Swirling thoughts

I haven't written much this week. There's a lot going on in my head, but it hasn't spun itself into formed thoughts, and it's hard to articulate unformed ones, and also not really my style.

But some examples...

It's Good Friday today, a pretty bleak day if you are a practising Christian, but it's also Holi, a pretty fantastic day if you are a practising Hindu.

I watched a programme about street prostitution which focused on a 21 year old with a bad wig and glasses. Over the half hour we heard pretty much every tragic inch of her story, with each stage silently accompanied by statistics flashed on screen illustrating how widely her tragedies -- sexual abuse from the age of four, heroin and crack addiction, mental health problems, two children before she was 20 which she gave up for adoption -- are shared by others in the same position. She really really wants to stop what she's doing. None of them want to be doing it. Of course they don't fucking want to be doing it. Why can't we protect them better?

I watched another programme about a shop in Birmingham where if you are skint you can take your valuables and draw cash on them. A busker needed to pay his rent so he put in his keyboard for £120, and then paid £156 to get it back. Safer and friendlier than a loan shark, but still a horrendously expensive way for vulnerable people to raise miserable amounts of money.

In thoughts following on from both the above, the Fabian Society has published some research on what the Great British Public really think about the poverty in this country. They say:

By European standards the UK public is uniquely misinformed about the extent of poverty in the UK. We are also much more likely to believe that poverty is caused by behavioural factors – something captured in the strength of negative stereotypes of the poor. A great many people still need to be convinced both that there is real poverty in Britain today, and that it is possible to do something about it. Our research shows that it is hard for many people to believe that poverty exists in the midst of our affluent society. They think there must be something wrong with the parents of children who suffer from material deprivation. They do not know about the government’s commitment to end child poverty. They are startled to discover that other European countries have successfully chosen not to tolerate it.

I *did* know about the government's commitment to end child poverty (which, as the Fabians point out, is a commitment unmatched by any other party), and also that they have achieved some success. I am so angry about Iraq that I'm wondering where to put my X in May, but we need to remember it's not all boys and toys.

I have started drinking again and have been reborn as a bitter drinker. I was hoping to be a better drinker too -- little and often rather than four pints the night before a bank holiday, but I'd forgotten what a whole lot of fun a pub full of congenial drunk people can be when you are a congenial drunk person yourself. Arse and feck.

And finally, if I don't tidy my bedroom this weekend it will start to seriously affect my self esteem.

joella