Francesca's Thoughts

I don’t know about you, but I’ll see a very worthwhile petition in a WhatsApp group, or in my email inbox and I’ll click it and sign it and then open up WhatsApp or suchlike to send it to people who might also find it worthwhile and then… get distracted. And while I am under no illusion that signing a petition will solve an issue at a legal or societal level, they firstly act as a mechanism to blow off steam instead of yelling ‘ARGH’ when I read the news, and secondly do have the power to bring topics to the wider public and even to debate in Parliament. They’re not the only step on the ‘trying to give a shit’ path but they are a good first step. Also they take about eight seconds to sign so I can do a couple before the kettle’s boiled.

I thought I might start compiling petitions into blog posts, because if you’re a reader here then we’re probably interested in roughly the same issues, with the added bonus that I don’t have to send you a link to this blog on WhatsApp because you’re already subscribed. (You are, aren’t you.)

So without further ado:

Keep the arts in the government’s 10-year plan for the UK (via Campaign for the Arts)

Thus far in his prime minstership Andy Burnham has not personally fixed the one terrible bus service I use every day. So obviously I think he should be out of office by August. Anyway, the Campaign for the Arts have a petition to include the arts and culture in a proposed ’10 year plan for the UK.’ Given the one good thing this country reliably produces is excellent telly, I reckon prioritising the arts is a good shout.

Defend the right to healthcare for trans youth (via the Good Law Project)

Reader, you and I may hold differing opinions on The Great Gender Debate* and that is okay.** Pretend I’ve pasted a GIF about freedom of thought here. What I’m going to assume we do agree on is that the NHS is a good idea and should continue to exist, ideally in a better-run state than it’s been in recently. And part of a public healthcare system is providing healthcare to the entire public regardless of which minority group is or isn’t currently public enemy number one according to the tabloid press or people who spend too much time on X. So the Good Law Project is pointing out that trans people have a right to the same healthcare everyone else does and should not be denied it due to being trans. If you’d like the NHS to continue in principle, I’d recommend giving it your time.

And on that note:

Kick Palantir out of the NHS (via the Good Law Project)

What’s worse than American spy-tech firms using The Lord of the Rings to name their company? American spy-tech firms charging the NHS millions of pounds to look after NHS health records! Like I said, I’m a frequent flyer at the NHS and I absolutely did not agree for my reams of health data to go to a privately run foreign company, and definitely not a company that’s used by the Israeli military and supplies ICE with surveillance tools. Most of my health issues started before the modern internet, for god’s sake, my data should be handwritten on fax paper. Then maybe scanned in to a secure server in case I outlive fax paper. So find out if Palantir is in use in your local NHS service, and then tell the health secretary to tell them to fuck off.

All right, three petitions will do for today. I’ve done two asterisks (what is the plural of asterisks? Asteriskses?). I might share more in August. If you see a petition you think I might like to sign, share it in a comment and I’ll put it in the next post!

Look after yourselves,

Francesca

*my opinions are that trans people are in fact a) real humans, b) perfectly sane, c) absolutely ethically allowed to use whichever toilet they want to, Jesus Christ what is up with the obsession with other people’s genitalia that is what’s weird here, not the fact of gender nonconformity.

**unless you are horrible to and about trans and gender nonconforming people which is not okay, please grow up and do something with your time that will feed your soul instead of destroying someone else’s.

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