*Cough cough splutter cough and a bit o' phlegm (yep, I can spell it!)*

Yuck.

I'm sick.

Got a coughing type thing. Lots of coughing, snot and general yuckyness. Making me feel moody and not wanting to do any work (even less than usual) and generally a bit shit. Night before last I hardly slept a wink - I think I woke up every couple of hours to have a bit of a coughing fit and then having to deal with the accompanying intensity of throbbing in my already achy head. Bring on the sympathy.... please.

Good news about mummy though - she's been making excellent progress in the last couple of weeks and they're holding a 'discharge planning meeting' for her a week today. That means they'll be letting her out in the next couple of weeks. I'm slightly worried though because they've pushed her slightly too low with the drugs she's on, but have noticed this and are changing them accordingly. I'm flabberghasted at how they are being so... erm.... responsive to my mother's needs. Which is kinda unusual. But good.

Moving on to the state of the world - I think I want a bit more of a stake in it all. Now, I have to be careful here. I can see an easy route for me to get more involved in it all - by joining a political party, using my political contacts and writing a few articles for a few left magazines (first one here :s) and probably climb in that way quite quickly. It's easy to get a bit of profile when you know a few people. But this means me selling out some of my principles - of non-partisanship, of fundamental belief in human rights, of belief in equality and of my puritanism in these areas, none of which is particularly well-served by joining a political party. Though, of course, joining a political party can give a sense of achievement, even if it is a somewhat false and contained achievement.

But I don't want false achievement, contained achievement, falsely contained achievement or contained false achievement. I'm not even sure I want achievement - well at least not on a personal level (ha - well, maybe a little bit *Little man in head: "Be honest Steven"*). What I do want is change. Not just a little bit of change, but lots of it. And not necessarily overt change, but change to peoples' thinking, which hopefully will lead to more overt change generally. I've started by applying to be a school governor. It's a small but first step, and it's a step where I feel I can make a change. But we'll see about that when I get started.

Back to my more normal life, I'm going to quit my job. The Article 12 one. I'm bloody fed up with and... nope, I'm not gonna give the issues the time of day on here - suffice to say I'm pretty pissed off with it all. I'll let y'all know how it pans out.

Oh, the quarterly debate about whether or not to ban smacking has come around again in the media and in parliament. We've had two reports from two different select committees come out today - the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Health Select Committee - both saying that the parental defence of 'reasonable chastisement' (legal-egal jargon for bashing your kid as much as you like as long as you can prove they deserved it...) to be removed. Of course I totally support this and think its an indictment on our society that we can ever allow our smallest and most vulnerable members have the least protection when it comes to physical abuse. Not that that's the only debate around smacking and the banning of it. There's the age-old debate about when a smack becomes a bash and when that bash can been seen as unjustified, as well as debate about whether smacking reinforces the use of violence as a way of solving problems in the child being smacked. I think we need to take a positive step and recognise that children are human beings, and no human being deserves to be physically punished. Full stop.

OK, rant over; thought for the day is "Eminem is cool". Where did that one come from :s? God knows.

Back to the coughing....

steven

Stop the Illegal Occupation!