Caroline Lucas And Workplace Equality

Caroline Lucas, the Green Party leader, and MEP for the South East, will feature in the 755pm politics slot on Channel 4, tonight.

Our spring conference is coming up (not this weekend, but next) in Blackpool.

At conference, Caroline Lucas will propose a motion on workplace equality. Women working full-time in the UK are paid 17% less than men.

Caroline's motion would require:

- Medium and large companies undertake equal pay audits that compare the earnings of their employees
- That such companies take action to redress inequalities
- Legal changes to make it much easier for women to take equal pay cases to court, and to allow women to take such cases as a group, with the support of their unions
- Significant funding to be put into encouraging girls and women to consider a broader range of careers
- a law (following Norway) in requiring that companies listed on the Stock Exchange have 40% of their board members being female within five years of the date of the passing of the legislation.

There will also be other motions on women's issues debated at conference:

- a motion to improve NHS pre- and post-natal care, including a full range of birth options and the right
- a motion to help combat domestic abuse, starting with "respect" training in schools, and,
- a motion to extend the right to asylum for women and girls, to include asylum for those who would be forced to undergo forced marriage or genital mutilation were they denied asylum.

The New Domestic Abuse Database

It sounds like, at a launch of a database of serial domestic abusers, Sandra Horley, chief executive of Refuge, told it like it is.

With Jacqui Smith beside her, Holey said government action has been "piecemeal" and that the register was "a gimmick" and doesn't address the root problem. "The majority of violent men don't come to the attention of police and it won't keep women safe. Police can't be expected to monitor relationships and love lives of offenders." She added: "The Government is hoping to get away with useless initiatives like this register, and it is hypocritical to sound tough and do little."

You can see Refuge's national website here.

You can download their financial guide for women experiencing domestic violence, "You Can Afford To Leave" here.

0808 2000 247 is a freephone 24-hour national domestic violence helpline (run in partnership between Women's Aid and Refuge).

Also see: Joan Smith: "Vulnerable women are being failed by the authorities, and the last thing we need is a government policy which shifts responsibility on to victims and away from the people who are supposed to protect them"
Also see: Laurie Penny: "That a database of listed offenders will necessarily be inadequate to the scale of the problem, because not all abuse incidents are even reported, is only one of the reasons that the scheme is frankly barmy. This isn't just a question of trying to shoehorn feminist apologism into the quest for a database state. This is about civil liberties, and it’s about how we conceptualise violence against women."

Norway Tops For Gender Equality

Norway is #1 this year, but Norway, Sweden and Finland are the only countries who have been in the top 3 for 3 years running.

The UK has gone from 9th (2006) to 11th (2007) to 13th (2008).

The US has been 23rd, 31st and 26th over the three years. When you look at women and "political empowerment," the US was only in 56th place. Norway is also rated as the most peaceful nation in the world, unlike the US, which remains the only country to use nuclear weapons in warfare.

Domestic Violence In Britain

Domestic violence accounts for one in six of all reported attacks, with more than one in four victims (27%) having been victimised at least three or four times. There are now 104 specialist domestic violence courts around the country, but there has been a wave of closures of much-needed support services and refuge centres. Around one third of local authorities have no domestic violence services. We can't continue to have a nationwide postcode lottery on domestic violence.

In other news:

Mark Mardell has a good post on post-WWII German identity. I'm tired of going into bookshops and the "German History" section is full of books on the Nazi regime, especially when the same shop has a seperate "WWII" section.

Right now, on the refinancing of PFI projects, profits are split 30% for the public sector and 70% for the private sector. The Treasury is now proposing for it to be 50-50, on any net gains over £3 million. The revised refinancing rules will applly to roughly 200 projects, worth £26 billion, which are expected to reach financial close before 2010.

This is what Americans call an "October surprise."

And, I won't miss 4 Poofs & a Piano.

Tory Conference - Cameron's Speech

David Cameron spoke for 65 minutes at conference, but he didn’t mention his 2005 idea of a "carbon audit office" -- a watchdog for a new statutory framework with specific year-by-year requirements for carbon cuts. In his leadership contest with David Davis, he said such an office would perform a role in checking emissions similar to the Monetary Policy Committee in monitoring and forecasting inflation. Cameron is green only when it suits him.

I thought one part of Cameron’s speech did hit home (and it wasn’t quoted as part of Nick Robinson’s package on the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News). He read out a letter from a constituent whose wife had died from MRSA complications. The man claimed that her treatment "was like something out of a 17th century asylum not a 21st century £90 billion health service." Cameron sent the letter to Alan Johnson, as Health Secretary, and received the following reply:

"A complaints procedure has been established for the NHS to resolve concerns … Each hospital and Primary Care Trust has a Patient Advice and Liaison Service to support people who wish to make a complaint … There is also an Independent Complaints Advocacy Service … If, when Mr Woods has received a response, he remains dissatisfied, it is open to him to approach the Healthcare Commission and seek an independent review of his complaint and local organisation's response … Once the Health Care Commission has investigated the case he can approach the Health Service Ombudsman if he remains dissatisfied.”

Cameron followed up reading out the letter with the zinger: "four ways to make a complaint but not one way for my constituent's wife to die with dignity."

Liberal Democrats In Coventry

In the 2008 local elections, the Greens were head-to-head against the Liberal Democrats in 13 wards. The Lib Dems won Upper Stoke. In Earlsdon, we have finished 3rd for three straight years, each time beating the Lib Dems into fourth.

In Cheylesmore, Longford, Lower Stoke, Radford, Sherbourne, Wainbody, Westwood and Whoberley, the Greens came within 150 votes of the Lib Dems.

Let's look at some of the differences between the Lib Dems and the Greens:

- Microsoft is one of the sponsors (see page 8) of the Lib Dem autumn conference this year; the Greens support open source software to help reduce the "digital divide" in society.

- The Liberal Democrats have 8 MPs (out of 63) who are women. Of the 19 different people who ran for the Lib Dems in Coventry in 2007 and 2008, only 6 were women. In contrast, half of our slate in Coventry, in both 2007 and 2008, have been women. The Greens have our new national leader, Caroline Lucas, and we ran Sian Berry as our candidate for London Mayor.

- The Greens favour bringing the train network back into public ownership; the Lib Dems have a "vision of the railways to 2050" that includes keeping the railways private

- The Greens have prominent out politicians, such as Darren Johnson (London Assembly), Patrick Harvie (MSP) or Peter Tatchell (PPC for Oxford East); the Lib Dems have gay/lesbian friendly policies, but you have to wonder about them internally, when there are these firestorms around Simon Hughes coming out as bisexual, and only one MP (Stephen Williams) who is out.

- The Lib Dems are having the same money problems (inadmissable donations) as Labour; in Q2 of 2008, the Lib Dems had 5 donors who gave more than £30 000 each, whilst total donations in the quarter to the Greens was £9300. The Green Party is more independent and can stand up for you without worrying about our corporate funders.

- The Liberal Democrats are in favour of retaining Trident. The Green Party rejects any reliance on nuclear weapons. We will decommission our own nuclear weapons. We will insist on the removal of US nuclear bases. We will have no further research into nuclear weapons. The export of nuclear technology will be stopped. We're pretty clear on nuclear.

If you like what you've been reading, take a close look at our other policies, and see if you agree with them too.

Unison Strike In Coventry

For the next two days, nearly 600 000 members of Unison will be on strike.

It will be one of the biggest strikes since the general strike of 1926.

The chief issue is the cost of living and wages. Inflation was 3.8% in June. That monthly figure was the highest since June 1992. The Local Government Association is offering 2.45% to workers. The LGA is crying poor, but if central government stepped in, they could pay public sector workers a living wage. It's a gendered issue as well. As many as 250 000 of those balloted earn less than £6.50 an hour. Of these, 75 per cent are women.

It's an EU-wide issue. Across the 27 countries of the EU, average wages have grown by just 6.7% between 2000 and 2007 -- less than 1% a year. There has also been, across the EU, a "widening gap between productivity improvements and wage growth, with real pay lagging around 10 points behind increased output per employee."

So, we have increasing worker productivity, rampant inflation, and poor treatment of women workers on minimum wages in the public sector. What should Labour do?

The New Statesman captured it well in a recent editorial:

If millions of workers lose purchasing power by below-inflation wage settlements, we will quickly be in a recession. Is it realistic, or even morally acceptable, to call on the lowest-paid not to defend their families' living standards?

Tony Blair continued a Tory tradition of disdain for public servants such as teachers, social workers and probation officers. Brown must break with it.

Fighting them will not win him votes from the middle ground, because anything he can do on that front, the Tories will always do better. George Osborne has already made it clear that his response to strike threats will be tougher trade union legislation.

For the past decade, the country has been held to ransom, with Labour's blessing, by the richest in society. That is why an appeal to those seeking only a living wage to act for the greater good sounds hollow indeed.

National link: Green councillors respect town hall pickets

Car Club Membership On The Rise

- The public health director of Stockport: "We need much more widespread introduction of 20mph zones in side streets. We are killing our children for the sake of saving a couple of minutes."

- The Commons Public Accounts Committee says that the cost of decommissioning nuclear power sites could rise "significantly" above the £73 billion already estimated. We can install solar panels and wind turbines and tidal turbines now, not 10 years from now, and also avoid the massive decommissioning that will follow any nuclear power expansion.

- Despite years of sustained criticism from watchdogs, "significant weaknesses" persist in maternity and neonatal services across England, putting mothers and babies at risk.

Finally, car club memership is significantly up:

This week, two of the leading car clubs - Streetcar and City Car Club - both announced a sudden surge in members. They say that a likely catalyst was the moment the chancellor revealed increases in motoring taxes in his budget speech in March.

Streetcar said that in the period from March to June its UK membership leapt from 27,537 to 37,532.

Similarly, City Car Club reported a 300% increase in membership requests since March compared with the same period last year. It now has more than 6,000 UK members.

More Ethnic Minority Women Councillors

Maya de Souza, a Green Party councillor in London (Camden), has been appointed to a national cross-party taskforce which aims to increase the number of minority ethnic women local councillors across the country.

Women councillors currently make up just 29.3% of councillors, with ethnic minority women particularly under-represented (5.4% of the total population but only 0.9% of local councillors).

Cllr de Souza: "Local councils make many decisions that have a huge impact on all of us - from housing policy, the environment and education and also nurseries, after-school clubs and youth services. Women can't afford to leave all these decisions to men. It is vital to local, regional and national politics, if all interests are to be properly taken into account and good decisions made, that women play a full part."

Alternatives To Gordon Brown

Why not Jacqui Smith or Harriet Harman? It says a great deal about sexism in the media that all the runners and riders being discussed to succeed Brown (including relatively inexperienced people, like James Purnell and Andy Burnham) are men.

The Big Feed - Breastfeeding In Coventry

The Coventry Telegraph reports that Sure Start is having breastfeeding cafes in the Lower Precinct, all day, until Friday. Friday is "The Big Feed" -- an "en masse" breastfeed in the Lower Precinct at noon. For more information, you can call Dana Hunter on 07984 130317.

The Telegraph article also talks about Ikea's efforts to make it store family-friendly for breastfeeding -- chairs, privacy screens, a clean nappy changing room, family toilets and water on tap:

Mum-of-one Dana Hunter, aged 37, of Hawkesbury, near Nuneaton, said: 'We need to bring breastfeeding out into the open. The more people who see it in the community the more normal it becomes. Some people see it as deviant behaviour.'

Emma Neat, 27, of Coundon, Coventry, mum of five-week-old Josiah, Malachi, aged four, and one-year-old Elijah who runs two toddler groups in Spon End said: 'Breastfeeding is free and very easy to do - I couldn't afford to bottlefeed.'

Video: NHS in Scotland on breastfeeding

Youth And Self-Harming

This is astounding.

A third of UK girls aged 11 to 19 have tried to harm themselves. More than half of the 800 young people surveyed said they knew someone who had self-harmed - either through cutting, burning or punching themselves.

Of those who admitted to self-harm, 43% said they did it because they were depressed, 17% because they were angry, 10% because of relationship problems and 10% because they were stressed.

Dr David Kingsley, consultant psychiatrist at Cheadle Royal Hospital: "We need to ask ourselves what it is about modern living that is causing such stress for our youngsters."

The Great Signature Race

It's the home stretch for getting nominations in. The deadline is noon on Friday.

We finished collecting signatures (10 per ward) for Longford and Cheylesmore tonight. I need to get our papers for Upper Stoke signed bright and early tomorrow. We have two Young Greens from the University of Warwick running in Wainbody and Westwood wards. Both are away (in Wimbledon and Bristol) on half term, so one mailed her forms back to me today, and I'm picking up the other set of forms from the Bishop Street postal office tomorrow (a "sorry you were out when we tried to deliver it" slip was in my porch when I got back from Cheylesmore).

Assuming ("assuming" making an "ass" out of "u" and "me") that all the signatures from all the forms are fine, and there are no last minute hiccups, we'll have 15 candidates across Coventry (everywhere but St Michael's, Henley and Holbrook wards).

Eight of our candidates will be women. Four of our candidates will be 20 years old or younger. Two are both. We will be a pretty unique slate, even for the Green Party.

We're not selecting these folks because they are women, or because they are young.

They are coming forward and saying:

- I want to help out. I'm a member of the Young Greens at Warwick. I'm willing to be a non-target candidate in Westwood. Mail me the forms, and I'll mail them back.
- I live in Cheylesmore, and I'm broadly Green/socialist. I don't mind putting in a bit of work, and I want to be more involved.
- I want to help out. My brother was a candidate last year. I helped him leaflet in Cheylesmore. Can I run this year where I grew up in Sherbourne?

Women And Unpaid Overtime

A report by the Trades Union Congress has found that 24% of women without children do unpaid overtime - the highest number of any other group:

The Fawcett Society's Kat Banyard: "Women are forced to choose between caring for a family at home or maximising their career opportunities in a workplace that measures performance by the number of hours put in."

The TUC's general secretary, Brendan Barber, said this was preventing women getting the top jobs in their profession. "It is hardly surprising that the senior levels of most organisations are male and that the gender pay gap stubbornly persists," he said.

"The Terror Dream" - American Men and 9/11

Susan Faludi's most recent book, "The Terror Dream," sounds interesting. It looks at the redefinition of American masculinity in the aftermath of 9/11:

When al-Qaida attacked their country, Faludi writes, the humiliating shame felt by American men watching helplessly on TV was experienced, at a subliminal level, sexually. "The post-9/11 commentaries were riddled with apprehensions that America was lacking in masculine fortitude." America's media fell back in love with the manly man - an old-fashioned hero strong enough to defend his nation and rescue his womenfolk. If he did not exist, he would have to be invented. So firemen had to be superheroes, widows had to be helpless, unmarried women had to be frantic to wed, and working mums had to want to stay at home. Crucially, strong men had to protect weak women - a desire vividly dramatised by the Rambo-style rescue in Iraq of Private Jessica Lynch, who found herself reconfigured by the media from professional soldier to helpless damsel.

Equal Pay For City Council Contracts

Women in full-time work earn 17% less than men. It gets worse for part-time women workers (nearly 36% less).

Currently, Coventry City Council's procurement policy states that "equal opportunities" must be observed by companies bidding for contracts. Perhaps it should be explicit that if you want the council's work, women must be paid the same as men.

Pro-Choice Protest In Coventry - 13 February

Next Wednesday, at 645pm, outside Coventry Cathedral, Abortion Rights have called a peaceful pro-choice protest against a speaking tour by Anne Widdicombe, Lord David Alton, and others.

Anti-abortion activists are attempting to use the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to attack the current time limit (24 weeks) and grounds for legal abortion.

Anti-abortionists are fundamentally anti-woman. Their goal is to control women and women's sexuality. They argue for cooling off periods, but when you think about, that's like saying women make abortion decisions lightly, and implicitly says that women can’t be trusted to make such a fundamental decision about their lives. If women are deprived of any way to control when (access to birth control; comprehensive sex education), or if they get pregnant, they revert back to chattel and the property of men.

An opinion poll commissioned by Abortion Rights in October 2007 to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act showed 83 per cent support a woman’s right to make her own abortion decision. This finding is in line with previous polls over a number of years.

If anything, 40 years on:

Current unfair barriers to accessing abortion should be ended. Specifically that doctors’ effective right of veto of over women’s abortion decision should be ended and that abortion should be allowed in more settings and by trained nurses to end delays.

90th Anniversary Of Women's Right To Vote

The Guardian has a collection of photos to mark the 90th anniversary of the suffragette movement. What's striking about the suffragette movement, especially the WSPU, is the degree of direct action, especially violent direct action against property. Among their tactics: breaking the windows of government buildings (including Downing Street); trying to enter the House of Commons; throwing themselves under horses; slashing paintings with meat-cleavers; hunger strikes; and attempted arson against cricket pavilions, racecourse stands and golf clubhouses. By the summer of 1914, over 1,000 suffragettes had been imprisoned for destroying public property. The Representation of the People Act 1918 gave women over the age of 30 (who owned property) the right to vote. It took until 1928 for all women to have the vote.

A Domestic Violence Registry

Domestic violence is 16% of all violent crime, and it has more repeat victims than any other crime (on average there will have been 35 assaults before a victim calls the police).

Brian Moore, chief constable of Wiltshire Police, has urged MPs to give "considerable extra thought" to the idea of creating a domestic violence abuse register.

Moore is concerned about the "thousands of protocols" around information sharing, and a register would help track abusive men and women who move from one relationship to another.

"Each agency may have part of the picture. But it is only when all these pieces of information come together from police, education, social services and from housing authorities that we have the clearest picture of those at risk. The law in this regard is inadequate. The law on information sharing is passive - there is no obligation to share when someone is at risk. We have to act now because year-on-year other people are losing their lives because of this gap in the law."

Here is a list of organisations providing domestic violence services in the West Midlands.

A "Fair Employment Commission"

Citizens Advice is calling for a "Fair Employment Commission" to be created:

Last year, Citizens Advice Bureaux across the UK dealt with more than half a million employment related queries.

60% of these involved the denial of statutory workplace rights such as the minimum wage, paid holiday and sick leave and pay. Some workers were also required to work excessively long hours or were denied proper rest breaks, the report said. Others were summarily dismissed for being pregnant. Other high risk groups include migrant workers and those who because of age, disability of lack of skills, would struggle to find another job.

In contrast, David Cameron's in favour of taking what worker protection we have away. Cameron wants to take Britain out of the EU's Social Chapter -- that would mean less protection against discrimination, the removal of legal protection for part-time workers, and the ending of the rights of women to extend maternity leave.