Ok, so it's official. Nobody reads my blog or bothers to give me suggestions. Thanks a bunch. No need to worry though about my mental state because I've got a dog. A temporary dog. No, the dog isn't really temporary, at least no more than you and me or the average dog, but I only have her for a limited period of time. Her Herrchen and Frauchen are away in Egypt, on the very trip that we had planned last year and which then fell through. Well, they may have Nile Cruises, but I've got Booboo!!!

Nothing in the world beats coming home to a creature that is utterly overjoyed to see you. Same in the morning. You wake up and the first thing you see is someone who is over the moon to see you, no matter how little a morning person you are. I know it's just for food and company, but who cares, I opt to take it personal. Chomsky is a bit worried though, he looks ill, and freezes as soon as he sees the dog. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether he's alive or dead. And if Chomsky is worried, so am I. He's the main man after all.

Since nobody left any suggestions as to lighthearted books to read, I've decided on two: Bill Bryson A Small History to Almost Everything and Refusal Shoes. I've forgotten who wrote that but you can be sure it'll pop up on your left. The latter is about immigration officers in Britain and asylum seekers, but apparently it's funny nonetheless. I also watched Pot Luck (L'auberge Espagnole) last night, which I have to say was utterly enjoyable, made me keen bucketloads and brought back both memories of my first year(s) abroad as a student, and showed me just why I feel so mixed up and that I'm just normal. Living in two countries is a blessing and a curse. Living in four in my case is making a mess of anything formaly known as identity or belonging. So there's the new theory courtesy of Cartside: At the end of the day your mind makes up its own decision and tells you where you belong and don't even dare to question that or you'll get a bout of depression. Or you'll see Erasmus everywhere you go.

Not gaga yet. Just a bit confused. Normal.

Oh, and there's lots of news about all the refugee policies, teaching ESOL Literacies, Community Councils (you see, I've been busy!) but I'll keep that for another time.

Somehow, I'm relieved to be back in Glasgow. Back home. The greatest pain is being honest about it. Germany is becoming a country ever more strange to me. The xenophobia was shocking; so was being sexually harrassed on a train. I still can't believe that it really happened to me, for goodness sake, I'm a middle aged woman! Next I was disillusioned by watching election results and the politicians' commentaries made me want to scream. There is little fact, lots of accusations, and contempt. An utter lack of respect for members of other parties. I find this very worrying, or am I too adapted at the diplomatic and much wittier ways of British politicians? Listening to middle to old aged men in suits accusing one another of being stupid seriously turned me off, and I'm someone who has a political interest. What does it do to those who don't? The only (young) woman in the circle was ignored and treated very disrespectfully by both the other male politicians, and the female presenter. I didn't think she spoke half as much rubbish, but maybe that was the reason?

Above all though, being in my hometown makes me a restless person, I'm purposelessly floating through town, city, trains and friends' houses. It gets me down. I dreamt of dying every night, as if visiting the past, memories and places that were once mine was suffocating me, why I do not know. I miss my friends and look forward to seeing them, then I'm disappointed at the lack of time and that you simply can't make growing distance go away in a couple of hours. Distance friendship will be more superficial, as much as both parties try not to go down that way. Back here, ease settles in instantly, in spite of work stress, too many projects on my plate and the worries associated when you care about your job and the people you deal with. All of this though is part of my life, which is here now, as much as I want to save and keep the bit of me that's still in Germany.

Maybe I simply shouldn't read depressing novels on planes and trains. I think I know now why Reinaldo Arenas committed suicide. Dear me are his novels depressing. Great writing, but with a serious danger of getting you down. Got to read something uplifting next. Any suggestions?

This post is about fear of flying and xenophobia. Not related other than being the prevalent feelings I've had in the last 36 hours. Please scroll down if not interested in my stupid fear of flying. I won't mind. Honest.

I fly a lot, because it's quick, so much cheaper thank taking trains and ferries, and definitely not because I like it. I get dizzy with fear of heights, I also get pangs of worry that this heavy heavy thing is actually going to be in mid air, miles above the ground, just like that. And not drop. Usually. I've tried tranquilisers but they make me into an alien in human form (once, I almost stayed on in Vancouver due to utter relaxation and not a care in the world about catching my plane in time). And I'm still afraid when the motors roar in anticipation of take off. What keeps me in control is the water of life, good old Whisky. You see, I'm a well adapted foreigner on these shores.

So I had my usual Flachmann with me which enables me to avoid the more serious panic attacks of the sweaty, hyperventilating and crying type. In fact, I quite like my not so wee dram and the freedom of travelling, reading on the train to the airport, in the airport lounge, buying presents for my friends and family, it's all rather jolly and enjoyable. Until the plane takes off and I fall into a stupor between the land of nod and sudden startles of panic. I'm still not sure if I should blame the whisky, the cabin pressure, the attempt of Ryanair to only give its passenger the exact amount of oxygen necessary for bare survival, or whether it's just me. Without fault, after the first critical point of take off is over, the fasten seat belt sign off, and I attempt to read my book, I sink into sleep. Instantly. There is absolutly nothing I can do about it. Then, every five minutes, I wake up with a panic stricken startle, convinced the plane is about to crash. Fall asleep again, startle myself awake again. By the end of the 80 minutes flight, I've had enough of travel and am in a seriously bad mood. Ready for a whisky. Actually, come to think of it, I hate travelling if it involves planes, although I can get used to it in the really big jets for long hauls. There's hope. Interestingly, I got the same panic attack induced by fear of heights when snorkeling in Cuba, I thought that was pretty hilarious, if it hadn't been so scary. I was seriously panicstricken to drop into a coral reef and crush the colourful fish... Incidentally, I was wearing a safety ring ...

For all these fear of heights anecdotes, I've come back to a country (Germany) where xenophobia is alive and kicking. I'm exhausted after hours of discussion with every single family friend complaining about the Turkish youngsters, lack of integration, rowdiness and honour killings. Calls for them to go "home", not to allow them German citizenship (although they, and sometimes their parents, were born here) and general distrust and utter reluctance to have anything to do with them. Them. Us. Complaints about the head scarf being a religious statement to provoke "us" Germans. Fear of living in a country that is no longer one's own. Overestimates of number of people of Turkish decent actually living here. It's frightening, especially as it comes from educated and liberal folk. I'm drained trying to argue against gross generalisations, stereotypes, and in fact plain racism, which seems to be the most normal thing here now. I feel a stranger here myself, but I'm also confronted with the result of avoidance that has prevailed in German politics since the arrival of the so called "guest workers" from many southern European countries, mainly from Turkey.

The issue is quite simple but nobody seems to be able to share my perspective. School starts at the age of 6 or 7 here, and if a child was born into a non-German speaking family, well tough. They won't get any help developing their language. Instead, they'll be classed into the low achieving group, then go on to the Hauptschule (the school for the really low achievers, nowadays mainly of Turkish origin, who are not actually stupid but simply don't read and write German properly), get disillusioned as there's no work for people from Hauptschule, get angry, annoy people, vandalise, become antisocial elements. Often, the family also doesn't value schooling too much, as they tend to come from rural parts of Turkey. Poverty and Turkish descent become interchangeable concepts, where Turkish people live, Germans move out, creating ghettos which in turn give the idea that in these parts a German cannot feel safe because we're "flooded" by so many foreigners.

In Britain, to start with, you are British if born in the UK. It's a start to feeling part and responsible as a citizen in the country you live in. Turkish kids born in Germany are Turkish, and even if they change citizenship (which they can do), any German will continue to consider them to be Turkish. In the UK, school starts at 5. Primary school takes longer, giving also the non-English speakers a real chance to catch up before reaching Secondary School. On top of this, comprehensive schools prevail, giving more chances, and everyone is sort of expected to be able to do Highers or A-Levels if they want to. In Germany, nobody expects a Turkish child to do well in school. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. It could be changed by changing attitudes to start with, establishing early intervention in the form of reducing the age of starting school, or creating a prep school or language support for kids from families where German isn't spoken in the home.

My schooltime friend is the proof of what it takes not to be left behind by the system: Spanish born, her parents never mastered German and only Spanish was spoken in the home. However, as both parents worked, she was sent to full day nursery school from the age of 3. We became friends at nursery. By the time we started school, she spoke German as well as me, and she passed her Abitur, went to University and simply fulfilled her potential. My primary school friend from Turkey was simply taken out of the class into kindergarden for one year, where all kids were younger than her, and there was no specific support to proactively improve her language. I don't know what became of her but I can guess. At University, I never even saw a student of Turkish descent.

How is it that after 35 years of inviting guest workers to Germany, an invitation answered by people and their families rather than "workers", who certainly weren't guests but stayed on, there is still no serious thought of how to break the vicious circle of xenophobia, ghettoisation, lack of language skils, opportunities, ambition, achievement and resulting antisocial behaviour, bringing us back to xenophobia? But Paris has shaken us up, we have to get our act together and change something, to keep the peace and create at least a shadow of social justice. And it's not good enough to look at the dangers of continuing our road of avoidance, we must also look at instances where multicultural living works. Because it does more often than it doesn't.

In the meantime, I guess I need to keep challenging people's views.

Glasgow has been transformed into a large building site. This must be because the tax year is coming to an end and suddenly the city council has realised that they charged us so much council tax that there's actually money left over, which of course has to be spent by March. So all the streets are ripped open, diversions everywhere and Cartside is getting very confused indeed, having the sense of direction of the average woman. A quick trip to the airport to send my beloved off to Americay for a bit of peas and quiet at home turned out to be a journey to hades and back, and now my own street is blocked off, as well as the major turntable of Victoria Cross, also very local. Ah well, just as well I don't drive an awful lot.

Little wonder the council has money to spare. Or in fact it is a wonder. If you  rent a flat, you pay council tax, approximately £150 a month. On top of expensive rents that is. If you are renting out a flat, and the tenant moves out, you pay the same again for the time until you find a new tenant. The idea is to discourage second homes and empty flats. While I empathise with the council that they don't want to have a ghost city, I don't quite see how the interim period between tenants can be described as the landlord having a second home, especially if the first home is rented and council tax is already being paid. Allowing for a reasonable time to find a new tenant, in the range of maybe 3 months, would be much nicer and safe the council all these letters of invoices, reminders, court action and repossession threats (oh no, they can't quite repossess yet, so lucky).

But not to worry, you may qualify for a massive rebate on the council tax due on your second home, of the amazing amount of 10%. Two years ago, it was 50%. Ouch. This is a lot of money for your average income, and it really really hurts. However, the real mindboggling thing is a) that the administrative cost of dealing with rebate and calculating the short period of unoccupation of this "second home" is surely higher than what the council eventually manages to keep. b) I've had the brilliant idea that my beloved could claim to move back to his "second home" thus making it his "first home". Then he would qualify for a 25% rebate in his flat, and I would qualify for the same rebate in our rented flat, a total of a 50% rebate, and the pleasure of having tricked the council free of charge.

At the end of the day though, we neither have the time nor the energy. Apathy rules. Here comes the spring. I'm off to Weeze tomorrow. Pulling faces at the council from above the clouds.

So I'm doing the Introduction to Teaching Adult Literacies Learners (ITALL). Part of this qualification is to actually do it. So I found myself a victim, who I am now trying to make literate.

Today was the first lesson, and thanks to my profound knowledge of adult learning, I did it all wrong. Well, not totally wrong, but pretty much so. But being a reflective tutor, as the Scottish Social Practice Modell wants me to be, I can learn from this. So, let's reflect.

First lesson learned is that it's very difficult indeed to imagine how difficult it is for an adult learner who neither knows the alphabet nor speaks any English to understand the concept of letters, sound and name of the letter. My poor learner was utterly confused why "a" is called "ay", but sound more like "ae" in most cases. Or why "u" is called "yew" and pronounced like "a" in "bus. Unless you're Irish of course, but let's not go there. Explain this if you con't have a language in common. The interpreter helped but still, it's not easy. English is simply not that straight forward as would be helpful to an ESOL Literacies learner.

Next difficulty is that of learning goals. Now, my learner has really high goals, which I would really like to help her achieve, just that it's a long road, and I  can't get her to write letters, or understand phone calls if she can't even cope with three letter words. So at least I thought, let's do three letter words and get a head start. I was doomed to failure as three letter words are hard if you don't know the sound of even one letter and can't really sound things out. Also, three letter words have the disadvantag of not always being very relevant to the English she really needs. I mean, you hardly speak to or about a mop, do you? Hello mop, how are you today? What's your name? My name is mop. Oh, and there's bin. Big bin. Maybe there's a pin in the bin? Or even a pen? Have you seen pen recently? Mop, do you think pen might be in the bed? I'll ask cat if he has seen pen or pin in the bed or bin. Or maybe I should ask pig, or even dog? They are always about the bed.

So lesson two will be relevant, without any excuse. Use her name and address. Start with individual letters by and by. Spend half an hour on learning how to write name and address, and half an hour on four letters, a further half hour on small talk. Above all, don't scare her with three letter words that even I have hardly ever used (in fact, I thought mop wasn't an English word at all, I was convinced it was German. What do I know anyway?)

Well, at least I did well with the diagnostic assessment. Left school at six. Because parents couldn't afford to send the girls to school. She can use the pen, so her motoric skills are fine, she can draw letters, but can't sound them. She can copy her address but not write it from memory. She speaks only a few words of English. She really struggles with the letter "v" and any double consonant. "z" isn't easy either. But she knows what she wants, is happy to say hold on, this is too hard for me, and she's dead keen to learn. I'll enjoy this once I'll get the hang of it.

I don't believe it. Honestly.

The voucher system for "failed" asylum seekers has been extended. This is madness, as the Home Office themselves found the system to be expensive to administer and very flawed indeed.

Asylum seekers, whose asylum application has failed, and who agree to voluntary return to their country once this is possible, but who cannot be returned due to the unsafe circumstances in their country of origin (Zimbabwe, Iraq, Somalia for instance), are given "hard case support", in the form of £35 worth in vouchers, to be used only in big supermarkets such as Asda and Texcos. With these vouchers, you can only buy food and certain toilettries, but not toilet paper or nappies. You also don't get change. You can't use them in local shops for a pint of milk, for a bus fare to get to the shop where you can use them, or for any other small needs. In effect, the only way to work this for asylum seekers is to try and sell the vouchers, under value mostly, because the flexibility of cash is always better, even if it's less.

As if making people to sign voluntary return and forcing them to live on just £35 a week isn't harsh enough, they now have to continue to live on vouchers. Why? So that there's no cash incentive to live in the country. As if any of these hard case people (remember, they can't be returned to their country because it's so bad there that there aren't any flights, or safety in transit cannot be guaranteed - it's not their fault they can't be returned) would choose to live her for the £35 they get. Not to mention that if things are so bad in a country, refugees from these country should at least be given leave to remain until the situation improves.

How about letting them work and thus not needing to pay benefits in the first place?

But, there are some good news as well: The Glasgow Girls, who campaigned against dawn raids on their friends, for the right of asylum seeking families to be allowed to stay in Glasgow, have achieved a small but important victory: asylum seeking children who are sitting their exams will not be removed, but allowed to sit their exams and at least half concentrate on what should be important in a young person's life. Hurray for the girls from Drumchapel High School! There is also some evidence that the Home Office may be considering the use of more humane procedures of removal for failed asylum seeking families. Nothing concret yet, but there's hope. What we don't know yet is if this change in policy will be applied all over the UK or just in Glasgow.

Thanks to my not needed presence at the Scottish Parliament's cross party group on refugees and asylum, I've had some sort of official confirmation of the renewal of the dispersal contract between the Home Office, Glasgow City Council and other housing providers in Glasgow. Asylum Seekers will continue to be dispersed to Glasgow (hurray!), 81% of them will be housed by Glasgow City Council in council houses which are not taken up by local residents (because they're so crap that nobody in their right mind, even if no income etc would chose to live in them), 10% by the YMCA and another 9%, and here comes the controversial stuff, by the Angel Group.

The Angel Group is a private housing provider. Not very known in Scotland, but they come with a reputation from England. Apparently, in the past, they've provided sub standard accommodation, there were allegations of blunder and worse. Even if they've changed tactics now, the issue is that their flats will be all over Glasgow, while City Council accommodation as well as YMCA are scattered in certain parts of Glasgow, which aren't nice neighbourhoods, but at least have developed adequate services for asylum seekers in the past five years. The concern has to be that asylum seekers housed in Angel Group accommodation are more isolated and have less access to services. So while the liberal lobby is deeply concerned about them getting Home Office moneys to provide housing to asylum seekers in Glasgow, the Daily Mail criticises from the other extreme, calling the housing "private and plush", as if asylum seekers were given state of the art homes with all mod cons, a welcome present for their new lives in Glasgow. It's laughable, really, unfortunately though, many people believe this kind of rubbish.
Clairwil says it all in her letter to the Daily Mail.

I've also heard rumours that only families will be dispersed to Glasgow, but that remains to be confirmed. I'd be surprised to be honest, on the other hand, the National Asylum Support System (NASS) will be given more money than before for education and health needs, which does in fact point towards at least a greater percentage of family dispersals.

What worries me though is that the current meetings for the new Refugee Integration Action Plan (to be revised after five years of delivering services to refugees and asylum seekers) has no sub group for employment and adult education. English skills are unarguably vital for any kind of integration, any participation in Scottish life. This will then, after having obtained refugee status and leave to remain, translate into employment. No English, low skilled jobs. Why is neither ESOL nor routes into employment on the agenda? I've tried to ask the question, but didn't get a proper answer so far. Maybe it's worth chasing up.

Radio Free Mike hat eine interessante Frage gestellt. Er will all die kleinen typisch deutschen Skurilitäten sammeln. Für einen Spiegel Artikel... Irgendwie muss ich auf diese Frage gewartet haben, oder sagen wir mal besser, seit ich Notes from a Small Island von Bill Bryson gelesen hab, und sein Buch über die USA eben dort verschlang, hatte ich ein gewisses Verlangen, etwas ähnliches über Deutschland zu schreiben. Insbesondere, da Brysons Kommentare zu Köln und Aachen Bewunderung in Verachtung umwandelte.
Also hab ich einfach mal kommentiert, insbesondere, da Radio Free Mike netterweise kurz zuvor ein mir heimwehverursachendes Bild des Kölner Karnevals in sein Blog gestellt hat. Ta very much.

Bei jeder Reise gen Heimat stelle ich mich bewusst um. Und es wird bewusster. Wohl ein Zeichen, dass ich mich inzwischen in Schottland leichter zurechtfinde. (Genau wie es ein Zeichen ist, dass ein deutscher Blogeintrag weitaus länger braucht, I'm so distressed, really!). Obendrein habe ich einen deutschen Kollegen, na, nicht direkt Kollege, da er für eine andere Firma arbeitet, aber eben im gleichen Bürogebäude. Während meine deutschen Freunde hier schon so akklimatisiert sind, dass Unterschiede kaum erwähnt werden, wurde ich mit diesem neuen, gerade frisch importierten Kollegen doch gleich mal wieder mit den üblichen Banalitäten des kulturellen Unterschiedes konfrontiert. Banal, weil sie so voraussehbar sind. Weil wirklich jeder Deutsche in GB sich drüber auslässt.

Da ist das Brot. Oh wie schrecklich ist das britische Brot. Labbrig, hell, ohne Biss. Ach was vermissen wir das Schwarzbrot, Vollkornbrot, Sauerteigroggenmitvollemkornunddreibisfünfzehnkornbrotfrischgebackenvombäckerbrot. Ich will ja nicht behaupten, dass die Brotauswahl in Deutschland schlecht ist, und sicher ist es schön und lobenswert, dass in Deutschland das Brot noch vom Bäcker gebacken wird. Trotzdem quäle ich mich wieder und wieder durch pappiges, dunkles, schwerimmagenliegendes Roggenbrot und wünsche mir ein schlichtes, ehrliches Scotch Batch. Natürlich gibt es ganz wunderbare Brote in Deutschland, nur gibt's die selten bei Familie und Freunden zu essen, die alle die supergesunden und geschmackslosen Varietäten bevorzugen. Wie alle Deutschen in Schottland habe ich mir per Weihnachtsgeschenk = Brotmaschine Abhilfe von allen Probleme deutscher und schottischer Brotmisshandlung geschaffen. Es backt gerade...

Auf der anderen Seite gibt es solche Eigenheiten meiner deutschen Kultur, die mir nun garnicht auffallen. Siehe Chillmost, der ganz richtig feststellt, dass wir deutschen ein seltsames Verhältnis zu Frühstücks- und Abendbrot haben. Während beide Mahlzeiten absolut gleiche Zutaten haben (Brot, Wurst, Marmelade, Käse und Variationen derselben), zeigt sich der kleine, aber eben wichtige Unterschiede im Gebrauch von Besteck: Messer zum Bestreichen am Morgen, Messer und Gabel zum Aufpieksen und anständigen Essen am Abend. Does anyone else think that's weird? No, in fact, it doesn't. Perfectly normal.

Yesterday, the House of Commons saw was meant to see (a vote) a debate on the much debated voucher system for asylum seekers.

To put things into context, vouchers instead of cash were issued as a form of benefits to asylum seekers in 2000. The problem is that these vouchers can only be used in big supermarkets, places where you are not necessarily likely to get Halal food. They also can't be used for bus fares. Effectively, asylum seekers were left without cash, and ended up selling the vouchers on the black market for half their value. Which is pretty horrific considering that asylum seekers only receive 70% of the minimum benefits in the UK. Thankfully, the voucher system was also expensive to administer, so there was an acceptable reason to get rid of it.

Except for one group of asylum seekers: the section 4 people, the hard case support people. Who are they? People whose claim has not been successful, but who can't be removed from the country. Here comes the mindboggling hypocrisy of it all: there are actually so called "failed" asylum seekers who cannot be sent back to their country of origin because either that country is so unstable that transport is unsafe, or because the country doesn't want them, or because the person is physically unable to travel. This also applies to asylum seekers who have new evidence and are awaiting a fresh case. All good reasons to actually allow people to stay on humanitarian or compassionate grounds one would think. But no. Instead, they have to sign a paper that they will return voluntarily once they can be returned. And only then, and only then, will they get hard case support under section 4. In vouchers. A spit in the face. If they don't sign the voluntary return bit (and I know plenty of people who are so scared for their lives if they are returned they won't sign this for the love of God), they are evicted and made destitiute. Man, woman, child.

Anyway, the vote was on the proposed extension of the voucher scheme for "failed" asylum seekers. A day later, not a single website gives me the outcome of this. Instead, it's all about loans to the Labour Party. The news are getting a joke. They love sleeze and finding out insignificant bits either about politicians (do they pay for sex? are they even gay? are they alcoholics? do their relatives get payments from Italian politicians?) or their party, while the really important news simply disappear.

To date, I've still not seen an official piece of news about the extension of the dispersal contract with Glasgow City Council, i.e the continuation of housing asylum seekers in Glasgow. While I know the outcome through my contacts, it's not reported. In the spirit of no news is good news, I can only hope that reason prevailed yesterday in relation to the vouchers scheme, because there is simply not one good reason to have it. No matter which side you're on.

Update 18/03/06: Indeed, indeed. The debate has been postponed to sometime. possibly even next week. but we don't know. So - there's still a chance to campaign: Ask your MP to sign Early Day Motion 1796 which opposes the voucher scheme. Find out more about the whole thing. Unfortunately, I can't lobby myself, as my MP, Tom Harris, can't sign Early Day Motions. Politics can be so frustrating.

Sometimes things are simple. There is a person I like, respect and care for. She has fled her country, fled war, abuse, displacement. She's been in Glasgow for three years. She's an asylum seeker and her claim is currently being decided. The hearing didn't go well. She's worried. Very worried.

I was woken to the news yesterday morning that the public accounts committee of the Westminster Parliament calls for a more efficient removal of failed asylum seekers. As if using immigration squads, handcuffs, dawn raid and arbitrary detention weren't enough.

A inward scream ripped through my body, panic at the effect such a public statement will have. I only hinted at the news to my friend. True enough, she had heard it too. Adding to her worries, making each day a burden to her and her family.

It's simple. I want her to stay. I don't care about asylum claims or whether she's got a genuine case or not. I believe she has, but it's actually irrelevant. I simply want her to stay.

Sometimes things are so simple. And the world we live in doesn't allow them to be simple.

After a long day's work and an evening class teaching on top of it I'm indulging in my creative side: card making and lightening up this space with a few pictures that I had meant to post ages ago. Hm, card making. What really bothers me about this newest hobby of mine is that QVC has hundreds of programmes trying to sell card making supplies to the avid shopping channel viewer. I don't watch it, but still concerned I'm just following another fashion. And there's me thinking I'm the only one delighting people with my wee beauties. Is there nothing out there that isn't being exploited for commercial profit? What the heck, it's a great way to unwind, especially if the news are full of bloodshed, and someone out there made the news by criticising that the government doesn't return failed asylum seekers fast and efficient enough. That must be because they refuse applications of people from extremely unsafe countries, where a return isn't logistically possible, da. How about actually believing people a bit more, increasing the rate of successful applications, and not having to deal with returning people to countries rich in lead and explosives. Oh, let's just make another card.

Oh, and what I really wanted to comment about is the ingenious new use of bicycle parking in front of my work local post office. Three bike rails, buy boy was it difficult parking my bike there!

I spent the Sunday transferring files and MP3s on my new baby, a 80Gig MP3 player. Mind you, it's not cool, pretty or anything like that. It's rather large, but it's got a lot of space. A lot. I love that and rather carry a bulky, utterly not iPod like thing around with me. Well, nothing madly interesting about this weekend perusal of mine, just that I managed to cut rather than copy all my digital pictures. Read: delete from my harddrive. Gladly, I noticed only a day later, and instant pang of panic was swiftly replaced by faint memory of the potential error in my system. Phew.

So, now that I've outed me as someone who can't tell a CtrlX from a CtrlC, and while my computer is working hard to this time copy my lovely pix back to its own hard drive, I've come across some useful stuff for the geeks out there. Firstly, SDP is a nice free programme that allows to capture Windows Media Stream. I think that means you can record live streams (video and the like) to your hard disk and view them again. And copy them onto moveable disks and take them even further. Apparently, my beloved chops in, it's not perfect as it doesn't do any such thing with Real Media Stream. I'm not quite sure what that means, but thought I'd tell yous anyhow.

Secondly there's a fascinating website that I haven't quite managed to pay its due attention: It's the Open Source Academy . It's aim is to promote the use of open source software in government offices, but they also have lots of exciting news, articles etc presented in a really nice way, so it's definitely worth a look.

As to blogging, I've been contacted about a research project involving a survey, into the usefulness for community engagement and participation through the use of blogging within nonprofit organisations. Sounds interesting indeed, just that the survey was multiple choice throughout which is simply bad practice as my trainer and developer incarnation can confidently tell you. No space for qualifying comments, and consequently a feeling that my answers may not be useful at all. Strange too that the research is geographically linked to the US, while I'm on the other side of the pond, so have I actually contributed to a misrepresentation of the US voluntary sector blogosphere? The timing was a shame too, with just a month since the Mount Florida Community Council blog was launched. And I would really like to link to this research project just that the URL is at work, and I can't google it. and should be boycotting google anyway. hence no link.

Now, once my music is all in portable format (just imagine, shelves of music in one handheld piece of magic!), the film scanner will be next, to digitalise my other passion; photography. If I finally manage to buy the right SCSI card or whatever they are called.
Yours happily foraging in the technology jungle without having a clue, eh, compass.

The motion I put forward to the Amnesty International AGM in April has been accepted as valid. I sit in front of the Conference pack and see my words published in proceedings form. It instills a pleasure and panic, pleasure of having succeeded in bringing an issue close to my heart to the eyes of a large and committed audience, pleasure of the potential of actually contributing to a change in government policy if the motion is passed and AIUK acts upon it. Panic because I will have to get up in front of 500-700 delegates, walk up a stage, speak into a microphone, and present the motion succinctly in three minutes. Yet, I am seriously worried about both my vocal chords and bowel performance on 9th April.

I've been there before you see. Conferences, presenting academic papers, singing in choirs (and managing to deliver any song at about five times its natural speed), teaching. Now, I teach for a living, or at least used to, and strangely have managed to be ok with a group of up to 16 people whom I know. Meaning: I asmost run away in adrenalin infused pangs of fear at the start of a new class, but once that's done with, I actually enjoy teaching. I can cope with that. I still can't cope with addressing a large group of knowledgeable, opinionated, agendaed people who may give me a hard time, or simply laugh me off for being an insignificant twit.

However, I shall have to face my demons, because, let's face it, my personal insecurity and reluctance to speak in public is sweet nothing compared to the difference this motion can make. It calls on AIUK to lobby the UK government to consider more humane ways of removing "failed" asylum seekers, and to exercise particular care when children are concerned, abolishing dawn raids and the use of inappropriate force and threats, as well as working with children's services to insure that the wellbeing of the children involved is put first. The motion also calls for AIUK to support a family amnesty for all asylum seekers to be allowed to stay in the UK if they have been resident in the UK for at least three years, and if at least one of their children attends school/college. If AIUK can be brought on board on this campaign to end dawn raids and to enable families to stay if they have settled in the UK, rather than put children under the strain of resettlement twice in their young lives, a lot can be achieved. I'm positive that a family amnesty would be a realistic goal. And that surely must be on my mind and on my tongue in April. Then it's just up to opening mouth, forming words and getting on with it.

So there's an organisation called United For Life who is targetting Amnesty International to join their campaign to outlaw abortion. Let's leave aside their apparent inability to express their ideas in grammatically correct English. I feel transformed in time and place, to before the late 60s, or a country across the Atlantic. I stand in awe. Great words they have about genocide, slavery, trafficking. I've read it all, and I still don't get it. How is abortion genocide? Let's have a look. Genocide is the mass extermination by killing of an ethnic group. Remember Rwanda? Remember Yugoslavia? Yes, that's genocide. Abortion cannot by definition be a genocide, as we're neither talking an ethnic group, nor mass extermination, nor in fact, oh yes, I know this is coming to the heart of the matter, killing/murder of human beings.

It amazes me that this organisation can seriously think that Amnesty could support the protection of embryos as a campaigning issue in itself, equal to torturing people for expressing their views, or for genocide of countless people. We're talking about an embryo here. Let's not forget this. 

And before you hit me with words, I would, if at all possible, never have an abortion. But I'm also in charge of my life, financially and socially secure, and have no reason to have an abortion. It is not my place or that of others to judge any woman who has an abortion because nobody will do it for the fun of it. If it's not legal, it will still happen, and we'll be back to the middle ages of sticking a rusty coat hanger being into a woman's womb.

I find it extremely irritating that this United For Life organisation actually has a website campaigning on Amnesty. Have they ever considered what AI's mission is? There is no way for one organisation to look at each potential human rights violation. You have to focus. Amnesty focusses on grave human rights violations, and the political end of things. Not exclusively, but mainly. This makes it a clearly defined and strong organisation. Next they talk about AI not implementing in full the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Well, excuse me, it's not AI's task to implement it, but the government's task. AI works on the actual adherence to the UDHR, and thus has no need and no lack of implementation.

On the other hand, debate on what AI can take on is ongoing, as it's a developing organisation, driven by members. In fact, sexual and reproductive rights are even on the agenda at the moment. And they know that, judging from the website. Yet the United for Life organisation complains there's no direct and quick answer to their efforts at contacting AIUK. So they contacted the Glasgow South Group instead, as if we could magically speak for a worldwide movement. If we did, we'd be utterly disrespectful to our millions of fellow activists. 

http://www.unitedforlife.com/whyai.html

However, embryos do become a Human Rights issue at both ends of the discussion if rape is used as a weapon of war, the disowning of the female body in the context of war and conflict, or if abortion is used for the same ends. Both then are a form of torture, one necessitating the right to have an abortion, the other the effective legal protection of the unborn as well as the mother to be from abuse.

beware, this is going to be a moaning post.

You were warned.

I just had a phone interview for three funding applications I submitted early last month. It's my string of hope and I was pacing the office, waiting in dreaded expectation for the ominuous phone call. It came 10 minutes late, but it did come, and the lady on the other end was dead nice. I think I did as well as I could have, apart from my usual "ehms" and my English going seriously downhill after one hour of speaking continuously, a dry throat and lips which don't want to form English consonants any more. Mind you, English is the language that comes natural to me these days, so all the more worrying if it deserts me.

Well, 90 minutes later and I feel like someone has pumped my lifeblood out of me. I could cry. I don't of course, it would be silly. I'm unable to do any work, my lunchbreak should be almost over by now, but I just can't get back to work. So I read my favourite blogs, try to recompose.

Why it matters so much to me? As the sole employee of a charity, I don't feel lonely as such. I'm happy being on my own in a big dark office, really. But each phone call, each email, each letter, each visitor has to be dealt with by me. Relevant or not. If I don't do it, nobody does. If I'm on holiday, work accumulates. I don't like going on holiday for more than a week, and only when I know there won't be much work, such as during school holidays. I had to decline going to Barcelona or Paris with my beloved for a short trip at Valentines Day because of my workload. How bad is that? There is nobody to bounce ideas off, nobody to share frustrations with, and by now I don't even want to raise any issues with my managers because they may simply close the project. The project shouldn't be closed because it's actually doing great and making a real difference. So I suffer in silence and try to be constructive. My idea is to direct need into clear projects, and recruit a colleague or two, who effectively do some new stuff, and take some old stuff over from me. If it works, it'll be worth it. However, writing funding applications and spending time supporting them in one way or another effectively takes time away from my real work, and adds to the stress. I think I've just reached the limit.

It really really doesn't help if some impressed and understanding funding officer tells me that she is surprised we don't get on-going, statutory funding. I am too, and what would I give for having a more secure and more supported situation. Clearly, what keeps me going is the job as such, the project, that I've found a niche where I can do something I utterly enjoy, in a way I also enjoy. If the two main applications went through, we'd be a team of three, and it would make all the difference. If it doesn't , I'm gonna hide in a hole and not come out for a week. Gladly, it looks like decision time coincides with a trip to the end of the world. Morvern that is.

The phone rings, I guess that's the end of my lunch break.

Writing on the dirt of a white van this morning: "the rest of the 50 million are in HERE!" (note to all non brits: police across the country are hunting for 53 million pounds stolen from somewhere, the biggest theft ever, they found only a few grand so far) 

An inarticulate pub acquaintenance, willing to buy anyone five drinks if they only spoke to him, unable to communicate verbally, while his gestures were ambiguous to say the least, suddenly proclaims crystal clear "One day I'm gonna get my daddy's croft back. One day. One day." I toasted to that. Saddest thing was he knew he was a sad character.

Snow sprinkled east cost hills, skating ducks on Queens Park pond, among half submerged traffic cones held by the ice. A slalom course for the almost grown cygnets.

That's my bit of poetry for the day. not. Enjoy the rest of the sunshine, the rain will be knocking on our roofs soon again.

Cycling into work, I pondered my severly increased salt intake in the recent week. This is due to the weather. Really. And it's also linked to the streets of Glasgow turning into a sand desert, slowly but noticeably. I'm sure my daily salt intake has reached unhealthy realms, while footpaths are turning white and roads yellow. There is a strange logic to dealing with unusual weather, and expectations of safety. Bizarrely, for over a week now, it has been stone dry and sunny. Mind you, this is Glasgow. And it's been cold at night. Freezing in fact. So? Well, usually, it's not dry here, so when it freezes there may be some icy patches. The problem with this logic is that it may freeze when it's wet in some parts of the country, in Glasgow it's a very rare occurence indeed. Mostly, it's either wet and mild, or it's dry and cold. Still, you never know. So for over a week, each night, gritters and salt sprayers have been treating roads and footpaths. Every night. Not a sign of a drop of water that could potentially decide to freeze (safe for the shops throwing out their cleaning water onto the streets), so there's nothing really that the grit and salt could melt. So it gets bored, meets up with its friends, and accumulates on the roadside. Next comes a car, shisks it around and lifts it up in the air. Here comes Cartside on her bike and  breathes in a salty fish supper.

Once it starts raining again, and don't we know it will, all the salt will go straight into the soil, in unknown concentrations. It'll be a right killer. Glasgow won't be the dear green place an more. Plants, shrubs, trees and even dandelions will DIE. I will get high blood pressure from salt overdose, and a heart attack by all means. And all in the name of safety.