politics – Page 4 – The Daily Opinion

Don’t Be Afraid To Listen: Protecting Free Speech

“Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”

— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

Oxford and Cambridge Universities have an awful lot in common. And last week was no exception. By inviting polarising political figures from the left and the right – George Galloway and Marine Le Pen, respectively – both institutions reaffirmed what is at once perhaps the most sacred and the most imperilled of all our values: the freedom of speech.

Le Pen was shuffled past protesters into the Cambridge Union last Tuesday – an organisation that prides itself on being a forum for all kinds of discussion and debate – to deliver a lengthy diatribe about the EU’s dilution of national identity. The patina of xenophilia and inclusiveness that she wanted to solidify for the audience was derided and scoured away once the floor was opened to questioning. In short, her politics were as unconvincing as ever.

So too with George Galloway. His decision to refuse to communicate with an Israeli opponent at a debate at Christ Church college was juvenile at best, discriminatory at worst. It did him no favours. But his words as he swept up his coat and opened the door to exit made me shiver: “I don’t debate with Israelis,” he said. Words full of hatred and ignorance and thoughtlessness. But, as I listened to him, I couldn’t help being reminded of the message those protesting against Marine Le Pen’s speech at the Union were effectively giving out as I headed past them into the chamber: ‘We don’t debate with Fascists’.

This is not a marginal issue. This is about me; this is about you; this is about the richness of the conversation we want to carry on when we can no longer participate in it. If free speech is something we want to protect, we’ve got to be prepared to put our necks on the line sometimes. Compromise is not an option. For to protect our freedom to speak as we please is to commit ourselves to hearing ideas that we consider rebarbative, repulsive and untrue.

Indeed, the best – the only – response to sinister and disgusting speech is more speech: truth, not censorship. Rather than give in to the temptation to stifle all that makes us cringe, we must be brave enough to engage with it. Our moral authority is never stronger than when we stand up for our beliefs: for whomever, wherever, whenever. The most admirable and effective response to bigotry and falsehood is to give them their say – because only then will we find out how baseless they really are.

Which is why the attempt to put a lid on ‘dangerous’ speech terrifies me. (Who decides for us what is ‘dangerous’ and what is not?) Sitting in the civil arena of the Cambridge Union during Le Pen’s lecture, the baying, drumming, chanting sounds outside prompted but one thought: why wasn’t all that energy being channelled into proving her wrong? Hardly courageous. More like cowardice, if you ask me.

If we’re confident of possessing arguments sound enough to defeat those of the Front National, then why should we be scared to engage in debate? Her risible and reproachable ideas are what should be opposed, not her right to say them. We should be using our voices not to hurl abuse from the other side of a brick wall but to defend our democracy, our freedom and our rights on our terms. And the last time I checked, they didn’t include suppression or censorship.

So bring it on.

We can’t be so myopic. As soon as we inhibit Marine Le Pen’s freedom to speak and think, our liberty suffers too. It’s a self-inflicted wound. Not only do we jeopardise our own thoughts, which are at any moment liable to be deemed too toxic to be heard, but we also willingly refuse perhaps the most critical intellectual duty we owe ourselves: the duty of listening.

Each and every time we muffle a dissenting voice, we forego the chance to reacquaint ourselves with why we believe what we believe. It was John Stuart Mill who posited that even if every living being were in agreement on the absolute truth of a concept, except one person, then it would be imperative – more so than ever – to hear him or her out. If he had a point, we would be better off for taking it on board; and if he were wrong, even in the most appalling manner, we would benefit from being forced to re-examine our greatest certainties. There would be nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

To be sufficiently brave to listen to opinions we find uncomfortable or contemptible is to be intellectually honest and rigorous enough to ask just how sure we are of what we believe as often as we possibly can. That’s all it boils down to. It’s never a waste of time to wonder how we can prove that the earth is spherical or that two and two make four, let alone to question why we hold our idiosyncratic political and religious convictions. We can’t afford to shirk self-criticism, forensic self-examination. No pursuit could be more worthy; nothing could be more precious.

Holy Taxation Batman!

My daily commute to work consists of driving around six miles a day and also consists of driving into pot holes that even a Challenger tank would struggle to get through. And year after year the roads get a cheap repair and subsequently end up as pot holes again within a few short months. And this in turn has me a) on the verge of a cataclysmic mental break down as my spine is shattered by what appears to be a meteor crater , and b) makes me wonder what the council’s authorities for our area are doing with our cash.

And so, upon arriving at work today on ungritted roads I made a few quick calculations as to how much of my monies have been taken from me.

So, here we go.

Okay, my yearly Income Tax payments work out to a staggering £3423. I’ve earned a pretty similar wage for the last ten years, which tells me that over the last ten years I’ve paid approximately £34,236 in Income Tax. It also tells me that after ten years of the same wage that I’m probably due a pay rise.

Then I looked at my National Insurance contributions. In a one-year period I paid £2073. Over ten years this comes in at a princely sum of £20,730.

So after spitting some tea over my desk as my calculator returned these numbers I then looked at my Council Tax bill.

My council tax for the last 10 years has been over £100 a month, but I rounded off at £140, the actual number these days is £159 but with fluctuations over the years I’ve rounded off to a more suitable number to accommodate the rises. My calculator returned a number of £14000 for ten years. Tea was then sprayed out of my nose and a meek cry squeaked from my throat.

Now, basing the above figure of £14,000, I then looked at the number of houses down my road, forty-four, and as all the houses down my road are the same, minus the occupants, the ten yearly Council Tax payments return at, and this made me pretty much launch my cup across the room, at £616,000. Remember, this is forty-four homes over ten years and I’ve been pretty generous in rounding off to the lower denominator.

Where I live, Wikipedia has the 2001 census as showing 14,732 residential homes. I appreciate that perhaps 60% of these homes either pay a lot less in Council Tax or get some form of support in paying it, yet still, if for the sake of being generous subtract 60% off we are left with 8,839 residential homes; now let’s be even more generous to the Council Tax that the remaining households pay and let’s say that they all pay £90 a month, quite a large deficit but I’m being generous, but now we are left with a monthly tax to the Council of £795,510.

Then over a ten month period of tax, as they so kindly allow us two months free of payments, we reach the figure of £7,955,100.

That’s the year done.

Okay, so 10 years?

Add another zero to that figure my friend. £79,551,000

And this is for a small town where the Christmas tree that the Council put in our town was dubbed by tabloids nationwide as “The Worst Xmas Tree In Britain” and now small businesses are rallying other businesses to put some of their earnings into a kitty so they can provide the next Christmas tree!

So where does our Council Tax go? Well, a breakdown of the taxation can be found here: http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/main.cfm?objectid=1416

Note that my tax is a touch higher per annum than the example shown on the Canterbury Council website, but do note that section “7” shows that the annual charge on this example is £1307.39 Then scroll your eyes up to section “6” and look at the breakdown of this tax.

And now look out of your window and wonder how on a national scale of taxation that this country can be in recession.

And remember I’ve only used Council Tax as a larger example – to show how this cartel aggressively take your hard earned money yet collects my landfill bin waste every fortnight and only provide enough recycling sacks per year to allow for 4 sacks of recycling waste a month.

I appreciate that the Council don’t just collect our bins, but I’m looking at the big picture. The one where surely the expenditure of Kent City Council cannot be above the cost of the tax paid across our little South Eastern county?

I’m basing all the above figures on a town that probably wouldn’t even be missed if it fell into the sea, I’m not including the larger cities, towns and villages in the area, I’m basing the above on a town with an estimated population of 35,188.

So with this in mind after having my skull smashed into the roof of my car repeatedly I started wondering about car fuel tax.

See the link below of how this is made up. http://www.petrolprices.com/the-price-of-fuel.html

This is ludicrous, how can the tax be over 60%?

Or how the cost of fueling your home so you don’t have to start pulling down your fences and torching them in a metal bin in your front room to keep warm.

Or the VAT on every item you purchase at a 20%.

Car tax. This is a big “Wow” for me, because again, with Council Tax payments and Car Tax payments I still can’t travel from A to B without my car breaking up like the Challenger Spaceship.

Cigarettes and alcohol – you can’t even kill yourself for cheap in this country.

And then you start getting really pissy and start looking at Congestion charges, Travel costs. TV licensing, the cost to use a public toilet, and I’m not talking about the fear of assault or STDs caught off the taps, airport costs, the cost of buying a house and so on.

The cost of living in the UK is now at a point where your wages are gone before you’ve even seen them. Disposable income is something we will tell our grandchildren about as we sit around a fire burning the coffee table and family albums.

Jesus H Christ, where is this all going? Can we smile? Or will that be taxed soon as well? But then again, the fact we are being raped of all that we earn; it makes it difficult to keep turning that frown upside down. It’s a good thing this country doesn’t have the same gun laws as the USA because this country is bleeding hard working folk dry. And there are only so much of us that you can consume before you end up in a revolt.

The War That Never Ends

“What is the fundamental question one must ask of the world? I would think and posit many things, but the answer was always the same: Why is the child crying?”

—Alice Walker

(Possessing the Secret of Joy)

His name was Ahmed Younis Khader Abu Daqqa. He was Palestinian; he was Gazan; he was human. He was the first of 30 children killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza in the space of just 11 days last November. He – like all the others – stood no chance: a 13-year-old boy with weapons no more deadly than the football he was playing with, shot in the stomach. Such ‘surgical precision,’ such care!

It’s only weeks after these events that I feel able to write about them with any sort of cogency. Even now, I only have questions: Who are the terrorists here? Which is the ‘rogue nation’? Where has the morality gone? It’s time for Israel to be held to account – fairly but frankly – not just by its enemies but by its friends too. Mindless, juvenile apology for an Occupation-addled junkie won’t get us anywhere. But that’s what you get when you’re brought up on a diet of indoctrination and half-truths.

Let’s get some facts straight. Since September 2000, 1,638 children have died in the fighting – 92 per cent (1,509) were Palestinian. From 13^th until 19^th November 2012, the IDF claims that 2,198 missiles were fired from both sides put together – 61 per cent of these (1,350) were Israeli. At a minimum estimate, 166 people were killed in last month’s episode – 96 per cent (at least 160) were Palestinian. The figures don’t lie.

There hasn’t been nearly enough contrition – not from Israel itself, and not from its apologists. “If we don’t support Israel, who will?” they say. Such an attitude is a double perfidy: of the principles a state of Israel should be held to, and of those dead, dying and to die (on both sides) because of the perversion of them. Resisting the automatic urge to leap straight to the defence of a country whose brain-washing machine is so slick that it would have us believe that the whole world is perpetually against ‘us’ is by no means easy for any Jew. But we must at least try. After all, the more in touch you are with the Jewish story of persecution, the more repulsed you should be by the day-to-day suffering, degradation and brutality to which the Palestinians are subjected. As Noam Chomsky notes, the “images of terror and destruction, and the character of the conflict, leave few remaining shreds of credibility to the self-declared ‘most moral army in the world,’ at least among people with eyes open.”

It’s the zealotry that’s blind to this fact that worries me most. It doesn’t insulate Israel as its proponents believe; it just pushes it down a path of mind-warping self-delusion. And it pushes us into constructing a frankly sickening fiction. ‘We’ are defending ourselves; ‘they’ are attacking. If citizens are killed, we can blame Hamas for hiding behind them – even though Gaza’s population density of 12,216 people per square mile renders this practically unavoidable. If international lawmakers or the media condemn Israel’s actions, we can cry “persecution!” and “anti-Semitism!” to our heart’s content – even though the reality is that we would never think, for instance, to ignore, exonerate or defend any other nation’s killing of 30 children in less than a fortnight. We should instead step back – in this as in so many other previous situations – and wonder what has gone wrong: Can this really be collateral damage? Is this self-defence?

Well, if it is, then count me out. For even to begin to excuse such atrocities is to make a claim that no empathic human being could: that fidelity to Israel and/or Judaism comes first – before any obligations to supranational legal parameters and before any duties owed to others on the grounds of common humanity. And that is something that I, for one, cannot and will not do. To ignore the standards by which we as a global community choose to judge one another is to assert some external claim (or rather, I might suggest, a divine claim) to superiority. To disavow responsibility for the fates of one’s fellow human beings is to toss morality aside. To support a set of ideals, whether religious, political or otherwise, without proper care for the facts is to become a fundamentalist.

You only have to take two comments from public figures to see the raft of disgusting generalisations and speculations that guide this brand of thought. Alan Dershowitz, professor of Law at Harvard, aired a commonly held, oft unchallenged view of Hamas’ tactics in conversation with Piers Morgan. According to Dershowitz, the Israeli bombing of the Al-Dalou family home in which four children died on 18^th November was a deliberate ploy by Hamas to gain sympathy from the international media: “Hamas was firing rockets in order to induce [Israel] to kill the family… It’s called the dead baby strategy… They want their children to be martyred so they can carry them out… and thereby gain an advantage over Israel.” He presents not an ounce of evidence – and the notion eerily echoes the blood libels about which Jews have been tormented since the Middle Ages.

And such prejudices seem to be shared by those in government. Danny Ayalon, Israel’s current Deputy Foreign Minister (though he won’t stand at the next Knesset), betrayed his misunderstanding of the nuances of the situation in an interview with ‘The Takeaway’. “I would say that most of the people that were hit in Gaza deserved it,” he claimed, “as they were just armed terrorists”. Try telling that to the grieving parents.

This is not to say that Hamas is blameless. Doubtless similar (if not identical) beliefs exist in the Palestinian community. Both sides have their terrorists, their extremists, their fundamentalists – and some of those killed may well have been legitimate targets, even if they were attacked in illegitimate ways that caused disproportionate and inappropriate damage. But it can do no harm to see things from both perspectives: the fact is that Israel is the occupier, and its actions are in nobody’s interests. The destruction they cause hurts Gazans before backfiring on Israel with the radicalisation of more and more Palestinians. Indeed, truisms have a knack of remaining true – there’s no smoke without fire. As American historian Juan Cole put it when talking about his own country’s foreign policy, “When you bomb people and kill their family, it pisses them off. They form lifelong grudges… This is not rocket science. If they were not sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qa’ida before, after you bomb the shit out of them, they will be.”

What’s needed is a drastic shift in attitude. The re-humanisation of the Palestinians could not come quickly enough. Unflinching support of a destructive policy, both from within and without Israel, which succeeds in demeaning, demonising and degrading the enemy will keep peace forever at arm’s length. What’s worse is that it will allow the fundamentalists on both sides to thrive, dividing two peoples whose similarities (as it has been acknowledged so many times) are far greater than their differences.

For me and many others, the image that defined this brief battle in a seemingly interminable war was that of the four Al-Dalou siblings. Their corpses, limp and squashed together on the metal mortuary table, are marbled with bloody scars and debris. It’s an image of everything this conflict has become: amoral, inhuman, tragic. It’s an image that forces us to confront the feelings we must deaden in order to justify any fatal attack, whether Israeli or Palestinian: that ‘they’ are ultimately just as vulnerable as ‘us,’ just as mortal, just as human.

It’s Meant to be the Beautiful Game – Let’s Try to Keep it That Way

I find it very hard to feel sympathetic for footballers. But the image of A.C. Milan’s Kevin-Prince Boateng rifling the ball into the stands, ripping his shirt off, and storming off the pitch (the rest of his teammates in tow) in his club’s match against Pro Patria was certainly a poignant one. “I don’t care what game it is,” Boateng said defiantly, “a friendly, Italian league or Champions’ League match – I would walk off again.”

So what on earth had got up his nose? Along with three other black players on the Milan team, Boateng had been subjected to racist chants from a section of opposition supporters. His decision to put an end to the abuse by putting an end to the match was praised by other players across the globe, but was it justified?

Clarence Seedorf doesn’t think so. The well-respected Dutch midfielder seemed to characterise Boateng’s response as immature: “I don’t see it as such a positive thing because [it] empowers more and more of this behaviour,” he observed. And his argument has an enticing logic to it. By enabling hooligans to cause the disruption they so crave, we show the minority that they have the power spoil the game for everyone else. Far better, says Seedorf, to boot out the offending faction and carry on playing.

The question is not whether racism (or, for that matter, any other form of abuse) has a place in stadia, but whether players have a right to take matters into their own hands if nothing is done about it. Ever since the rightly ridiculed Michel Platini, UEFA President, threatened Mario Balotelli with a booking if he refused to put up with racist hollers from the crowd at Euro 2012, there’s been a fair amount of controversy over the issue – not least because of Sepp Blatter’s gaffe six months earlier when he told players that on-field racism should be resolved with a handshake. (Why hadn’t anyone else thought of that?)

In fact, at almost every level, football’s governing bodies have failed to tackle racism. Just compare UEFA’s initial £65,000 fine on Serbia following persistent abuse of some of England’s Under-21s last October, to the £80,000 that Nicklas Bendtner was forced to dish out after revealing his branded boxer shorts after scoring at Euro 2012. And no, you didn’t misread that. Oh, and what about the paltry £65,000 the Croatian FA was charged after racial abuse at Euro 2012? Or the £32,500 that Lazio shelled out for anti-Semitic jeering at Tottenham fans in September? Or John Terry’s mystifying escape (with just a £220,000 fine and a four match ban), like a cat with nine lives, from the Anton Ferdinand incident?

The simple question is this: why are footballing institutions so reluctant to act? It’s a question that never gets answered. At least we’re not in Russia, where both Christopher Samba and Roberto Carlos have been offered bananas by fans. Zenit St Petersburg’s biggest supporters’ group (called Landscrona) was responsible for one of the most horrendous sporting stories of 2012: they went completely unpunished for writing a manifesto making the oh-so-reasonable request that the club recruit no more non-white or gay players – please. The multi-million pound signings of two black players who were “forced down Zenit’s throat” had broken “an important tradition that underlines the team’s identity”. And gay footballers? Well, they’re just “unworthy of our great city”. Evidently.

But don’t be fooled into thinking everything’s dandy over here. English football isn’t immune to racism, even if the problems lie just beneath the surface. It still shocks me that only three of the 88 managers listed by the LMA are black. The imbalance is uncomfortable, to say the least. Indeed, the very fact that two of the most high-profile in-game incidents of racism – involving Luis Suarez and John Terry – in Premier League history took place just last season is extremely telling.

Given all the evidence, it’s hard to accept Seedorf’s cynical view of Boateng’s stand. It was one that has long since needed to be made – and one that must continue to be made until the establishment makes some serious changes. As Reading striker Jason Roberts noted, “until the authorities take appropriate action and start taking this issue seriously, this battle will have to be fought by the players.” It’s by no means ideal, but for as long as footballing bodies refuse to clamp down on every kind of abuse, there seems to be no other option – an ugly situation to be in, in a game now drowning in cash but thirsting for morality.

Put yourself in the boots of Kevin-Prince Boateng, the ball at your feet as thugs behind you whoop and holler. “Imagine yourself,” as Fifpro’s anti-racism spokesman, Tony Higgins, does, “at work and someone standing right next to you is constantly insulting you in the worst way possible. Would you accept that?”

I know I wouldn’t.

Is This (The Beginning Of) The End Of Prohibition?

Speaking as someone who knows next to nothing about the American lawmaking process – and can therefore be naively optimistic – I’ve had my mental fingers crossed ever since I heard that Colorado and Washington have both voted to legalise cannabis for recreational use. (NB Mental fingers: those things you cross when you really, really want something to happen but you don’t want to have to stop typing.)

Potheads in the two states have been celebrating well in advance of any consent from the Department of Justice, with plans already in place to direct tax money from legal sale of the drug into the construction of schools (oh, to be young enough to enrol in the first real High School) and a range of health programmes including drug and alcohol treatment.

Oregon just lost out on legalising weed – although, with arguably the most liberal initiative of the three states (they wanted unlimited personal amounts and growing privileges), but by far the smallest campaign budget, this outcome is perhaps understandable. Maybe next time, Oregon. I’ve got my mental fingers crossed for you, ‘n all.

Another good piece of pot-related news came in the form of the Mayor of Amsterdam’s announcement (to admittedly negligible surprise) that foreign tourists will not be banned from using the city’s coffee shops. Wasn’t that a lot of worry for nothing – cannabis café owners fretting over the loss of tourism, the Mayor facing the prospect of the city descending into a miasma of dodgy street dealers and shoddy merchandise, not to mention us lot sitting worriedly on the couch in front of the laptop, trying to work out how to fit in another jaunt to Holland before the law came into effect. Worry over, anyway.

All this liberalism has been making me feel just a little bit as though I’m living in some kind of backwater, conservative commune, rather than one of the world’s most awesome global cities. While we’ve been resting back in our creaking leather armchairs, passing the brandy and gently chuckling at the antics of our younger cousin, America’s been getting on with surpassing us in some pretty damn important arenas. Britain upgrades cannabis to Class B, America legalises it first for medicinal and then recreational use. America gets Obamacare, while in Britain we’re in danger of losing our internationally-lauded NHS to the fickle whims of privatisation. Our PM reveals himself to be an immoral wheeler-dealer of war machines to the Middle East, while in America a genius businessman fights to use his enormous wealth to develop clean energy for all. Oh wait, that was Iron Man. But you get the point.

But anyway, back to America. What does this legalisation of pot mean for them? Well, I can’t imagine that the Department of Justice is going to roll over on this one, if its initial, tight-lipped “no comment” reaction is anything to go by. Presumably it will cite precedent, and complain of the difficulties in managing a country in which some states allow the use of a drug while other states battle smuggling issues and criminal activity. Or perhaps it will just bring its big federal boot down and yell “I said NO!” Which would be a shame because, as some have already pointed out, this could be a great opportunity to start to address the longstanding conflict between state and federal laws. It seems bizarre that you can do something that’s both legal and illegal at the same time. Personally, I see this as a case of political and legislative stagnation rather than mere precedent, but surely even two states deciding to legalise cannabis evidences a sea change worthy of review on a federal level? At any rate, the Department of Justice needs to make a decision soon – it would be a phenomenal waste of resources if Washington and Colorado got too far into their implementation and were then told it’d all been for nothing.

A much more immediate issue is, of course, the impact of legalisation on drug cartels. Make something legal, regulate it, keep the quality to a certain standard, make it easily obtainable… why would anyone choose instead to buy off some shifty dealer who may well be bulking out the product with sugar or sand in order to turn a profit – someone who, in turn, has to handle the paranoid people one level up, who sometimes deal in much nastier things than weed and occasionally wave a gun in their face? It’s a no-brainer. Obviously the lords aren’t going to be too happy about it, but any savvy street dealer or home grower with half a brain should be looking to capitalise on the change in law and set up shop legitimately. More money, less risk. Another no-brainer.

Ok, so I’m over-simplifying. There are many knots to be massaged out of this legislation, including how to test for “drug-drivers” without accidentally penalising medical marijuana users (though, to be fair, if you have enough in your system to be considered too impaired to drive, you probably shouldn’t be driving). But this has got medical marijuana users understandably worried – will the tests be good enough, will they be fair? It’s something that needs to be worked out and set in place beforehand in order to avoid wrongful arrests, but it shouldn’t be a permanent barrier to legalisation. Calm down, guys. Put your feet up and have a smoke, why not?

Surprising enough as is opposition to legalisation from those who can already buy and smoke legally, it’s as nothing when compared to the support from anti-drugs campaigners. Funny what the promise of funding for rehab programmes can do to a person’s views – but I guess it’s no weirder than a government taxing alcohol and tobacco and then pushing tax money into a healthcare system that provides treatment for diseases caused by the consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Funny old world, eh? I’m not even going to mention the utter hypocrisy of a system that’s been benefiting from the abuse of certain substances while punishing the use of others. Or add my voice to the millions of those yelling that “the war on drugs isn’t working”. The evidence speaks for itself.

Whatever the outcome in the US, full credit to this significant minority of America that has had an attack of rationality and accepted that the legalisation – and, therefore, regulation – of marijuana is the only way forward in the so-called “war on drugs”. You can’t stop people experimenting with drugs – human beings have been getting high for millennia – but you can do your utmost to ensure that personal risk is minimised, in this case by taking power away from criminals and regulating your product for quality. Oh, and did we forget it can be taxed, just like alcohol and tobacco? Legalised weed is an untapped, potentially hugely lucrative source of revenue for an ailing economy. I wholeheartedly wish that British politicians would stop pandering to the sensationalist media and recognise when to act for the benefit of the people. We’ve got Tories running the show now, for god’s sake – surely they of all people should be able to spot when they’re missing out on a fantastic business opportunity?

Book Review: Damaged Goods by Alexandra Allred

Just because this book opens with a disgruntled wife forcing a bloody tampon into the hand of her husband, does not necessarily mean it is a book just for women, although some might be put off by the opening. Damaged Goods follows the life of Joanna Lucas, a well-spoken divorcee who moves to Marcus, Texas to begin a life she can finally be proud of. Unfortunately for her, this town full of possibilities is actually home to the worst case of pollution in the US and a whole host of other issues that are set to make life hard for her, including rape, arson, and a beer-guzzling emu named Eduardo. Amongst this mess she finds herself adopted by a group of outspoken and eternally youthful women who bring out the true feistiness of her nature.
This is not a book to gloss over topical issues in favour of a happy ending, but neither is it didactic in tone. All too often if an author chooses to tackle complex issues you find yourself feeling sometimes enlightened, but rarely entertained and quite often bored. Allred combines her clever narrative techniques with continually evolving conflicts that keep the reader turning each page. Behind all the plot twists, one-legged Lion lovers and the beer-seeking emu there are some very real lessons. Allred makes you face up to the fact that if you want to see change then you have to do something about it. Sitting back and pretending nothing is happening makes you just as guilty as those causing the damage. She also shows the power of female friendship, without painting all male characters in a bad light, which is refreshing.
At times you are given a lot of information about new characters, and that can be a little hard to retain, but this is only at the start. Overall this is a complex story about friendship, politics and free-thinking that will keep you hanging on long after you’ve read the final page.