To Church? or not to Church? That is the Question

I'm not particularly religious. I thoroughly resented thirteen years of being forced to attend Chapel services twice a week at Church of England school's and, up until a couple of years ago, the mere thought of voluntarily attending a religious ceremony of any kind made me feel faintly sick with boredom. However this festive season I've been going to carol services. For fun. And donating money to the Church in collections.

Now some of my more militantly atheist friends have found this deeply outrageous demanding how I can be so hypocritical or, in one slightly more extreme case, how I can support what is transparently a system of lies designed to control the masses with fear and concentrate power in the hands of the religious elite.

Well I have a few reasons:

1) I dunno about everyone else's but my local Church isn't an evil force full of corrupt priests seeking to control the congregation, it's rather nice. Aside for Church services they run a whole range of prayer groups, old folk befriending services, soup kitchens and charity ventures. True, not all Church-goers are the saintly types they'd like to pretend but there's a great big core of essentially good folk who combine their beliefs with helping people, and at Christmas I like to show my support for such good will, especially since there's rather too many people out there willing to mock them for their beliefs.

2) Jesus taught nice stuff! Of all the religions I've looked into the teachings of Jesus appeal to me most. Love thy neighbour? Do unto others as you would have others do unto you? Forgiving sins? One of his closest followers was a former prostitute! I'm not convinced that he was the son of God but for a man living a couple of thousand years ago in the Nazareth you've got to admit he was pretty forward thinking. In this time of trouble and strife I think it's nice to hear a bit about good will and peace.

3) And finally I get presents on Christmas day primarily because a nice fella called Jesus Christ died over 2000 years ago. I might not be a Christian myself but thanks to Christians once a year I get to eat hefty amounts of food, exchange gifts with my friends and see the family all together in a cheerful festive mood (a rare occurance). So what if it's just an appropriation of a pagan winter solstice festival into the Christian calender? I love Christmas and I see no problem with singing some cracking carols and donating a bit of money to the nice folk down at my local Church to thank them for it.

So that's why I like going to church at Christmas, and in this day and age where congregations are down and everyone's complaining about a lack of local community, if your a bit curious, why don't you go too?

...Though if you're utterly appalled by the idea and would rather sit in your nice warm house drinking hot chocolate and looking up funny things on the t'internet you can always check this out http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/photos/20-most-awkward-santas

Now I'm off to get ready for midnight mass, Merry Christmas everyone!!

H.B.

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Exploration Archive: Flat Pack Suburbia

Here we have a copy of my latest article for the North America section of the fabulous fledgeling online travel magazine Exploration Online. If you haven't heard about Exploration before and are interested in travel advice and anecdotes, fun facts or becoming a regular contributor yourself check it out! http://www.eruditiononline.co.uk/exploration/article.php?id=243

A few years ago I went to visit some of my increasingly vast collection of American cousins. All that I really knew about them was that they lived in a suburb of Chicago so, naturally, I was expecting it to be like London suburbs: connected to the main part of the city by a vast urban sprawl, narrow streets, narrow houses, a fair bit of traffic and lots of hurried looking people catching buses. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

My first experience of Orland Park was a slightly surreal one. Far from the stereotypical English suburbs I was greeted by a picture book American one: huge houses, wide streets, kids playing in the road, neighbours waving to each other and nothing that resembled a city in sight (turns out Chicago itself is a good 40 kilometres and a 45 minute train journey away). It was adorable.

After talking to my aunt and uncle about it I discovered that, for them, it was truly a dream home. They are in the late seventies; my aunt met my uncle when he was a GI stationed in England during the war. They fell in love and moved to America. Years later, after long careers and raising five children, they bought a plot of land in Orland Park, picked what elements they wanted in their house out of a catalogue, watched it being built and settled in. Their grown-up children were also impressed; so impressed that most of them bought their own flat-pack dream homes in the area and now live within a twenty minute drive of each other. They spend much of their time working, going to church, hanging out with the neighbours and having extended family bowling nights. They love it. Their kids however, aren’t so impressed.

The majority of my younger cousins are around my age, and most of them can’t wait to get out of Orland Park. It’s boring. There’s nothing fun to do within walking distance and all their neighbours know both them and at least one or two of their relatives so there’s little chance of getting away with any misdemeanours. What is a safe little slice of American paradise to their middle aged and elderly relatives is just dull and frustrating to most people under the age of 30. And I kind of saw what they meant; my time in America was spent being handed from cousin to cousin of various generations to be shown stuff, taken to things and constantly entertained, whilst also having a random selection of their friends and neighbours drop by to meet ‘the English girl’. It was sweet and really well meaning, but a little stifling. Yet living close to way too many of your relatives who know almost every detail of your day-to-day life must be even worse for my cousins.

Despite all this, Orland Park does look like an amazing place to grow up. It’s safe, secure and all your friends live near-by. Having spent my childhood split between a small countryside village, Rugby town, Oxford and (more briefly) London, and having few close relatives beyond my immediate family, I can honestly say I’ve never experienced anything quite like it in the UK. And I’m sure, once my cousins have kids of their own, they’ll look back at Orland Park and its flat-pack monotony with a lot more fondness.

The Fourth Wall Theatre Network

I'm 21. I'm a massive nerd about my course, work part time in a rather nice student job, do a lot of extracurricular and voluntary activities and have met a wide range of prestigious leaders from a variety of fields. I thought this was pretty impressive. Then I heard about what a friend of mine, Dan Bridgewater, has been up to.

I know Dan through the UpRising Leadership programme, he's in his first year at uni and I've known for a while that he's working on a social enterprise aimed at making theatre companies in schools called the Fourth Wall Theatre Network. He's a pretty motivated, entrepreneurial guy so I figured it'd be pretty good but I've got to admit, after attending the launch of The Fourth Wall Theatre Network at the Custard Factory on Thursday, I was really impressed.

The Fourth Wall Theatre Network is a group of young people, lead by Dan, who aim to create a network of sustainable theatre companies within schools. The team offer a variety of competitive packages which involve them coming into schools, offering 24 weeks of a couple of hours of drama and business workshops per week and offering a small group of interested 'leaders' within the school 4 weeks of mentoring and leadership training to enable them to set up their own theatre company. At the end of the programme the kids put on a showcase of whatever drama they decided to create and, depending on which package the school selects and pays for, even get to keep a portion of the ticket sales. And on the subject of fees The Fourth Wall Theatre Network's top package costs just a minuscule £500, not bad for 28 weeks of stuff!

To me, it's a really great idea. It teaches kids invaluable skills at every level, whether they are interested in performing, lighting, set design, costume, producing, directing, setting up a business or anything in between it provides opportunities for young people to take initiative and learn how to lead. It's not just about a nice bit of drama, it's about creating leaders and giving kids the skills they need to make it in this tough economic climate, whilst having a lot of fun in the process.

What Dan and his team have put together isn't just good for a group of young people, it's good full stop. The business plan makes sense on every level and what they've come up with is both original and good value for money. There's no one doing exactly what they are in Birmingham and the equivalent cost per hour of drama workshops offered by their nearest competitor would be close to £4000 where The Fourth Wall Theatre Network's top package is a mere £500.

It's pretty awesome stuff! And if you fancy finding out a bit more about who these guys are and what they can offer for schools check out their website http://www.fourthwalltheatre.co.uk

H.B.

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UpRising meet BAP

So I didn't win the women's officer election...and I've decided that in between my job, extra curricular stuff and desperately attempting to end my final year on a first (could happen?) I maybe don't have time to organise a week of women's rights events from scratch, figure out the non guild officer/council member paperwork protocol and recruit a team of helpers to organise and run it on the day just before my dissertation is due in. So, sadly, International Women's Week is off...unless someone else wants to do it?

On the plus side I very much intend to continue campaigning for women's rights by joining in with some lovely external projects. But more on that later, this post is about the BAP.

Ok. What's the BAP?

Well it's the British American Project, a gathering of rather successful individuals aged under 40 picked from both sides of the Atlantic for their already impressive achievements and potential to accomplish a heck of a lot more.

So, as I'm sure you can imagine, after being told that the wonderful UpRising programme had joined forces with the BAP to offer specially selected UpRisers (including myself) an opportunity to meet these fabulous people in a day of networking and 'speed mentoring' I was just a little bit intimidated...but mostly quite excited. Particularly after being sent the 92 page document containing their rather impressive biographies.

Last Saturday myself and a group of other Birmingham UpRisers made our way up to London to meet the BAP. Our journey was full of delays (thanks network rail) but the event was brilliant.

The vast majority of the event consisted of 'speed mentoring', where one UpRiser was assigned two or three members of the BAP and asked a series of questions about their experience, interests and ambitions. After fifteen minuets a whistle was blown and the UpRiser had to move to the side of the room for a couple of minutes while the BAP'ers filled in a feedback form about how the UpRiser presented him or herself. Then the UpRiser had to pick another group of BAP'ers and the process started all over again.

For me, it was a really worthwhile experience. Members of the BAP come from so many different professional backgrounds and their own personal journeys are so diverse that each grouping had different advice to offer and new perspectives on my ambitions, goals and potential.

Stand out conversations for me include:

- Discussing the ridiculous nature of policy creation in Westminster with Murphey Cobbing (BBC radio producer), Tim Nuthall (Media Manager of the European Climate Foundation) and Robert Wilton (diplomat and writer of short stories and essays on politics and history)

- Hearing amusing tales of entrepreneur Paige Davis's family conferences and feedback sessions experienced as a small child, in her words 'looking back it was kind of controlling but it bred entrepreneurial spirit into me'

- And last but certainly not least, chatting to former apprentice Tim Campbell and International Director of CBI Rhian Chilcott. I'm very interested in potentially getting into lobbying on behalf of business groups one day so to talk to someone with Rhian's great mass of experience was just brilliant. Especially once Rhian explained that she didn't start off working for business groups but in fact a feminist pressure group, lobbying for more women in parliament. Her advice was that, wherever I think I want to end up, I should start by trying to work on things that I care passionately about because I'll try harder, work longer and build up more experience, expertise and contacts then if I just do something I'm not so fussed about. It's pretty good advice! And has certainly got me thinking about some more specific organisations and areas I'm going to apply to work in after uni.

There was of course lots more great advice received, interesting people met and stories recounted but what impressed me the most about the BAP was their approachable sense of enjoyment. They were having fun. They bantered with the 'master of ceremonies' Olly Barrett, joked between themselves and confessed to going out the night before and intending to again that night. They provided serious advice, without appearing too serious and unapproachable themselves.

So in short I really enjoyed the UpRising - BAP event and hope that if I'm ever successful enough to get invited to join a similar network, I'll be able to offer other young people as much good advice as the BAP'ers offered me...at least I hope I'll still be saying that when I receive my feed back forms later this week :s

Thanks BAP!

H.B.
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Vote 'Henrietta is Better' for Women's Officer!!

I’m running for Women’s Officer at University of Birmingham!! So here’s a quick blog post to let you know what I’m all about and what I plan on doing if I win.

As you UofB’ers may have noticed the Women’s Rights movement within the University of Birmingham is pretty dead. No one at all ran for Women’s Officer in the first round of elections last academic year and even now in the by-elections there are only two candidates standing for it.

 I want to change all this.

I first found out that we don’t currently have a Women’s Officer by accident. I’ve been working on organising a week of events surrounding International Women’s Day in March for a couple of months now and I figured the best way to get it off the ground with the guild would be to get the Women’s Officer on board. At which point I was told there wasn’t one.

To begin with I was pretty shocked but then I realised, if it hadn’t been for unfortunate events in my own life (see the post below) I wouldn’t particularly care about women’s rights either. It’s hardly a well-publicised area of concern and the crazy feminist stereotype (unfairly in my opinion) associated with campaigning for Women’s Rights is pretty off putting for most people. So I decided ‘you know what, this is something I care about and I really believe I can make a difference’ and I’m running for it.

In the UK recently released statistics show that female managers are paid an average of £10,000 less a year then male colleagues doing exactly the same job. This is technically illegal and recent legislation now means that all employees have the right to ask what their colleagues are being paid. If I win the election I will organise some workshops on ‘How to Be Assertive in the Workplace’ teaching women how to find out if they are being treated unfairly and what to do about it.

The second most frequently reported crime in the UK is domestic violence. An average of one in four women will experience domestic abuse in their life time. If I win the election I will promote domestic abuse charities around campus with the aim that, if a woman in this establishment encounters abuse they know where to go to get help. I will also raise awareness of organisations working with men who are afraid of becoming abusers. Often abusers don’t set out to be violent to their partners and if I can help make them aware of where to get help before it is too late I think it’d be in the best interests of the whole university community.

Around the world there are many issues affecting women; from forced marriage to gendercide in China and India to FGM and sex trafficking. In the week surrounding International Women’s Day (8^th March) I will organise a week of events, working with both external charities and university societies, to raise awareness of a different gender inequality issue each day and fundraise for selected charities. I've already started contacting university societies and have found a selection of charities and brummie business women and journalists who are interested in supporting this idea and working together to make this event a reality. It was through starting to organise this that I first found out that there wasn't a Women’s Officer so, even if I don’t win the election, I will still try and run this event…though of course being Women’s Officer would definitely make the paperwork a lot easier!

So that’s what I want to do and I hope you agree that ‘Henrietta is Better’ for Women’s Rights and Vote Henrietta between October 24^th and 28^th!!

H.B.

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The Accidental Feminist

I never wanted to be a feminist.

In fact at school I’d occasionally get called a ‘feminist’ during debates in my politics classes as an insult. And I’d take it as such, furiously denying that I was anything of the sort.

Like a depressingly high proportion of my generation I believed that Women’s Rights and Feminism were dead issues. The Women’s Rights revolution had already happened. We live in an equal world, and anyone still kicking about that old chestnut was either of the misguided opinion that women deserve superiority over men or was just plain odd.

It wasn’t until something bad happened that I began to take gender equality and feminism seriously.

In my first year at uni I was contacted by a friend I hadn’t spoken to in a couple of years. After meeting up with her it became apparent that the reason I hadn’t heard from her was because she’d been involved in an abusive relationship.

It was the usual story: her former boyfriend had started off incredibly charming, won her over and showered her with all sorts of affection. Until they started living together at which point he began to change, became more and more demanding, selfish, controlling and angry, changed the affection for insults and psychological games, he’d go out with his friends when he pleased but bully her out of seeing hers and into staying in the house, and even starting to abusively threaten her.

It was after the first time that he physically hurt her that she made the decision to leave him. But visible damage had already been done. The first time I met up with her after that relatively short space of time the outgoing, confident girl I knew was uncomfortable just being out in public.

This got me thinking about two things:

1) How shockingly easy it is for intelligent outgoing women to be sucked into abusive relationships through no fault of their own

And

2) Said friend is very wealthy and she was only able to build up the courage to leave her ex whilst he was out of the country. What happens to women who don’t have separate incomes or this kind of absence to allow escape?

Then I started researching domestic abuse charities and my journey into becoming a feminist snowballed from there. Here are some fun facts for you:

-          Domestic abuse is the second most frequently reported crime in the UK

-          Domestic abuse charities receive less per annum in donations than donkey sanctuaries

We live in a country where the population value abused donkeys over abused women.

Something’s not quite right here.

From there I looked into issues in the UK like the wage gap, the fact that when applying for graduate jobs most employers will see the likelihood that I will probably one day have children as a reason not to employ me, the massive discrepancy between the women in certain industries (like PR) and the number of women managers and a whole host of international issues from gendercide to human trafficking and bride abduction, to the stoning of women for being raped in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

And I realised that I have a problem with this. Therefore I am a feminist.

Women in the UK are letting themselves down. The Women’s Rights Revolution only happened in the last few generations. Where my grandmother dreamt of being a secretary and marrying a rich man my mother is a doctor with her own pretty decent independent income.

The change is recent. As a result many culturally entrenched views on women, what they can and can’t do, how competent they are in the workplace and what they are good for are still pervasive.

You only have to look at the city and see that the stereotypical ‘business man’s night out’ of taking clients to a lap dancing club is still very much a common place or look at the composition of the Houses of Parliament to note the preponderance of men compared to women.

There’s also the case that now women have all the rights of men, but are still expected to fulfil the traditional ‘duties’ of a woman. In many families both parents have to work in order to create a comfortable lifestyle, or, in low income families, just to pay the bills. Who then has to do all the additional work of cooking, cleaning and childrearing? In most cases it’s the woman. I’m not saying that we should create a generation of house husbands but we do need to work towards making it more culturally acceptable for men to take on a more equal part in these domestic roles.

This is not me saying that ‘men’ are to blame. Of course they aren’t. Yes a small minority hold misogynistic views but there are almost certainly an equal number of women with extreme views on men, or even women with misogynistic views on women. Both genders are as bad (and good) as each other.

The problem now is changing cultural perceptions that are held by both men and women in our society. We need people to recognise that yes there have been mighty leaps forward in tackling gender inequality over the past century, but we’re not finished yet.

Where homosexual and ethnic minority groups are still pushing to end the discrimination against them which should by law be non-existent, women have, for the greater part, stopped trying.

The modern feminist movement isn’t about burning bras and shouting slogans. It’s about promoting the idea that it is ok for women to complain if they are treated unfairly just for being women, without having all the negative stereotypes of ‘the crazy feminist’ thrust upon them.

So I implore you, leave behind any qualms you might have about boot wearing, hairy faced, man hating nutters and bear in mind this modern view of what a feminist is: someone who has a problem with the statistics and thinks things need to change.

And with this far more realistic definition in mind; there are plenty of men and women I know who’d probably be horrified to learn that they are feminists too.

H.B.

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A Very British Kind of Justice

Something is rotten in the British Justice system.

Like most ordinary law abiding citizens I’d always assumed that the British Justice system was here for me, to keep me safe from false accusations and punish the guilty criminals. That is until I actually experienced it.

Last summer my then sixteen year old brother was badly beaten up at a party by a gang of ten guys. He’d been walking down a corridor, a lad pushed into him and started shouting at him, he shouted back, the guy started to threaten him so he walked away. Ten minutes later, not wanting to ruin the party for his friends he decided to go back in and say sorry.

He was immediately hit in the face, heard saying by a room full of witnesses ‘what are you doing I’m trying to apologise’ before being thrown to the ground and receiving kicks to the head and face. His jaw was broken in three places and his ribs and back were badly bruised. If his friends hadn’t intervened and pulled him out of there they would have carried on kicking. It would have been a lot worse.

What followed was the irksomely slow process of interviews and statement taking. An identity parade didn’t take place until a month later by which time, given that he’d never seen his assailants before that night, his memory was already not the sharpest and he was only able to identify one of his attackers, the boy who had first shoved in to him, first hit him in the face and first started kicking.

Over a year later we were finally told that a trial had been scheduled and he’d need to come in and give evidence, I went with him to offer my support.

Naturally, given the weight of evidence and the room full of witnesses my family and I were expecting a quick, simple trial followed by a conviction. Wrong.

From the moment we got there I knew something was off. The only two witnesses testifying were girls who hardly knew my brother and the third, an actual good friend of his, hadn’t shown up and the court were forced to issue a summons.

It quickly became apparent that they had been being threatened by the defendant and his friends. One girl had even received a text showing a photo of her statement, illegally taken by the defendant after he’d been shown it in a meeting with his solicitor, showing her name and address and the words ‘if you come to court you’re dead’.

The police response? As he'd sent it to a friend, who had then sent it to her there was nothing they could do, despite the fact that only he could have taken the photo.

It emerged that this ‘boy’ was already well known to the police, although never convicted of any priors, for his involvement in drug dealing, petty crime and violence, including against former girlfriends.

The witnesses were so terrified they asked to be given screens so he couldn’t see their faces during the trial, but that didn’t stop the crown court telling us all to go for lunch at the same time, resulting in them having to walk past the defendant while he was smoking outside.

And this is just the beginning. The first five hours of court were devoted to talking about such important issues as ‘what order to call the witnesses in now one hasn’t shown up’ and whether a policeman had a door open or shut behind him as he’d asked a witness a question (fun fact, court sessions cost the country £2000 per hour).

Then, after 6 hours of waiting, my brother was called as a witness. We got all the way upstairs to the court door before being told, actually the prosecution had changed the order without telling anyone, completely going against the order that had been debated over for hours that morning, and had actually asked for a different witness.

A present policeman commented that the barrister that my brother had been assigned (in crown prosecutions you don’t get a choice over who prosecutes your case) is known for funny turns, ambiguous questions and unfathomable behaviour.

In the end we were sent home and told to come back the next day. My brother was called as a witness the next morning.

Still, despite the incompetence of the court we were still thinking ‘It’s an air tight case, good witnesses, evidence of intimidation, what can go wrong?’ a lot apparently.

In the end the far more capable defence made it appear that each of the witnesses had placed the defendant in slightly different places in the room, making it unclear whether he was actually responsible for my brother’s really quite serious injuries. No one bothered to mention that the event had taken place over a year ago, all of the witnesses agreed he was responsible and a chief attacker and no one’s memory is film footage perfect, especially after that length of time.

The end result was a hung jury. In about a year my brother and the girls who’ve been so terrified by this process will have to go through it all over again. And for one of them this gang know where she lives.

As the policeman who was talking us through the process stated; ‘justice isn’t a balance, it’s entirely in favour of the defendant, no one talks about the rights of the witnesses’.

Soon after I heard about an acquaintance of mine whose mum had been badly beaten by his stepfather. His stepfather had walked free from court. Why? Because the only witnesses were the acquaintance and his mother, and he was known to have a problem with his stepfather so his testimony was discounted (ignoring the fact that this ‘problem’ stemmed from his stepfather regularly beating up his mother). She has now had to move to another town after receiving physical threats.

The current Crown Court system treats victims abysmally. It makes already emotionally distressed people sit in small, airless rooms for hours and hours whilst the court wastes time and money on pedantic issues before throwing them to the mercy of the defence who we were warned employ psychological tricks and go out of their way to make you appear confused. It allows scared victims to come face to face with their attackers outside the court and then allows brutal aggressors to walk free without consequence whilst victims and witnesses are left vulnerable to their retribution.

I understand the need to ensure that innocent people aren't convicted but there is no denying that something is rotten in the British Justice system. And it’s innocent people who are suffering for it.