If you get your wayIf the foreigners are kept at bayIf we wind the drawbridge and mine the beachesReach a state of monocultureCreate an all-white social structure Would your wages rise? Or would you find to your surprise your payslip doesn’t grow … Read more
Debating neurodiversity
Article
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Janine Booth replies to John Cromby and Lucy Johnstone’s post, Neurodiversity – what exactly does it mean?, on Mad in the UK’s website. Throwing the neurodivergent baby out with the bathwater John Cromby and Lucy Johnstone have contributed an interesting … Read more
Ta-ra Tories
Article
Tuesday, July 9, 2024
Ta-ra Penny
Let’s hope that the end of Ms Mordaunt
turns out to be some sort of portent
of Conservative death
the Tories’ last breath
and spares us from more of their torment
Nancy Astor: another statue to fling in the sea
Article
Friday, June 28, 2024
Nancy Astor
in fancy plaster
in copper not in alabaster
Disabled people: Labour manifesto offers little
Article
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Labour’s general election manifesto offers little more than vague mentions to disabled people, and drops many of the party’s specific pledges.
War, Occupation and Mental Health
Article
Saturday, June 1, 2024
A personal view published in Asylum magazine, Summer 2024.
District 6
Article
Friday, May 24, 2024
District 6 is an area of Cape Town, South Africa, that had a population that was racially mixed until the Apartheid government decreed in 1966 that District 6 become whites-only. Sixty thousand black and coloured residents of District 6 were evicted and their houses demolished.
Neurodiversity in Rail conference
Article
Friday, May 24, 2024
Janine will be a keynote speaker at this year’s Neurodiversity in Rail conference.
Cheese Plant
Article
Sunday, May 12, 2024
I go mental for lentils
and crazy for maize
I’m in an eternal
pine kernel phase
Dirty: Abuse, trauma, failure and hope
Article
Saturday, May 11, 2024
In Dirty, Holly Bars has created an extraordinary, mighty, courageous, poetic record of child sexual abuse and of the ways in which survivors are traumatised and failed.
Mental Health Care Failings
Article
Saturday, April 27, 2024
These reports were included in radical mental health magazine Asylum, Spring 2024
Court Win on Right to Strike
Article
Friday, April 19, 2024
The UK Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday 17 April that UK law allowing employers to discipline (but not sack) workers for striking is in conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Video: GMB Midlands Neurodiversity training
Article
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
GMB Midlands members are invited to a training course about neurodiversity at work.
Lip Service
Article
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Maybe one day we won’t celebrate each month anniversary
Or one day our “I love you”s will start sounding rather cursory
Video: Neurodiversity – a left-wing perspective
Article
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Neurodiversity – a left-wing perspective On Monday 25 March, Janine spoke at an online open meeting hosted by Lewes Labour party members, setting out a left-wing perspective on neurodiversity. You can watch a video of the talk, and the ensuing … Read more
Listen: Brum Radio Poets, March 2024
Article
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
An hour of poems and chat about poetry, with Rick Sanders in conversation with poets Janine Booth and Mehdi Yavari. Broadcast on Brum Radio.
Guest poem: This is Me
Article
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
I am loud, I am chatty
I am exhausting, Impulsive and batty
Pride Is
Article
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Pride is this:
the counter-march to prejudice
There’s a reason it was named:
Pride is refusal to feel ashamed.
Video: Job cuts
Article
Saturday, March 23, 2024
A poem in the Welsh poetic form of Clogyrnach (which is remarkably similar to a limerick), written in support of Unite the Union’s strike ballot of steel workers employed by Tata in South Wales, whose jobs are under threat.
Video: Steel workers’ jobs are on the line
Article
Saturday, March 23, 2024
A poem in the Welsh poetic form of Cyhydedd Fer, written in support of Unite the Union’s strike ballot of steel workers employed by Tata in South Wales, whose jobs are under threat.