11/23/2004 01:01:41 PM
Welcome to my new new web address, provided courtesy of the generosity of Drina at Sonafide.com!
You might have noticed being redirected here from my old (tanglewood.myby.co.uk) address, so if you have me linked I'd be grateful if you could update it!
If you're reading this in your newsreader, it means my autoredirect script has worked. Otherwise I've included some links below.
Steve :-)
11/22/2004 09:47:12 AM
Bullying always strikes a chord with me, particularly as I was bullied at school. This article from the Sun is suprisingly like serious journalism.
Ministers estimate that one in three secondary school pupils and a quarter of kids at primary schools suffer bullying.
Schools Minister Stephen Twigg said: ?Bullying creates misery for thousands of children. It is crucial they know that they are not alone.?
Shadow Education Secretary Tim Collins seized on the NOP report to blast Labour?s record on school discipline.
He said: ?This shows how discipline in our schools has completely broken down.
?Schools with the least bullying problems are always schools with the highest standards of discipline.?
And he insisted that the survey proved Government plans announced last week to ?share out? problem pupils around schools was a mistake.
He said: ?The worst way to tackle bullying is to spread poorly behaved pupils through every school. They are likely to be the worst bullies.?
Bullying happens in every school regardless, and sharing our difficult pupils among schools with good discipline is the best way to ensure change.
11/21/2004 10:36:12 PM
Father Jake has an excellent post quoting The Arch Bishop of Canterbury's Christmas Message. I hope he won't mind me posting it almost in full. Visit his site.
He tells of observing a therapist working with an autistic boy. When the boy became overwhelmed by external stimuli, and began to retreat into repetitive, and sometimes violent behaviors, the therapist mirrored each of the actions. Over a few days, the boy came to see this mirror as a connection with the external world that was safe, and even controllable. A relationship was born, and the healing process began.
...Christ does not save the world just by his death on the cross; we respond to that death because we know that here is love in human flesh, here is the creator's power and life in a shape like ours. As we read the gospels, we should think of God watching us moment by moment, mirroring back to us our human actions - our fears and our joys and our struggles - until he can at last reach out in the great gestures of the healing ministry and the cross. And at last we let ourselves be touched and changed.
That's what begins at Christmas. Not a doctor coming in with a needle or a surgeon with a knife, but a baby who has to learn how to be human by watching; only this baby is the eternal Word of God, who is watching and learning so that when he speaks God's transforming word we will be able to hear it in our own human language. He is God so that he has the freedom to heal, to be our 'therapist'. He is human so that he speaks in terms we can understand, in the suffering and delight of a humanity that he shares completely with us. And now we must let him touch us and tell us that there is a world outside our minds - our pride and fear and guilt. It is called the Kingdom of God.
11/20/2004 10:51:29 AM
This seemed a little eccesive, until I realised that you can get upto 75 items at a time. Thats ***75*** items. Given that I can get 8 at a time, i'm very jealous.
BAY CITY, Mich. - Stacks of chronically overdue library books may soon land some readers in Bay County, Mich., more than just a 10-cent-a-day fine. Frustrated librarians are proposing a crackdown on the worst offenders that could include criminal charges and up to 90 days in jail.
11/19/2004 09:34:21 PM
I don't quite understand why news outlets always call new public figures 'The next xxxx'. In this case though I'm happy to join in.
The Tories have drafted in Lynton Crosby from Australia to run their campaign for the next General Election, ominiously referred to as the new Peter Mandleson or the new Karl Rove. My knowledge of Australian politics is limited to what I've read on Signposts, but i'm guessing it's more than most people. - so start here, and find some more links at the very bottom.
The 48-year-old has been described as a "master of the dark political arts" and "the Australian Karl Rove," a reference to George Bush's legendary campaign adviser.I love this
In 2002, Australian newspaper The Age described Mr Crosby as "one of the most powerful and influential figures in the nation".
His reputation is built on masterminding four successive general election victories for Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
The Australian said that Freedom of Information queries had revealed that 75% of all complaints from all political parties to the ABC had come from Lynton Crosby.
In a pre-election interview, Jeremy Paxman asks Mr Howard about the sacking of prisons chief Derek Lewis in 1995 following the Parhurst escape, Everthorpe riot and Fred West's suicide. Paxman asks "Did you threaten to overrule him?" 14 times and each time Mr Howard evades the question.
In 2002, Australian newspaper The Age described Mr Crosby as "one of the most powerful and influential figures in the nation".
His reputation is built on masterminding four successive general election victories for Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
'Slick political machine'
Mr Howard, of the Liberal Party, the nearest Australian equivalent of the UK's Conservative party, returned from the political wilderness in 1996 to defeat Labour's Paul Keating.
He went on to win a further three elections, with Mr Crosby involved in key campaigning roles.
Michael Howard
Mr Howard hopes to emulate his Australian namesake
Mr Crosby quit the Liberal Party of Australia last year and had been expected to take up lucrative work in the private sector.
But he has been lured to the Conservative cause by the prospect of engineering a similar comeback for Michael Howard, who not so long ago was languishing on the back benches.
"I think there are many similarities with John Howard," Mr Crosby told The Times newspaper last year.
"We had Keating running a very slick political machine. But the glitz and the glamour can only last so long. Ultimately, you have to deliver."
Whatever tactics he chooses to deploy in the UK, Mr Crosby, who will work alongside Tory co-chairman Liam Fox, is certain to want a tough, highly-focused election campaign.
He is known for his aggressive style and his willingness to "go negative".
He reportedly made quite an impression when he made a presentation at a shadow cabinet bonding weekend last year.
According to one report, then shadow chancellor Michael Howard's "eyes lit up" as Mr Crosby screened a television ad showing Paul Keating making a remark he later had to withdraw.
This has led to speculation the Tories will attempt to skewer Tony Blair on "trust" at the next election.
Localised campaigning
What Mr Crosby does best, according to one journalist who has watched him at close quarters, is "below the radar" campaigning.
That is, the ruthless targeting of marginal constituencies with highly localised campaigning, latching on to local issues and personalities.
The key to winning election campaigns is building a good team...and having a leader who knows what he's on about
Lynton Crosby
This even stretches to calling up voters individually - or, better still, having the party leader or other senior figures man the phones.
"This has been a highly effective tactic," says one Australian journalist, who asked not to be named.
"The Liberal Party have whipped Labour's butt in marginal seats. They have wiped them out."
Swing voters
The Conservatives have already set up a call centre in the West Midlands - close to its target seats and away from the Westminster village - with a similar purpose in mind.
The party has imported Voter Vault computer software from the US, where it was used by the Republicans to store information on voters.
It claims to identify people likely to vote Tory from their spending habits and other information. The party hopes to use it to target about 400,000 swing voters in key marginals.
Critics say the Tories has been forced to go down this route because they are short of activists willing to pound the streets, but Labour has set up a similar call centre in North Shields.
The Australian journalist said: "The biggest effect Lynton will have is his professionalism.
"The Australian Liberal Party have a very professional campaign structure.
"If Lynton achieves nothing else, he will get the Conservative party machine working more effectively.
"That means effective media monitoring, responding quickly, not letting any of the issues get away from them."
'Playing hardball'
He will also tell Michael Howard to "stand up for what you believe in, let people know what you stand for, who you are".
"John Howard is a conviction politician - and I think Lynton will want to steer Michael Howard in that direction", added the journalist.
In a rare interview with The Age two years ago, Mr Crosby said: "The key to winning election campaigns is building a good team, having clear central lines of authority while implementing your campaign in as decentralised away as possible, and having a leader who knows what he's on about."
He may have been compared to Karl Rove, but Mr Crosby's fondness for "playing hardball" with journalists - and his habit of firing off letters of complaint to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - will remind many in Westminster of someone a little closer to home.
They've had a long search, but could the Tories have finally found their very own Alastair Campbell?
11/19/2004 08:36:44 PM
You need to listen to this wonderful song - 'What I bought on ebay'. So funny.
Via L'entrecote
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11/19/2004 01:17:25 PM
Do you have any spare webspace?
With the addition of post pages to blogger my space requirements have shot up, and I've all but used the 30mb Blueyonder provide me with. I've temporarily deleted Katie's blog, (not used for months) so that I can post this!
If anyone happens to have any spare webspace lying around, or knows of anywhere offering some space - I'd be grateful if you could comment or email me.
Thanks - Steve
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11/19/2004 01:16:50 PM
Is your therapist is reading your blog?
Novembers CPJ magazine, which arrived today, contained an article on blogging, by Therapist Kate Anthony, who has been using her blog as part of one of her research projects.
Kate has posted the article online in draft, and I'd really encourage you to pop over and have a look.
It asks all sorts of interesting questions, particually around what happens when a client can post details of their therapy session online for the world (including their therapist?!?) to comment on. I've been thinking about what would happen of a client of mine came across my blog. Hmm. Go over and say hello - www.katesbook.blogspot.com
CPJ is the monthly magazine from the British Association for Counselling and Psycotherapy (BACP) the regulatory body for, well, counsellors and psycotherapists in the UK.
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11/19/2004 01:01:27 AM
This is another one of those things that beggers belief.
HOUSTON (Reuters) - Camouflage was in and cross-dressing was out at a rural East Texas school district after a Christian legal group complained a long-standing school tradition of reversing social roles for a day would promote homosexuality.
Students in Spurger, Texas were encouraged by school officials to wear camouflage hunting gear to class after they called off their annual "TWIRP Day" in which boys dressed as girls and vice versa.
The cross-dressing tradition began some years back as a kind of Sadie Hawkins Day where girls ask boys to go out on dates. ...
But Delana Davies, who has two children in the Spurger school, complained this year that the tradition could promote homosexuality and got the Liberty Legal Institute, a right-wing Christian legal group, to take up the cause.
"It might be fun today to dress up like a little girl -- kids think it's cute and things like that. And you start playing around with it and, like drugs, you do a little here and there (and) eventually it gets you," Davies told reporters on Wednesday.
"It is outrageous that a school in a small town in east Texas would encourage their 4-year-olds to be cross-dressers," institute litigation director Hiram Sasser said.
He sought and obtained permission from the district for the woman's children to stay out of school for the day.
School attorney Tanner Hunt told Reuters the Liberty group misrepresented TWIRP Day and made it sound sinister when it has always been innocent fun.
"I guarantee you nobody on the school board or in the administration ever had that cross their minds," Hunt said of the "cross-dressing" reference.
Sasser said it was not his intent to disparage the school.
"The district gets mad every time I say 'cross-dress,' but I don't know what other way to describe it," he told Reuters.
Because of the controversy, school officials decided to change Wednesday from TWIRP Day to Camouflage Day, in what Hunt described as a reference to the clothing hunters wear during deer-hunting season, which is going on now and is enormously popular in rural Texas.
Despite the change from TWIRP Day, Hunt said some of the students stuck to the old tradition and wore clothes of the opposite sex.
"I understand from the superintendent that some of the boys dressed in pink shorts anyway," he said.
11/17/2004 11:08:20 PM
Some scary stuff about blogging I found at this post on Signposts...
Rule 1: Edit your posts thoroughly and severely. Blogging is an immeasurably more time sensitive medium than print media, let alone any of the more substantial forms of print. Every reader is constrained by a blogging time-budget. Every reader has millions of alternative blogs a mere click away. No reader has paid to visit your blog. No reader has a sunk investment in your blog. No reader will sit down with your blog for the 15 minutes they will always do to justify them buying today's newspaper. These illusive readers can always slip away in nonoseconds flat. This means you can't burden a reader with reading one paragraph, one sentence, one word more than helps them to get your message. Non-working words aren't permitted.
Rule 2: Go back and read Rule 1 again. You call that an edit? You have yet begun to edit. Do the whole edit again. This time, make sure you make some tough decisions about your own writing. The great liberating benefit of blogging is that you don't have to jump the hurdle of a professional editor to be published. The great danger is that you will take this freedom as an open licence to publish words. So, yes, do the edit again. This time, get serious, really. Remember, no non-working words. Not even one. Bludging words aren't allowed. Dig every single one of those non-working suckers out. If the word isn't functionally necessary, it must carry its share of the rest of the message's weight, or it must go.
Rule 3: Go back and read rules 1 & 2 again. You just don't get it. You think that, because you happen to have personally written that stupid sentence, it can stay, even though the post would make perfect sense without it. You shouldn't be blogging. If readers are what you want, you might as well give up right now. You need a grown-up editor. Do you think readers grow on trees? You're wasting your readers' time. Time is precisely what this is all about. You waste your readers' time, you don't get readers. It's that simple. You're trying to write in the most time-sensitive medium that has ever existed on this planet. Go back and really start editing, or give up.Ctd...
Rule 4: Do a quality edit. OK, you've made a start. How brave! You've finally expelled the obvious non-working words, and these included some words you really liked. Congratulations, you've now taken your first step along the road to readership. Now you have to think in another way. You don't have to think about getting rid of excess words, but the productivity of the remaining words. You have to ask yourself whether readers will get a high value return per word ratio from your post. Yes, go over the whole thing again. This time you're not searching for spare words, you're looking for slack arse, low-performing words. This time, you have to ensure every part of your composition is not just working, but hard working. Find the slackers. And once you've found them, if you can't cut them, figure out how to change them, or change them around, so that they lift their game. Piss off gratuitous affectations. Shoot on sight stuff like 'furthermore', 'however', 'additionally', 'with respect to', 'in this regard' and any and every other piece of writing jargon you can find. These may have been useful in composing. They might have helped structure your thinking. But now your thinking is structured, and they're superfluous. They were scaffolding. Now you only need the building. If you've completed your work, it will stand alone. If it won't, you haven't completed. So get back to work, until the building will stand alone.
Rule 5: Edit your quotes. Forgot about them did you dummy? Go back and look closely. Yes, you can drop three-quarters of that quote. This is because it's a reasonably sure bet that whoever wrote it was writing in a context nowhere near as time-sensitive as your medium. Dig out the other guy's slackers and the bludgers. If you've got a link that will allow readers to check the full context, be even tougher, a lot tougher.
Rule 6: Editing doesn't mean short posts. No stupid. Now you've gone overboard. The time-sensitive nature of the medium doesn't mean you can't have long posts. Many of the most successful posts are long posts. These might also even have long quotes. Writing long posts merely means you must apply the same diamond-hard editing standards for longer. Don't go the the other extreme either, and only write long posts. Mix them up. Once readers feel confident you won't waste their time, they'll come back to your long posts. In the meantime, give them a shortie, so they've got something to take away now that they're already at your place. And if you've really got rules 1-5, and only if you've really got rules 1-5, you can also begin to think about the delicate art of adding back in a judicious quality word or two or three - colorful or attractive words. Let the post out just a touch. Let it breathe a little in the word straightjacket you've just put it in.
Rule 7: Yes, you must be original. Sorry about that. Don't bother blogging unless you are putting out something readers won't get somewhere else. You must contribute something to the 'sphere, if readers is what you want, that is. This doesn't mean you need an original topic or an original argument or an original style. The 'sphere is a gigantic conversation where huge parts are all talking about the same things in similar ways to make the same argument. There are as many ways to add something as there are different people on this earth. You have to ask yourself what exactly it is that you are adding. And if you come up with zip, forget about it. If you must still post on the subject, confine it to links to the places that have already covered the story.
Rule 8: Don't write mystery stories. Don't try to make readers work all the way through your evidence before they discover whodunit. This is strictly for stylists who've worn low readerships for a long time while they slowly became established. Unless you fancy your chances along this difficult path, you must immediately sink your biggest, strongest, sharpest hook straight into the reader, burying it as deeply as you possibly can, and refusing to let go, even the slightest, before the end of your post. If you place the hook at the bottom of the post, or in the middle, or even in the second line, you may never get it into a reader at all.
Rule 9: Link often, link well. Linking is another of the special features of blogging. You must therefore make the most of it. Directly linking to the sources for your writing is one of blogging's great advantages over print media. Linking supplies a degree of transparency that no other medium can so readily match, and accounts for most of the power of blogging. And don't just link to the sources you are relying on. You must also link to the places where you also discovered those sources. Don't be one of those blog-idiots who think that the way to get an edge on other blogs is to steal their sources without acknowledgement, if you plan to be around for the long haul. And don't be one of those even bigger blog-idiots who refuse to link to good material they've seen at other blogs, because they don't wish to send readers over there for some political or other dumb reason. Good material stays good material, wherever it is. If your readers don't find out about it because of you, they'll find it because of someone else, to whom they will now be more likely to return - get it! No, it's not rocket science.
Rule 10: Delete abusive and vexatious commenters without mercy or fanfare. You are the guardian of a public space. If you allow that space to be degraded, only degraded readers will visit. This is one area where the blogosphere clearly has matured during my year of blogging furiously. When I started blogging, a faux-libertarian ideology ruled, holding that no comments should ever be deleted on principle. Although you might still find the odd old-time blogger doggedly holding to this antediluvian idea, don't be fooled for a nanosecond. The notion is crap, and has always been crap. Fortunately, it's now widely recognised as crap. Anyone can establish a blog. Freedom of speech has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with your right to delete commenters who clearly have no intention other than to abuse or annoy you or your commenters. Set your standards. Make them explicit. Don't hesitate to enforce them. Readers will more readily contribute to a discussion if they feel confident they're not going to be insulted or assaulted for their effort. On the other hand, it is unquestionably counter-productive to the aim of attracting readers to frequently delete comments, especially if you delete for purely political reasons, or because you just disagree with the content of the comment. I'm pretty confident that I never deleted more than six or seven commenters, although two or three of these did come back for more punishment (yes, here's looking at you Murph! Cheers ol' son!). But it's up to you. By all means turn your space into a toilet wall if you wish. Just know you don't have to and, most importantly, this is not a route for attracting readers
11/17/2004 01:58:44 AM
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Teenagers raised by two women appear to be as well
adjusted as those who are raised by male-female couples, a new report indicates.
"Their adjustment is pretty normal - that is, indistinguishable from a
matched group of kids being raised by opposite-sex parents," said study author
Dr. Charlotte J. Patterson of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Specifically, teens with same-sex parents appeared to be no more likely
to have psychological problems, struggle at school, try intercourse, or have
problems at home, the investigators found.
Ctd...
Critics have argued that
same-sex parents "may in some way harm the children that are raised in these
households," Patterson told Reuters Health. "And I think that our results speak
to that concern, to some degree."
Previous research about children
raised by same-sex parents has shown that by and large they tend to fare as well
as their peers raised by a man and woman.
One study of teenagers raised
by divorced lesbians found they had similar self-esteem as teenagers of divorced
heterosexual parents, and appeared to fare better if their mothers had a partner
living at home, their fathers were supportive of the relationship, and they
learned of their mothers' orientation when they were relatively young.
To investigate further how teenagers fare with same-sex parents,
Patterson and her colleagues reviewed information collected from a national
sample of 44 12- to 18-year olds -- 23 girls and 21 boys -- living with mothers
in same-sex partnerships.
The researchers compared those adolescents to
44 teens with mothers in opposite-sex relationships.
As reported in the
journal Child Development, the investigators found that, overall, teens with
parents in same-sex relationships appeared to have relatively high levels of
self-esteem, little anxiety, few signs of depression, and to do well in school.
They were no more likely than other teens to have symptoms of
depression, problems with self-esteem, or anxiety. They also reported feeling
equal levels of warmth from their parents, and caring from adults and their
peers.
Moreover, teens with mothers in same-sex unions appeared to get
comparable grades, and be just as likely or unlikely to get in trouble in
school. They were also no different in whether or not they had had sex, or been
in a romantic relationship in the previous 18 months.
Patterson noted
that teens who appeared to be most well adjusted in school also tended to have a
particularly warm and close relationship with their parents. Clearly, parental
closeness is connected to teenage well-being, she added; whether one causes the
other is still unclear.
SOURCE: Child Development, November 2004.
11/17/2004 01:56:17 AM
AS VEGAS - Weight-loss experts have a novel prescription for people who want to shed pounds: Get some sleep. A very large study has found a surprisingly strong link between the amount of shut-eye people get and their risk of becoming obese.
Those who got less than four hours of sleep a night were 73 percent more likely to be obese than those who got the recommended seven to nine hours of rest, scientists discovered. Those who averaged five hours of sleep had 50 percent greater risk, and those who got six hours had 23 percent more.
Ctd...
"Maybe there's a window of opportunity for helping people sleep more, and maybe that would help their weight," said Dr. Steven Heymsfield of Columbia University and St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York.
He and James Gangwisch, a Columbia epidemiologist, led the study and are presenting results this week at a meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity.
They used information on about 18,000 adults participating in the federal government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES, throughout the 1980s. The survey includes long-term follow-up information on health habits, and researchers adjusted it to take into account other things that affect the odds of obesity, like exercise habits, so that the effects of sleep could be isolated.
It seems "somewhat counterintuitive" that sleeping more would prevent obesity because people burn fewer calories when they're resting, Gangwisch said.
But they also eat when they're awake, and the effect of chronic sleep deprivation on the body's food-seeking circuitry is what specialists think may be making the difference in obesity risks.
"There's growing scientific evidence that there's a link between sleep and the various neural pathways that regulate food intake," Heymsfield said.
Sleep deprivation lowers leptin, a blood protein that suppresses appetite and seems to affect how the brain senses when the body has had enough food. Sleep deprivation also raises levels of grehlin, a substance that makes people want to eat.
It also hurts "executive function" — the ability to make clear decisions, said Dr. Philip Eichling, a sleep and weight-loss specialist at the University of Arizona who also is medical director of the Canyon Ranch, a spa in Tucson that offers health and weight management programs, especially for business executives.
"One of my treatments is to tell them they should move from six hours to seven hours of sleep. When they're less sleepy, they're less hungry," he said.
Eichling had no role in the new study but said it gives important evidence for a long-suspected theory in the field. Americans average only a little more than six hours of sleep a night, and one report a few years ago even suggested that the growing prevalence of sleep deprivation might be responsible for the growing obesity epidemic, he said.
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11/16/2004 06:35:04 PM
This is an interesting article from the BBC on the effects on 9/11 on the Sikh community. This imparticular struck me.
According to figures released in June, there has been a 300% rise in stop and searches of Asian members of the community since the introduction of anti-terrorism legislation.
Racial assaults on Britain's Sikh community have become "fashionable" since the
11th September attacks, a Sikh community leader has told MPs.
Jagdeesh
Singh of the Sikh Community Action Network said 9/11 had opened up a new form of
vocal and physical racism against Sikhs and other ethnic groups.
The
British government had done "next to nothing" to protect Sikhs, he told the Home
Affairs Select Committee.
The committee is looking into the impact of
anti-terrorism measures.
MPs are also examining the alleged stigmatising
of minority groups "associated" with terrorism and any evidence of an increase
in racial tension.
Mr Singh said 11 September had become a trigger for a
small minority to justify their racism and randomly go out and attack people.
For the first time, Sikhs in Britain had experienced a very "deliberate"
and very "fashionable" form of racism, he said.
The way the
legislation has been implemented has had a disproportionate effect on Muslims
Sadiq Khan
Muslim Council
Racist abusers often shouted "Bin
Laden "at Sikh men walking down the street because of their beards and turbans,
he said.
Mr Singh himself had been attacked in September when British
hostage Ken Bigley was being held in Iraq by kidnappers.
His attackers
had laid the blame for Mr Bigley's kidnap and events in Iraq on Mr Singh and
those of his racial appearance, he said.
Mr Singh also accused the
national media of having a "pervasive culture of disinterest" in the attacks on
Sikh community members.
Sadiq Khan, of the Muslim Council of Great
Britain, told MPs there were huge concerns about the way new stop and search
powers granted under the terrorism act were being used
He said police
could now stop people in an area designated to be under threat of terrorist
attack.
This was understandable if an attack on Canary Wharf, for
example, were suspected.
Monitoring
But the problem was that the
whole of Greater London has been designated as such an area, which meant police
could effectively stop anyone they liked, he said.
And there was little
evidence that such stops led to charges and prosecutions.
There was a
need to ensure the government and police used these powers properly and were
held to account, Mr Khan said.
"The way the legislation has been
implemented has had a disproportionate effect on Muslims and we are concerned
whether there are systems in place to monitor them."
Concerns that the
introduction of tough anti-terror laws has led to the unfair targeting of some
ethnic minorities have been raised by many interest groups.
According to
figures released in June, there has been a 300% rise in stop and searches of
Asian members of the community since the introduction of anti-terrorism
legislation.
11/16/2004 11:19:21 AM
We've talked a number of times on my counselling diploma course about the boundaries of working with people, including those who self-harm. Whether, at the most basic level you make it a condition of working that all self-harm stops, or whether you negotiate a downgrading to a safer level.
Which makes this very interesting reading from. The Guardian The Last Result, a therapeutic community that negotiates a downgrading in a protected environment.
Oakwood Hall, with its ivy-covered stonework, elegant grounds and location down a tree-lined lane, looks like it has stepped out of the pages of a Victorian country house novel. But it is a place where violence, aggression and chronic self-harm are dealt with as everyday events. It is a therapeutic community just outside Leeds city centre and is home to 12 people who have personality disorders and major mental health problems that the rest of the health and social care system just cannot cope with.
But instead of locked doors, barred windows and restraint techniques, the Oakwood ethos is to make people feel at home - even if that means allowing them to cut themselves with razor blades.
Manager Paul Beckett says this doesn't mean that clients are allowed to run riot. "Self-harm is a form of instantaneous relief," he says. "We say that it's OK because we want people to feel that this is their own home. But there have to be rules. If people want to cut themselves they must use a sterile blade and must tell a member of staff what they intend to do. If they need medical treatment they must go to hospital."
Ctd...
Surely allowing someone to continue cutting themselves is not helping? Beckett disagrees: "It's a long, slow, patient process, but our techniques lead to a decrease in this self-harming behaviour. We haven't got any statistics for this, but qualitative research shows that it does work. It's all about respecting clients as people and making this a genuine home."
Oakwood does not tolerate violence towards staff or other residents, but it does not use control and restraint techniques. "We make a contract about what is acceptable and what is not," Beckett says. "Aggression would be unacceptable. People know that if there is violence we would have to call the police."
In over 10 years since Oakwood opened, it has had only five or six serious incidents, according to Beckett, despite working with people who are or have been extremely violent.
To qualify for a place, clients have to be 18 or over and live in the Leeds area. The listed building is owned by Leeds city council and referrals come from health and social services. Typical clients may exhibit problem behaviour that is too much for other services to cope with, have lifestyles that are chaotic and elusive, or simply be isolated and vulnerable. The nine people on the waiting list can expect to wait at least 12 months due to the length of treatment.
Beckett refutes the idea that people with personality disorders - which can manifest in a spectrum of behaviours from alienation to dependency, obsessiveness, narcissism and violence - cannot be helped. He says: "We can't cure people but we can provide them with a better quality of life, improve their coping and understanding techniques using cognitive behavioural therapy and psychosocial techniques."
Oakwood's staff of 16 - which includes three managers, five registered mental nurses and seven mental health support workers - provide 24-hour support. With high levels of mental ill health among mental health workers themselves, and the tough nature of the job, Beckett says staff support and feedback is vital.
All residents are registered with the local GP and some have a psychiatrist. But Oakwood does not offer depot injections - drugs for long-term conditions such as schizophrenia - because it does not want to seem like a hospital.
While the hall itself is not surrounded by houses, the whole idea is one of inclusion. John Anderson, director of planning and development for Community Links, the charity that runs Oakwood, says: "We are down a leafy lane and in nice grounds, but come out of the lane and you are near the city centre. It's the real world. We didn't want to make this place into some old-fashioned asylum tucked miles away. It's a less than semi-secure environment; it's all about inclusion and preventing exclusion."
Community Links is at www.commlinks.co.uk
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11/16/2004 10:54:26 AM
Do you remember the Hokey Cokey? I didn't know this. Via Jason Clark
Apparantly the Hokey Cokey is a ridicule of the pre Vatican II Catholic mass. katie loves the Hokey Cokey, and my family are all catholics. I shall have to mention this at Christmas! :-)
Hmm...... well ....back in 17th century Puritan England anything 'popish' or Roman Catholic was viewed with great suspicion and open to, at best, ridicule. The Hokey-Cokey, with its song and actions, is a mimicry of the Roman Catholic Mass.
In those days the priest faced the altar (not the people) and performed several actions as he consecrated the bread and wine at Holy Communion. The words of the service were in Latin. You put your left arm in ......etc was ridiculing the priest as he lifted his arms heavenward during the rite. You do the Hokey- Cokey and you turn around............ was when the priest turned to face the congregation with the host (consecrated bread) to offer it to them.
Ctd...
Ooooh, the Hokey-Cokey......... hokey-cokey is a corruption of the Latin words of consecration - Hoc est corpus: 'This is my body' (Note: many of the strange words and phrases of our language are corruptions of other languages introduced to our country over the years and few were educated enough to speak or understand Latin). Knees bend, arm stretch, ra-ra-ra....... knees bend is a ridicule of the genuflection (a kind of religious curtsey to the altar) of the priest, arm stretch is when he holds up his hands at the point of consecration in the service, and ra-ra-ra is just a mimicry of the Latin words and prayers they didn't understand.
Today, many people do not know the origin of the song/dance and just do it for fun, especially to teach children co-ordination (and their right from their left). Today, in England, the Roman Catholic Mass is said in English and is so similar to the Holy Communion of the Church of England that, sometimes, if you didn't know what church you were in.........
11/16/2004 10:38:56 AM
I've been reading a series of stories from Rob at Unspace, and in the latest one he talks about the growing awareness of HIV in the 80's.
One thing he mentioned caught my attention, that some Christian leaders were (quite popular it seems) condemning anyone who treated those who were HIV positive, for anything HIV related, and anyone researching a cure as opposing Gods will of destruction for homosexuals.
I wish I could say it surprised me, but it doesn't, only sadden me. I don't want to rehash past stupidity, and I hope that no-one still believes this. (If anyone doe s- I hope God shows you more grace than you show others), but it is nevertheless important to remember it or the future, so that when we look back at this oppressive, fear-led, running with and leading the prejudice of society, we can look at ourselves today, and ask this question:
What is the modern day equivalent of this attitude, and to whom?
I don;t know the answer to that, but I'd encourage you to ask it.
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11/15/2004 07:25:13 PM
Interesting article on The Revealer
Gay Marriage, GOP Secret Weapon
03 November 2004
Was the "moral value" of homophobia this election’s X-factor?
By Jeff Sharlet
My colleague Ann and I decided to tune out of the election coverage around 1:30 am. We left the friends with whom we’d been watching to walk to the F train the long way, crosstown and down Sixth Avenue through Greenwich Village.
At W. 4th, a man staggered toward us from across the street. He looked drunk; he was dirty; and he wore an American flag t-shirt that didn’t come close to covering his belly. “Admit it, Democrat,” he bellowed, closing fast. “Bush won!” He shook a fist at us. “And now I’m gonna shove my whole f-----g fist up your Democrat ass!”
I had two inches on the guy. Ann, half a foot shorter than me and probably half as heavy, knows karate. We figured we could protect our unaffiliated asses. The real puzzle was, Why did this man think we were Democrats? And what was with the weirdly homoerotic anger? There’s something about threatening to shove your “whole fist” up an ass that suggests a certain familiarity with the sexual practice of fisting and its challenges.
We thought about it while we waited for the F train. Ann, as it happens, had voted for Kerry. Since I didn’t vote -- my registration is two or three apartments behind me -- I don’t need to say who I would’ve voted for if I had. We inspected our clothing: Ann looked sharp in a neat black outfit and short, bright red hair. I felt stylistically nonpartisan in jeans and a sweatshirt. Both of our bellies, however, were fully covered, unlike the fister’s. That fact, apparently, revealed both our political and sexual proclivities.
Ctd...
At first, we didn't make much of the man's warning. After all, it’s easy to imagine that had the election gone differently, and had we been in, say, Dallas, a bare-bellied Kerry supporter might have likewise threatened a fisting. Or maybe not.
Homophobia is a cross-party persuasion, but last night it figured most often in the votes of Republicans. A topic discussed more and more frequently as the pundits came to realize that their predictions had been wildly wrong was “values” -- that is, in this election like no other, gay marriage. Let’s make that simpler, get to the root of the matter: gay sex. Gay sex in all its variety -- including fisting -- may have been this election’s X-factor. Bush is against it. Kerry would rather leave the details to the discretion of lovers.
The clearest evidence of homosexuality as an organizing principle in last night’s voting is the fact that all eleven of the state gay marriage bans proposed passed. The proposals may not have been so much populist as political from conception, designed by GOP strategists to drive otherwise lazy, Republican-leaning voters to the polls. Given the accounts of fraudulent phone calls “campaigning” for Kerry’s promise to legalize gay marriage (a promise he never made; like Bush, he’s for civil unions), that’s not a hard story to swallow. But it doesn’t account for the marriage bans’ victories, nor for the many bishops and priests and ministers who called for electoral holy war by declaring the fight against homosexuality on par with that against abortion, and both more important than voters’ pocketbooks, public welfare, and international warfare.
And no get-out-the-vote strategy can ultimately explain the vote itself, nor the plurality of voters who told exit pollsters that "moral values" were their number one concern. Moral values -- visible faith, anti-abortion, and, this time, anti-homosexuality -- are a real and powerful force in the American public sphere.
In 2002 and 2003, my friend Peter Manseau and I spent about a year traveling the United States, reporting a book called Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible, a sort of spiritual geography of the nation. When we published the book earlier this year, interviewers asked us time and again: What’s the common denominator of American faith? What is it that most of us share? We lied every time. We offered up sincere but misleading tributes to freedom of speech as the American devotion. We avoided the answer that had made itself as plain as the two-lane roads we drove on: The greatest common denominator of American belief is anti-homosexuality.
In Alan Wolfe’s sociological survey, One Nation, After All, he writes that he discovered that most middle-class Americans are free of overt bigotries -- except homophobia. The exception to the rule of tolerance in American life, he argues, is the widespread belief that homosexuality is just not ok. Really not ok; whereas most Americans practice a nonjudgmental pragmatism with regard to others, homosexuality comes in for special condemnation. Wolfe found this common thread through careful sociological analysis.
My co-author and I tripped over it without even looking. In the strong majority of hundreds of interviews we conducted, believers of nearly every variety volunteered their opposition to homosexuality. I’m talking not only about Christian conservatives, although it’s worth remembering that that designation applies to the majority of Americans. We also heard about how wrong homosexuality is from Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, New Agers, Santeria practitioners, even Wiccans. Most of these people are surprisingly abstract in their thinking.
There may be a certain disingenuousness to the popular anti-homosexuality mantra, “hate the sin, love the sinner,” but nearly everyone we met really did distinguish their hatred of homosexuality from their dealings with homosexuals. How do I know? Because many, if not most, thought that Peter and I were a gay couple, by virtue of the facts that we’re writers and had come from New York City. We’re neither a couple, nor gay, but there never seemed to be a polite way to say that, so we didn’t, and still some of the great homosexual-haters of America welcomed us into their homes and their churches and their temples.
If they could share their homes and their faith with men they assumed were gay, why can’t they share the state sanction of marriage? I don’t know. I’m familiar with all the arguments for and against gay marriage, and have heard variations played to the tune of a dozen different creeds and denominations. Examined in good faith, arguments against it do not hold water. Even if one concedes that homosexuality might be against God’s will, and that the state should help enforce God’s will, there’s the troubling question of priority.
Depending on how you read -- or don’t read-- your scripture, there are a lot of things against God’s will, and in no faith that I know of is homosexuality chief among them. Most are more concerned, for example, with relations between men and women.
Take the problem of wife beating, much more widespread than gay marriage. Wife-beating can’t by any stretch of the imagination be defended on biological grounds. And yet, wife-beating is remarkably amenable to faith-based solutions; indeed, Christian conservative programs such as Promise Keepers enjoy much greater success in helping men refrain from hitting their wives than they do in “curing” homosexuality. So, why the obsession with homosexuality?
As Jason Boog pointed out on The Revealer on Monday, some referendums actually pushed the issue further than gay activists had been inclined to take it. Gay activists in Michigan weren’t, for the most part, seeking the right to gay marriage, but that didn’t stop the state’s Catholic dioceses from pouring money and media into a campaign to prevent them from doing so. That campaign worked, although, if it was designed to tip Michigan Republican, it failed, as it did in Oregon, where another gay marriage ban passed even as the state went blue for Kerry.
In both states, though, it required Kerry to pour resources into states that might otherwise have been safe bets. So, at one a.m. this morning, TV pundits left and right shook their heads and talked about gay marriage, and “values,” as possible explanations for why the overall vote failed to follow pollsters’ predictions. If they're right, why exactly do so many people believe that homosexuality is an “issue” as important in determining one’s vote as the economy, or healthcare, or war?
Since I don’t share that view, it’s hard for me to know. But I suspect that most of those who do hold it don’t really know, either. Very few are able to articulate anything more than the easily-countered arguments that have been taking the debate nowhere for years. So I’m proposing a story for some brave journalist, or novelist, or scholar, or filmmaker. Tell us why so many of us build our understandings of the world around opposition to homosexuality. We’ll want to know about the various theologies. We’ll need to know about psychology, biology, sociology. But what I’m really waiting for is a full account of the faith that underlies this opposition. It’s neither simple nor shallow.
My travels -- and this election -- suggest to me that it is deep, profound, and made up of many meanings, spiritual, physiological, political, metaphorical. And it’s crucial to understanding the passion for "morality" that become this election’s X-factor, whether expressed in a vote or an angry “whole fist up your Democrat ass.” There must be more to it than can be explained, or justified, by the vast, empty term “values.”
Jeff Sharlet is co-author of Killing the Buddha and editor of The Revealer.
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11/15/2004 07:18:35 PM
This from Social Gospel Today on political/religious diversity. Found via Beth Quick
Consider these numbers from CNN's exit polling data:
Kerry carried:
Can a Republican party that carried only the votes of the powerful really be the party of Christianity?
11/15/2004 01:15:59 AM
This post from Andy at To All Nations leaves me reeling. I find sin hard, I find it hard to face God. Thanks Andy - Thank you father. Visit Andy and Kate's blog here.
Lord I am sorry that I wrong you, that I grieve you and that I cause you pain
every day. Lord I am sorry that I have taken for granted the things that you
have given me. Lord I am sorry that I have allowed my own grievances, my own
frustrations, my own anger, my own desires, my own disappointments to cloud my
thinking.
Lord I am in awe that in spite of me, you have given me so
much to be thankful for.
Ctd...
Lord I thank You that You
have given me this vision. You could have chosen anyone, but you chose me. I
thank You that You have placed a passion in my heart; that You have given me a
desire, a dream, and a purpose. I thank You that You have placed in me a
determination to fight against injustice, to see captives freed, and broken
hearts mended.
Lord I thank You that You are faithful in your promises
and when I meet resistance and rejection I can hold tightly to the promises You
have made me. I thank You that Your plan for me is a perfect plan, and while I
don’t understand much of it, and I am unaware of more than I am aware, I can
trust You.
Lord I thank You that You love me just as I am, and that
nothing I can ever do will change that. I thank you that You are patient with
me, gently teaching me, nurturing me, and holding me tightly within the circle
of Your arms as I beat on Your chest with my frustration and my anger.
Lord I thank You that You have blessed me so richly; that you have seen
fit to entrust me with a family, with prosperity and with gifts.
Lord I
pray that You will teach me to love you more deeply, more passionately, and to
live with a greater focus on You, using that which You have given me to glorify
Your Kingdom.
Amen.
