Who am I? Societal attitude and the question of identity

How do we create our identity?
The UK has been my home for 27 years. I have always loved living here, have been part of my community and have felt totally at home and accepted. That changed a year ago when the EU referendum fuelled anti-immigration sentiment and for the very first time I felt unwelcome, anxious and insecure.

I want to explain what happens when people are marginalised and scapegoated, because even a year on I feel the effects very strongly. Of course I can only speak for myself, but I have spoken to enough EU immigrants and have observed friends from other minority groups to be fairly sure that this is a shared experience.
I expect that the simultaneous impact of the EU referendum result on 3 million people is probably a fairly unique event, but the sense of no longer (or indeed not ever) belonging into society happens to many groups of people for many reasons.

In my personal experience, when you no longer feel accepted by society as a whole, you lose your sense of belonging and security.
You may try to fight it, but how do you change society's perception of you, especially when it's fuelled by the media and political powers?
You begin to feel wary of other people, and you wonder what people really think about you - even people you have known and felt safe with for a long time.
You become more sensitive and more defensive about what people are saying and how they are saying it.
There is a temptation to withdraw and isolate yourself, because that's easier and more comfortable than managing your own feelings around other people.
So eventually you shed your old identity, and you take on a new one. Which new one? The one that you have been labelled with. First you carry that badge tentatively, then you carry it with pride.
Then you start to seek others who carry the same badge, and before you know it *they* are the people you feel safe and comfortable with.
And although you have perhaps never before felt disconnected from "everybody else", you have been pushed that way and you suddenly become it. You know longer belong, at least not in the same way you used to.

I say this because I felt so secure and assured in my life that I would never ever have imagined that anything could change how I feel. And yet it has.
If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

This post is not about me. I am just using my own experience to demonstrate how we affect others.
How society perceives us matters. How we allow politicians and the media to speak about whole groups of people matters. If we allow people to be set aside and scapegoated we risk driving them away into the margins of society where they may become lost and drift away.

We seem to be increasingly wary of people who are different to us, whether it's based on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, or social standing etc. We don't like the very rich and the very poor. We accuse people who sound, look or behave differently to us of undermining our culture and way of life. We suspect whole groups of people of exploiting our system, to "just take" and not contribute to society. There is much talk about wanting people to "integrate", to be more like us and to take on the "British way of life".

I put up a different argument. I suggest that if as a society we accept and welcome people as they are, they will be much more likely to contribute to and be part of our society naturally. It's what most people are wired to do.
If we learn to draw people into the fold of our communities, rather than hold them suspiciously at arms length on the edges, we may just become a better nation.

Losing my religion because of politics

Britain is a very divided country these days. The EU Referendum has split the nation, and despite assurances by certain politicians that "the country is uniting behind Brexit", in practice that seems not at all the case.

Now we are in the final weeks before our snap general election and - in contrast to previous elections where the main parties really seemed much of a muchness - there are marked differences between the parties, and their plans and manifestos.

Today, as I sat quietly with the Quakers, pondering life, it came to me: It is not my religion that defines me, but other, deeper values, attitudes and beliefs. Other people who share my religious beliefs hold very different political views and have very different attitudes towards social justice, international affairs and the environment.
Give me the humble atheist/agnostic with compassion for the vulnerable in society over the cruel vicar's daughter any day!

My religion is the desire for a caring and compassionate society, which happily and proactively cares for the needy and vulnerable; a society which encourages individuals not to just think about themselves, but to build a secure world for future generations; a society which seeks cooperation and constructive relationships with outsiders and foreigners.
And yes, I find many of those elements in Christian teaching - but probably only by ignoring those elements which contradict my personal values.
I also recognise that people of other faiths and none find those elements in their teachings and worldviews too ... and possibly only by equally ignoring certain elements which contradict their values. How else can the cruel vicar's daughter and other people with totally opposing political views to mine still profess to the same religious faith as me? And how can other followers of other religions also have found very different political positions?

Over the last year or so on Twitter I have come to realise that I am much more tolerant of other religious beliefs than of differing political views. Believe what you like, as long as your actions are in line with what I believe to be right and good.
My point is, I seem to have more in common and feel more closely connected with people who have similar political stances than some people who share my religious beliefs.

I can only conclude that rather than my religion shaping me, my deeper values shape my religion, how I understand it and how I apply it.
Do I still call myself a Christian? - I think I do.
Where do I go from here? - I don't know. Perhaps I need to sit in silence a bit more to fathom it out.

I guess one question which remains is what came first: My religion or my politics? - Any thoughts?

2015 The Recap

I know, I know. 2015 is so LAST YEAR!
But before 2016 really gets going, it's not such a bad idea to have a brief look at what the last year had to offer.

2015 was, all in all, not a bad year.

It started with the birth of the #ToriesMustGo beanie - born out of the desire to see the back of the Tory party in government, inspired by a Twitter hashtag and thought up by @SkelMawhrin who still valiantly wears it in his Twitter avi. The free pattern is available on Ravelry.

Sadly the message that #ToriesMustGo did not spread far and wide enough as the general election in May was to prove.
So 2015 became the year in which I became a member of the Labour party and emailed all undecided Labour MPs in June, urging them to nominate Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership contest. And (by the skin of their teeth) they did. :)

In July I joined some marching buddies at the Durham Miner's Gala. Definitely an experience and hoping to join again this year.

Crowds, much laughter and even more drinking...

Oh yes, and political speeches ...

More political action in October, when I joined Walking the Breadline and a group of Scousers in their march from Liverpool to Manchester to the Tory Conference.
We held up some traffic and shouted until we were hoarse.

I also had the opportunity to meet up with @davegore2005 and @VonGrime, two of my fave Twitter friends. A bit exciting and a huge pleasure to meet you guys for the first time.

2015 was also the year our youngest left home to go to university.






That gave hubby and me the opportunity to remind ourselves what it is like to be (just) a couple again.
We spent much time cycling and under floorboards together and found out that we indeed still like each other's company. Bonus!

2015 was the year we raised chicks from eggs and I finally started to take the allotment more seriously.




So all in all a productive year and a joyful one.

I have so much to be grateful for. So many friends, acquaintances and loved ones. So many interests, hobbies and areas I can learn more about and develop further.

Possibly one of my greatest joys is to create and make new things, to develop new ideas and let them grow.
So I am looking forward to doing more of that in the future.

Thank you to all of you who are my friends. For your support, honesty and inspiration. I would be a far lesser person without you.
I hope you'll stick around in 2016. x

Walking The Breadline (1)

Tomorrow I am travelling to Hoylake near Liverpool to join a group called Walking the Breadline in their final four days of marching to Manchester. Walking the Breadline have already been marching for a week, having started in Tredegar on 23rd September.
For more information about the group, please visit their Facebook page.

So why am I marching? I am marching to hopefully join tens of thousands of people who are demonstrating at the Tory Conference against the austerity measures implemented by this government.

Speaking for myself, I no longer believe in the austerity rhetoric. Since the financial crisis in 2008 we have been told how we all have to tighten our belts and how we are all in it together.
Yet it’s the weakest and most vulnerable members of society who are most squeezed to make up for this obscure deficit, of which nobody seems to be quite able to explain what exactly it is. Not the richest people who have the means to pay without suffering much hardship nor the bankers who caused the crisis in the first place, but those who have very little to begin with.

How can I take austerity measures seriously when we are told it is inevitable that we have to reduce benefits, penalise people for having extra bedrooms (despite no alternative housing being available), cut tax credits, freeze public sector pay and slash essential health and public services; yet somehow there is enough money to bail out bankers, go to war, fund nuclear weapons which – God help us – we will never use, and give MPs a payrise of 11%?

The media and tabloids are keen to present to us obscure ‘scroungers’ who are apparently showered with public money, rake in the benefits and are given mansions to live in. I am not saying these people don’t exist, but statistics show us that they are a tiny, tiny minority and that the vast majority of benefits recipients are working families on such low wages that they cannot make ends meet.
At a time when homelessness and Foodbank use is increasing at alarming rate, somehow our government (and the media who serve it) manage to scapegoat the weakest and most vulnerable. Somehow they try to convince us that people only use Foodbanks because it’s an easy option, that immigrants cause the housing crisis and health care crisis, that people on benefits are just too lazy to work, etc, etc.
Child poverty is ‘eradicated’ by changing the definition of the term. A reduction in unemployment is being flaunted without mentioning that a great proportion of those new jobs are on zero hour contracts, which provide nobody with a secure income.

Yet the media don’t mention the tax avoiders and evaders, the rich with offshore accounts, the corporations who manage their companies from abroad without having to contribute to the infrastructure which enables their company to function and the health/public service which keep their workers well and safe.
In the last 7 years since the financial crisis the rich in this country have only become richer and poor only poorer. That sounds neither right nor fair. And it certainly doesn't sound like austerity is working!

I no longer naively believe that those in political power necessarily have our best interest at heart. I think it is time to ask questions, challenge and hold those in power accountable.
I think it is come to leave the comfort of our sitting rooms and meet and organise with like-minded people.

If – as I used to – you think that you are not political, DON’T!
Politics is about people and about making society work. If you live in any community and have any opinion on how it should be run, then you ARE political and you have a voice.
The welfare state is at the very core of a caring and compassionate society. It’s a system which aims to meet the needs of the people without asking who they are, whether they are deserving or whether they have paid into the system enough to have ‘earned’ getting some back.
I believe austerity is about convincing us that the welfare state is outdated, inefficient and unaffordable. It is not!
Austerity measures are uncaring and heartless, even brutal.

If you are interested in becoming politically active, consider joining a political party or local pressure group.
The People’s Assembly may be a starting point. It’s a non-party-political gathering of people from different political parties and none. There are local groups up and down the country.

If you want to support the Walking the Breadline march which solely depends on the generosity and hospitality of ordinary people to feed and house the marchers, please donate your pennies here: https://www.gofundme.com/cc3g88dx

Will marching and demonstrating make a difference?
It does in the sense that it helps me realise that I am not the only one and that there are many, many people out there who feel the same.

But it is hard to be heard. I steel fence is going up around the Tory Conference centre as we speak, so it will be impossible to get anywhere near the venue.
It will be difficult to get the mainstream media to report on any anti-austerity demonstrations, or if they do it is likely to be biased against it.
So you can help by spreading the message, on social media and beyond. We ARE all in it together.

Sorry about the rant.
I think I’m ready to march now …