In full support of Emily Brothers and Transgender Remembrance (TDOR)

Ed Miliband has said he is proud of Emily Brothers, the new Labour candidate for Sutton and Cheam. She hopes to become the first visually impaired woman to be elected to parliament. Not only that but this week she has come out as Trans*. If elected she will be the first ‘out’ Trans* woman in the House.

I feel the whole Trans* community should be immensely proud of Emily Brothers, even getting selected must have been difficult enough but then to ‘come out’ as Trans* takes a special kind of courage. I would imagine that being visually impaired makes it even harder. But the thing that must considered is that, here in the UK, we as Trans* women (and men) are lucky to live  in a society that is reasonably tolerant of LGBT issues. Lesbian, Gay and to a lesser extent Bi-sexual people have gained wider acceptance than Trans* which in the opinion of the writer, and many others, still lags behind LGB by many years. Many Trans* women (including myself) have been vilified and insulted by the gutter press in the past few years one of which led, in a recent case, to the suicide of lady involved.

As I have said we are lucky to live here in the UK  as we live in a reasonably tolerant society, although there have been cases of Trans* people  that have been beaten or murdered because of hate.

I say lucky because every year hundreds of Transgender people, throughout the world, have their lives taken from them . Killed by shooting, strangulation, beaten to death, even being drowned in a toilet bowl. Their murders often not recorded because of lack of interest by the authorities. But murdered they were. Murdered simply because they were Transgender, murdered simply because  (like myself) they needed to live their lives in the gender in which they should have been born.

Every year, the 20th November is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR).  At venues all over the world Trans* people and their friends gather to remember those whose lives have been taken from them or have taken their own lives because of hatred and harassment. Their names are read aloud, poems are recited, candles are lit for a vigel and prayers are offered. I have attended many TDOR events over the past few years, I’ve read my poems, lit my candle and prayed ‘there but for the Grace of God go I’. Unfortunately next year there will be a few hundred more names added to that list .

So I wish Emily Brothers every success, the publicity she has generated will be great positive for raising Trans awareness  even if she is unable to gain a seat in Parliament. I just hope the press don’t get their teeth into her.

UKIP, Immigration and Ancestry

There has been a lot of debate recently about immigration into the UK. UKIP’s continual attack on immigration has all the major political parties running like headless chickens trying to reorganise their policy.

What the populace and some politicians tend to forget is that we are a nation built on immigration, from the Romans onwards. Without Immigration many of our public services would cease to function.Immigration has also brought a great deal of diversity and new culture to these islands. I sometimes wonder where we would be without it.
I can remember back in the late 50’s and even the very early 60’s one was hard pressed even to get a curry on the average High St. Something we now take very much for granted with an explosion of Asian, Caribbean, Chinese, Greek and many other cultures shops and restaurants owned and run by immigrants.

Most of us that claim to be “British through and through” are descended from the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans etc .How many people can trace their ancestry back to the Ancient Britons? With the exception of some Scots (Celtic), Welsh and Cornish people I doubt few of us can. I have traced my ancestry and I certainly cannot. I have Anglo-Saxon, Spanish-Irish and Dutch (going back to William of Orange) ancestors. I’ve also had experience of being an immigrant as I emmigrated to Australia when I was 18. I had a mixed reception being welcomed by some and called a “Bloody Pom” by others.
And while I’m at it don’t forget that even some of our current leaders are sons and daughters or grandchildren of people that came to this country seeking refuge from tyranny.
How shortsighted and insular some of these “Little Englanders ” are.

The Tori Party Rally 2014 (satire)

So the annual Tori Party Rally kicks off in Birmighof this week. This is expected to be the biggest Rally in the parties history and is forecast to be even bigger than the Tori Party Rallies of the 1930′ s in Nuremberg with thousands of loyal Tori’s attending. Organised and overseen by the parties secret police The Grey Suits, there promises to be a lot of flag waving and mass adoration of their glorious Fuhrer C a Moron and  Deputy Fuhrer Chancellor Von Ossburne.

Von Ossburne will speak on the ‘it’s the economy stupid’. blaming, as usual, the previous administration for all the ills besetting the country and reinforcing his point that the recession was caused by their massive spending on welfare and good works and nothing to do with the bankers and sub-prime lending. He is also expected to announce massive tax cuts for those earning over £300,000 a year and an increase in taxes for the lower paid thereby ‘making hard work pay‘.

Head of The Grey Suits Reichsfuhrer I D Schmitt is expected to give a speech on the promise to ‘Eliminate Poverty’ by eliminating the poor. He will state that the poor, sick, disabled, jobless and the homeless will slowly be eradicated  by the withdrawal of benefits, dismantling of the Welfare state  and amending the bedroom tax to cover bedrooms in ALL houses worth less than £250,000, thereby forcing  people into ‘special centres’ (previously called food banks) which will be extended by building barracks to ‘especially to house the less fortunate members of society’. With this move he hopes to increase the rate of people starving to death, cutting billions of pounds from the deficit in a single stroke.

Frau Von Maykle, the ReichMinister for Home Affairs will speak on the need for greater crowd control, in the case of riots breaking out, with rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannon and if necessary machine guns to be used in policing future disturbances. In a pre-rally press release she pledged to repeal the gay marriage act claiming it was forced on the party by ‘dangerous left wing elements of the present coalition.’  and further reduce the rights of LGBT people ‘unless they conformed to the rules of The New Society and gave up being gay or having sex changes on the NHS, which cost the country a small fortune’ ..

Fuhrer C a Moron will wind up the rally, calling on the party faithful to ‘go forth and spread the gospel of Toriism’ throughout the length and breadth of the  land. He is also expected to announce that the party WILL win an overall majority at the next election ‘by all and every means possible’. even if this meant banning all MP’s from north of the border from sitting in Westminster and forming an alliance with Herr Furryage leader of the extreme ‘extreme right party’. He will also promise to extend the future life of parliament by calling a general election every ten years as the the current five year term will not give enough time to bring his proposed reforms into being and launch a glorious 1000 years of Tori utopia . These further reforms will be announced shortly.

Why I joined the Labour Party

So why did I join the Labour Party after spending a lifetime as a Tory voter/supporter?
I was brought up as what used to be called ‘A working class Tory’. I truly believed that wealth would trickle down from the top. I believed that if business prospered the working man (and woman) would reap the benefits of a booming economy. I was young, I was healthy and I didn’t need help from the welfare state or the NHS apart from occasional visits to the doctor  or hospital to get my badly cut fingers fingers stitched or a metal splinter removed from my eye. Working in the motor trade 40 or 50 years ago was quite hazardous and health and safety was still a thing of the future.

Britain in the late 50’s and early 60’s was a vibrant place with a growing economy. Jobs were plentiful and petrol was cheap.  I could walk out of one job and straight into another the next day, even under the Wilson government. In the early 70’s we had the oil crisis, the 3 day week, the winter of discontent, continual strikes and the SDP. Both the Labour and Conservative governments at that time were pretty useless and I lost all interest in politics.

Then along came Margaret Thatcher who certainly changed things. We kicked the Argentinians out of the Falklands and I thought MT was the best thing since sliced bread until she started shutting down our major industries and turning Britain into a service based economy. The way she treated the miners I felt I couldn’t bring myself to vote Conservative any more and I certainly wasn’t enamoured by Neil Kinnock or Tony Blair.

I had started my own business in 1977  and apart from an illness that caused me to close it down for a short time in 1989 I ran it until 2010 when I had no option but to sell up and retire. 1991 was the only time in my life I was forced to claim unemployment benefit as my son had arrived and my wife was hardly able to cope, but that’s another story which I have written about in my autobiography ‘Unashamedly Me’. I totally went off politics and politicians after meeting and talking to Michael Howard MP at a Management Employment Training Course which I attended as part of being unemployed. He struck me as being totally uninterested in the people he was supposed to be helping and only there  for good PR and a photo opportunity.

I did eventually manage to restart my business in 1992 running a machine shop and reconditioning engines and moved into suitable premises in ’93. I had cut myself off from all party politics as I had become totally disillusioned with politicians and the way they continually refused to answer the questions asked of them by the political commentators,  ‘I’m glad you asked me that, let me answer by saying something completely different and totally changing the subject.’  I even started a campaign ‘Vote for None of the Above’ which possibly got a little interest and maybe got a few people to think about why they voted.

When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party I started taking an interest in politics again. He seemed to make sense and promised many things. The Labour government under Gordon Brown was starting to hurt my business, my business rates had increased and the Car Scrappage Scheme was losing me a lot of work, as customers were buying new cars instead of repairing their old ones.

It was at this time I first became aware of my gender dysphoria and I know my transition from male to female  did nothing to make things better for my business, but I was determined to carry on. I even voted for DC in 2010 (the first time I had voted for many years) but I soon became disillusioned with his right wing agenda. He promised change and he has certainly changed things, unfortunately for the worse. I’ve always felt my true political stance is a Left Wing Tory or a Right Wing Socialist  so I started to take an interest in the Labour Party after I was told about the legislation that the last Labour government had passed to help people like me. The Gender Recognition Act (2004) was godsend to folk like myself. I could change my name and more importantly my gender on all my legal documents and even more importantly obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate. This establishes ones legal status as a member of the opposite gender to the one one was born in and  one can obtain  a new birth certificate in ones new gender.

Whilst Cameron and his Lib-Dem cohorts were busy dismantling the welfare state, introducing the hated Bedroom Tax, increasing tuition fees and the privatising the NHS I found myself moving slowly to the left. I had attended the TUC LGBT conference, as a guest,  in 2011, my first ever event of this kind. These were people that fully supported all LGBT rights and I met many wonderful people. I was beginning to be converted. My Road to Damascus moment came a little later when I met and talked with my local MP Kelvin Hopkins, I’d also met and became friendly with Kate Green MP (the then Shadow for Equalities).  And so I joined The Labour Party. I’m a member of the Local Constituency Party and I regularly attend my local branch meetings. I do what I can campaigning helping out on the local street stall although doorstepping is hard for me due to an arthritic knee.

As I write this blog I’m avidly watching The Labour Conference and I find myself agreeing with 75% of the speakers. I find that most of the speeches fall into my own way of thinking and what I now stand for. So what do I stand for and believe in?  I stand for equality. diversity and a more equal fairer Britain. I believe in the Welfare State. I believe giving the disabled and unemployed all the help they need to live a decent life and/or get employment. I believe in stopping the sell off of the NHS and bringing it back into public ownership. I believe in bringing the railways and buses back into public ownership and while we’re at it, the public utilities (Gas Water & Electricity) as well. But I still believe in free enterprise and I hate the idea of the nanny state that does your thinking for you. I believe we should stay in the EU as leaving would be an economic disaster. I believe that this country needs a manufacturing base that is owned by British firms with profits staying in this country and not being syphoned off aboard by their foreign owners. It’s not just the public utilities that are owned by the French or Germans, I challenge anyone to name one major British Owned Vehicle Manufacturer. There are none, unless you count the small specialist car makers like Morgan, Noble, Caterham and Mclaren, the major manufactures are all owned by companies in China, Germany, France. India and America.

I wasn’t particularly impressed with Ed Miliband when he became party leader, but I have grown to respect and admire him as he has grown, into his role as leader of the party. I love the way he thinks and the way he can speak to an audience without any Autocue or notes. I predict he will become one of the best Prime Ministers of recent times.