A different manner of walk

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SlutWalk As regular visitors know I’m quite a fan of walking, going as I do do for a regular walk once a year on November the 5th with other like minded individuals. Well my attention has been brought to another walk which I rather feel I should join. It would seem that a police officer in Toronto told a group of law students that in order to avoid being raped ‘women should avoid dressing like sluts’. This rather understandably caused a bit of upset, after all whilst one should be sensible in ones behaviour (you know don’t let a politician see your wallet that sort of thing) one really should have the freedom to dress how one likes. In fact it turns out that by law one does, and yet here’s a police man (what do they teach them in the colonies) suggesting that if a woman is dressing as she pleases if it could be seen in some way as “slutty” then well they’ve just got to expect to be raped. Of course that means they’re expected to guess what some violent thug they happen to run across, or some bone headed police officer, would consider slutty – perhaps a burqa would be safe? Now if this was just a single police officer in some colonial back water one might ignore it, but sadly this attitude of “dressed like that, she was asking for it” is far too common amongst the legal establishment – you know those people we pay to enforce laws against committing acts of violence against other people and to punish those that break those laws.

As the SlutWalk London page rightly points out manner of dress really isn’t a magic shield that stops people getting raped. So as someone who gets the odd bit of hassle for how I dress, sometimes even from the police I feel this is really rather something I should support. Besides the logical conclusion of such an attitude towards how women should dress is pretty much what some of those on the Muslim fringe would support. So I shall be taking additional exercise this year and going for a little stroll on June 11th and almost certainly not in my usual garb.

FaceBook event is here.

Just on a slightly ancillary note it would seem that Nadine Doris is in hot water again this time for suggesting that it might be a good thing if children where taught how to say no to sexual advances as it might be useful later in life to be taught early on that they can say no. Some people are interpreting her comments as saying that the victim is responsible, but I’m rather with Ms Raccoon in taking it as being told from an early age that you can say no to sexual advances even when you’re in your teens or later is a really rather handy life skill.

Update On another related note over at Harry’s place there is a report that:
“The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee has suggested that forced marriage should be made a criminal offence.”
Which seems likely a terribly good idea, though one suspects it might fall foul of cultural diversity laws and the like (Ok one doesn’t but it will be interesting to see how various groups react to the proposal).

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The station that rigged everything

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For reasons that now escape me I’ve just finished watching The street that cut everything – this was an “experiment” where Nick Robinson persuades a street to give up all council services for 6 weeks. The very subtle (no honest it was subtle really – like a brick wall across Brandshatch) sub-text was that councils are terribly good value for money and that cuts can only affect vital services and are therefore evil.

That said I was hugely impressed with how well the street actually did, they managed to meet all the “challenges” aunty threw at them and stay on budget (just about – one can’t help but suspect that the additional challenges were set to make sure the budget didn’t last). The community (on the whole) pulled together and did a damn good job of going from having the council provide everything (including social interaction) to having to do it for themselves. Oddly as many dodgy libertarians might predict a community can actually pull together and choose to help each other out when asked to do so.

So that said, I may have hinted that I considered the “experiment” to be somewhat rigged. So lets ignore the in built slant to the situation in that no one on the street had any knowledge of any of the bits of legislation they were expected to adhere to, they also couldn’t make use of any of the economies of scale notionally available to the council. The best bit of rigging though was the funding they got, which was their council tax – so no slice of any central government funding, no slice of the business taxes, in fact nothing from any of the other funding streams that the council have. But I suppose in balance to that they didn’t have to pay anyone to do any of the jobs as they were doing it themselves (though then also had to also do jobs beyond their street as well). That though really was the huge hidden flaw – they were pretty much forced to organise along traditional council lines, there wasn’t the scope to really try anything radical. For instance they had to have weekly rubbish collections or they’d be fined – anyone had weekly rubbish collections of late? One of the residents insisted on free school meals and the same provision for getting their child to and from school and wouldn’t consider other options provided by the community – especially when it went wrong the first time it was tried.

So what the program did manage to show was that a single very small street, isn’t a viable self supporting community especially when people aren’t allowed to give additional money to the community. So wow if you ham-string a community it doesn’t do so well – who’d have thunk it.

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The good, the bad and the ugly

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Clergy against debtSo Saturday was the first (and I do hope not last Rally against debt) turn out was predictably low, despite all the people on Facebook saying they’d attend. Proving that armchair activism is alive and well – which isn’t really news at all. I can’t agree with the people that said it was fantastic, I think claiming that is as deluded as the LibDems saying they’ll make real progress next time or the Yes2Av crowd claiming they didn’t get hammered. The turn out wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, and I’ll return to that but first as the title suggests lets look at the good.

For what was a very small gathering it got an awful lot of media attention, almost all of which was wrong on almost every count. But for a while a quite group of a few hudnred people not causing trouble was on the front of the BBC news website, with video coverage later. Even tha Daily Mail covered it in their own special fashion (Hat tip LegIron). That’s an awful lot of coverage for an event where not a lot happened (I do suspect a larger turn out might actually have got less coverage). It’s interesting to notice how every report managed to decide it was a right wing rally (apparently according to that great political pundit Alexei Sayle the “right” can’t protest) but that’s probably to be expected and fair as the student demo’s where obviously all just self seeking vandals and anarchists (and more on anarchists later). Beyond that it was a good afternoon, mixing with a load of people from all over the political and every other spectrum – especially when we then headed for the pub.

So what was the bad, well obviously better turn out would have been good, and stood as I was at the back of the crowd I could hardly hear most of the speakers. So I think it’s safe to say that experts at publicizing and organizing rallies, we’re probably not (I wasn’t involved in organizing but I didn’t do much to publicise so..). That said not having pre existing channels for advertising protests such as maybe the TUC and students have it wasn’t too bad and I think probably best described as a learning experience. Thankfully those that thought it was irrelevant have been doing a splendid job spreading the message after we’d all gone to the pub. The other bad, and probably inevitable, thing is that despite what was actually talked about at the rally, which didn’t involve sacrificing kittens or driving poor people into the Thames with bricks around their necks that seems to have been how it was described. That the debt may actually be a serious problem is still being ignored with claims that we don’t need to cut anything. I guess that “what do want? A reasoned and informed debate on how to achieve fiscal responsibility!” just isn’t a catchy enough chant, need to work on that. After all there is so much that could be cut without affecting “front line” services (first off when councils make cuts why is it always front line services rather than managers or even councilors pay?), as a quick round up:
We could stop giving development aid to countries with nuclear and space programs?
We could perhaps stop subsiding the bars and restaurants in the palace of Westminster?
Save a few bob on police diversity groups?
Stop spending quite so much on pok barreling defence contracts?
Not bail out other bankrupt countries?
And as discussed that stupid?

Anarachists about townNow just in case you thought I might have forgotten, onto the ugly and to be honest the rather dim of brain. A little group of anarchists turned up to have a counter demo. Which to be honest was rather confusing as there they were a group of people who believe in no government protesting against a group of people that want less government (or at least less government spending). When asked they were very adamant in their support for the continuation of government spending and everything that entails. But then again they also insisted that Guy Fawkes was an anarchist and simply wouldn’t listen when told that he was in fact the supporter of a papist regime over the incumbent protestant regime and so was really trying to get even further from anarchy. It was though terribly nice of them to provide the amusement along with their really rather sharply dressed cameraman (I guess all those government trade agreements are ok at times.)

Sharp dressed anarchist

Sharp dressed anarchist

More photo’s on Flickr

Other Rally reports:
Guido We Rallied against the debt
Simon Clarke So, was the Rally Against Debt a success?
Platform 10 Rally Against the Debt: What impact will it have?

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