Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

HT and thanks to Witchy. Thank you. 

"Women united will never be defeated!"

We mustered and we waited.

 

It took ages to get going but while we waited the numbers and noise just grew and grew.

We were about in the middle and it was HUGE!

There were rather a lot of women, marching, singing, shouting and generally being very very obvious through central London, which we brought to a complete standstill and we clearly made for excellent pictures….

We blocked roads and brought everything to a complete standstill for hours.

 

The roads were closed.

 

We took up loads of police time!

 

Several days later we reached the rally… Well it felt like several days, it was a couple of hours of stop start walking, shouting and banner waving and I still hurt!

 

But you know what? I reckon I’ll be there again next time, possibly sooner if I can at other marches and rallies. 

This blog post has been brought to you by SharkBait and HUGE thanks are owed to fellow bloggers Witchy Woo; RMott and Stormy along with the other fantastic women I met, bumped into, hugged and was deafened by.

Eh?

One-Armed CBeebies Host ‘Scaring’ Children

Cerrie Burnell is a recent addition to the cbeebies channel, presenting the filler bits in between the programmes. She is so far from scary that I am just astounded at the comments I’ve seen around the internet - all anonymous of course, as is the way of the interweb!

"Is it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on Cbeebies (Cerrie Burnell) may scare the kids because of her disability?

I didn’t want to let my children watch the filler bits on the bedtime hour last night because I know it would have played on my eldest daughter’s mind and possibly caused sleep problems… and yes, this is a serious post." From one of the message boards - from an anonymous poster obviously far too scared of Cerrie to admit who he is!

Yes, Cerrie has a difference, I hesitate to call it a disability because although she is obviously different she seems to have no problems doing her job extremely well. My kids didn’t notice her difference for ages and even then they shrugged and took no notice. In fact their conversation ran a bit like: "Oh yes, you’re right, that’ll make doing (insert random task - I think they said ironing but it might have been washing up) a bit tricky." Reply from oldest - "Nah, she’ll just get her partner to do it." Not scary at all and clearly has no impact on her ability to present on cbeebies.

I’m a bit gobsmacked over the whole thing to be honest. This is a young woman making her way in the world and doing it well. She doesn’t deserve the vitriol that’s been aimed at her and makes her out to be some sort of disfigured monster. 

So, what is this scary deformity that Cerrie has?

She was born missing her lower right arm and hand. Really, it’s barely noticeable. There is no nasty scarring, it’s not disfiguring and in any case it’s NOT scaring kids unless the parents are making that happen.

So, who fancies rebalancing the complaints with some letters and emails of support?

BBC, PO Box 1922, Glasgow, G2 3WT.

They have a WebForm for email too.  Although it wasn’t easy to track down on their site.

Go for it, make some positive noise!

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | MP calls for Clarkson to lose job

"Change gear, change gear, check mirror, murder a prostitute, change gear, change gear, murder." (my emphasis)

The joke was made on Sunday’s Top Gear as Clarkson and co recklessly and dangerously drove large trucks through walls, round obstacles and compared lorry driving to car driving and sparked hundreds of complaints.

The BBC’s response?

"This particular reference was used to comically exaggerate and make ridiculous an unfair urban myth about the world of lorry driving, and was not intended to cause offence." 

What planet are they on? It’s not only unfair to the majority of people who drive lorries (some of whom are women) it completely devalues the life of any prostituted woman and implies that her murder is commonplace and so normal we can ignore it. They’re not real people after all are they Jeremy…… It’s offensive to everyone referred to and simply not acceptable.

You can contact OfCom via their Complaints page.

Or their postal address is:

Ofcom
Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London
SE1 9HA

Or their phone number is:  020 7981 3040 or 0300 123 3333

It is an unfortunate fact that rape and other forms of sexual violence are being used as a weapon of war in order to humiliate, punish, control, inflict terror and displace women and their communities. These rapes and other sexual violence amount to serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Thanks Sparkle. And thanks Simply Wondered.

Women and children are 80% of refugees and displaced people worldwide. International courts have recognized that rape is routinely used as a weapon of war (*1) and an estimated 50% of women seeking asylum in the UK are rape survivors (*2). Yet the UN Convention on Refugees which defines who is entitled to protection does not recognise the specific persecution of women. Each woman must battle against institutional sexism, and institutional racism if she is a woman of colour, forced to show how her case relates to the Convention.

Gender Guidelines, provided to the Home Office (*3) and immigration judges in the UK (*4) acknowledge how hard it may be for women to speak about rape, and give practical guidance about how to ensure women have a fair hearing. But officials have no statutory obligation to implement the Guidelines, and rape survivors seeking asylum are treated with disbelief and even hostility. Case law and international precedents are rarely referred to and frequently flouted. And while victims of torture are considered “vulnerable” people who should not be detained, many are detained, including rape survivors.

Even when women are believed, rape can be dismissed as “simple lust” or “random acts” by “unruly officers”, or women are told it is safe to live somewhere else in the country they fled – with no means of survival, except begging or prostitution.

Women are denied any support or even legal representation. As a result, many cases are closed and women fight for years to get justice. Trafficked women who escaped forced prostitution or other bonded labour, mothers of children conceived as a result of rape, under-age girls and other rape survivors, are left destitute and detained. Most are ultimately removed.

Sign the petition here.  Please, your voice is needed here, make your mark and make it count.

Spreading the word from Witchy’s place.

Guy Armand Raes, 51, an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was ostensibly supporting a 17 year old girl to get off drugs and alcohol and sort her life out but guess what happened? Yes, he had one of those “momentary lapses” that result in sexual assault.

[ ]

This same man is due to be given an award for bravery by the Queen’s representative in Canada, Governor General Michaëlle Jean, because, in the same year he sexually assaulted a vulnerable young woman in his care, he rescued two people from a fire. This cannot be right.

No, it’s not right. Even if this citation for bravery is for a single incident if individual bravery, it’s still wrong. It still negates the 17 year old’s experience and devalues the assault, because he’s a hero right? He can still get an award even if he abuses women? Or because women mean nothing…..

He’s in Canada, but the award is given from our Queen and what she gives in terms of honours is given in the name of the British people, in my name and yours. I have no desire to have my name connected with any award given to him, apart from an award of more time in prison maybe, or an award of hefty compensation that he has to pay to women in need of support while surviving abuse. But not an award for bravery.

Governor General Michaëlle Jean isn’t responsible for giving this man any awards but she has to present it to him. She has done some good work for women surviving abuse in Canada, I suspect she’d listen to us if we told her how we feel. 

To register your protest contact:
Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, C.C., C.M.M., C.O.M., C.D.
Governor General of Canada

by email at info@gg.ca

by phone at (613) 993-8200 (or toll-free in Canada 1 800 465-6890)

by fax at (613) 998-8760

or by mail at
Rideau Hall
1 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A1

Alternatively, email the Queen, or write, or fax, or shout, or something. There are other Royals on there if you fancy telling them too.

Thanks Witchy, I hadn’t spotted this, as I really don’t watch that much TV after the kids go to bed - well, Heroes, CSI, Bonekickers, the odd film, but not much.

Lads Mag, Nuts, has it’s very own TV channel and it’s FREE! It’s beamed directly into MY home and yours, free of charge. How about that?  

Nuts TV has all the character of it’s lads magazine and much more.

Uh huh. Like I really want a channel that promotes "Sexy photos and even sexier videos with our Nuts TV fitness foxes!" Bleurgh.

If you want to complain - about Nuts or any other channel, then email, phone or write to:

Email:               info@freeview.co.uk
Telephone:      08701 111 270
Write to:          Freeview, DTV Services Ltd, Broadcast Centre, (BC3 B6),
201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TP

I dunno how many communications they’d need to encrypt it or charge for it - make it part of top up TV? Just don’t have that thinly veiled porn accessible for anyone to watch. I don’t care if it’s only on late at night, I don;t care if it’s mostly (male) sport such as Cage fighting, football etc. I really don’t, I just don’t want it unless I ask for it.

It’s insidious isn’t it? They pipe this stuff into our homes and for almost a year we don’t even notice it’s there. Late at night when watching CSI reruns I’ve noticed an increase in ads for text sex and various other unpleasantness. I can’t filter the ads like I can on here, although I do have a mute button or an off button. So this stuff seeps in unwelcome, unannounced and it’s just there, we barely notice it so it lulls us into accepting it as normal for it to be there on our tv screen in our home. It’s invaded and we didn’t see it.

We didn’t read the No Swimming signs did we?

But why is this crap free when the History Channel isn’t? Why can I get free porn on my TV but no decent film channel? Just, why?