I watched the Banking regulation debate yesterday.
I've watched a lot of "debates". Watched literally hundreds of parliamentarians stand at the despatch box by now.
I have never seen a better performance than Ed Balls gave yesterday. As Louis Walsh might say, "He owned the stage"
We can descend into a bit of partisan point scoring, but there's just no denying he was masterful. He controlled the House like a conductor, riding the cat calls and jeers with humour and confidence, his oration soaring and swooping from loud and commanding to quiet and dripping with authority.
Most interestingly, when they jokes and jibes settled down and he spoke seriously, the entire House fell silent in a way I've rarely seen before.
As he leant on his arm, his hair swept across, he actually reminded me of that other great orator who held the House in the palm of his hand. Both he and Nye Bevan overcame stutters to create such magic in parliament.
When he warned that the Government were making a grave mistake, he held Osborne's eye, spoke quietly and again the House fell silent.
By the time Osborne stood up, he must have felt bruised. His pip-squeaky voice and unruly quiff gave the air of Little Lord Fauntleroy, a 6th form debater so out of his depth, it may have been better for all if he'd just wandered off and found William Hague.
He had only one thing to say ; "They started it Miss!" - over and over in a playground loop, nothing to say, nothing to add, no way forward, no panache, no charm, no charisma, no confidence. Just a little-boy-lost on the world's stage.
I've seen right wing commentators write articles on how partisan and lowly the debate was. Well no, your man was just an embarrassment. This boy-child is our Chancellor! He is the man tasked with getting us out of the worst financial crisis in living memory. HE is the one who needs to persuade, to charm, to cajole and to inspire.
On yesterday's evidence he simply is not up to the job. Not in any way at all.
But this interested me : When they all trooped back after the vote, Osborne was a changed man. He seemed weak with relief, quieter, conciliatory. Even smaller and more insignificant - if that were even possible. Immediately, his aides started to brief the BBC's Nick Robinson that, no, in fact, he withdraw accusations that Balls had been involved in the Libor fixing scandal.
It was clear that this vote had been much, much, more important to him than us mere mortals could know. I wonder who had made George so determined to avoid a judge led enquiry that he would mislead the House repeatedly to discredit his opposite number, only to withdraw the accusations as soon as the vote had passed?
How desperate must he have been to flirt with a libel case to make his oh-so-shabby and pointless case?
This man is our Chancellor - one of the most powerful men in the world. The Conservative Party should be deeply ashamed by both his performance and his character after yesterday's debate. For all our sakes, they should find a politician who could actually manage the job. And they should do it fast. He holds all of our futures in his slippery hands.
Friday, 6 July 2012
Wednesday, 4 July 2012
Barclay's Diamond or Monarch, we are all just Little Lives
If you have a severe, long term illness, you've almost certainly learnt a skill I learnt. Maybe you have other reasons for learning it.
As the long, long needle is thrust deep, deep into your spine or head or chest, you go to that other place. As your heart fails and you drift away, you mutter a few words to your soul. "I will be or I will not."
As the anaesthetic seeps into your blood and you wonder "Will I wake up?" you remind yourself from somewhere else that sleep is sleep. Either way, you won't care.
As the tube goes deeper into bowel or nose or vein, you step out of yourself and look on impartially. The other you starts a chat or shows you images so beautiful you forget. She is tough and true. When you tell her you might die, she nods and agrees. "We all die." she reminds you.
When you think you can't bear any more, she reminds you that you have to.
When you scream "I can't" she replies "you will"
You drift above yourself and learn to not be there.
In time, you can do it at will. Every new ordeal, every new unbearable is just another moment. The other you appraises the situation coolly, detached from the here and now. "You are small, a little life. This is just a blink of time in a life amongst billions of lives."
And you go to that other place and you wait.
Mostly you have learnt to wait in peace, because peace gives you the best chance of survival of all.
********
I often think of the skills chronically ill or disabled people can bring to the world.
We learn to survive. We learn to do it in a world often ill equipped to deal with us and unwilling to empathise with us. We learn to be reasonable when all we want to do is scream. We learn to endure when most would believe endurance impossible. We learn to believe in ourselves when no-one else will.
But this gift of detachment, this ability to stand aside and judge ourselves with cool appraisal has been troubling me lately.
Sick and disabled people often live as "the other" they are used to looking at the rest of society and stripping away the "can't" and the "won't" and the "too scared" and the "too selfish"
Surely, it can't only be me that lately finds herself more and more detached, watching the last gasps of a crumbling corrupt order? That sees debauched Roman emperors or megalomaniac monarchs or precarious empires?
Daily, like a parade from history they line up - disgraced politicians, power-crazed media moguls, criminal financiers, greedy businessmen, corrupt police chiefs, despotic dictators, the head of this and the CEO of that on rape or corruption charges. Expenses cheats and tax evaders and Ponzi scheme charmers.
Their day has come and gone and they can't see it. Their own greed and selfishness and stupidity has gobbled them up. They had it all, there, in the palms of their hands and like every time before, they gambled it all away.
Got just a little too lazy, just a little too weak. A little too bloated and comfortable. Forgot they were privileged and started to believe that they were special. Forgot that they were lucky and started to believe that they were entitled.
The daily me fights them and tries to expose them, but more and more, the other me watches them from a distance and sees them for what they are. More and more I wonder if we really need to do anything at all but watch them crumble.
As the long, long needle is thrust deep, deep into your spine or head or chest, you go to that other place. As your heart fails and you drift away, you mutter a few words to your soul. "I will be or I will not."
As the anaesthetic seeps into your blood and you wonder "Will I wake up?" you remind yourself from somewhere else that sleep is sleep. Either way, you won't care.
As the tube goes deeper into bowel or nose or vein, you step out of yourself and look on impartially. The other you starts a chat or shows you images so beautiful you forget. She is tough and true. When you tell her you might die, she nods and agrees. "We all die." she reminds you.
When you think you can't bear any more, she reminds you that you have to.
When you scream "I can't" she replies "you will"
You drift above yourself and learn to not be there.
In time, you can do it at will. Every new ordeal, every new unbearable is just another moment. The other you appraises the situation coolly, detached from the here and now. "You are small, a little life. This is just a blink of time in a life amongst billions of lives."
And you go to that other place and you wait.
Mostly you have learnt to wait in peace, because peace gives you the best chance of survival of all.
********
I often think of the skills chronically ill or disabled people can bring to the world.
We learn to survive. We learn to do it in a world often ill equipped to deal with us and unwilling to empathise with us. We learn to be reasonable when all we want to do is scream. We learn to endure when most would believe endurance impossible. We learn to believe in ourselves when no-one else will.
But this gift of detachment, this ability to stand aside and judge ourselves with cool appraisal has been troubling me lately.
Sick and disabled people often live as "the other" they are used to looking at the rest of society and stripping away the "can't" and the "won't" and the "too scared" and the "too selfish"
Surely, it can't only be me that lately finds herself more and more detached, watching the last gasps of a crumbling corrupt order? That sees debauched Roman emperors or megalomaniac monarchs or precarious empires?
Daily, like a parade from history they line up - disgraced politicians, power-crazed media moguls, criminal financiers, greedy businessmen, corrupt police chiefs, despotic dictators, the head of this and the CEO of that on rape or corruption charges. Expenses cheats and tax evaders and Ponzi scheme charmers.
Their day has come and gone and they can't see it. Their own greed and selfishness and stupidity has gobbled them up. They had it all, there, in the palms of their hands and like every time before, they gambled it all away.
Got just a little too lazy, just a little too weak. A little too bloated and comfortable. Forgot they were privileged and started to believe that they were special. Forgot that they were lucky and started to believe that they were entitled.
The daily me fights them and tries to expose them, but more and more, the other me watches them from a distance and sees them for what they are. More and more I wonder if we really need to do anything at all but watch them crumble.
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
This Man is Worth 331 Sick or Disabled People
May I present Thierry Breton, Head of Atos, the firm charged with "assessing" whether or not sick and disabled people can work.
With his £830,000 salary and recent £1 million bonus, he is now officially "worth" 331 of the people his company are charged to assess. 331 lots of annual ESA stripped away from people with nothing else to rely on.
With 38% of decisions going to appeal and nearly 40% of those decisions found to be wrong, thousands of people are added to the list of suffering every month - 3,100 cases in May alone. Some may question why he got a bonus at all.
Well, clearly it's because he's worth it. His going rate is the livelihoods of 331 sick or disabled people. That's how important he is. 331 times more important than people like me.
With his £830,000 salary and recent £1 million bonus, he is now officially "worth" 331 of the people his company are charged to assess. 331 lots of annual ESA stripped away from people with nothing else to rely on.
With 38% of decisions going to appeal and nearly 40% of those decisions found to be wrong, thousands of people are added to the list of suffering every month - 3,100 cases in May alone. Some may question why he got a bonus at all.
Well, clearly it's because he's worth it. His going rate is the livelihoods of 331 sick or disabled people. That's how important he is. 331 times more important than people like me.
My Netroots Speech
At last, I get to see one of my speeches!!! And so do you. I hope you think I represented you all as best I could.
I dedicate this post to every last one of the thousands and thousands of Spartacii who made it possible.
I'm sorry that I can only post this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cjQBaMDr2Y&feature=youtu.be&a
But if you click on it, it will take you to youtube.
I dedicate this post to every last one of the thousands and thousands of Spartacii who made it possible.
I'm sorry that I can only post this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cjQBaMDr2Y&feature=youtu.be&a
But if you click on it, it will take you to youtube.
In a Fix
I am in a fix. I am in a fix so fixy it has been stuck with superglue and nailed for good measure.
It is a fix with no immediate unfix. Basically I'm screwed (fixy pun intended.)
I am sitting with a cup of tea, deflated with the fixiness. I am - as most sick and disabled people have to learn to be - an Empress of fix-solving. I have fixed fixes that seemed unfixable. I have urged, begged, manoeuvred, cajoled and outwitted my way through many a fix. I have a PHD in fixes. But this fix was designed by Mr Rubix himself.
Yet who am I? I watch my timeline absent mindedly and a succession of mega-fixes flow by.
Bankers who ought to be in prison that have so much seedy backroom influence, our politicians would rather pay homage than allow them to be arrested.
Corrupt media moguls and police departments with their sticky little fingers still dripping from the honey jar, arguing that they "do not recall" ever eating any honey in their lives.
Government ministers lying with a frequency so shocking it has actually ceased to shock.
Desperate, abandoned citizens setting themselves on fire outside benefit offices, just a joke for Guido and his pals. "Oh how we laughed at the burning man!"
A world economy sucking hope and dreams down the plughole for the want of a bit of imagination and a lot of work.
It is the last days of Rome, literally, fiddling while claimants burn.
I have no idea what's going on with my country any more. If we cut out the corruption would there actually be anything left? It seems we must totally rebuild our economy, our banking system, our media, our democracy, our society and our communities.
Daunting really.
Yet we are offered public enquiries that will conclude nothing, legal cases where no-one will be found guilty, Lords reform that almost certainly won't happen, expenses investigations that let the culprits keep the money they stole and cheating ministers allowed to keep their jobs.
Can we fix these fixes? Does anyone actually want to any more?
It is a fix with no immediate unfix. Basically I'm screwed (fixy pun intended.)
I am sitting with a cup of tea, deflated with the fixiness. I am - as most sick and disabled people have to learn to be - an Empress of fix-solving. I have fixed fixes that seemed unfixable. I have urged, begged, manoeuvred, cajoled and outwitted my way through many a fix. I have a PHD in fixes. But this fix was designed by Mr Rubix himself.
Yet who am I? I watch my timeline absent mindedly and a succession of mega-fixes flow by.
Bankers who ought to be in prison that have so much seedy backroom influence, our politicians would rather pay homage than allow them to be arrested.
Corrupt media moguls and police departments with their sticky little fingers still dripping from the honey jar, arguing that they "do not recall" ever eating any honey in their lives.
Government ministers lying with a frequency so shocking it has actually ceased to shock.
Desperate, abandoned citizens setting themselves on fire outside benefit offices, just a joke for Guido and his pals. "Oh how we laughed at the burning man!"
A world economy sucking hope and dreams down the plughole for the want of a bit of imagination and a lot of work.
It is the last days of Rome, literally, fiddling while claimants burn.
I have no idea what's going on with my country any more. If we cut out the corruption would there actually be anything left? It seems we must totally rebuild our economy, our banking system, our media, our democracy, our society and our communities.
Daunting really.
Yet we are offered public enquiries that will conclude nothing, legal cases where no-one will be found guilty, Lords reform that almost certainly won't happen, expenses investigations that let the culprits keep the money they stole and cheating ministers allowed to keep their jobs.
Can we fix these fixes? Does anyone actually want to any more?
Monday, 2 July 2012
easyMoney
If you're slightly geeky, like me, then the best time to follow me on twitter is from about 7pm when the kids go off to bed.
The next morning, Declan tweeted that I ought to "check my emails. Sitting down."
Jonathan Portes and Declan thought it was actually quite a good idea. One that might in fact solve quite a few problems causing the current stalemate in Eurozone economics. They wanted to pitch it to the FT!!! Who accepted it!!!!
Gulp.
All day, people send me links, or I see links on my timeline, and I open them to read later. In the evening, I read them all and comment. Then I have a glass of wine or two and become expansive. I splurge my opinions about the place a bit, there is usually some mocking of government ministers or random debate about banks or supermarkets or workfare or business, depending on the links I've read.
For some time I've watched the news and seen scenes of abject horror in Greece, that nice haven of ouzo and sunburn so beloved of Brits abroad.
Just in case you somehow missed it I want to interject here and point out that the Greeks are starving. In case you missed it. In case you thought the riots were a bit of discontent from radical troublemakers. In case it hasn't really sunk in. They're starving, they're queueing for soup kitchens and scrabbling in bins for food. They are proud people who work hard, not the profligate siesta hounds, powerful men would have us believe. They are our neighbours, our brothers and sisters.
I wondered why Osborne and Cameron couldn't encourage us all to holiday in Greece. I mean, it would be something wouldn't it? If we all showed a little solidarity and booked our holidays in the fishing villages and tourist hot-spots of Mykonos and Athens? If we helped those proud small businesses to sell a little more olive oil or fresh seafood or ice cream?
After a while, I had a thought. All of the countries in trouble were holiday destinations - Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal even Ireland. The one's weathering the storm were the colder, northern countries. Would it not make sense to encourage and incentivise holidays?
There was another pressing urgency to my question - was it not better to find a joyous, uplifting way to beat this depression - would it not pay dividends in itself, easing some of the discontent between the Eurozone countries and giving people hope that there were better ways than austerity to sort this mess out? Hell, was fun automatically not an option just because it was fun?
A few weeks ago, there were rumours of another 700 billion bailout for Eurozone banks. I had just watched Spanish banks get a bailout of more billions and the markets ate the extra money mercilessly in about 48 hours. With the press of a few buttons, the banks or markets appeared to have eaten the very money they had just created!! Nice work if you can get it eh?
I thought it must be better to give actual human people the money to spend and have a nice time if you're just going to flush it all away anyway?
I asked more seriously on twitter if any economists could explain to me why my holiday idea wouldn't be a better stimulus to the Eurozone than another bank bailout.
Warning : Be careful of tipsy tweeting on twitter. Especially if you in any way suggest you might have solutions to something quite big.
I found myself in a conversation on twitter, with the curiously well connected Declan Gaffney and some other tweeps - as you do and put my idea - couldn't we somehow incentivise countries like Germany to go on holiday to places like Greece by directing any Eurozone bailout money instead, into a scheme where it was used as spending money for tourism going directly to the local economies - the fishermen and bakers and restaurateurs so desperate for business.
Astonishingly - and rather scarily, none of them thought it was a bad idea. At the very least they agreed it was a rather better idea than only bailing out the banks again and could be done in combination with another bailout.
After one nice tweet from Jonathan Portes I tweeted, "See Declan my idea haz *economic credibility* #proud face" which shows you the level of a) my tipsiness and b) my lack of grown-up-ness throughout the whole chat.
After about an hour, I checked the profiles of the clever tweeps giving me advice and found that they were Jonathan Portes director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), Duncan Weldon, Economist and TUC Senior Policy Officer and Ian Mulhheirn, Director of the Social Market Foundation.
Gulp.
I tweeted "Whoops, just checked all of your profiles *rabbit in headlight face*
Which no doubt added even more to my economic credibility.
I went to bed, embarrassed at the fact I appeared to have just tried to present an economic idea to some people who actually knew stuff about economics. Quite a lot actually. Unlike me.
Jonathan Portes and Declan thought it was actually quite a good idea. One that might in fact solve quite a few problems causing the current stalemate in Eurozone economics. They wanted to pitch it to the FT!!! Who accepted it!!!!
Gulp.
They've written about it here as you can see so a huge thanks to Declan and especially to Jonathan for translating my tipsy tweeting into econospeak.
Quite incredibly, as is my luck, it turned out someone had had a spookily similar idea some time before!! The FT couldn't publish our article as they'd already published his! nonetheless, Jonathan wanted to post the article on his superb blog. But I nearly got an idea in the FT, which was awfully exciting.
Quite incredibly, as is my luck, it turned out someone had had a spookily similar idea some time before!! The FT couldn't publish our article as they'd already published his! nonetheless, Jonathan wanted to post the article on his superb blog. But I nearly got an idea in the FT, which was awfully exciting.
But here's a thought. I do like economics, I hate too much self effacing and dumbing down, especially from women, so I won't pretend I didn't know some very basic reasons why this could be an alternative.
What's more, I do passionately believe that we can solve many of our current problems by swapping pain for innovation, by inspiring people rather than crushing them. and by fostering a sense of the achievable, not by state-sponsoring misery.
Generally, new ideas can't be heard. But often, they come from nothing at all. If we just listen.
If we listen to the patient saying how their care could be more effective and efficient, if we listen to the worker who sees the waste every day. The poor could tell us what keeps them poor and the sick and disabled could tell us how our care and support could be administered in a way that was better for us and almost certainly more cost effective. If we just listened.
If we listened, our children could tell us what they need in school and we could act. If we listened, our staff could tell us where our businesses succeed and fail.
And if we listened, the Greeks would tell us they want work again. They want trade and pride, and some hope. They want to feed their families.
So here's to listening, and may there be very, very much more of it.
Sunday, 1 July 2012
Netroots 2012 - Some thoughts
So Netroots was fun. Fun-fun-fun in fact.
I had forgotten to think about the logistics of getting there, which is just the sort of thing I do. On Thursday therefore, when it came to booking train tickets, I realised it would mean getting up at 5am to get to that big London and speak for 9.30. Clearly that wasn't going to happen. If it did, I would be an incomprehensible blob of stuttering exhaustion by the time I tried to open my mouth on stage.
But fear not, the chivalric order of the TUC swept in and booked me a nice hotel for the night before and took me for Chinese-food in Chinatown when I got there. There may even have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say. So many thanks to John Wood and Alen who were models of organisational skill and so attentive I felt spoilt.
The squidgable, adorable Mark Ferguson was there. He went a bit sad when he told me how he'd phoned Kaliya the day I had my op and was begging for help from recovery, how a friend had walked in and asked "What on earth's wrong with you" he looked so pale. He'd replied "I'm trying to save my friend's life. It's sobering to realise that if you blog, if you pledge to make corruption and incompetence public, others feel your pain and hurt when you hurt.
Netroots was a bit bit exciting! Packed with people, I soon met Matthew Smith (@indigojo_uk) Jamie Cartwright (epipsychidion86) Emma Round (@pseudodeviant) Jamie Robertson from Scope (jae2k1025) and Lisa Egan (@lisybabe)
It's sooooo odd to finally meet people you feel you "know" so well online but have never met in the flesh. Odd-diddly-odd-odd it is. Nice though - you get over the shock of faces that aren't quite the ones in your head quite soon.
Then it was time for my speech. I hadn't really prepared one - I never usually do. I just sort of stood up and told the Spartacus story - you know, the mess we were in for so long, how we decided to fight back, how we made Lord Fraud pooh his little pants - all of that stuff. I got a lovely long round of applause after, that made me blush and wave my hand in a stoppy-kind-of-awwwww-shucks way, but that just turned it into a slow hand clap of appreciation that made me sink into me chair and blush more. (Incidentally, Netroots, massive chair fail - they were sort of slanty downy and slippery, so my trousers-of-unknown-man-made-fibre kept making me slide off. Not very dignified.)
After my speech, I persuaded the disabled posse listed above to "bunk off" and get tea in the lobby to catch up. Matthew nobly took on the job of chief munchie gatherer and got us all delicious little jammy shortbreads from the Sainsbury's just down the road. It felt very nice for the guys in the wheelchairs and us others of indistinguishable disabilities to be the naughty kids. Somehow appropriate.
Then, I bunked off from bunking off and went for lunch with the incomparable Declan Gaffney (@djmgaffneyw4) author of the government busting statistical stuff from Spartacus Report. There may even have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say. Declan has taken it upon himself to provide unofficial PA support to Kaliya and I whenever we are in London and carried my bags, pushed me in a chair when it all got too much, escorted me all the way back to Victoria when the time came to go home and saw me safely on to the train. What a thing eh?
Anyway, we went back to the conference in time for the final session - lots of 5 minute segments on different ways to campaign effectively online, all rounded off with a barnstorming speech from Owen Jones. There was a race to the free bar after and much schmoozing - the bit everyone really goes to these things for. There may have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say.
I had an odd day. It's strange to walk into a very crowded room of people who all know who you are. It's slightly discombobulating to be "someone" when, clearly, in real life I am no-one at all, just me. It's peculiar to be a bit famous in my own lunch break.
Blogging gives you anonymity on the whole. None of the people I know in "real life" think of me as famous. But in the rarified atmosphere of a political conference, I'm constantly surprised by how many people know what we did, by the awe they treat "the disabled" with now. We are a force to be reckoned with my friends! We are seen as the indomitable; no longer the downtrodden. We are feted as the very model of kick-ass campaigners. People read our report and look at the amendments we won in the Lords and shake their heads in admiration. It's all very Alice in Wonderland. They listen to how we harnessed the might of the internet and they take notes!!!
Wriggling with discomfort, I deflected compliments with very poor grace.
My life has changed, I'm finding it awfully hard to comprehend. Spending, as I do, so much time tucked up in my pjs, blogging from bed, I'm not exactly sure who this other me is - she probably doesn't exist, but in the eyes of very many people she does - we do - and it takes some getting used to.
I had forgotten to think about the logistics of getting there, which is just the sort of thing I do. On Thursday therefore, when it came to booking train tickets, I realised it would mean getting up at 5am to get to that big London and speak for 9.30. Clearly that wasn't going to happen. If it did, I would be an incomprehensible blob of stuttering exhaustion by the time I tried to open my mouth on stage.
But fear not, the chivalric order of the TUC swept in and booked me a nice hotel for the night before and took me for Chinese-food in Chinatown when I got there. There may even have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say. So many thanks to John Wood and Alen who were models of organisational skill and so attentive I felt spoilt.
The squidgable, adorable Mark Ferguson was there. He went a bit sad when he told me how he'd phoned Kaliya the day I had my op and was begging for help from recovery, how a friend had walked in and asked "What on earth's wrong with you" he looked so pale. He'd replied "I'm trying to save my friend's life. It's sobering to realise that if you blog, if you pledge to make corruption and incompetence public, others feel your pain and hurt when you hurt.
Netroots was a bit bit exciting! Packed with people, I soon met Matthew Smith (@indigojo_uk) Jamie Cartwright (epipsychidion86) Emma Round (@pseudodeviant) Jamie Robertson from Scope (jae2k1025) and Lisa Egan (@lisybabe)
It's sooooo odd to finally meet people you feel you "know" so well online but have never met in the flesh. Odd-diddly-odd-odd it is. Nice though - you get over the shock of faces that aren't quite the ones in your head quite soon.
Then it was time for my speech. I hadn't really prepared one - I never usually do. I just sort of stood up and told the Spartacus story - you know, the mess we were in for so long, how we decided to fight back, how we made Lord Fraud pooh his little pants - all of that stuff. I got a lovely long round of applause after, that made me blush and wave my hand in a stoppy-kind-of-awwwww-shucks way, but that just turned it into a slow hand clap of appreciation that made me sink into me chair and blush more. (Incidentally, Netroots, massive chair fail - they were sort of slanty downy and slippery, so my trousers-of-unknown-man-made-fibre kept making me slide off. Not very dignified.)
After my speech, I persuaded the disabled posse listed above to "bunk off" and get tea in the lobby to catch up. Matthew nobly took on the job of chief munchie gatherer and got us all delicious little jammy shortbreads from the Sainsbury's just down the road. It felt very nice for the guys in the wheelchairs and us others of indistinguishable disabilities to be the naughty kids. Somehow appropriate.
Then, I bunked off from bunking off and went for lunch with the incomparable Declan Gaffney (@djmgaffneyw4) author of the government busting statistical stuff from Spartacus Report. There may even have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say. Declan has taken it upon himself to provide unofficial PA support to Kaliya and I whenever we are in London and carried my bags, pushed me in a chair when it all got too much, escorted me all the way back to Victoria when the time came to go home and saw me safely on to the train. What a thing eh?
Anyway, we went back to the conference in time for the final session - lots of 5 minute segments on different ways to campaign effectively online, all rounded off with a barnstorming speech from Owen Jones. There was a race to the free bar after and much schmoozing - the bit everyone really goes to these things for. There may have been glasses of wine, but I couldn't possibly say.
I had an odd day. It's strange to walk into a very crowded room of people who all know who you are. It's slightly discombobulating to be "someone" when, clearly, in real life I am no-one at all, just me. It's peculiar to be a bit famous in my own lunch break.
Blogging gives you anonymity on the whole. None of the people I know in "real life" think of me as famous. But in the rarified atmosphere of a political conference, I'm constantly surprised by how many people know what we did, by the awe they treat "the disabled" with now. We are a force to be reckoned with my friends! We are seen as the indomitable; no longer the downtrodden. We are feted as the very model of kick-ass campaigners. People read our report and look at the amendments we won in the Lords and shake their heads in admiration. It's all very Alice in Wonderland. They listen to how we harnessed the might of the internet and they take notes!!!
Wriggling with discomfort, I deflected compliments with very poor grace.
My life has changed, I'm finding it awfully hard to comprehend. Spending, as I do, so much time tucked up in my pjs, blogging from bed, I'm not exactly sure who this other me is - she probably doesn't exist, but in the eyes of very many people she does - we do - and it takes some getting used to.
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