ICONOCLASTIC POLITICS NEEDED
PUBLISHER. A completed piece of basic reporting.
1. Final plea in opposition to building on asbestos contaminated land.
The kicker on this story is the observation of the existence currently of international trade in white asbestos.
2. Redress research imbalance between cancer and neurological disorders, says former CEO of medical research council. A public lecture by Professor Colin Blakemore, former head of the Medical Research Council.
3. Human Rights under fire. 14th February, 2012. A talk to law students at The University of Leeds by barrister, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty.
Iconoclastic journalism needed locally and nationally
in print, online and on air.
STOP SAYING ITS THE KIDS WOT DUN IT
4. A story of prejudice and mercantalism run amuck.
Events in my life in 2004 led to a Court case in 2008, and my eventual acquittal on appeal of harassment without violence of two secretaries for West Yorkshire Police. Those events were the State at its most sexist, ageist, nastiest, most dishonest, cowardly, back turning, snob ridden and paternalistically (I mean the word wholly perjoratively) co-ercive, seeking to force its own hang-ups onto me. By the State I mean medics, police, lawyers and professor M. Worboys of CHSTM at the University of Manchester. Iconoclastic opposition to the concept of localism
The causative philosophy, and which destroyed the basic, decent and honest things which I held dear and aspired to, was localism: localism chronologically, intellectually, geographically, and in the definition of geography, and socially. The legal instrument enabling the destruction was the Mental Health Act. Its name betrays its fascist intolerant heart. It protects its dishonest power base by seeking to create another class of human being, people - adults - too "vulnerable" to understand, and thus in the minds of some, a group to control, co-erce and deny access to knowledge of their own lives, whilst calling the co-ercion protection. The Act inculcates attitudes that caused:
5. Descent to bankruptcy, via canceled meetings (wilfully unrescheduled) , medical misdiagnosis (either through incompetence or organised malice) and abuse of law.
Iconoclastic politics.
Underlying the philosophy of localism was the assumption of guilt, and the even more dangerous assumption that only mental illness or alcohol (even when alcohol has been drunk) could explain behaviour not understood, and be an alternate to guilt. And medical notes are not "holy writ". They are opinion. In the field of mental health, as I learned, they can be based on wilful ignorance, prejudice, intolerance and flawed understanding, and disrespect of the patient. For that reason I am writing an:
6. Open letter to fellow journalists reporting mental health issues.
Iconoclastic Journalism which does not invade privacy is needed.
Instead of old wives tales more is needed from, say
7. Bipolar disorder and The Lancet.
And we must guard against thinking journalism and medicine or social work are alternates to politics, law (not a synonym for police) and medicine, where medicine is subservient to law.
8. Campaign against the MHAct.
9. Misdiagnosis and diagnosis where none should exist.
When it comes to the Mental Health Act, I am iconoclastic. It is a law undermining medicine, law and human dignity. It is a law turning humans into a commodity. With the privacy abuse it enables, and the view it encourages that medical notes should be seen by anyone, the NHS is creating a new type of localism, as damaging as the old bad forms. To counter the privacy abuse and alternate power base the NHS is seeking to create, law needs to reorganise itself and train its district judges as Crown Court Judges.
Iconoclastic politics needed nationally. |