God help us all!!

For quite a while now i have felt, like many others, that my life is being controlled by people who can't control themselves. The jury is out on the Prime Minister at the moment - it's early days. Then of course there is George Bush a man who is so stupid he couldn't teach a monkey how to scratch it's own ass! There are far too many bushism's to list here, i shall just mention 2 - Last year Stevie Wonder performed at a concert at the White House, George Bush kept waving at him to get his attention. Shortly after 9/11 - George Bush said that he was going to find the people who took part in the attacks - they were suicide bombers honey!

Taking it down a few levels, Last night i went to one of the consultation meetings i mentioned yesterday, this particular meeting was looking at how relevant gay men's HIV/sexual health media campaigns were. Basically the commissioners of the London Gay Men's HIV Prevention Partnership have released their commissioning intentions for the next 3 years and media campaigns face a massive cut. The money will instead go to recruit workers and volunteers as sexual health trainers, the proposal being that every gay and bisexual man in London (minimum estimate is around 150,000 men) will be offered an interview style HIV risk assessment by a sexual health trainer on an annual basis, this assessment will collect data such as HIV status, age, number of sexual partners, drug and alcohol use. For all men assessed, an individual code will be created and all data gathered will be stored under that code. This code can then be used by other service providers when gay men access their service.

I think this stinks of Big Brother, where is the confidentiality? I have been working in this field for years and i have worked with many gay men and although gay men do tend to be more open about their sexual health, it's often due to the campaigns and publications that are out on the gay scene raising guys awareness of sexuality and sexual health along with a host of other issues.

Asking each individual gay and bisexual guy in London to give up an hour to talk about their sex lives is going to be massively time consuming. The money would be better spent on written information and adverts that gay man can choose when and how they read them, not all gay men are as out and proud as others and having the guts to walk into a service and talk for an hour about the sex they are having is a big deal and i honestly think it's totally unrealistic.

The powers that be have allocated 65% of the total pot of funding to these assessments, where have they done their research to say that this is what men want? The national gay men's sex survey stats show that men would like to receive their sexual health information in the following ways -

68% from websites, 57% from articles in the gay press, 56% reading booklets and leaflets, 40% adverts in the gay press, 37% reading newsletters.

Only 36% of men want to get their information from talking to a health worker at a clinic so where on earth have they come up with the idea that men want to talk to an individual about their sexual health. Last night at the "consultation" meeting the commissioner stated that there is little to no evidence that media campaigns lead to behaviour change, he was then asked what evidence he had that they didn't work? he could not answer. Where has the 65% figure come from for sexual health trainers? he cound not answer.

At one point last night we were asked by the commissioner to provide evidence that the current services available are working. That is their job!, they are commissioning services without any evidence or thought being put into their decision making, they are making it so hard to be positive about being involved in this work, it's almost tempting to urge no one to bid for the funding, just so they know how horrendously offensive and miscalculated this whole situation is.

The whole consultation on this document is a farce, the commissioners have not been clear about what they will fund and what they wont fund so how can we as gay men be consulted if we do not know what we are being consulted on? I loathe the fact that decisions are being made about my life as a gay man in London without any thought about how it will affect me. Decisions have been made to ensure that i will be interviewed about the sex i am having and then any service in London will have access to that information. That is unnacceptable and totally against everything that i believe in.

The cabinet office states in it's guidelines around effective consultation that

a) The main purpose is to improve decision-making, by ensuring that decisions are soundly based on evidence, that they take account of the views and experience of those affected by them, that innovative and creative options are considered and that new arrangements are workable.

This is not what i or anyone else in that room experienced last night. I urge any gay men who are reading this and live in London to pease write to the address given on my blog yesterday stating what you want regarding your sexual health. There was one commissioner there last night, the rest didn't bother to turn up, that's how much they care about the clients of the services they are funding.

The joke of a consultation's deadline is 30th November at which point the commissioners will probably sit around an office doing crosswords and reading each other's horoscopes before throwing a few darts at a service map to see where they are going to spend their money.

The new services will be up and possibly running mid next year, i just hope they realise that gay men have been very powerful and pioneering in shaping the way our health needs are met, no one knows our health needs better than ourselves so send an email, write a letter but please don't just sit back and wait for the shit to hit the fan because we will all be covered in it.

thats why this blog is called pippyrants

xx