Two weeks ago, in its primetime soap EastEnders, the BBC showed resident gay couple Christian Clarke and Syed Masood in bed. On Thursday it was forced to release a public statement to defend it. This means two things: there are still viewers out there for whom homosexuality is of such concern a nod to its existence warrants complaint, and there were enough of them to require a broadcaster to feel it had to respond. It won’t have helped that one of the characters was a Pakistani-British Muslim.
The people watching aren’t your Last of the Summer Wine demographic either, the soft sort of viewer with mild sensibilities. They’re East “brains splattered out with a Queen Vic bust on Christmas day” Enders fans. There are apparently people who happily park their children in front of fictionalised drug abuse, prostitution and murder without batting an eye, yet regurgitate their own dinner at the sight of two people of the same sex lying on a mattress.
This comes the same week as Points of View discussed viewers’ disappointment that Holby City, so far swerving it deftly, was now “following the trend” of showing a relationship that happened to be between two men. Whether said complainers thought that the onscreen depiction of straight people or indeed the interaction of humans generally was similarly a compliance to fantastical trends remains unseen (maybe next week).
What is obvious is that a country that in law has instilled (near) equality between gay and straight citizens has failed to do the same in its culture. This is not to say vast progress has not been achieved nor to overblow the significance of TV complaints (though isolated they are not). It is, however, to remind ourselves that homophobia does not just come in the extremity of thugs throwing punches in the street but the gentility of a bigot writing an email from their living room. They are very clearly different but share an entrenched ignorance at the heart of the matter.
It’s time this was acknowledged. The “I’m not a homophobe but … ” mantra – a predominant piece of nonsense spouted in response to homosexuality (and funnily enough, the opening line of the chosen POV complaint) – can still seemingly leave the mouth without many blushing or feeling any sensation close to shame. It invariably is followed by a statement that confirms the speaker is very much a homophobe, traditionally by an objection to “explicitness” or a plea for someone to protect the children.
The “explicit” objection is easily solved (even by David Cameron): if it fits within the pre-watershed guidelines, you’re good to go. Yet here’s the rub: the explicitness of a romantic scene is too often dependent on which genders are in it. A man eating a woman’s face will go undetected, but if it happens to be another man, the BBC must brace itself. It’s like maths for homophobes. One heterosexual heavy petting equals one gay peck. Or is it a cuddle? A brisk handshake? The EastEnders characters in question were simply holding each other in bed, but for some an act otherwise seen as harmless, romantic even, was seen as harmful and perverse. It wasn’t, it was said, an appropriate image for children. In contrast to the naturalness of straight relationships, it was something it needed to protect the innocent from.
These are not their children’s thoughts of course but entirely their own. They, who deem noticing the existence of homosexuality as damaging, when it is in averting their child’s gaze that they cause harm. Some of their children will be straight and left (at best) battling the confused ignorance their parent’s special brand of “censorship come outrage” have bestowed them with. Others will be gay and, sunken within the tragedy of an unaccepting home, will be deprived the smallest escape of another world, of seeing a part of themselves on screen and knowing they are OK.
The snob may dismiss mainstream television as drivel but the power of it should not be. What we see on screen has an effect, and the more popular and widespread the programme, the greater this is. The complainers are right. What their children see does matter. This is the very reason the BBC should keep its nerve and refuse to pander to them.
They described her as “reckless”, “disrespectful”, “dogmatic” and “unprofessional”. They said she showed “no empathy” towards her client. Why? Psychotherapist Lesley Pilkington had tried to turn a gay person straight.
In a landmark ruling this week, Pilkington, 60, was found guilty of “treating” a patient for his homosexuality. A hearing of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy – the largest professional body for therapists – concluded that the treatment she gave constituted “professional malpractice”.
The unanimous verdict came with heavy sanctions. Pilkington’s accreditation to the organisation was suspended. She was ordered to complete extensive training and professional development. If she does not file a report in six to 12 months, satisfying the board that she has complied, she will have her membership fully revoked: she will be struck off.
The report concluded: “Mrs Pilkington had allowed her personal preconceived views about gay lifestyle and sexual orientation to affect her professional relationship in a way that was prejudicial.”
The client Pilkington tried to cure was me. I am an out, happily gay man. I was undercover, investigating therapists who practise this so-called conversion therapy (also known as reparative therapy) – who try to “pray away the gay”. I asked her to make me straight. Her attempts to do so flout the advice of every major mental-health body in Britain.
But despite the decades of abuse that gay patients have received from therapists and psychiatrists – despite the electro-convulsive therapy used until the 1980s, despite the chemical castrations, the aversion therapy (where pain is inflicted to dissuade same-sex fantasies) and despite the recent rise in fundamentalist talking therapy – no one has ever been held to account.
The details of this case, and another I am pursuing, explain why not only gay clients but mental-health patients in general do not come forward to complain. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists routinely avoid accountability – and the government is helping them do so.
My investigation began in April 2009. I heard that a conference was taking place in London for therapists and psychiatrists who wanted to learn how to convert their patients to heterosexuality. Homosexuality was removed from psychiatry’s glossary of mental illnesses in 1973. How then could anyone treat something healthy? I went along to find out, posing as someone looking to be “cured”. Two people agreed to treat me. The first was a psychiatrist – we’ll come to him later. The second was Lesley Pilkington.
A few weeks later I was in her grand Hertfordshire home with a Dictaphone taped to my stomach. She set about trying to find the childhood “wounds” that she believes led to my homosexuality. But she found none. “There was no sexual abuse?” she pressed.
“No.”
“I think there is something there … you’ve allowed things to be done to you.” She then prayed: “Father, we give you permission to bring to the surface some of the things that have happened over the years.” I asked who could have committed this abuse – a member of my family? “Yes, very likely,” she replied.
Was homosexuality a mental illness, an addiction or an anti-religious phenomenon? “It’s all of that,” said Pilkington. During the sessions, she recited prayers for me to say whenever I thought about a man sexually. She gave me how-to-be-heterosexual tips such as taking up rugby, abstaining from masturbation and distancing myself from gay friends.
When the results of my investigation were published last year in the Independent, it sparked widespread outrage. Not least because Pilkington claimed that she had had referrals to “treat” gay clients from the NHS GP surgery to which she is attached. As a result of the investigation, the British Medical Association passed a motion condemning conversion therapy and calling on the NHS to investigate instances where it may have unwittingly paid for it.
Just before its publication, in January 2010, I made a formal complaint about Pilkington to the BACP. But by last autumn, little had happened. Three dates for a hearing were made and then cancelled. The BACP, which has 32,000 members, explained that they couldn’t find people for the adjudication panel. Why? “The legal advice we’ve been given is that the panel members can’t be very religious but nor can they be overtly pro-gay,” said Fay Reaney from the professional conduct department. So in a complaint about racism would they therefore not allow someone on the panel who is strongly opposed to racism? “This is the advice we’ve been given,” she replied.
A new date – 20 January – was confirmed. Four days before the hearing Pilkington gave an interview to the Sunday Telegraph, contrary to BACP guidelines that neither party speak publicly about the case. I had not named her in my original article. She then went on the radio to talk about it. In response to Pilkington’s disclosures – 48 hours before the hearing was due to take place – the BACP adjourned it and issued us both with confidentiality agreements.
The signed agreements would have prevented either side from ever talking about the case. My barrister, Sarah Bourke, advised me not to sign. But I couldn’t decide. I didn’t want to jeopardise the case but was it worth pursuing if it could never be discussed publicly? The BACP wouldn’t tell me what would happen if I refused to sign.
Meanwhile, Pilkington’s representatives – the Christian Legal Centre – were making intriguing claims. On the day the hearing would have taken place, they stated that it had been postponed because one of the expert witnesses she had cited in her defence had been subject to “menacing phone calls, threats and intimidation”. I was the only person named in her lawyers’ statement. Although she submitted testimony from several witnesses, I never knew their names and the BACP did not call any of them.
But the Daily Mail ran a story regardless: “Trial of therapist who tried to ‘cure’ gay man is halted after 'expert defence witness is intimidated’,” screamed the headline. Countless Christian websites repeated the claims. Hate mail poured in. Pilkington continued to give interviews and gave a talk at another conversion-therapy conference in London. With the agreements unsigned, the BACP decided to go ahead regardless. What was the point of adjourning the case for four months? The BACP would not explain.
Finally, the date was set. During the hearing, Pilkington said she still “feels there’s a need” for my homosexuality to be treated. The panel asked her if it was good practice to say to someone who had stated they had not been sexually abused: “You’ve let things be done to you.” She replied: “It didn’t come across like that.”
Was it, the panel asked, her belief that homosexuality was wrong, sinful or unnatural? “Oh yes,” she replied. “There’s no question about that … but there’s a way out.”
Pilkington revealed that she was trying to convert another gay client to heterosexuality. But that now she’s “clearer” about it – she uses a contract adapted from a US-based conversion-therapy organisation. Equally startling, however, was what the panel asked me: on what basis did I assert that the BACP was publicly opposed to conversion therapy? I read aloud the letter the BACP had written to the Guardian in 2009 describing such therapy as “absurd” and stating that it “makes people with gay thoughts suffer extra pain”. The panel was unaware of the letter and the BACP’s position on the subject. After lunch the chair announced that they would disregard the statement as they “don’t know who authorised it”.
As the hearing progressed, I discovered the strain all complainants go through. I was cross-examined at length by Pilkington’s barrister and by the panel. How would someone with mental-health problems cope with that? And it isn’t just the emotional challenges that could deter a complainant. Without being well educated and having free legal help to interpret the BACP’s jargon-dense literature and legal letters, I would have found the process incomprehensible and intimidating.
The BACP’s ruling in the Pilkington case will, however, help to reassure the victims of conversion therapy. Since my first article was published dozens of people have contacted me describing their experiences. Young people whose parents had forced them into residential gay “cure” centres in the US deep south. Middle-aged men and women who wasted decades trying to be straight. Several people who had attempted suicide. One young man showed me the self-harm scars on his arms. I thought about him every day.
But although this case will serve as a precedent, it does not solve the wider problem. Even if Pilkington had been struck off completely she would still be able to carry on practising. Anyone can claim to be a therapist in Britain because there is no state regulation of the profession. “Psychotherapist” and “counsellor” are not protected titles. The BACP is a self-regulating, independent body. No one has to be a member. Thus you can’t stop a bad therapist seeing clients any more than you can a fortune-teller.
The previous government had planned to regulate counsellors and psychotherapists by bringing them under the Health Professions Council, in line with other health workers, such as chiropodists, hearing aid dispensers and art therapists. This would have provided a central body offering standardised codes of conduct. But, contrary to the advice of mental-health charities such as Mind, the coalition has decided not to do this. Instead, the HPC will introduce a voluntary register for therapists.
But there is another unsettling thread to this story: that of the psychiatrist. His name is Dr Paul Miller. After meeting him at the London conference, he agreed to “treat” me for my homosexuality via Skype – as he lives in Belfast. He claims to have “resolved” his own conflicted sexuality and is now married with children.
Miller told me that homosexuality “represents a pathology”. He added: “The men you were having sex with or falling in love with are just as wounded as you.” He concluded that because my father is a physicist, and I was always more creative, that prevented a “gender-affirming process” which in turn led to my sexualising men.
His advice was for me to have massages with male masseurs and to stand in front of the mirror naked, touching myself, thus somehow affirming my masculinity/heterosexuality. He told me to visualise a red light when aroused: “I want you to move that red from your genitals up into your chest,” he said.
I complained to the General Medical Council (the Royal College of Psychiatrists has no remit for disciplinary procedures). The RCPsych has stated: “There is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.” Yet the GMC let Miller off without even a warning – in fact, without even a hearing.
After receiving my complaint they appointed a consultant psychiatrist – whose identity was redacted – to write a report about the taped evidence I submitted. The crux of the report was that conventional therapeutic practices used by many psychotherapists have “as much or little scientific evidence” as conversion/reparative therapy. And yet reparative therapy is based on the work of self-proclaimed psychologist Elizabeth Moberly, who is not trained – her degree was in theology – and whose theories were not based on clinical research. The professional guideline document Good Psychiatric Practice, to which all psychiatrists are bound, states: “A psychiatrist must provide care that does not discriminate and is sensitive to issues of sexual orientation.” The GMC report relating to my experience concludes: “I do not consider that Dr Miller’s actions were inconsistent with Good Psychiatric Practice.” I will appeal.
Reaction to the report has been unrestrained. The psychiatrist and author Dr Max Pemberton told me: “The GMC’s decision is scandalous. Conversion therapy has been shown consistently to be dangerous and damaging. It is a disgrace that a qualified doctor is engaging in such practice, and an even greater disgrace that the GMC do not appear to feel that this warrants their attention.”
A 2002 study by US clinical psychologists Ariel Shidlo and Michael Shroeder found that 55% of patients experienced psychological harm from conversion therapy, the results of which included depression and suicide attempts.
Furthermore, as Michael King, professor of psychiatry at UCL, points out: “There is an error in the GMC’s logic: homosexuality is not a diagnosis. To therefore offer any kind of treatment can be damaging.” He added: “Self-regulation is a problem. Professions are inward looking. People don’t like to criticise each other.”
But until the government steps in, self-regulation will continue to protect psychiatrists and therapists. Dissatisfied patients, meanwhile, will be deterred from complaining.
Dr Miller is still practising in his clinic in Belfast. Lesley Pilkington can carry on charging patients and praying for God to “bring to the surface” their non-existent traumas. No one can stop them.
The Lawn Tennis Association, one of the first sporting national governing bodies to sign the new Charter launched by the government to tackle homophobia in sport, has joined Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme.
The Diversity Champions programme promotes a good working environment for all existing and potential employees and helps to ensure equal treatment for those who are lesbian, gay and bisexual.
The Lawn Tennis Association joins other sporting bodies including the Rugby Football League, Sport Wales, UK Sport, Youth Sport Trust and the Professional Footballers Association on the Diversity Champions programme that has more than 600 major employer members.
Members of the programme benefit from business benchmarking through the Workplace Equality Index, good practice seminars around the country and exclusive entry into Stonewall’s Starting Out Recruitment Guide that profiles gay-friendly employers.
Last year tennis topped an online poll by Stonewall as the most gay-friendly sport, with 65 per cent of the vote.
Roger Draper, LTA Chief Executive, said: “We were very pleased that tennis was voted the most LGB friendly sport last year and we look forward to building on the sport’s good reputation as a diverse and inclusive sport.
"By supporting and developing our staff through the Diversity Champions programme we’re sending out a message that all sports should be inclusive to people who are lesbian, gay or bisexual. Joining the Diversity Champions is a strong step towards achieving this in tennis, and we’re proud to join the programme.”
David Shields, Stonewall Director of Workplace Programmes said: “By joining the Diversity Champions programme the Lawn Tennis Association has joined the list of sporting organisations who recognise that people perform better when they can be themselves.
"Our members are forward thinking 21st century employers who want to recruit, recognise, and support the very best staff regardless of background. Good employers understand that providing support for all their staff improves their operational effectiveness.”

After making my way through The Ice Storm (which I had mixed feelings about), I started on Cheri by Colette. I adored Colette’s style of writing, and her amusing portrait of French society. In a similar way to Edith Wharton, she also managed to capture perfectly the very bittersweet sense of loss. Being a very slim work, I ripped through Cheri quickly and I am half tempted to watch the relatively recent film version starring Michelle Pfeiffer… though I’m not sure how well it translates into film.
The next book I tackled was The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. I was attracted to this book for two reasons - firstly I LOVED Saturday so was keen to read more of his work, and secondly (as pathetic as it sounds) I liked the cover design… It was a very interesting read, and the beginning of Maddona’s ‘What it feels like for a girl’ finally makes sense. It was bizarre and vivid in equal measures, and I’m glad I took a chance on it, though I’m not sure it is a book that I shall revisit in years to come.
On an impulse I picked up The Soft Machine by William Burroughs, and all I can say is 'wow’. It was incredibly surreal to read, more so than The Waves by Virginia Woolf, and I’ll be frank I found it hard going, and I’m not sure I “got it”. Also, I’m not sure any book has the word “cock” in it quite as many times that is not an erotic novel… I’m still not sure what to make of it…
Currently I am reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins which is much more within my comfort zone (not that I don’t like being challenged by what I read). I was a little weary when I learnt that it was an epistolary novel (memories of Richardson’s turgid Pamela resurfaced) but it has yet to get in the way of my enjoyment of it. Having taken a course on crime fiction at university, it’s interesting to see an early form of the genre, and to be honest it’s just good old fashioned fun, which is always appreciated.
Patrick Strudwick
Another bell for British gay equality is ringing out across the world . The UK is to end the ban on gay men donating blood. But read the not-so-small print, and that ringing sound becomes tinny, hollow. Only gay men who have not had sex in a decade will be able to give blood.
This proposal won’t help the young woman with a rare blood type, knocked over by a car, bleeding profusely. This won’t help the thousands of anaemic cancer sufferers needing a blood transfusion. This will help just one person: David Cameron.
He can now say he is making good on the coalition’s promises over gay equality. But like many of their other pledges in this area – in particular, to stop persecuted gay asylum seekers being sent back to their home country and to put pressure on foreign governments to protect their gay citizens – it’s all gong and no dinner.
And it affects everyone. Imagine just after reading this you receive a phone call. It’s the local hospital. A member of your family has been stabbed. They tell you that there isn’t enough blood locally. Would you rather your family member died or that they were given blood from a gay man who says he has never had unsafe sex?
This shortage scenario is not far-fetched. Indeed, in December, during the big freeze, fears grew that we would run out, so an appeal was issued for O-negative donors. Heterosexual donors that is.
But the effects go further. What message does a government send out when one group cannot give blood even if they have only ever had safe sex? Simple: “Gay men are not to be trusted over their sexual history.” In contrast, straight men who pay for sex can give blood a year later. It would seem that the NHS will believe people who say they are heterosexual, but not those gay people who profess to only ever playing safe.
I have always used condoms. I personally know of not a single heterosexual person who has used condoms every time they have had penetrative sex. But I do know of a heterosexual who refuses to give blood because of the ban: my mother. Unaware of the exclusions, she went along to her local clinic to become a donor. When she read the forms which detail those who are not permitted, she gave the paperwork back and announced: “If my son’s blood isn’t good enough for you, then nor is mine.”
Here’s another anomaly. I am on the bone marrow register. In fact, last year the Anthony Nolan Trust contacted me because I was a potential match for a woman who needed a transplant. So, my marrow is okay but not my blood?
I would happily donate blood every 16 weeks (the minimum time between donations). I would happily donate my blood to someone that despised me for being gay if it meant saving their life. But my country won’t allow me to help others.
Tonight there was a lesbian couple at the bus stop. They were both around 16-ish, and a bit vomit inducing with their cutesiness, but when one got on the same bus as me, she kissed her girlfriend goodbye… she was totally casual about it, and no one at the bus stop/ on the bus said anything or batted an eye lid. This progressive moment made me smile so much…. it seems the times they are a changin in the West Midlands…
Elizabeth Day, 27th March 2011
As a child in Uganda, John Bosco remembers hearing an old wives’ tale that if a man fell asleep in the sun and it crossed over him, he would wake up as a woman. “I used to try that as a kid,” says John now, some 30 years later. He sits at a table in a busy cafe across the road from the railway station in Southampton, his fingers playing with the handle of a glass of hot chocolate. “I’d spend all day lying under the sun. From childhood, I wanted to be a girl. I wanted dolls. At school, I played netball. I wanted to dress up like a girl … I rubbed herbs into my chest that were meant to make your breasts grow. I tried everything but it didn’t work.”
He tells me that there was not one single moment when he realised he was gay; that the knowledge of it had always been there, unexpressed until he found the right words. As he grew older, John started being attracted to men. On the radio, he heard stories of gay couples being beaten and killed by police. He says that if he could have changed himself, he would because he so desperately wanted to be considered “normal”, to fit in, to make his family proud.
When he went to university to study for a business administration degree, his relatives and neighbours in Kampala would ask why he never had a girlfriend. “I used lots of excuses – I’m not yet ready, or I have a girlfriend who doesn’t live in the same area,” he says. “It was difficult because you cannot be open [about your sexuality]. You can’t socialise like any other person. A lot of the time, you have to keep your distance. You feel you’re not yourself. It makes things really hard.”
This is the reality of being gay in modern Uganda, a place where homosexuality is criminalised under the penal code, punishable by life imprisonment. According to human rights organisations, about 500,000 homosexuals live in the country, unable to admit their sexuality for fear of violent retribution either from the police or their own communities. Anti-gay legislation is a relic of British colonialism, designed to punish what the imperial authorities thought of as “unnatural sex” – thinking that was subsequently reinforced by wave upon wave of Catholic missionaries.
Although much of that legacy has been dismantled as Uganda modernises, homophobia is as entrenched as ever. An anti-homosexuality bill, due to be discussed by parliament before June, advocates the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” –ie for gay people with HIV practising sex, or gay people who have sex with someone under 18. Known colloquially as the “kill the gays” bill, it would also make it a crime not to report someone you know to be a practising homosexual, thereby putting parents, siblings and friends at risk.
“One of the things the Ugandans say is that being gay is European culture, that it is un-African,” explains John, 31. “There is this idea that Europeans and Americans are recruiting people to be gay, giving them money to do it.”
Last October, the now defunct anti-gay Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stonepublished a list of the country’s “top 100” homosexuals under the headline “Hang Them”. In January, the prominent gay-rights activist David Kato was murdered – beaten to death in his home by a hammer-wielding thug. Gays, lesbians and transgendered people in Uganda face harassment, extortion, vandalism, death threats and violence on a daily basis. They can be sacked from employment if they are outed, forced to enter into heterosexual marriage and detained by the authorities without charge or access to legal defence. In some of the worst cases, they can be subjected to so-called “correctional rape”.
It is not only Uganda – for years, the developed world has turned a blind eye to the state-sanctioned persecution of homosexuals that exists in 38 out of 53 African nations, according to Human Rights Watch. Now, a new feature-length documentary film seeks to redress the balance. Getting Out, directed by film-maker Alexandra Chapman in conjunction with Christian Aid, tells the story of the gay refugees who are forced to flee discrimination in their own countries.
“It is very important for people in the west to understand that legalised and state-sanctioned homophobia is a reality in many parts of Africa,” says Dr Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University in Kampala, who was instrumental in the making of the film. Dolan, who campaigns extensively to protect the rights of beleaguered minorities in this corner of Africa, says that the political climate in Uganda “enables a wide range of abuses and violations that seriously diminish the quality of life of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, most of whom seek to stay under the public radar. It also places many such persons in serious and extreme danger.”
For John, the danger soon became too great to ignore. At his university freshers’ ball, he met and fell in love with a man called Aziz. The two of them were discreet, taking care not to be seen acting too intimately in public. In this way – never quite being honest, living in the half-shadows, always looking over their shoulders – their relationship continued after graduation when John took a well-paid job in a bank. When John first took Aziz home to visit his family, he was introduced as “my best friend. He became like another son to my mum. That was the way it was until 2001.”
Then everything changed. A group of John’s gay friends were arrested in a police crackdown. They were beaten and forced to give the names of other gay people they knew. John realised he had to get out. “I had to disappear,” he says. “I had some money saved up so I paid a private agency to get me a visa, a passport … I didn’t tell anybody I was leaving, not even my family. At first, I didn’t know where I was going. But then, luckily, the guy gave me a visa to the UK.”
John Bosco did not know it then, but his problems were only just beginning.
Florence Kizza smiles a lot. She has a sharp, pretty face with slanted eyes and straight, white teeth. When she talks, she does so in an even, clear voice, her faint Ugandan accent lending the words an irregular rhythm. We meet in a cafe in Richmond, Surrey, near to where she works as a bank clerk. Although the story she tells me is a horrific one, Florence does not show emotion as she recounts it, beyond a slight narrowing of the eyes, a glance to one side, a short pause in her narrative. She explains that to break down and cry would be to give into something she needs to resist. Because Florence is a woman who defines herself by her survival.
Florence is 32, Ugandan and a lesbian. She grew up in Najjanankumbi, on the southern edge of Kampala, the daughter of a prosperous businessman who sent Florence and her sister to a prestigious girls’ boarding school.
“I kind of knew [about my sexuality] at school, but those things you don’t talk about,” she says. “It’s something you never breathe out loud. I was brought up a Catholic. Every day, these pastors are preaching that a gay person should be stoned to death, that they should die. If you heard that, would you be open?”
When Florence was 16, both of her parents died of Aids within a year of each other. Florence was taken out of school and raised by relatives. The older she got, the more certain she became that she was gay. Lonely and increasingly isolated, she craved companionship. And then, buying food at the market one day, she met a woman called Susan, from the west of the country. “She spoke a different language,” says Florence, “but we just connected. We went for coffee, we talked and then we met up five more times.” Gradually, the two of them became closer but, like John Bosco, they were careful about how they acted together in public. Florence continued to live alone. Still, the fact that she was a woman of marriageable age without a husband aroused the suspicion of the local community.
In December 2000, neighbours broke into her house and found her in bed with Susan. The villagers stripped the two women naked, paraded them through the streets and then beat them in front of a baying crowd. “To say it was painful is an understatement,” says Florence now. “You can take being hit but being humiliated around God knows how many people – you lose your dignity. I felt, I wish I could die now.”
Banished from her village, Florence was forced to find somewhere else to stay. She spent the nights at Susan’s home, waking up early each morning to sneak out under cover of darkness. But however cautious she tried to be, it was never enough. In March 2001, Florence was arrested and, over a three-day period, was beaten and raped by three policemen at gunpoint. The assault was so ferocious that, 10 years on, Florence still bears the scars. It is cold when we meet and Florence is wearing a long-sleeved zip-up sweatshirt but, even in the milder weather, she does not like to show the twisted ridges of skin that snake all the way up her arms.
“Looking back, I think the police officers found me very challenging,” Florence says, and she half-closes her eyelids, as though squinting to make out a murky, distant shape. “There was a time when one of them hit me on the second day and I looked at him and I didn’t cry. I looked very, very calm. I told him: ‘Have you finished? It doesn’t hurt,’ and I laughed.” She looks up, meeting my gaze. “And he stopped.”
On the third day, Florence escaped when one of the policemen fell into a drunken stupor and she was able to steal the keys to her cell. She ran out into the streets and got a taxi to a friend’s house. She knew she had to get out of the country before the police tracked her down. She and Susan fled across the border to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, they paid a human trafficker to take them to the UK. “He said, OK, you have to pay a very big price. He asked for £20,000. I had to give up one of my dad’s plots of land as security.”
At the last minute, the trafficker said it was too dangerous for both Florence and Susan to travel at the same time. “He said, it’s one person, you choose. I said Susan should go because I was feeling ill, I didn’t have the energy. But they said I should go because my health was bad and I was the worst off.”
In September 2001, Florence flew to the UK and was taken by the trafficker to a B&B in Wembley, north London. He gave her a £50 note and left her there. At the age of 22, Florence was on her own in a sprawling foreign city with little money and no prospects. For days, she walked the streets, unsure of what to do or who to turn to. After her experiences in Uganda, she looked at everyone with mistrust and suspicion. She had to beg for money for food.
A man from a local church group eventually took her to the Home Office to seek refugee status but Florence was deeply intimidated by the interview process. “Basically, I didn’t trust authorities because of the bad experiences I had with them in Uganda,” says Florence. “The interviews were degrading. They would ask me to talk about my personal life, to explain how I had sex. The way they looked at me, I just thought, Jesus Christ, am I this disgusting? Honestly, I was so angry. They just had no idea.”
Already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, Florence’s symptoms got worse the further she travelled through the UK appeals system. Her initial application to stay was refused, on the grounds that she would be safe if she returned to Uganda, relocated to a different area of the country and acted “discreetly”.
According to Erin Power, the group manager of the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, a large part of the problem for gay Ugandan refugees is an unwillingness to talk openly about a sexual identity that they have had to keep secret all their lives, often even from themselves. “If they do what they’re supposed to do and approach the Home Office as soon as they land in the UK, you’re asking them to go up to a figure of authority in a uniform and tell them they’re gay,” says Power. “But that is the person who, in their country, will persecute them for speaking openly.
"We have clients who have never said they’re gay before. The idea that they can identify themselves is problematic because often they have kept it secret all their lives … Some clients have never had sex, but we argue that being LGBT is not about who you have sex with, it’s about who you are and what your identity is. We’ve struggled to get the Home Office not to focus on sex. Up till now you’ve had to prove two things: one, that you’re gay or lesbian and two, that your country’s dangerous.”
How do you prove you’re gay? Power laughs. “Everyone always asks that.”
John Bosco was facing similar problems in a different part of town. Having arrived in London with £600, John found a room to rent in Manor Park, north London. “I thought, if I can get to an English-speaking country, I’ll be OK. As soon as I get there, I can get a job because I have qualifications. I didn’t know the asylum system at all.”
When he tried to apply for jobs, he was told he needed a national insurance number. “I didn’t know what it was,” says John. Eventually, a group of Jamaicans he met on the street directed him to the UK Border Agency offices in Croydon. But instead of what he thought would be a straightforward interview, John says he was stripped naked, asked for his fingerprints, bundled into a van and taken to the Oakington immigration detention centre in Cambridgeshire.
Here, he spoke to the authorities through a translator, but the interpreter was from a different part of Uganda and did not speak the same tribal language so John’s statement was littered with inconsistencies. John, terrified as to how the UK authorities might react, did not tell them that he was gay and that this was the real reason he had fled Uganda. “They asked me if I wanted a solicitor,” he says now, shaking his head. “I didn’t know what this word meant.”
Failing to make himself understood or to provide a consistent story to explain his refugee status ended up costing John dearly. From Oakington, he was taken to Haslar, an immigration removal centre run by the prison service in Portsmouth. For the first few weeks, he had no change of clothes and had to wash his single pair of underpants every day. When a local volunteer visited him to ask if he needed any help, John finally confessed everything.
“When she asked me, 'Why did you leave?’ I said because of my sexuality. She said: 'That’s OK, that’s not a problem.’ I had to sit back like this.” He leans back in his cafe chair, crossing his arms over his chest with an expression of shock in his eyes. “I was shivering. I’d never had anyone talk to me like that. She was the first person I’d ever told about my sexuality and she was nice to me.” He breaks off, bows his head and rapidly wipes his eyes.
After four months in Haslar, John was given leave to stay in the UK but the Home Office appealed against the decision. For the next six years, from 2002 to 2008, John’s life became an exhausting cycle of legal battles. He got a job working at a mental health charity in Southampton and poured £21,000 of his own money into solicitors’ fees. In 2008, during a routine visit to the police station (the terms of his leave to remain in the country required that he report to the police once a month), he was manhandled into a van, taken to the airport and put on a flight back to Uganda.
“I was thinking, just kill me. I have no friends, no relatives, nothing. How long is this going to go on? I’m not going to change myself to be accepted.”
As with Florence Kizza, the judge in charge of his case had decided that John would face no immediate danger if he returned to Uganda, changed his behaviour and moved to a different part of the country to live “discreetly”. This was in spite of the fact that John’s photograph had been printed on the front page of a national newspaper in Uganda only a few weeks before he was deported. Living discreetly was just about the last thing he could do.
Within days of touching down in Kampala, John was arrested. The police threw him into a cell with several other inmates and subjected him to regular beatings. “The beatings are not something you can say you get used to,” he says now. “It’s something you expect.”
He bribed the police to release him with the little money he had left and went into hiding for six months. In the end, his solicitors won him refugee status for five years and he was flown back to the UK. But the leave expires in 2014 and John still lives in a state of anxious uncertainty, isolated from his family, friends and his former boyfriend Aziz, all of whom he has found it impossible to trace.
“I have bad dreams still: people chasing me, being beaten up,” he says. “Sometimes I sleep and then I think, what will happen after 2014? All I want is freedom, where I can be who I am.”
Florence was granted permanent refugee status last year. Since leaving Uganda, she has completed a degree in business management at Kingston University. For a while she worked for a supermarket; now she has a job in the offices of a high-street bank in Twickenham, London. She never heard from her girlfriend Susan again. “We tried really hard to locate her,” she says, her voice drained of emotion. “I think I’m getting used to it.”
In July 2010, the UK’s Supreme Court categorically denounced the “discretion reasoning” that had been central to the rejection of both Florence’s and John’s refugee claims, ruling that the decision failed to recognise the human rights of homosexuals and breached the UN refugee convention. The Home Office has since produced a set of guidelines, in consultation with asylum groups, on how to assess the validity of such claims, and all senior case-workers have been put through a one-day training session on the connected issues. “That process finished at the end of February,” says Erin Power, “so we don’t know what the outcome will be. Obviously we hope there will be some improvement because some of the interviewing was horrific, quite honestly.”
Back in the cafe in Southampton, John’s hot chocolate has gone cold. He says he misses his family “all the time” and does not have much of a social life, feeling too black to be fully welcomed by the predominantly white gay community in this part of the world, and too gay to be fully accepted by the straight people he meets. He spends most of his evenings and weekends in a rented room watching TV soaps. “Calling the memories back stresses me out,” he says, at the end of our conversation. “But the reason I do it is because if I don’t, people won’t understand what is happening, especially the people in Uganda who do not have a voice. The only way they will understand is for me to tell you about it.”
As he pushes his chair neatly under the table, he says that he is plagued by two questions. “I ask myself all the time, why was I born gay? And if I was born gay, why was I born in Africa?”
He leaves, letting the cafe door slide silently shut behind him, turning back to give me a wave and a smile through the window as he goes. Perhaps there will never be an answer. But for now, at least, John Bosco is free to pose the questions out loud.

After reading Mr Norris Changes Train it seemed appropriate that I continue the Berlin theme with Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin. I found it to be compelling, and gripping despite knowing how inevitable the tragic ending would be. I wish my German was better so I could have read the original version of the text, but I still felt I got a lot of enjoyment out of it.
I followed it with By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham. I had read The Hours and enjoyed it (an admission that would crush Dr Sutton who taught the Virginia Woolf module I took at university), so was curious to see what it was like. I was worried that I had made a mistake in buying it after a few pages as it felt a bit forced, but that feeling soon evaporated as Cunningham’s prose became beautiful and washed over me. The story touched me, and I found myself wanting to know what happened to the protagonist after the story came to its conclusion… one of those books, like A Single Man, where I found myself wishing for a sequal but knowing that I would not want to read it in case it spoilt the original (which it undoubtedly would).
The next book I avidly consumed was Amateur City, which is the first in the Kate Delafield series by Katherine Forest. I found Murder by Tradition incredibly empowering so was excited to read this book. It was engaging and a nice change of pace.
Currently I’m reading The Ice Storm by Rick Moody. It’s probably something I’d enjoy more if I had lived through the 1970s but it is witty, and the characters are bizarrely compelling.
Where are they now, those brave little books released into the community on Saturday – World Book Day – sometimes delivered by the very hand that wrote them? Many, I fear, will already be languishing under coffee cups, blocking draughts from windows, or gathering dust on a shelf, serving a strictly ornamental purpose.
The good-hearted people who were giving away books in the hope of winning new converts to literature were unfortunately not able to provide those other essential ingredients that reading requires: time and a modicum of solitude. Leisure now demands as much effort as work. It is easier to be swept along on the babbling torrent of busy, interactive, chatty modern life than to allow oneself the time to read a book, to listen to music, or even to think.
So addicted to movement and noise have we become that not being in company has become a source of embarrassment, associated with social defeat. A survey has just been published which reveals that, of 5,000 people questioned, more than one in four admitted to lying regularly about what they have done over the weekend. Most claimed to have gone out with friends on a Saturday night, while others pathetically invented dinner parties or claimed to have gone for a weekend break.
“It’s the horrible feeling that everyone else is having a better time than us, going away, partying or having fun,” a Professor of Stating-the-Bleeding-Obvious Studies has concluded, without asking why staying at home should be associated with dullness and boredom. The compulsion to surround oneself with company – almost any company – is a powerful modern addiction.
The great eroder of tranquillity has been the computer. Life may be easier thanks to the new technology, but the old idea that it would be a labour-saving device which would herald a golden age of leisure has turned out to be a joke in poor taste. It is work which has been liberated, and it follows us around wherever we are.
Leisure itself has become more frenetic and competitive. The computerisation of our social life means friendship has been ratcheted up into a numbers game. Quantity is all: the number of friends or followers you have, whether you are liked or unliked, favourited or unfavourited.
The restless busyness of the internet has infected every aspect of our lives. According to the American psychiatrist Dr Elias Aboujade, whose new book Virtually You adds to the growing body of evidence pointing to the neurological harm which computers can cause, those who spend a significant time online will develop an alternative personality, which is an extreme, unattractive version of their real selves – more e-abusive, more e-sexually perverse, more e-quarrelsome and e-bullying. Not only does it unleash our worst mob instincts, it allows us to remain anonymous. Aboujade argues that this dysfunctional online persona soon infects the real world.
The buzz of communication and interaction is addictive. One in five people now eat their dinners in front of computers, according to yet another depressing survey. Even when we are eating, we have to remain in touch, to be dementedly multi-tasking.
Who could be surprised that people have begun to feel ashamed about staying in, that they lie about what they do over the weekend? Not to be busy is not to be truly alive. Silence has become the enemy. Even in the debate that surrounds libraries, there is a school of opinion that these institutions should be about vibrancy and social interaction. The act of reading in an atmosphere of quiet is now eccentric, old-fashioned, out of touch with the real world.
In the noise and hectic forward movement of modern life, something quiet, personal and important is danger of being drowned out.
Tomorrow I shall be 24 on the 24th… today is my last day of being 23 (on the 23rd). Freaky.

It had been ages since I had baked anything, so on Sunday I went about changing that…
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Ingredients:
Method:
Ministers are expected to publish plans to enable same-sex couples to “marry” in church, the BBC has learned.
Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose lifting the ban on civil partnerships taking place in religious settings in England and Wales.
There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.
Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the change was “long overdue”.
Civil partnership ceremonies are currently entirely secular.
It is not clear whether the proposals will suggest that civil ceremonies in religious surroundings could incorporate elements such as hymns or Bible readings or be formally described as marriages.
It is thought this might be part of a consultation process.
Equality Act
Marriage between people of the same gender is not legal in the UK but civil partnerships were introduced in 2005 to give couples the same legal protection as if they were wed.
The proposals were welcomed by gay rights campaigners but may raise the ire of many churchgoers.
Mr Tatchell said: “Permitting faith organisations to make their own decision on whether to conduct same-sex civil partnerships is the democratic and decent thing to do.
"The current law prevents them from doing so, even if they want to. No religious institution will be forced to perform civil partnerships if they do not wish to do so.”
The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, gave the news a guarded welcome.
He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he “believes in a liberal democracy, and actually wants equality with everybody”.
A Church of England spokesman said: “Given the Church’s view on the nature of marriage, the House of Bishops has consistently been clear that the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register civil partnerships.”
He added the worry was that any changes could “lead to inconsistencies with civil marriage, have unexplored impacts, and lead to confusion, with a number of difficult and unintended consequences for churches and faiths”.
“Any change could therefore only be brought after proper and careful consideration of all the issues involved, to ensure that the intended freedom for all denominations over these matters is genuinely secured,” he said.
The Sunday Telegraph claims the decision to push ahead with the legislation is a victory for Mrs Featherstone and her fellow Liberal Democrats.
The Roman Catholic Church has long held that homosexuality is a “deviation” and is not expected to agree to same-sex ceremonies.
The legislation would also cover synagogues and mosques although homosexual relationships are forbidden under Islam and Orthodox Judaism.
But Quakers, Unitarians, and liberal Jews are thought to be more sympathetic to the idea, says the newspaper.
In February last year several senior Anglican clergymen wrote to The Times calling for the law to be changed.
The group of clerics, which includes the Bishop of Salisbury, the Dean of Southwark and five former bishops, said: “Straight couples have the choice between civil marriage and religious marriage. Gay couples are denied a similar choice.”
The move follows an amendment to the Equality Act by Lord Alli, a Labour peer.
That amendment, which would not force religious venues to accept gay couples, has not yet been implemented and would require a standing order.
The BBC understands Mrs Featherstone has been consulting with gay and lesbian groups and churches about this issue and is expected to make an announcement within the next few weeks.
According to reports, the government plans would also see straight couples being allowed to become civil partners.
On Friday, the Protection of Freedoms Bill included plans to lift a ban on night-time weddings and also gave gay men the right to clear their name by removing out-of-date convictions for consensual acts.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The government is currently considering what the next stage should be for civil partnerships, including how some religious organisations can allow same-sex couples to register their relationship in a religious setting if they wish to do so.
"Ministers have met a range of people and organisations to hear their views on this issue. An announcement will be made in due course.”
The Office Of National Statistics reported in May 2010 that 26,000 same-sex couples had undergone civil partnerships.
Three times last night whilst I was asleep I sat up and “ate and drank”, or at least I clearly thought I did in my dream state, but in reality I was just flailing my limbs around and freaking out my fiance. FUN.
I am exhausted. I have spent all week trying to brainwash small children into being gay, by relentlessly inserting homosexuality into their maths, geography and science lessons. Their little eyes widened when the gay algebra lesson started, but it worked: their concept of “normal sexual behaviour” has been successfully destroyed. It’s all part of the program brilliantly co-ordinated by the Homintern to imposed The Gay Agenda on Every Aspect of British Life.
That, at least, is what you would believe if you had read some of Britain’s best-selling newspapers this week, or listened to some prominent Tory politicians. The headlines were filled with fury. The Conservative MP Richard Drax said gays were trying to impose “questionable sexual standards” on kids, while the Daily Mail said we were mounting a massive “abuse of childhood.”
Here’s what is actually happening. A detailed study by the Schools Health Education Unit found that in Britain today, 70 percent of gay children get bullied, 41 percent get beaten up, and 17 percent get told at some point in their childhood that they are going to be killed.
I’ll tell you the story of just one of them. Jonathan Reynolds was a 15-year old boy from Bridgend in South Wales who was accused – accurately or not, we’ll never know – of being gay. He was yelled at for being a “faggot” and a “poof”. So one day, he sat a GSCE exam – later graded as an A - and went to the train tracks near his school and lay on them. He texted his sister: “Tell everyone that this is for anybody who eva said anything bad about me, see I do have feelings too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust to me, see I do have feeling too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust to me. This is because of them, I am human just like them. None of you blame yourself, mum, dad, Sam and the rest of the family. This is not because of you.” And then the train killed him.
I guess nobody told Jonathan Reynolds that, as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it, “just about everything in Britain is now run according to the gay agenda.” The great Gay Conquest didn’t make it from her imagination to his playground, or any playground in Britain. Gay kids are six times more likely to commit suicide than their straight siblings. Every week, I get emails from despairing gay kids who describe being thrown against lockers, scorned by their teachers if they complain, and – in some faith schools – told they will burn in Hell. Every day they have to brave playgrounds where the worst insult you can apply is to call something “gay”. They feel totally lost. This could have been your child, or my child, or Melanie Phillips’ child.
Is it “political correctness” and “McCarthyism” to try to ensure these kids can feel safe in their own schools – or is it basic decency? A few very mild proposals were made this week for how to change the attitudes behind this. They came from an excellent organization called Schools Out, which is run with a small grant from the tax-payer. They gave out a voluntary information pack in which they suggested that, to mark LGBT History Month, teachers acknowledge the existence of gay people in their lessons. They could teach in history about how Alan Turing played a vital role in saving the world from the Nazis and paved the way for the invention of the computer, only to be hounded to death for being gay. They could learn in science that homosexuality occurs in hundreds of species of animals. They could – yes! – maybe even look in maths lessons at the census data, figuring out how prevalent gay people are.
We know that these lessons work in making gay kids much safer. The Schools Health Education Unit found that homophobic violence was dramatically lower in schools that taught about homosexuality. Good schools like Stoke Newington Secondary that followed this program were assessed to have “virtually eliminated homophobic bullying.” That has a very powerful educational purpose: when gay kids feel safe, they can learn.
Yet these pragmatic policies to make kids safe were presented as a wicked plot to endanger children. We can’t stop the endemic intimidation and violence if every time there is a policy to do it, it is grossly distorted and demonized in this way. The critics even whispered that gays want to “impose” sexuality on kids – with hints of the ugliest and oldest lie about gay men, that they are paedophiles.
Yet in one strange way, the current backlash is reassuring. When I was a kid in the 1980s, these sentiments were so widespread that a law – Section 28 – was passed to resolve them, and the cowed critics were derided as “the loony left.” Today, the opinion polls show 80 percent of the British people support gay marriage, and the people offering these views are regarded as the loons. It’s worth pausing and saying to all the people who have been open to persuasion and have changed their minds on this question: thank you. It’s incredibly moving to see how many heterosexual people have rallied to the defence of gay people, and it’s a reminder that we will never go back now.
But this anti-equality shouting still has an effect. It stops many schools from pursuing sensible policies that would save kids like Jonathan Reynolds, for fear of being accused of “political correctness gone mad” – so it’s important to answer the arguments now.
These critics don’t appear to understand what homosexuality actually is. In every human society that has ever existed, and ever will, some 3 to 10 percent of the population has wanted to have sex with their own gender. This is a fixed and unchangeable reality. The only choice is whether you are pointlessly cruel to them, or accept their harmless difference. Homosexuality is “normal sexual behaviour”: it occurs wherever human societies exist. It is not engaged in by a majority, but using that logic, Jews and Muslims are “abnormal” in Britain too – an ugly and foolish claim.
Informing children about these facts can’t make them gay. Nothing can. You can no more teach a child homosexuality than you can teach them left-handedness. Oddly, the homophobes seem to understand this about their own sexuality, but not about other people’s. I once asked Michael Howard, the architect of Section 28, if he would be gay now if he had been taught to be as a child. He moved very anxiously in his seat and mumbled something incoherent.
In order to justify their desire to discriminate against gay people, the few remaining homophobes have concocted a scenario where they are The Real Victims. They can say what they want, set up churches or mosques that preach what they want, and turn away gay people from their homes every day of the week if they so desire – and I would defend every one of those rights to the last ditch. There is only one thing they can’t do. They can’t choose to offer a service to the general public, and then turn people away on the basis of race or sexuality. They can’t put up de facto signs saying ‘No blacks, no Irish, no gays’ at their B&B.
This isn’t a form of prejudice – it is a way of preventing prejudice. Nobody will ever force you to work in a registry office or open a B&B, but if you choose to, you can’t reject the gay couples and expect to remain in post. (In one case where this happened, they offered her a job in the office instead, but she chose to be a bizarre cause célèbre of prejudice instead.) Services for the general public have to be available without contamination by bigotry. It’s a simple principle. Don’t demand the right to spit in the face of gay people, and claim you’re being picked on when you’re asked to stop.
Yes, I know your religious texts mandate bigotry against gay people. They also mandate slavery and stoning adulterers, and they laud a God who feeds small children to bears (see II Kings ii, 23-24). As secular morality has evolved, you have managed to overcome those beliefs. Here’s another that has to catch up. If you are really going to defend Biblical or Koranic literalism, you’ll end up as Stephen Green, head of the tiny Christian Voice sect, who argues that there is biblical authority for the legalisation of rape by husbands. So febrile is the atmosphere in Uganda that David Kato, the incredibly brave campaigner for gay equality, was just lynched as part of the hate-wave.
When people say that a “deeply held religious conviction” should enable you to break anti-discrimination laws and treat gay people as second class citizens, I reply – what about the Mormons? Until 1975, they believed black people did not have souls. (They only changed their minds when the Supreme Court ruled it illegal, and God conveniently appeared to say they did have souls after all.) Should they have been allowed to run adoption agencies that refused to give babies to black people, because of their “deeply held religious conviction”?
But there is an even lower point in the homophobes’ rhetorical arsenal. Being subjected to bullying and violence as children and teenagers makes gay people unusually vulnerable to depression and despair. The homophobes then use that depression and despair to claim that homosexuality is inherently a miserable state – and we shouldn’t do anything that might “encourage” it. They create misery, and then use it as a pretext to create even more misery.
Yet Melanie Phillips, Richard Drax and the last raging band of homophobes are right about one thing. There is a “Gay Agenda.” They are only wrong about its contents. It has one item on the list, and one item only: to ensure that gay people are treated exactly the same as everybody else. That’s it. That’s all. That’s the sum total of our ambitions. To get there we may – yes – have to mention the existence of gay people in schools. It is the only way to save kids like Jonathan Reynolds, and make sure everyone knows – as he said in his final text, before the train hit – “I am human just like them.”
POSTSCRIPT
As a side-note, it’s especially galling to be accused of endangering children by Melanie Phillips, the journalist in Britain who has done more to recklessly endanger children than any other I can think of. She was the leading journalistic champion of the false claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism. She refused to listen to the overwhelming scientific consensus and instead promoted the claims of a fraudster called Andrew Wakefield. After she played a key role in spreading and popularizing his claims, the rate of children being vaccinated plummeted, and several have died.
Even after the British Medical Journal concluded that Wakefield staged an “elaborate fraud”, she has refused to apologise. I’d say persuading parents not to give their kids a life-saving vaccine based on the claims of a charlatan was a bigger “abuse of childhood” than teaching them that gay people exist, wouldn’t you?
Beggars can’t be choosers bullies, or rather they shouldn’t be. I am very open to the idea of donating money to homeless charities, and am an occasional buyer of The Big Issue (let’s face it no one buys it to actually read it), but I resent people begging for short change - something I don’t carry generally, and would be suspicious about giving.
The homeless people that ask for change whilst sat on the floor, wrapped in cardboard to try to keep warm, I genuinely feel sorry for. I would like to give them change if I had it, but have grown up being told by teachers not to. We were always taught to give money to the charities helping the homeless rather than to the specific homeless people, I think because then you know the money is being used for the right reasons. Cynical? Very much so.
Last week I met the other kind of homeless person (twice) or in these cases “homeless” person. Whilst waiting for my bus to work in Birmingham a twitchy, angry guy came over and started talking to me. He asked me if I would help a homeless person if I saw one… then he asked if I would buy him a hot drink since it was such a cold day… so was he saying he was homeless? I assume so. His tone was threatening, and made me feel uncomfortable. I was not convinced he was homeless, and I was late for work. So I walked/ran away to a different bus stop. Cowardly move I know, but no one else was about and I was feeling like I was about to be mugged…
Whilst waiting for my bus home that night, a lady approached me to ask if I had any change. I assumed it was for the bus/ something else, and had to tell her that I didn’t carry change as I had a bus pass (true for the most part, I believe I had about 10p in change on me). She then asked if she could use my phone… what?? I told her that I didn’t want to give my phone to a stranger… she said she wouldn’t run off with it… well she would say that wouldn’t she? The bus arrived and I thought that would end things, but no. She had a frickin bus pass, so got on and proceeded to ask to borrow the phone of every person on the bus. No one did. I felt bad, but confused, and justified in my decision, as she could have taken the phone and run off with it…. I was about to tell her about dialling a reverse charge call at a phone box but didn’t.
The incidents made me feel unnerved and ashamed in equal measures. Maybe my actions were cynical and selfish, but I’m not sure I’d do anything differently if similar situations arose in the future.

In December I finished Saturday by Ian McEwan, and was at a lost as to what I should follow it with. After reading such a great book, I struggled to settle on my next read. I tried reading Flush by Virginia Woolf (having already read all her other novels with the exception of Night and Day as part of my degree), but I failed to get into it… one for another day I think.
I went through a week without reading anything, then it was Christmas time and I went home to my parents’ house. My salvation came in the form of five great books that I really wanted to read amongst my presents on Christmas morning. I started Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis on Boxing Day and had devoured it by the following day. I wrote my dissertation on Ellis in the Autumn of 2009, and when Imperial Bedrooms came out last summer I knew I wanted to read it (it had originally been scheduled for release whilst I was writing my diss. which had concerned me a lot) but having spent so much time with his works, I need time away from him… I have to say I was mildly disappointed by Imperial Bedrooms. It was amusing and surprisingly streamlined given the sizes of Glamorama and Lunar Park, but I felt like Clay no longer sounded like Clay… he sounded like the fictitious version of Bret himself from Lunar Park. A minor quibble about was a great and challenging piece of literature, but I’m still concerned that Ellis is starting to become unable to create a voice that does not sound like his own.
When I returned to Wolverhampton (and to work), I started to read Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood and loved it to pieces. I read A Single Man last year and was impressed, but I almost feel that Mr Norris… is a stronger piece. Well maybe not, but I loved it all the same. Arthur Norris is a wonderful creation, and Isherwood presents a vivid image of 1930s Berlin. I thoroughly encourage all to READ READ READ.
What next? I’m not sure. Maybe I should return to my fiance’s list of political theory books (yay… *cough*), or maybe I should read another of Joseph Hanson’s great detective books… hmm…
When I hear an automated voice announce the above at a train station it makes my blood boil. Are you really sorry? I seriously doubt it. At Birmingham New Street station I have serious reservations about whether they care about providing a decent service at all let alone whether they mind delayed trains considering they have so many of them daily.
Every train I have tried to catch this week from New Street has been delayed by at least 15 minutes. On Monday my train was delayed by 25 minutes, on Tuesday I got on a train that was delayed because it could not leave until a different delayed train had left (I had just got off said train and run across the station to catch what I had presumed would be an earlier leaving train. It was not), on Wednesday my train was delayed for 15 minutes and yesterday set an all time low for my New Street experiences.
I was allowed to leave work early and arrived at New Street at 18:17. There was a delayed train to Manchester scheduled to leave at that time (perhaps the first sign that I shouldn’t try and catch it), so I rushed down and managed to get on it and even find a seat. 10 minutes passed and then we were told that the driver had yet to arrive… another 8 minutes and we were advised to catch different trains… I had passed on three other trains that would have got me home by committing to the delayed train. I should have changed trains as soon as they announced the absence of a driver, but I foolishly believed that they had meant he would be arriving shortly, and was still smarting from what had happened on Tuesday. I did get on a train that was also delayed, but only by 3 minutes…
In the new year I shall have to pay more money for this overcrowded, incompetant service… I’m sorry what?
On the train home from Birmingham the other day, I overheard a man complaining about home people on the tube in London push and shove. I had to restrain myself from turning around and telling him that I preferred aggressive behaviour to the dawdling and down right stupidity that goes on in the streets and public transport in Birmingham.
In a hurry? Need to run down an escalator or flight of steps to make your train home? Rarely possible at Birmingham New Street Station. People there are content to stand side by side on escalators and not allow anyone passed. A woman recently decided not to take the lift down to the platform, but to try to wheel her pram down the steps - there was no child in it, just her mountain of stuff. There is a ramp that leads up into the Pallasades shopping centre (through which I get to New Street Station) and there are signs on it saying ‘Keep Left’, and there is a big yellow line down the middle of the ramp. Very few people follow this advice. Meandering in large, slow moving groups is way more fun.
This kind of behaviour would not fly in London. People who don’t stand on the right of escalators are shouted at, shoved out of the way and generally made to feel like the morons they are. A group of people with large cases once decided that right at the bottom of an escalator was the perfect place to stop. During the morning rush hour. They were soon made to see the errors of their way. Plus, they were a health hazard as they were preventing people getting off of the escalator.
So I would happily take the hostile London attitude over the lazy Birmingham one because at least it means I would get where I was going in a timely manner… or that I could at least glare at the person who prevented me from doing so.
Yesterday I was on the bus home from work when a shifty guy sat down behind me. I must stress that I work in a very deprived part of Birmingham, which has high crime levels etc etc. I was on my i-phone and immediately regretted having it out. The guy was making strange sounds behind me, and I was convinced he was going to mug me either whilst I was still on the bus, or as soon as I got off it…
I was wrong.
Whilst rushing to get off the bus I had manage to drop my Network West Midlands pass, and who picked up and returned it to me? My potential mugger. I had stereotyped the guy based on his ethnicity, his appearance and where he was travelling from. Does this mean I should stop being so judgemental? Maybe a little less, but I’m not sure that it’s something I can stick to…
I appreciate that it’s cold outside (actually it’s incredibly cold outside at the moment), and that everyone gets a bit under the weather sometimes, but that doesn’t excuse three things: excessive coughing, sniffing and throat clearing on public transport. And I shall explain why…
1. Coughing - OK so it’s an uncontrollable reaction, but seriously at least put your hand over your mouth, and if it’s so bad that you can’t stop doing it for 30 mins then perhaps you should be in bed or at least have a glass or water.
2. Sniffing - Blow. Your. Nose.
3. Throat Clearing - Perhaps the most annoying of all. Do I need to explain why?
OK I’m calm again now. Maybe I have been a little harsh, as let’s face it when I’m sick (which will inevitably happen sometime in the next six months) I will expect everyone to be sympathetic and excuse my sniffing/coughing/sneezing… though I will at least carry a big pack of tissues with me…
If I were to hazard a guess, I would estimate that over 50% of blogs written by a blogger who seriously intends on maintaining it contain a post apologising for not posting for weeks/ months. After noticing the gap of almost a week between posts from earlier in the month, I felt compelled to apologise and grovel and promise to write more regularly… But, I have decided that I wont.
Maybe it’s an English thing, but I spend half my life apologising for things, even when I’m not at fault - someone isn’t looking where they are going, they bump into me, and I say sorry. The apology has lost all sincerity through overuse… but that’s another issue for another post, what I want to explain is why I wont apologise for not writing in my blog (if anyone has foolishly continued reading up to this point).
In my mind a blog is somewhere where you can express your opinions, somewhere you can process what is going on in your mind, and somewhere you can share pretty pictures/ interesting articles/ fun videos. However it is not an obligation. Although of course the point of having a blog is to write posts for it, if we have nothing that we want to share then there is no point blogging about nothing… let’s face it we have all posted something for the sake of posting something and perhaps been mildly disappointed that we had to resort to it.
My reason for not posting (if I need an excuse, which I of course don’t yet still feel compelled to give…) is that I have been busy with work. I have had time to post, but not the energy. I have kept a list of ideas for posts (lots of tennis related ideas, which I suddenly realised last week was something I had intended to post about a lot), and hopefully I will get round to them in a speedy fashion, if not then don’t hold your breath for an apology… [I’m sorry if this came across as rude…]
I made a lemon drizzle cake for the Mr’s birthday a couple of weeks back, but have been slow to post it on here because it was a bit of a disappointment. Firstly it didn’t rise very much (which was undoubtedly my fault), and secondly it was just so extremely lemon-y. Far too lemon-y in fact. And we both like lemon deserts… Anyway, I have copied it out below and I’m sure an able baker can rectify it to make it more enjoyable.
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Having finally waded my way through all 90 pages of The Prince, it’s finally time for me to start reading something else. I would like to say that my slow progress through Machiavelli’s text was due to busyness but since I didn’t start working until last Monday there really is no excuse… still I read it, digested it, vaguely remember some of his key concepts, and now have the delicious satisfaction of knowing that I have indeed read it.
Now I shall be reading Saturday by Ian McEwan. I have only ever read one other book by McEwan, Enduring Love, which I enjoyed, so I’m looking forward to trying another one. The Mr’s father leant me his copy of Saturday so I guess I really will need to crack on with i! I will update you with my thoughts/ ramblings on it if I have any once I have finished it.

The Mr asked me to make a biscuit-y treat that he could bring into the office on his birthday last week. He had mentioned millionaire’s shortbread a few days earlier, and so I thought I’d take a risk and make it. I made ‘Black Millionaire’s Shortbread’ which uses treacle and golden syrup instead of caramel, which results in a really rich end result.
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Dear reader I married him. Not quite. I am employed.

The Mr was determined that we go full throtle this Halloween, so last Monday we carved a pumpkin (see the post below) and yesterday we baked Halloween biscuits. We used a recipe from the BBC website, but cut the dough into circles as we didn’t have “Halloween-style biscuit cutters” because we are not that tacky (yet). We then proceeded to decorate our biscuits and swiftly realised that we both suck at using icing. The biscuits in the photo are our best attempts and I’m sure anyone reading this will struggle to identify what half of them are supposed to be of. The recipe says the mix should make 6-8 biscuits, we doubled it thinking that the aforementioned estimate was stingy, and ended up with over 30… the Mr then mentioned how he only really wanted “one or two”. I was not pleased.
The recipe below is the one given on the BBC website. The quantities seem at times a bit random, so I would strongly suggest using it as a guide and just winging it. Happy Halloween!
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From yesterday’s Guardian newspaper:
A north London school which has developed lessons on gay historical figures who suffered persecution claims to have succeeded in “more or less eliminating homophobic bullying” in its classrooms and playgrounds over the last five years.
The life story of the wartime code-breaker Alan Turing is among those being used to tackle homophobia. Authors Oscar Wilde and James Baldwin and artist Andy Warhol also feature.
Now Stoke Newington secondary plans to share the lessons with hundreds of primary and secondary school teachers. By the summer, it will have trained more than a hundred teachers in how to “educate and celebrate” being gay.
Turing, a mathematician who cracked German codes in the second world war, was prosecuted in 1952 for his homosexuality, which was then a crime. He was forced to decide between prison and taking female hormones to reduce his libido, and chose the latter. An inquest into his death – two years after his prosecution – returned a verdict of suicide.
Last year, Gordon Brown offered a posthumous government apology for the way Turing had been treated for being gay.
Elly Barnes, a music teacher, devised the lesson plans and training course with the help of colleagues. Her concern began when she heard a pupil say their “pen was so gay” when it snapped in two. Barnes’s aim is to “eradicate homophobia from all schools” by giving staff the confidence and resources required to tackle the prejudice.
Earlier this month, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission published a report, How Fair is Britain?, which found two-thirds of lesbian, gay and transgender students had suffered homophobic bullying, and 17% had received death threats.
Nearly half of secondary school teachers in England believe homophobic bullying is common. Only one in six believes their school is active in promoting the rights of gay pupils, the commission found.
“Many schools haven’t even begun to deal with homophobia,” Barnes said. “Some still think being gay is illegal in parts of the country.”
She believes one problem is that teachers dread taking lessons on homosexuality. “Many are scared of celebrating LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] as they are worried pupils will judge them and will assume they are gay. In fact, to them, we are just a blob giving them information. Over the five years, I’ve only had three pupils ask whether I am gay.”
A week ago, a group of 10 and 11 year olds trooped into Barnes’s classroom and she played them a clip from the film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which is about three drag queens travelling across the Australian outback. The pupils appeared happy to discuss transvestites and transsexuals.
“There is a man at my auntie’s work who wears a skirt and has really hairy legs,” said one. “Criss-cross is where you like both men and women,” offered another.
Florence, aged 12, told the class about the first wedding she went to. “It was a gay wedding and they were called Andrew and Eric, and I wanted to be a bridesmaid, but I had only known them for two years.”
Josiah, aged 11, said: “The pope opposes homosexuality, but I don’t know why, as I think everyone should have free will.”
Occasionally, the lessons do not go to plan. One of Barnes’s colleagues, Anna Gluckstein, was teaching about Turing when a boy at the back of the class got up and chanted “batty man, batty man” – a Jamaican term for a gay man.
A poll of 1,145 pupils in 2007 by the charity Stonewall found 65% of lesbian, gay and bisexual students had experienced homophobic bullying. Some 98% said the word “gay” was used as a synonym for “rubbish”.
“By looking at famous LGBT people in history, we’ve changed opinions and we have had a number of pupils come out,” Barnes said. “We have also changed the language used in the school. I used to hear the word gay used all the time as a derogatory term. Now we hardly hear it.”

Tonight I made miso broth with noodles and an assortment of vegetables. I had considered making a Thai curry, but whilst flicking through my cookery books I came across this recipe and it looked so straightforward and tasty (which it is) that I had to give it a bash.
The recipe is from Maria Elia’s The Modern Vegetarian and it’s incredibly simple. I chose to go with asparagus, broccoli and mushrooms, but you could easily use a variety of other vegetables. I also used miso powder (one of those instant miso soup packets) but Elia suggests using miso paste, the powder worked just fine, so don’t be concerned if you can’t find one or the other.
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Maria Elia’s Miso Broth with Noodles and Vegetables
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Perhaps this should be titled my obsession of the past two weeks as that would be more accurate. For the past 14 days I have been plowing my way through teeny pots of petits filous and loving every petit mouthful. I guess I bought them on a whim; overcome by a wave of nostalgia for the days when my Mum would pack them in my lunchbox, I knew that I just had to have some. The strawberry pots are still clearly superior, but I have a new found respect for the raspberry and apricot pots, both of which I cruelly maligned in my youth. With only four out of my mammoth pack left, my trip down memory lane will soon be over, but perhaps this is for the best, as there is something unnatural about having to eat out of a container that most of my teaspoons struggle to fit into.

I made this risotto last week, it’s one of my favourites and was actually the first risotto I ever made. My sister and I made it for my Dad for Father’s Day a few years back and since then it has been a hit with everyone I have made it for. The mascarpone makes this a luxurious risotto, whilst the flavours of the sweet roasted garlic and thyme combined with the toasted breadcrumbs and almonds makes this a more-ish dish.
The recipe is by Jamie Oliver, and a copy of it can be found here.

This week I made a custard tart. It started off really well, the pastry was easy to make and happily filled my flan tin. Then it all went wrong: I hadn’t weighed it all down properly so it puffed up in a couple of places, I accidentally overfilled the case and then I proceded to slosh so more of the filling onto the out/inside of the oven, leaving me with very little tart. When it came out of the oven there was pastry visible in one place! So I did what all cooks would do in my situation, I dusted the tart heavily with icing sugar. It still looked awful. Two days later only one slice has been eaten. FAIL.
[I originally contributed this hurried article for the November 2009 issue of an online student magazine called The Tribe, but thought in the light of recent events in America it was worth re-posting here.]
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The recent Stonewall poster campaign ran with the words: ‘Some people are gay. Get over it!’
Britain desperately needs to.
When Stephen Gately tragically died recently, the majority of the media focus was on his sexuality. Whether it was the thinly veiled prejudice of Jan Moir’s article, or a rehashing of his coming out in 1999, the British press concentrated on the fact that he was gay. Admittedly Gately’s decision to come out was a bold move, but surely there was more to say about his life than this? Then there is the attention that Donal Og Cusak, a famous goalkeeper in the world of Irish Hurling, received for joining those out of the closet. He of course deserves to be praised for taking this brave step, but his admission only further emphasises the lack of openly gay men in sport (however that is a whole other issue). If recent events have taught us anything it is that being gay is still considered a big deal.
Something that should be considered a big deal is homophobia. Despite being a relatively gay-friendly town, homophobic abuse occurs in St Andrews - from the random drunken insult (bizarrely even in the Gay Bop last year) to a beer mat being thrown at a lesbian couple out on a date. However these instances of homophobia are on such a small scale when compared to some of the incidents that occur nationally, many of which go unreported. A recent example is the violent assault on Police trainee James Parkes, who was attacked by a gang of around 20 people outside of a club in the city centre of Liverpool. The attack was reportedly unprovoked and motivated solely by the fact that Parkes was gay.
How does such a horrific thing still happen in Britain today? Perhaps the answer lies in how homophobia is tackled in schools. Speaking to a teacher at a Greater London primary school I was shocked by how she was told to deal with homophobia at her school. If a pupil is heard making a racist comment by a member of staff then the incident goes on the child’s record and is reported to (and potentially investigated by) the local governing body. A similar protocol is in place for anti-Semitism and other prejudice relating to religious beliefs. There is no such protocol for homophobia. If a teacher hears a student calling a member of their peer group “faggot” or “dyke”, the teacher would not be obligated to do anything about it.
In Britain there seems to be an insincere attitude of tolerance towards the homosexual community; Gays can adopt, can have civil partnerships, are allowed in the military… However actually witnessing the results of this tolerance, such as seeing two people of the same sex kissing in public, still provokes a negative reaction from a surprising number of people. The prevailing attitude in Britain seems to be that people are free to be gay so long as they don’t flaunt it - conferring equality without actually wanting to confront what it would mean for society. Is this not a pretty shoddy way to treat at least 6% of the population?

Today I tried my hand at making fresh pesto. I used Delia Smith’s recipe from her book Delia’s Vegetarian Collection, but there are tonnes of recipes out there that I’m sure are just as good. It was incredibly easy, though it required a tonne of basil, and Vassili II (our basil plant) is looking very bare now.
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I spend far too much time doing laundry. The poor clothes horse can’t take it anymore.

I know what you’re thinking, pretentious much? But I am indeed reading Machiavelli’s The Prince. It was not my choice. The Mr and I wrote each other a list of ten books that the other one had to read. The one I gave him was full of Henry James, Bret Easton Ellis and Ernest Hemingway. What I received in return were books of political theory and biographies… yeah… Having already tackled John McCain’s memoirs (yes I did soldier my way through that) I now turn my attention to the slimmest item on his list. Like most people I am aware of the basic premise of The Prince and I guess it is something I “should” read at some point in my life, so why not now?
Ok so they said it would be a disaster, and there is a severe lack of crowd support, but I’m really enjoying the coverage of the Commonwealth Games in Dehli. Maybe my underappreciation of the games in the past is due to the fact that I have never had so much free time to dedicate to watching them (maybe this illustrates how empty my life has become). My one little gripe is the lack of tennis coverage from the BBC: several matches on the opening day, one quick match shown on Tuesday, none Wednesday and Thursday, and then full coverage on Friday (today) when a lot of home interest have been knocked out. Still it’s only a minor issue. I have found myself avidly watching archery matches, swimming races, squash matches… and avoiding weightlifting and boxing, of course. In my opinion the games are entertaining, pretty competitive, and still relevant today. I am now tempted to get tickets for Glasgow 2014, as well as London 2012.

There is an episode of Gilmore Girls (yes, I am an unashamed fan of that show) where Lorelei (played by Lauren Graham) runs into a coffee shop demanding “Coffee coffee coffee!” and as a caffeine enthusiast this is how I feel every morning. Does this make me a coffee addict? And is this really a bad thing?
A quick search of the web and you can find numerous website proclaiming the dangers of coffee (and a few listing its benefits). This BBC article from 2007 outlines the perils of drinking excessive amounts of coffee: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6945697.stm, from restlessness and nervousness to delirium and seizures if you really over do it, but would anyone actually drink the necessary 20+ cups a day to experience these effects? And is there anything wrong in having 3 or 4 mugs a day?
I love lattes, americanos, cappucinos, espressos (should I be saying cappucini etc?), filtered coffee, cafetiere coffee, even instant coffee; I will drink them all. My flatmate and I in my last year of university co-owned 6 cafetieres and come the end of the day they all needed washing up, which says it all really. Yet I believe I could give coffee up if I had to, I would miss it but I know I am capable of it. There are days when I don’t partake of a cup of delicious java (or even mediocre coffee), but I don’t experience withdrawal symptoms… so I guess despite sometimes jokingly referring to myself as a “coffee addict” I am not one, as I display no real signs of addiction. That does not rule out me developing one in the future, and this is where the well known mantra ‘everything in moderation’ rears its mundane head.
So what leads to immoderate consumption of coffee? I must admit I scoffed when I heard a few years back that Robbie Williams had checked himself into rehab for a caffeine addiction, but maybe I was too quick to judge. Like all drugs, an addiction to caffeine can really mess a person up, so perhaps it’s time we took it more seriously. Having said that, I know that tomorrow morning I’m going to wake up, stagger into the kitchen and make myself a cup of coffee, and, most importantly, enjoy drinking it immensely.
[Currently I fill my cafetiere with Taylor of Harrogate’s Brasilia blend, however my favourite brand has got to be Lavazza]