Let’s all do what Jesus did

Listening to a radio programme on the ongoing row about women priests and bishops, a woman said that there shouldn’t be women priests “because Jesus didn’t have female disciples”.

My initial reaction was disbelief that a woman had said this (but then, there’s no lower limit to what garbage anyone can be brainwashed into accepting and regurgitating on demand), but then I began to think.

So, true Christians have to do “what Jesus did”?

Let’s look at “what Jesus did”:

He was Jewish
He was circumcised
He obeyed the Torah
He probably spoke Aramaic
He never ate pork
He wore a long robe and sandals, but his clothing was never of mixed materials
He was a carpenter
He walked everywhere, or rode on a donkey.
Given that this was over two thousand years ago, standards of personal hygiene were probably pretty low – and there were no running water or indoor toilets.

So, to do "what Jesus did," a “true Christian” would have to be:

Jewish, circumcised, abstain from pork, obey the Torah, become a woodworker, wear a long robe (but not of mixed fabrics) and sandals, sell their car and never use public transport or get a lift from friends but walk everywhere, use a hole in the ground as a toilet and bathe about once a year.

How many "true Christians" do all of that? or even any of that?

And priests?

 
Jesus chose his disciples from common people, who were very likely semi-literate (apart from Matthew; a tax collector can be expected to be literate and numerate).

They’d have had no special education, no university degrees – they all got their hands dirty with manual labour. They didn’t wear clothes to advertise how special they thought they were, that shouted “Hey, look how holy I am!”

Jesus chose his disciples from the men of his country - there’s no mention of any of them being Black, Asian, Oriental or Caucasian.

So, as "Jesus didn't do it", all Black, Asian, Oriental and Caucasian priests should be ejcted from the priesthood.

Every Christian priest should be a Jew born in the Middle East – after all, that’s “what Jesus did”.

Would a Christian stand up and say that Black men should be barred from the priesthood because “Jesus never had a Black disciple? Or that a Chinese man should never be ordained because “Jesus never had Chinese disciple”?

Of course not! That’s discrimination against MEN, and we can’t have that! 

But discrimination against women, for exactly that same reason, that “Jesus didn't do it” is perfectly acceptable – it’s only against women, and what do they matter?

What an amazing coincidence that the only time that they must do "what Jesus did" is when it comes to  keeping the religious hierarchy as a smug boys-only club!

Some are so pants-wettingly afraid of losing the tiny scrap of authority that they think they have that they’ll change their religion rather than face up to their bigotry, admit it for what it is, and work to change it.

Cowards and hypocrites!!!!

Third-class citizen ... again

I went to an information event today about Personalisation [a way for disabled people to be more independent in their day-to-day lives - or at least those disabled people who meet the criteria]. The event ran from 12-5 but I left after about an hour, thoroughly depressed, frustrated and furiously angry.

About a dozen organisations or charities had tables at the event, all with leaflets, booklets, and such – and not one of them had anything in large print or alternative format.

Let me say that again: at an event run to inform disabled people of disability help options, NOT ONE organisation or charity out of a dozen had ANYTHING that could be immediately accessed by a visually impaired person in the same way that a sighted person could pick up a leaflet and read it then and there.

NOT ONE of these disabled organisations or charities had apparently thought that a person could have “their” disability AND be visually impaired, so they’d better do a little something just in case.

It seems that the only organisations or charities that acknowledge the existence of visual impairment are visually-impaired organisations or charities themselves. For the rest, we’re not even on the fringes of their radar.

Granted, alternative format comes in many shapes and forms, and at varying expense: but not one even had a “who we are and what we do” leaflet in large print.

Okay, so they may not come across a lot of visually-impaired people in their usual line of work, but they should at least accept that it could happen, and make even a tiny nod in our direction. They could at least acknowledge that we exist – even if it’s just the organisation’s name and phone number in large print.

How would they like it if they attended a disabled information event, and found that all the information was in Braille and inaccessible to them? How “included” would they feel then? But that’s what they’re doing to us.

This is by no means the first time this has happened, and I very much doubt that it will be the last. But it makes me so damn angry that I’m not even regarded as second-class – I’m the underclass to the underclass.

On the way home, I stopped off at the local education centre that had a large sign “pick up a course guide here”. True to form, they had nothing in alternative format either.

Sometimes I despair, I really do. There's oceans of information that would help me greatly - if I could access it. But I'm denied the chance to find out how to improve my quality of life because I'm visually impaired and so not a real person.

What's the point in trying to do anything? Just what is the bloody point?

Carthage v Rome

Just been watching a documentary on Hannibal Barca, and had a thought.

It said that Rome was a burgeoning city-state then, nowhere near as big as she later became, and that that expansion was due in large part to the Punic Wars: Rome had to reorganise pdq to meet and defeat Hannibal – and from there we got the Roman Empire and history as we know it.

Now comes my thought: what if Carthage had defeated Rome? Rome would have been destroyed, its power broken forever, or for the foreseeable future, at least. Presumably the Carthaginians would have gone home again, having won control of the Mediterranean Sea, which was their original aim.

Which would mean that there would have been no Roman Empire to “civilise” the rest of Europe – the Germanic and Celtic countries would have stayed Germanic and Celtic; there would have been no Roman invasion and subjugation of Britain.

Would Carthage have been content just to gain control of the Mediterranean and be its only superpower? Or would there have been a European empire nonetheless? Even if so, its capital would have been in north Africa, not south Europe; how much difference would that have made? Would the Carthaginians have needed to subdue troublesome tribes in Europe?

Would public schools now be teaching Classical Carthaginian? Would there now be a Carthaginian Catholic church? Would The Life of Brian have asked “What have the Carthaginians ever done for us?”

A comment on even more cuts in educational spending

(to the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn)


My daughter came home from school last night;
she'd just started learning to read and write:
it's the saddest thing I've ever seen –
because my daughter is seventeen.

chorus
But it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.

Sixteen kids share a tattered book,
all of them trying to get a look;
around the kids the books all pass,
even though there's forty in a class.

Tomorrow's people will be in a state –
a world to which they can't relate;
in a sea of national apathy –
it could never happen to you and me.

One day all people will be the same,
unable to read, or write their name,
totally unfitted for
anything but manual labour.

The bosses, of course, will be the few
who've got more money than me and you;
and, being well-off financially,
can send their kids to university.

A two-class system is evolving now,
but this thing we must not allow;
a national of menials, working at low wage,
a technological Dark Age.

A people who can't read or write
won't put up much of a fight;
the ruling class can steal them blind ...
Could this be what they've got in mind?

Cos it's a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
a state-run school and the state don't care,
the future's gone away.



1989 – sadly still as relevant these days

and you wonder why I get so pissed off at times ...

email to Jobcentre Plus via Government Equalities Office


Dear People

I received a telephone call from Jobcentre Plus today: I tried to email them, but, my are they shy about giving email addresses for complaints about themselves! It might have been the "local office" that phoned me, but they don't give email addresses either, and I'm too wound up to want to phone anyone, even if I get the right office and even if someone picks up the call eventually.

I did email the first "Jobcentre Plus" that came up in Google, but it turned out to be a different company; the directgov site gives zero information about how to complain about any part of itself.

So here's what I wanted to say to them:

******
I’ve just had a phone call from Jobcentre Plus –

She: We sent you a form on October 4th and haven’t had it back yet.

Me: If it came in small print, I would have sent it back with a covering letter saying that I’m visually impaired and need large print: I always do.
[I checked my correspondence log after this call: it did arrive and I did send it back, using the SAE provided – I don’t know who’s got it, but they don’t seem to have passed it on.]

She: We need your pension details; the provider, and the amount.

Me: The provider is the London Borough of Tower Hamlets; the amount I don’t know cos they use small print too.

She: I'll send you out another form

Me: If it’s in small print I won’t be able to read it; that’s why I sent the first one back.

She: We can’t do large print. Isn’t there someone who can help you fill it in?

Me: No. I live alone and have no friends or family
[not true, but I certainly have none within calling distance. Besides I object to other people knowing private details of my personal life]

She: All you have to do is fill in the details.

Me: But how can I fill in the details when I can’t see the form?

She: You can put them on a piece of paper but you have to sign the form on the back.

I gave up at that point. How am I going to know what details are wanted if I can’t read the sodding form?

“We can’t do large print” in the 21st century? “Can’t be bothered”, more like.

I don’t know how many people work for Jobcentre Plus (I did try a Google, no luck), but as it covers all of the country, I’d imagine there to be several thousand employees.

None of those several thousand people seem to have heard of the Disability Discrimination Act, which has only been law for about ten years.

Even though visual impairment is the fastest-growing disability, none of those several thousand people has apparently ever thought that they just might be able to do something to meet the needs of those disabled people – and conform to the law.

Especially as the DDA says that organisations “must make reasonable adjustments” to enable the disabled to interact on a more equal footing (or less unequal, at least) – and putting a letter or form into large print is hardly unreasonable.

Whoever’s reading this: how would you feel if you had to let your relatives, friends, or the bloke next door know personal details about yourself? Just so that a national government agency can protect its staff from the arduous effort of having to think?

I don’t buy “we can’t do large print”. I’m sure you’d find that you could – if anyone ever bothered to try.

If it’s any consolation, you’re not alone: it took five years and an official complaint to get the Rent section of my council to get past “we can’t do large print”. Odd how quickly they found that they could do it once the complaint hit their desks.

To tell the visually impaired that they must have their personal and private correspondence read to them, as if they were children, that they must let others, even family (sometimes, especially family!) know the intimate details of their personal life, is humiliating, degrading, soul-destroying ... and most of all, completely unnecessary as well as completely illegal.

Any letter, form, booklet or other communication that you send me in small print is going to be sent right back to you. One day maybe your people might just get the message.

I’m fed up with having to grovel for even reluctant semi-decent treatment. I’m sick of having to beg cap-in-hand for even a semblance of normal human understanding and a willingness to bend even a micron to meet the needs of the visually-impaired.

If Jobcentre Plus really is completely incapable of transforming documents, forms, etc, into large print, then please say so in writing, clearly and unequivocally. My legal friend will know what to do. If such an admission is not forthcoming, I shall assume that Jobcentre Plus can do large print, but simply chooses not to – and my legal friend will know what to do with that, too.

If I sound fed up and stroppy, guess what? I am. I’ve been fighting this battle since 1992, when my vision first failed: I’m so tired of having to beg ever-so-‘umbly to be treated just as if I were a real person.


While I'm writing to you ... I am medically retired from work because of an inoperable injury to my lower spine: I am officially unfit for work. So why does Jobcentre Plus keep harassing me? (Granted, you stopped sending me "let's get you back to work" booklets [in small print] after I wrote asking you to take me off your disabled-hate-mail mailing list, and explaining why) - but I am officially incapable of work, so what does Jobcentre Plus have to do with me now? Or I with it?

[my name] [Ms]

*****
You can see why I didn’t want to say this over the phone! Apart from anything else, it wouldn't have been fair on whoever just happened to pick up the call - not their fault.

****
from Jobcentre Plus website:
When you contact Jobcentre Plus, you can expect to:
be treated with respect
be given the right information
be dealt with on time
access services easily [irony, I presume]


[my name] [Ms]

PS: you might get your webmaster to relabel the home page of your site. Saving it to favourites as "Home Page" is hardly informative: whose home page? and there's "do you want to overwrite" all the other "Home Page"s from all the other professional [sic] websites that do this?

Write from the Heart

One of the best, and possibly the safest, ways of letting off steam when something up-sets you is to write about it. You can say absolutely what you want, get rid of your ten-sions, pour your feelings onto paper (and then you can tear it up and throw it away so nobody will ever know what you wrote, if that worries you).

Creative writing is a useful safety-valve, having a definite therapeutic effect, but few peo-ple seem to take advantage of it. Everybody can write; some can do it better than oth-ers, but everybody can do it to some extent. And, like everything else, most of it is prac-tice: the more you do, the better you become.

If you’ve never done any creative writing (or not since you left school), you may not know how to start. On the back of this sheet, I’ve made a couple of lists. Have a look; do any of these things ring bells in you? Do you find meaning in any of them? Then write about it! Write what you feel, what it reminds you of, what you wish you could have done about it at the time, what you’d like to do about it now.

If none of them rings any particular bell, then just pick one at random and write whatever you like about it; what does that word, or that line, conjure up to you? What words and feelings do you associate with it? The human mind is very good at laying down smoke-screens and hiding behind them, blocking anything that might be ‘too risky’ to let out. Pick words at random, write about them, and see what happens. If nothing else, you’ll be writing!


Remember:

The only rule in creative writing is that there aren’t any rules. It’s not like cooking, for in-stance, where the right ingredients have to be put into the mixture in the right order and in the right proportions, where a set sequence has to be followed to obtain the desired result. In creative writing, whatever works for you is valid. There’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way – only ways that work for you or that don’t; or ways that work better than others.

Be gentle with yourself. Don’t dismiss anything you write as ‘rubbish’; don’t compare yourself with ‘better’ writers. It’s amazing how skill comes with practice – and you’ve got the skill. Everybody has. But most people aren’t given the chance to find out that they’ve got it.

Find your own voice. Write in whatever style seems best for you; use the words and styles that you feel comfortable with. Develop your own unique way of expressing your-self; again, practice will make, if not perfect, then better. (Some how-to-write books say that you should begin by copying the styles of other writers, but I’m not too sure about that – why be a tribute band, playing other people’s music, when you’ve got your own music to play? You want to be the first you, not the second somebody else!)

Write for yourself, to please yourself. So you may not be very good at first. Who is? Most of us can cook – but that doesn’t mean you can whip up a 12-course meal for 500 people the first time you enter a kitchen! Start with egg and chips, and work your way up from there – if you feel the need. (Personally, I’d rather eat egg and chips than some fancy meal covered with gunge!)

Don’t pre-judge, or censor yourself. Write exactly what you’re feeling, in your own words. And don’t worry! Nobody’s looking over your shoulder. Nobody’s judging you. Write for yourself. You might feel self-conscious about it at first (everybody does), but stick with it. You’ll probably surprise yourself, if you give yourself the chance.

You might be a little taken aback by the strength of some of your reactions at first. Feel-ings that have been long repressed will come out strongly; this may be the first time they’ve seen daylight for years! If this happens to you, don’t worry; you’ve taken the first step in acknowledging that you have unresolved conflicts. After all, you can’t solve a problem until you admit that the problem exists. Once it’s out in the open, it can be dealt with, and then you can move on. It may be painful, but it really is better out than in. You won’t hurt yourself; you’ll only become stronger - it’s keeping the feelings repressed that causes harm.



Do any of these mean anything special to you? Then write it out!

Ambition - Anger - Back-stabbing - Being controlled - Being ignored - Being laughed at - Being lied to - Broken dreams - Broken promises - Bullying - Childhood - Confidence - Counting your blessings - Depression - Dignity - Disappointment - Discipline - Drink - Family - Family expectations - Father - Fear - Forgiveness - Freedom - Friends - Friendship - Gossip - Gratitude - Guilt - Happiness - Hate - Hope - Innocence - Interference - Jealousy - Loneliness - Lost opportunities - Love - Manipulation - Misuse of authority - Money [or lack of] - Mother - Neighbours - Not being val-ued - Obedience - Obsession - Parting - Power over others - Pride - Quality of life - Relaxing - Resentment - Respect - Sacri-fice - Sadness - Secrets - Self-respect - Sex - Solitude - Stereotyping – Gender, racial, etc - Stress - Taking credit for someone else’ s work - Talking over your problems - Telling lies - The boss - Un-wanted advice - Work colleagues

************
A friend in need - Act your age! - Anything for a quiet life - Be grateful for small mercies - Be grateful for whatever you’re given - Beauty is only skin deep - Blood is thicker than water - Cheats never prosper - Cheer up, it could al-ways be worse - Don’t do as I do, do as I say - Don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth - For better or for worse - Heaven helps those who help themselves - Honour thy father and thy mother - If I had the money, I’d— -
If I was you, I’d . . . - If only I hadn’t said that! - If you loved me you’d prove it - It takes one to know one - Just you wait till I get you home! - Men should be . . . - Mother knows best - Nobody really understands me - One rule for ‘them’, another for ‘us’ - Only babies cry - Pull yourself together! - Spare the rod and spoil the child - The past is dead – isn’t it? - Thou shalt not be found out - When I was your age, I . . . - Why can’t I . . .? - Because I say so! - Why can’t people mind their own business? - Why don’t you ever listen to me? - Why won’t they take me seriously? - Women should be . . . - You don’t know when you’re well-off - You think you’ve got problems! - You’ll un-derstand when you grow up - You’re not going out looking like that!

Songs that helped to save my life

I’ve suffered from depression for years. Some times are worse than others: at my very lowest I have seriously considered climbing out of the window of my 7th-floor flat.

Thankfully I’ve never (yet) gone that bare millimetre lower that would turn thought into action – there’s always been a tiny spark (so far) that tells me that that’s not the answer.

I’ve bought so many self-help books to try to get myself sorted, and they all basically say the same thing – you have to love yourself.

But, I thought, how can you love yourself when you don’t even like yourself very much?

Okay, I thought, let’s scale it down. Rather than try to climb Everest in one leap, let’s break it down into a more manageable series of smaller steps. Let’s start with making friends with myself and work upwards from there.

Then I suddenly thought of the Queen song “You’re my best friend”. That sounds a good start, I thought; after all, I should be my own best friend.

So every day, when I stood in front of the bathroom mirror brushing my hair or cleaning my teeth, I looked myself in the eyes and ran that song through my mind (it might have been better if I’d been able to play the actual song, but I know it enough to be able to “replay” most of it).

And it started to work. I started to feel better about myself. I started to look at myself more kindly – psychologically as well as physically.

Then I thought of the Monkees song “Take a giant step outside your mind” and found that to be helpful, too. That was linked to another Monkees song “That was then, this is now”; the song itself isn’t really relevant, but the title is – and that was all I needed to reinforce the message of “Take a giant step”.

But the one that really rang the bell …

Years ago there was a Gene Kelly film on TV that I videoed – “It’s always fair weather”. The film as a whole was a bit naff, but I kept the vid because there’s an amazing sequence where he tap-dances on roller-skates, and I played that bit so much I almost wore the tape out. It was only much later that I started to pay attention to the song that went with the dance:.

Can it be I like myself?
She likes me so I like myself
If someone wonderful as she is
Can think I’m wonderful
I must be quite a guy
Feeling so unlike myself
Always used to dislike myself
But now my love has got me riding high
She likes me – so so do I

Those words really struck home:

If people like me, there must be something likeable about me? If people want to be with me, then I can’t be such a nebbish? If people want to be my friends, then I must have some qualities that they think worthy of being associated with?

I used that song a lot. I let it play in my mind, over and over and over. And while you can’t get away with singing in the street it’s got a very whistle-able tune.

And the more I did it, the deeper and stronger and more powerful it became. More than once, walking down the road with that song in my mind or that tune on my lips, I had to suddenly check myself as my foot almost touched the pavement because I knew that that foot would have gone down in a tappy-tap – and if I’d taken that step, what would the next one have been? I wasn’t quite confident enough to start trying to tap-dance in the street!

Queen helped a lot, and the Monkees added a bit to the foundations, but this is the song that did most to save my life.

That was years ago, and after a while, sadly, I forgot to keep these songs in mind and I slipped back to my former level of depression.

But yesterday, for no reason that I can remember, “I like myself” came back into my mind; I started to whistle it and immediately started feeling better. So now I need to remember to practice remembering the song – and who knows? one day I might not mind that I feel like tippy-tapping in the street!

I looked up the names of the songwriters (Betty Comden and Adolph Green); I did think of sending them a thank-you – them, or their families if it were too late to thank them personally. I never did, or at least I haven’t so far; I suppose I could contact the film studio and ask them to pass on a message, but they might just think that I was a nutter.

Anyway, it worked then – and I know that it will work just as well now that I’ve remembered to try again. It might not work for anyone else, but who knows? It might.

You might already own some of these songs, but if not they’re all on YouTube (I’ve not included “That was then” since I only used the title! but it’s there too):

Queen: You’re my best friend –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aus1PA5-SyI (this video has the lyrics as well)
Monkees: Take a giant step
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDqYHNaesk
Gene Kelly: I like myself
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aus1PA5-SyI