The City of Liverpool has one of the oldest established Chinese communities in Europe. Trade between the port and China dates back 175 years – and the first Chinese immigrants settled there about thirty years later in 1866.
Nowadays it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that economic migration into Britain is a relatively new thing. It’s easy to forget the many waves of immigration over centuries – creating the diverse society we are today.
Each community was new once, so I wondered if there are therefore some lessons to learn from such a long-established community about how such to settle and become part of the scenery.
Alan Seatwo came to Britain to study and settled here. He’s now vice chair of the Liverpool Chinese Business association, so I thought he was the ideal person to discuss this.
On Monday 26th October this year a large gang of youths surrounded and attacked a 22 year old gay man, James Parkes, as he left a bar in Liverpool City Centre. He was left with serious head injuries.
The attack is being treated by Police as a homophobic hate crime and some arrests have already been made.
This was not the first attack of its’ kind. Recently another gay man was beaten to death in Trafalgar Square London. Going back further there have been many other such atrocities, including the murder in Liverpool of Michael Causer last year.
Liverpool’s Lesbian and Gay community is holding a vigil in the city on Sunday November 1st as the nation increasingly wakes up to the reality of homophobic violence.
In my official capacity as Chair of the North West Region’s Equality and Diversity Group I agreed with my associates that I would make this statement of support to the organisers of the vigil.
There are several ways you can listen to Just Plain Sense Podcasts. You can play them in-situ just by clicking on the control at the bottom of each item; you can download the MP3 file by clicking on the link for that; or you can subscribe via iTunes or an RSS reader.
Last week I included a new kind of content - a so-called Audio Boo from a man you wouldn’t have heard of before. This is all well and good for those of you who come to the web site. However, as Audio Boos get included in the show’s feed, it might have come as an unannounced surprise to those of you who subscribe to hear a strange voice and a different format. I’ve explained more in this Audio Boo of my own.
I’m featuring this short Audio Boo blog piece by @Documentally because of the salutory tale it contains.
Suppose you’re blind and take the guide dog you rely on to Paris for the day? What if someone told you that you couldn’t bring it back because of quarantine regulations?
Twelve months ago this week I reported in detail from a special conference at Imperial College in London. Clinicians from Britain, Holland and the United States came together to discuss their different views about the best way to treat adolescents with persistent gender identity issues, and a strong desire to permanently change sex.
The central issue is about how to deal with Puberty. If clinicians don’t do something to prevent normal puberty occurring then a trans child will undergo changes that are impossible – or at least painful and expensive to reverse in adulthood.Some children say they would rather commit suicide and their parents are understandably frantic.
Puberty can be blocked in a way that’s completely reversible. So this is what doctors in several parts of the world are now doing. If the child should change their mind, you stop the drugs and puberty kicks in as though nothing had happened. It buys enough time till the child is older and their course in life is certain.
British clinicians have been ultra cautious and conservative though. They fear factors which might be as yet unknown if you meddle with puberty’s course. Paradoxically they weight this more highly than the certain negative outcomes of an unwanted puberty and the results of foreign studies.
That was twelve months ago. And on the face of it nothing seems to have changed much today. Clinicians at the UK’s only specialist centre for child and adolescent gender identity patients say they will still only prescribe blocking therapy once puberty has largely completed at the age of 16 – by which time irreversible changes have occurred.
What has altered, however, is that the advocates for change – mostly parents of trans children – are getting more of a hearing for their case.
In this show we feature a recent interview from BBC Radio Four’s flagship “Today” programme and afterwards I reflect on what mature media coverage does for the debate.
You can also listen to my full original interview with Nicky’s mother, “Gender Dysphoria, A Mother’s Tale“, first released in April 2008
This year people have been celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10th December 1948.
As discussed in an earlier show, lots of people have no idea what the declaration’s thirty articles actually say. And when people don’t know, then they often assume that the whole thing is irrelevant to their own lives.
Artist Monica Ross has taken a rather novel approach to educating people. To counter the tendency to forget, she has memorised the entire work. When she recites the preamble and articles to live audiences, it is literally therefore a memorial act.
Monica first came to prominence in the 1970’s as a performance artist, before she turned instead to video work. The shooting of John Charles De Menezes renewed her desire to perform before a live audience. And she’s aiming to make 60 public recitals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a way of marking its’ 60th anniversary.
This particular performance took place in August at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. She was joined and assisted by various people from the local community who performed individual articles and the event was recorded by University Staff. This presentation is with their permission.
The final weekend in August saw Manchester, one of Britain’s most LGBT-friendly cities, hosting its annual three day Pride celebration. In this reply to a similar French video, the revellers deliver a one-fingered salute to homophobia based on Lily Allen’s “F**k You!”. Shame the homophobes never seem to have so much fun in their lives.
Earlier this week I interviewed veteran Human Rights campaigner Peter Tatchell about what makes him tick, his methods and some of his opinions. You can hear that interview in the preceding item.
Peter and I were both speaking at the Centre for Local Policy Studies Summer School at Crewe Hall in Cheshire. In his keynote speech he addressed the risk that in being blindly sensitive to “multiculturalism” we might undermine everyone’s human rights - including sections of the cultures we are reticent to challenge. Is female genital mutilation an absolute violation or subject to cultural relativism, for instance.
Here is an excerpt from the opening section of Peter’s overall 30 minute presentation. I may make further segments available if the demand appears to be there.
Peter Tatchell was once described as a “Homosexual Terrorist”. To some he has been “Public Enemy Number One”. His causes have spanned four decades and world affairs.
He’s campaigned on Capital Punishment, the Vietnam war, Apartheid, Environmental issues and LGBT rights – to name just a few.
He famously outed ten Church of England Bishops as Gay and accused them of hypocrisy. He performed a citizens arrest on (President of Zimbabwe) Robert Mugabe, on charges of torture.
He was nearly run over by Tony Blair’s motorcade once when campaigning against the Iraq war. He has often been arrested and beaten up by authorities. His direct activism methods are applauded by some but abhorred by others – and not just those on the receiving end.
In this interview, following a lecture to the Centre for Local Policy Research Summer School, I wanted to know what makes such a man tick? What fires him up? And does he ever envisage running out of steam?
You can learn more about Peter’s career history and his extensive writing on his web site www.petertatchell.net
The question of whether gay or lesbian couples should conceive or adopt children has been with us for many years. Some people think it’s wrong.
There seems no justification for those reservations of course. We’re confronted all the time with examples of heterosexual men and women being bad parents and abusers. Yet the idea that less conventional couples pose some extra kind of threat is deeply ingrained.
And if there’s concern about gay and lesbian people adopting children, what must it be like for trans people?
In this interview I speak to a trans man who, with his wife, has successfully overcome the obstacles to adopt two young children. He also now advises other trans people on how to navigate the process too, and to deal with the general ignorance of social workers in this context.
We agreed we would keep his identity confidential for the sake of his children. In this interview he adopted the pseudonym “Nick”. However if people would like to contact Nick for advice on adoption themselves then please ask for help by leaving a request via the comments facility below. If you supply an email address in the “mail” box on the comment form this won’t be shown publicly; however we can use this to put you in touch.
Update:Since releasing this episode, ‘Nick’ has set up a special email address where people interested in adoption can contact him for advice:lgbtadoptionuk@gmail.com
The recent Ada Lovelace Day blogging event raised important points about the challenges of getting more young women and girls hooked on technology subjects – and dealing with the barriers which may cause some of them to fall by the wayside.
For this episode I travelled to the Electrical Engineering Department at Leeds University, for an event organised by the Women’s Special Interest Group of the British Computer Society, BCS Women.
The second annual Ada Lovelace Colloquium was organised by Hannah Dee with colleagues from the BCS Women committee. I spoke to Hannah, some of the speakers and many of the delegates as the day unfolded.
This Podcast is complemented by a series of You Tube videos showing excerpts from many of the actual presentations. One example is shown below. The others will be linked from here when they have all been published.
Alan Pollard is the President of the British Computer Society and is featured here delivering the introduction to the annual BCS Lovelace Colloquium for women undergraduates this year at Leeds University. He speaks here about why he and the BCS see the importance of encouraging more women into technology roles such as in IT. For more details (and for links to more of the video content) see the Podcast above this.
Not so long ago any talk about trans people and the police would have been confined to tales about discrimination on both side of the thin blue line. There were problems for trans people wanting to pursue policing as a career. There were also sometimes problems when trans members of the public had dealings with officers.
Nowadays there is still a big educational challenge to tackle, and mistakes do still happen. Recently, however, a new group has been set up by trans police officers themselves, with senior officer backing. The “National Trans Police Association” spans all 53 Police forces in the UK and their aim is to help bring about informed change from the inside.
PC Bernie Clifton, a Diversity officer for the Greater Manchester force, talks about the setting up of the new association and work to be done on both sides of the equation to achieve more inclusive policing in this area.
The next Podcast interview will be with PC “Bernie” Clifton, who is a diversity officer with Greater Manchester Police. Here’s a quick video teaser whilst you wait…
Just Plain Sense provides a mix of talks and interviews about Equality and Diversity in Britain today. There is a particular emphasis on the 'developing' areas such as LGBT but overall I set out to capture a truly diverse range of voices to talk first hand about what it means to work towards and live in a tolerant, diverse society -- and what we still need to do to get there.
Christine Burns
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