at Fairfield was a grand success with the highest Grand Round attendance for a long time (approximately 50). However at 1430- 4 hours before Miri's MRI talk- I learned that due to continued threats and complaints, the management of Central Manchester University Hospitals (of which MRI is a part) had cancelled the event. The exact content of the complaints is not known to us but what I have heard is that the hospital cancelled to 'avoid trouble'. With hardly any time to spare, it looked like there would be no lecture but luckily we managed to find an alternative venue across the road from the hospital. We stationed people outside the MRI postgrad to direct them to the new venue and also put up a notice. In the end, we had a brilliant meeting lasting two hours attended by approximately 100 people- mostly healthcare professionals. However I have come to know that some people- especially within MRI- did not make it to the new venue as the Trust intranet had put up a notice about the cancellation. Also, there are reports that MRI security personnel were asking guests to leave the hospital premises as the event was no longer taking place. Interestingly, by 9 pm (when the talk finished) the call to block the meeting had disappeared from the ZCC website.

At neither of the meetings did anyone object to- or even disagree with- what was said. Miri is wonderfully charismatic, with a real passion for justice, and an excellent speaker. I have already received enquiries from people wanting to host her and even some who wish to go to work in Israel/Palestine.

The whole idea that Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is anti-Semitic or even anti-Israel is ludicrous given that the organization is overwhelmingly comprised of Jewish Israelis of whom Miri is one. The talk itself was about the violation of the right to access healthcare, and was entirely appropriate for an audience of healthcare professionals. The orchestrated bullying tactics of the Zionist Central Council are well-known in the Northwest and violate the fundamental right of freedom of expression. If they disagreed with what was going to be said, they were welcome to come and express an alternative viewpoint. However, their objective has always been solely to silence any criticism of Israel. In this case, they failed.

PIMA is a registered charity which takes healthcare professionals and equipment to the Palestinian territories. It is not a political organization. And to use a brief newspaper report as 'proof' of an organization's 'anti-Israel sentiment' is ridiculous.

As for Central Manchester University Hospitals- it is regrettable that they panicked in the face of pressure and an event that had been booked for two months was cancelled with a few hours' notice. No attempt was made to determine if indeed there was anything objectionable in the subject matter of the talk and the Trust took the easiest option of simply stopping the talk. Had we not been fortunate enough to find the alternative venue, over 100 people- some of whom had travelled from Liverpool and Bradford- would have been deprived of the opportunity to hear a speaker from an internationally respected human rights organization.

Using the above points, I am asking you to do as many of the following things as you can-

1. Congratulate Pennine Acute Hospitals: If you were at the Fairfield talk or study/work within Pennine Acute, please convey your appreciation to Mr John Saxby, Chief Executive for his principled stance in favour of freedom of expression and institutional autonomy in the face of external pressure.

You can email him via his executive assistant: Janette.Melia [at] pat.nhs.uk
Or phone him on 0161 604 5462
Or write to him at
Mr John Saxby, Chief Executive, The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, North Manchester General Hospital, Manchester M8 5RB

2. Make your disgust known to the Zionist Central Council
Let them know that their allegations that the talk was anti-Semitic or that PHR-I is an anti-Israel group are baseless (for the reasons outlined above). Also tell them that the talk was a grand success and therefore they failed in their motive. Their attempts to silence any meaningful criticism of Israel will only be met with further determination on our part to organize and support such events. Inform them that we will be working to expose their primitive attempts at censorship by spreading the word in the wider media.
ZCC tel no 0161 740 8835 email zccoffice@zcc.org.uk

3. Complain to Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust
Convey your disappointment at the fact that they took the easy option and bowed to external pressure. Say that it was extremely impolite to cancel at a few hours' notice a meeting with an internationally respected human rights organization booked months in advance. This was a medical meeting by invitation only in a hospital and was no business of the general public. Seek reassurance that in the future, they will seek to establish the facts first before caving in to pressure. They also ignored the fact that among the organizers were Medsin and Medact, which are nationally respected networks of medical students and doctors concerned about global health inequalities.

Email the Chief Executive via his PA at Michelle.Green@cmft.nhs.uk
Or telephone her (via switchboard unfortunately) 0161 2761234
Or write a formal complaint to
The Chief Executive, Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Headquarters, Cobbett House, Manchester Royal Infirmary, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9WL

PLEASE REMEMBER- be brief, stick to the facts, use polite language and stay calm. Write/phone as individuals giving your name and designation (rather than as an organization). However, be firm and make it clear that you expect a response.

4. Disseminate this in the wider media
Email the local/national press. And if any of you are Jewish and object to the tactics of the ZCC, please consider writing to papers such as the Jewish Chronicle to express your disapproval.
Please do not ignore this email. It is too easy to shrug our shoulders and say 'the Zionist lobby are so powerful'. For they are not- if we get our act together.
Best wishes
Asad Khan

Jan Moir's career to die of perfectly natural causes

Just a quick little post to share an amusing bit of biteback to the vile Jan Moir column on the death of Stephen Gately, from Newsarse, which is funny without falling into the otherwise marvellous Onion's trap of going on FAR too long.
And here is a less frothy but more pertinent piece on why Moir might have been made by her bosses at the Hate Mail to do some grovelling... the power of advertising.

Signs o' the times

It was very odd the other morning to witness the Mail and the Express using the word Bigot in big headline letters to describe the execrable Nick Griffin of the BNP in the wake of his BBC TV debut. Mainly because the gap between the views on immigrants and women regularly espoused by said papers is usually pretty damn close to those of Mr Griffin. But I supposed they prefer their reactionary racism to be spouted by people at least one remove from out-and-out fascism, so they need to put some clear blue water between him and themselves. Weird to watch though.
On the subject of clear blue water - and, indeed, borderline fascism - a lurking cold, brain fatigue (the Leila Khaled book is due in in a week) and the NHS's ongoing slowness in offering any solution to my knackered hip have driven me once again into the arms of NCIS. A truly appalling show, but my goodness Mark Harmon is some quality eye candy. Hence the gratuitous pic. Just look at those lovely twinkly eyes.
Brian Candeland of Manchester Green Party has some good points to make about the decline of the local press here, as well as also pointing out the fallacy of assuming that because it's a less tangible Thing, the internet doesn't have a whopping environmental impact. To add to his info, I'll point out that the average server has similar climate change emissions to that bugbear of environmentalists, the SUV.
I suspect that Candeland and other Manchester G/greens will have their work cut out on coming months opposing Tesco's plans for one of its biggest grounds in the UK, being plotted in collusion with the corporate whores at Lancashire Cricket Club. There's a new campaign website here and I suspect that if Trafford council are stupid enough to let the proposals through the planning stage, this will turn into a big campaign - as one south Manchester environmentalist, a veteran of the Newbury and Manchester Second Runway direct action campaigns and now aspiring to a quiet life and parenthood (if those two are remotely compatible), said a while back, "Oh God, I hope it doesn't go through, or I'll have to go and sit on diggers and down tunnels again, won't I?" Well, there was an opening demo last week, and probably loads more to come. I'll be with you, guys, just as soon as I get that new hip...