What to focus on, dear reader? As the British electorate are set- again – to allow another government minister to slither out of a mess of their own creation, I want to focus on the specifics of Dominic Raab’s blatant dereliction of duty and ask- if the rule of law doesn’t apply, and common decency doesn’t apply – what does?
“The sea was closed”
Do they think we’re stupid? Yes. They do. The government that has lumbered it’s way from disaster to disaster over the last 18 months has officially given up on trying to find any credible reasoning for it’s misdeeds. This is the only conclusion a reasonable person can come to when hearing Dominic Raab proclaim that he was “working in his hotel room” and wasn’t paddle boarding, because… “The sea was closed”.
I for one would like an intimate breakdown from Mr Raab, detailing the no doubt lengthy and fastidious process that the Cypriots go through every evening to close the sea, and what measures they must take every morning to safely reopen it- though I do sense Mr Raab may have skipped that, as we are painfully aware that this government knows or cares very little for a safe reopening. Raab’s allies are all singing the same refrain of “what difference would it have made” or “he works hard”. We don’t know but it may have helped a lot, and of course he does… that’s why he can apparently afford a £40k holiday….
This though, is the standard set by a government headed by a man who said he “could not meet with families whose loved ones had died of coronavirus until their litigation”- of which, there is none – “had finished”. Boris Johnson, over a year on from this suggestion, still has avoided meeting the families of the bereaved – mind you, there are now over 131,000 official coronavirus deaths, and authorities estimate this is closer to 150,000 so one can suspect Johnson would have quite the task on his hands. That is if his hands weren’t busy ebebebe, painting I uh… ah… model ah… buses… Mind you, Johnson’s darkly anti-litigious career is positively littered with this type of bumbling. Fired twice for lying, caught out on PPE funding, allowing the Johnson Variant into the UK, casually laughing at the mass unemployment of the mine closures, callous indifference towards the deaths of tens of thousands, letting bodies pile high for all he cared about- suggesting people may “live longer” when catching covid. Suggesting we take a “gender neutral approach” to decarbonising with the G7. Misappropriated funds for a flat revamp, racist and homophobic language, another breach of ministerial code for jetting to an event on the public dime- the top man is the bottom of the barrel.
Let’s look instead then to Priti Patel, accused by a government employee of bullying- Johnson’s chosen investigator concluded that Patel HAD bullied staff- not only that she had bullied staff, but public funding was then apportioned to her victim as compensation- and just so you know, it’s quite a sum. Anyone who looks at the self assured smirk of Patel knows that underneath the arrogance lies a human so bereft of genuine kinship, one knock to the ego may produce bluster that could relocate small fishing villages like a category 5 tornado. Patel’s propensity for limitless confidence in the face of being wrong was recently recirculated on social media where she staunchly defended the death penalty- even in the face of being asked whether she thought it was right that people may be wrongly put to death… At least she applies the same logic to British citizens as she does to any non British people- basically, let them die if they’re an inconvenience.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, ghostly Victorian chimney sweep of the front bench and reject of Geppetto is, according to a source of a source of mine, quite friendly to the workers in parliament- which is surprising considering he’s so openly ambivalent towards the health, wealth, working conditions and general ability to survive of a gut wrenching portion of the British public at large. Mogg once sang god save the queen as one of his own party tried to open up a discussion about the separation of the Royals from the state- one can only assume he believed he was auditioning for a lead role in the musical “Bad Politicians and the Systems they Protect”.
And who can forget the man that Cthulu aspires to be – Michael Gove, a man with more drug rumours surrounding him than Freddie Mercury, who literally had a party with people carrying trays of cocaine around. Gove’s unhinged toilet pape-sorry, book, spells out the conspiracy theories of a man who thinks that Jewish people are conspiring against him – newsflash Mr Gove, jewish people hate you just the same as… well, everyone else. Even your ascerbic wife, a woman who drinks vinegar for fun, couldn’t stand you. I look forward to the @ExWestminsterWAG column on how you couldn’t figure out how to satisfy either yourself nor her, so you just decided to drain any trace of satisfaction from the rest of us as penance.
How about Rishi Sunak, a man whose budget is so full of holes that you can only see the actual legislation in direct light. Desperately begging the UK to return to the office, Sunak seems to forget what happened when he begged people to Eat out to Help out, a scheme that would have been better named “get coronavirus at a restaurant”. The budget Sunak apparently scrawled on the back of one of his office property owner ledgers continues to sprout holes as he eyes up his next move- screwing the older voters who put the tories in power. Turns out that no matter how many locks you put on something, the tories are happy to saw through it if it stops another recession – but let me guess, LABOUR LEFT US WITH NO MONEY? 11 years ago… guess that decade of austerity was for nothing huh.
And this, ladies, gentlemen and those of a non-binary nature- is our front bench.
Is that not enough? Let’s look at other prominent figures via their actions.
Matt ShamCrook- Sorry, Matt Shaglots- apologies, spell check – Matt Hancock, the health secretary who was too busy trying to meet at the time impossible testing figures to realise he was fucking a woman who wasn’t his wife- a man so creepingly servile and thin skinned that someone questioning him in parliament prompted him to tell her to MIND HER TONE- ironic for a health minister to undermine a literal doctor asking him questions about the veracity of the PPE that kept her colleagues from death…
Or how about ex PM Theresa May, a small and shy woodland creature often seen scurrying through fields of wheat to try and find something to make a Brexit deal with. Many were desperate to humanise may when she stepped down as PM as she openly choked up – a sentiment which was curiously absent over the mass deportation of people the UK resettled here to make a success of itself, or during her many hours speaking about the Grenfell disaster, or in response to her own tenure as home secretary. I don’t pity May, and I certainly don’t enjoy seeing her often speaking critically of the flatulent suit that is Johnson- she enabled the nightmarish government we see before us, and remainer she was but her weak kneed pontifications about Brexit being the right move emboldened a fervent electorate to allow the no win situation which is currently baring the backs of our supermarket shelves like an onlyfans creator’s previews section.
A lesser figure
This is the standard set by our current government, a government I remind you with a gasp inducing majority. It would be charitable at best to suggest that too many folk in England are politically engaged enough to understand the repercussions of having this government in charge, or of the building blocks which led to this mess.
I’m currently-slowly, begrudingly- reading books by previous tory party MPs who explain how their party began folding long ago, and how like the butterfly effects, the small ripples of principled tories stepping down to make way for corpulent fools like Johnson have led to this situation we’re in now.
Captain Hindsight? At least he’s looking…
People so often look at me and say “but you trust Starmer?! Boring captain hindsight Keith?” and to that I say, I have novelty pens I trust to govern more than a significant portion of our government at present. And I would happily take a small, shuffling step to the left, than have to bear another clomping goose-step to the right.
Do I think Starmer is a hot political figure who will revolutionise politics? No. But I also don’t think he’ll continue curb-stomping the British electorate like this government is- and if I’m wrong… prime ministers can be asked to step down. I’d take a prime minister who just does the job of prime minister over a man who is doing the equivalent of supping a pint at the dispatch box while he tells his lad mates how much shagging he got up to this weekend.
Get in the Corbyn
I was a fervent Corbyn supporter back during his tenure, but the never ending “well Corbyn would have” folk, while well meaning, give me a certain level of frustration. I didn’t think even then that Corbyn was perfect- I have to laugh at those who make any attempt to decry his sartorial choices being as my toilet brush is not indistinguishable from Johnson. I would have liked to see Corbyn as PM, to see what he could do and I do feel that England may be the poorer for it, because having a PM who cared about the electorate would have been quite the breath of fresh air after the endless recycling of politicians who would mulch the British voters to make the rose garden bloom. But it didn’t happen, and Corbyn wasn’t a perfect political figure. I urge people who think like this to stop- now- and look at what we have and realise that if you have the luxury of bowing out, soiling your vote and saying HE’S A RED TORY about Starmer, a lot of people behind you are dying or have died – literally, because of tory policies. The increase in foodbanks, reticence of changes in law about buildings with unsafe cladding, the callous dismissal of the at risk during the entire covid crisis, especially now- benefit cuts, no free school meals- this is what this government fosters, and if you don’t actively, intelligently, vote to oust that- you’re party to it. There is no “I’m just not that interested in politics” any more.
Day after day, social media is suffused with angry knee jerking people, yelling to the high hills about how you can’t say or do anything these days without being cancelled. But people seem to fail to realise the irony of the platforms from which they speak. As John Cleese’s documentary on “cancel culture” arrives to cause more unnecessary culture war rehashing, I’m here to tell you the cold hard fact that cancel culture just isn’t a thing- you’re just not funny for being a prick.
One of my favourite examples of people who mysteriously believed they were “cancelled/censored/silenced”, was Rosie Duffield, MP, who endorsed transphobic views on twitter and has subsequently faced cancellation… by being in several national newspapers, talking about how silenced she is.
I’m not sure if Ms. Duffield is aware, but speaking from a double page spread is actually NOT what being silenced is. I’ve spoken several times on transphobia and it’s clownery, but for an MP to speak on being “cancelled” because she espouses views contrary to the idea that she would seek to work with any of her voters- is highly ironic. She was platformed by those who voted for her, only to turn around and essentially endorse the idea that they do not deserve the rights they have- and feels aggrieved by being called out on this.
The cherry on top, is the idea of silence while being interviewed by national media is… comical at best. When is the last time an everyday trans person was interviewed to platform their views…
Instead, we see the same faces pushed to media- trans people who agree to toe the line of the gender critical or people who aren’t even accepted by the trans community for what could be considered radical views. And so the media giant turns the screw more- “we thought you wanted representation” they say, platforming trans people who agree it’s a sexual perversion – who never, oddly, stop to wonder if it’s just THEM who feel that way. Or gay people like Darren Grimes who decry “identity politics” and in the same breath refer to themselves as a working class gay man. Irony is lost on these people- specifically because their brains don’t have the acuity for it, clearly.
The irony of this whole farcical debate about cancel culture, is that many of those who proclaim to think it’s an attack on their freedom, their views, their lifestyles- themselves- often cheerfully propagate their own versions of it! Take Cleese for example, who is cheerfully creating a TV show talking about how hard cancel culture is for folk of his ilk- forgetting, I’m sure, to mention that he sued a journalist for saying something Cleese didn’t like- is that cancel culture? Cancelling a person with an opinion? Or is that the good type of cancel culture that those who benefit from it overlook.
The crux of the argument seems to be is that many people these days seem to feel that they are cancelled for espousing their horrible views- but never before has this been such flagrant nonsense, with the four year tenure of a pussy grabbing mask denying gobshite like Trump, lauded for “telling people like it is” recently coming to a close- the man’s only selling point that his head was too empty to say anything with grace or just not speak when he could be megaphoning his own greatness to a feverish crowd, or a PM in the UK who has described Muslim women as letterboxes and criminals, gay men as tank topped bum boys, black people as having “watermelon smiles” and his only response? “Out of context”. Having read it- the context makes it worse. So never before has it been so clear that the people who decry cancel culture’s issues isn’t that they’re being punished for espousing disgusting views- its’ that they didn’t already have the insulation of a platform to say it from with safety.
Equally, looking at examples of people who did suffer “cancellation” seem to truly deserve it. Openly being racist, homophobic, misogynistic, ableist and that being your only schtick means you’re trying to profit from hatred- are we in a world where profiting off hatred is ok? If so, what a sad society we’ve become. But I can find scarce examples of people who have successfully been cancelled- Paris Hilton’s homophobic rant didn’t stop her from creating a TV show where she “interviewed” for her best friend. Rowling is still jogging along cheerfully throwing bigot baguettes out of her hamper for her slavering crowd of followers. But lets look at Janet Jackson- thrown under the bus by a co-worker and lost her jobs and footing… strange, I wonder what was different about Jackson compared to, I don’t know… white people being bigoted. It’s a mystery!
That’s the real message I get whenever I hear the bleating of “WoKe CaNcEl CuLtUrE”- I’m just angry that I’m not already famous enough to say this and survive it.
The fact is, racial, anti LGBTQIA humour, ridiculous sentiments like anti vaccination stances or similar, has been the safety net of many a waning star to gain a quick following from people who will blindly support you because they’re a one issue voter.
Those glibly hashtagging #IStandWithRosie or sharing Cleese’s documentary with unbridled glee that SOMEONE IS FINALLY SAYING IT couldn’t care less that Duffield drove two gay staff members to quit with her mindless rhetoric, or that Cleese thinks London “is not an English city any more” as long as they keep pushing the victim mentality that’s hilariously common with people in this regressive mindset.
Gaslighting is a term I don’t like to throw around but when you have vast portions of society on your side simply by dint of your gender or the fact you were a beloved comedian in your youth, accusing minorities of cancelling you because you don’t like being told your views are incorrect and damaging, or that your comedy relies on punching down on people’s existences.
The irony is that nobody in this crowd of oh so oppressed for their thoughts people, never stop to put themselves in the position of the people who suffer for their thoughts, their humour, their thoughtless words. Are people just moaning for the sake of it, or could it be that your endless rehashing of shit humour, your banal and frankly incorrect assumptions about someone because of what arouses them or their skin colour, is just tedious enough that we’re bored of smiling and nodding and privately deleting your number from our phones.
Your want the impunity to speak, but don’t have the stones to cope with the reaction to it. Clearly it’s better to wander the world shouting racial slurs because THATS WHAT MY GRANDMA DID than try and empathise or just, generally, not be a sack of cat sick.
It’s an irony. I have thoughts often about people that would surely hurt them should I speak them- so I just don’t. And if i do say something insensitive, even if my immediate reaction is to defend myself because I don’t like to be accused of doing cruel things with intent, I’d be seriously let down by myself if i didn’t apologise and try and understand what I’d said and why it was damaging.
Much like other ridiculous ideas (see “electing a silly haired right wing chittering gibbon as leader”), the cancel culture garbage has been imported from America. Over in America over 60 percent of polled citizens believe that cancel culture is an issue which is affecting mainstream society: to this I would politely ask these polled Americans, what views is it that you hold that you’re so worried you’ll be cancelled over? With an ex president who won based on racial populism, desperate to build an ineffective wall between your neighbours, you can’t think it’s racism? And with a supreme court stacked with anti LGBTQIA bigots, and where literal members of the GOP refuse to publicly come out despite myriad statements from sex workers about their private proclivities, it cant be that you worry about being labelled a homophobe. I dread to think what it is that keeps you awake at night, wondering for whom the imaginary cancel bell is tolling today…
Ultimately, modern society is built on the promise that to co-exist humans have to put aside their petty nonsense and work together to further human interest, and many of us have to bury resentment about the snippy way we’re treated in service jobs or the outright aggression we face from strangers based on the bodies we were born in or what it is that arouses those bodies, but more and more it seems that a bunch of oversensitive folk, somehow on the more right and yet more wrong side of the spectrum, seem absolutely fervent that they should be able to say and do whatever they want without impunity – but when spoken back to, suddenly their free speech is being CANCELLED! What about our free speech to decry your bullshit, Karen?
People who refuse to change their thoughts, their actions to accommodate society are the reason it’s being cut to ribbons as it’s dragged along by those of us who want to make the world better. If you want to watch historical comedy series’ that make racial or homophobic jokes, no one is going to castigate you for it, but at some point maybe it’s better that we… move on as a society or at least share the stage with comedians from those minorities who get to make fun of the people who make careers out of stepping on our backs.
Anti LGBTQIA sentiment has taken a notable uptick in the UK in the last 4 years. As of October 2020, community specific hate crimes had tripled, with a huge survey of people confirming that they had experienced anti LGBTQIA sentiment in public or at work over the course of their recent lives. Some outside- and an unfortunate subset of those within- blame the visibility of the trans rights battle. Others, like I, believe the rise of right wing populism and the unmasking and normalisation of hateful sentiment, is the clear cause. The question is- how far will the UK slide, and what will be the catalyst for action to be taken?
You know when you’re at the beach, and you can see a tiny rock that’s been washed around in the tide and that tiny stone has worn a hole in a bigger rock? That’s how I feel, like that little rock, ebbing and flowing backwards and forwards and trying to wear in some change but also getting thinner and thinner myself- when I talk about certain aspects of being gay, back and forth over the same points, trying to wear in the groove so it’s not necessary to keep repeating. It’s so intrinsic to me that it’s almost tiring to have to explain it. Equally I want anyone who does come across this blog to realise that this is MY experience, not THE experience. I’ve met thousands of LGBTQIA people in my life and we all have different stories, so take what I write here as an op-ed, an opinion piece of being part of the LGBTQIA through the well worn lens of my own experience, and not the defining experience. It’s my explanation of me, how I feel and what I face, along with consensus from others I’ve spoken about.
I’m 33 years old, and I was pretty outspoken about my sexuality- firstly, as I grew, accidentally- now, very much intentionally. I didn’t mean to wear it on my sleeve as a child and it’s the idea that it’s controllable that wears at me so. I was never masculine, even though my dad and my uncles are the epitome of typical masculinity. I remember being 4 and 5 and seeking out girls to be friends with because I felt shy around other boys.
I’m apparently an odd one, because I always knew I was gay. I remember being 5 and telling my friend I would marry him one day, and the disgust on his face made me bury it all. But I couldn’t hide my presentation, my campness if you will. But I always felt I should. Rarely, directly, other kids and adults would tell me they didn’t like how I acted, that it wasn’t “normal” and that sentiment was echoed everywhere, wound tightly around my experience of existence and of my adolescence- and I always wondered where it came from, and why the way I acted was (i assume…) linked to my sexuality- I knew from the knee that There Was Something Different, and other people were all too happy to hammer that into my head.
I don’t think- because of that- that I ever experienced a real, relaxed childhood. Because I spent so much of my youth wondering what was different and why, and if I could change it, take it away, deny it, repress it.
I knew that I had to hide it to survive, and I lied to myself every day that I DID like girls, I DID want to be like the other boys around me, share their interests, their demeanour, their jokes. And I never could. This all sounds very self pitying – it was a miserable existence until decided I didn’t care what the repercussions were and that I was going to live outwardly as I was within, and embrace who I truly am.
As I battled through this, I heard so many hateful recycled tropes, and became aware of this culture of open irony that surrounds us on the daily. So, lets focus on some of these aspects and see if we can’t shed some light on why the world is such an odd place to be…
The Narrative of “choice”
I used to believe that there was no element of choice in being gay. And for me, I still don’t. It’s threaded deeply into every aspect of me- sexuality, in a heteronormative society, affects much more than just who you love. But it’s reductive at best for me to say 100% that nobody chooses to be gay- I’ve literally met gay men who have said they chose it, and who am I to deny their experiences off my own? That said I think that if you are gay you are gay- the choice comes into it when it comes to ACTING on it.
Equally, the narrative of choice is a common talking point with anti gay campaigners, so my simple question is -even if it is a choice: who cares? Why does sexuality being a choice in any way mean it deserves less credence, less respect? You rarely get an answer that isn’t garbage and gobbledegook when you ask this question. The idea that sexuality is a choice is absolutely laughable to me, as someone who (as a child- not now) would have chosen to flip that switch in an instant so I could enjoy my life as other children around me did. Now- I’ve been gay my entire life, I don’t know who I would be if I hadn’t experienced what I have so I cling to it because I believe I’m a mostly good person, and a lot of my empathy comes from the feelings of dislocation that are enmeshed in my sexuality, which is a part of my identity.
I was in a relationship for 2 years with a man who was so deeply brainwashed by heteronormativity and the message that his father pushed to him that gayness was not an option for him, that he only realised he was gay when he’d had sex with his girlfriend, she had gone to bed, and he had gone to watch gay porn on the internet, suddenly realising he only felt fulfilled when he was looking at men. He felt terrible for his girlfriend but was desperate to leave and be true to himself- I met him on his return to the UK, and we were together for 2 years as he explored who he was. Due to my own experiences I thought this was a rarity – not, apparently, so.
People ask why LGBTQIA issues should be taught in school – probably because many people feel as he did, and end up experimenting in the opposite way that society normally speaks in hushed tones about. I’d imagine younger girls and boys would appreciate not being the experimentation of LGBTQIA youths who don’t know who they are, due to what I can only describe as indoctrination by heteronormative media and the framing of how we raise children in this society.
It’s always entertaining to ask heterosexual people when they chose to be straight and listen to either glib silence, or slack jawed misunderstanding. Though I did see @theconsciouslee who is amazing by the way, have an argument with a homophobe recently who said that heterosexuality is “the default”- which would imply it’s not a choice because you intrinsically are it and then somehow, without choosing, choose to stray from that…
I think some LGBTQIA people would “choose” not to be part of the LGBTQIA if given a choice. Having run a poll on Twitter, my results say:
So though many people would choose their identity if it was a choice, ultimately the fact that people can even answer the question should defeat the narrative of choice, which needs to be extinguished once and for all; and for those who believe they are straight but choose not to engage in homosexual acts, or who think their reluctance to transition due to whatever reasons means others are the same- you’re bi/trans and ignorant of others’ experiences to boot.
I suspect in a different society/country the results would be vastly different than they were, and would not be echoed by this tweet which I agree with
I know it has “sex” in it, but sexuality is about more than sex
Another defence homophobes love to use is that they don’t want to “confuse” children when allowing LGBTQIA issues to be spoken about in school. Again, to reiterate, what about those of us in the rainbow who grow up confused- but aside from that- we still grow up as ourselves despite being surrounded by heterosexuality, so the idea that a class could “confuse” someone into being part of the community is ridiculous. And again I repeat- for the vast, huge majority of us there is no element of choice.
Equally it always comes across as the idea that heterosexual fearmongers think that people in the rainbow’s issues only ever revolve around our genitals or sex. It’s rarely spoken about that we have a much higher rate of depression, low self esteem, suicide rate, that we engage in unsafe sex practices because we’re simply not taught to abide by safety and because we feel that sex is our binding commonality and have to use this to bond with and please our fellows. I’m trying to be sensitive when saying that, as it’s certainly not an accusation of a cavalier attitude to safety in the community- it’s an explanation of the reality that some of us seek sexual safety and equate that to emotional closeness- even at 33, I too can sometimes fool myself that someone who wants to have sex with me is the same as someone who cares for me.
Talking about LGBTQIA issues in a setting like school would allow for us to safeguard youths in the rainbow from falling into the same traps many of us have- unsafe meetups, grooming by the more sinister of those in our community (Who should also be dealt with), falling into echo chambers about issues that affect our community. The normalisation of sexuality and gender presentations would allow for a broader dialogue of shared experiences to bolster the youth experience of those who both do, and do not, conform to what is seen as societal norms- and expanding those societal norms to embrace us would give those of us outside the current norms to find a sense of normality – something I’ve had to search for years to find from within. I am normal. We are normal. It’s a society that forces rigid conformance to gender and sexual spectrum norms that is not.
Sexuality is a huge trope in culture, and comes with baggage which can be foisted on us- and to escape that iron blanket and discover our own identities takes work. We have to untangle not only the negative aspersions we face from heteronormative society- we have to unpick the subcultures we sometimes feel obligated to be part of, and feeding into stereotypes or archetypes leads to problems of it’s own.
Recentering pride
As efforts are made to shift pride back to the pure protest it originated as, with or without the acceptance of an utterly ambivalent tory government, this should be a claxon call to the community at large. It’s not the time to seek peaceful dialogue with those who would debate our rights to marry, kiss in the street, live with our partner, transition. Our existence is not an inconvenience to people but an incontrovertible, undeniable hard fact. Our existence can, as it has been, suppressed but we can and do continue to exist in strength through that. And now we’ve tasted the freedom acceptance grants, it’s not likely to be something surrendered easily.
Pride once again needs to become an outright slap in the face of those who would deny us our rights, our happiness, our ability to live as we are. We have to fight the foolishness I’ve gone over in this article and work together as a community, or we’ll always be struggling for even the bare minimum of being tolerated.
One of the enduring problems we face is the hedonistic amongst us in the community who care only for their own rights and protections. I see being part of the community as an automatic opting in to defending the rights of my fellows who share the community for whatever reason. To see selfish cis gay men talk about how they don’t care for trans rights, to listen to lesbians casually erase bisexuality etc, is maddening and exhausting. We can’t, we shouldn’t, fight amongst ourselves- that ire should be aimed at those without, not within. The more accepting the community is and the more it grows, the safer we are- and everyone in the community, at its core, suffers oppression- regardless of it’s “cause”, we share that commonality and must fuse together to battle this.
Having tried to baby the anti trans movement with spoonfuls of information to explain away their worries about a people who simply want to live unimpeded by their ignorance, or nicely ask for my least favourite word- tolerance- from bigots, I’m of the mind that time is running short to remind people that the community is more than happy to fight for it’s rights.
As the worrying radicalisation of more and more people continues unabated under a government indifferent to serious warning signs that the LGBTQIA of the UK are under threat, the time has come to utilise pride as the weapon in hiding it’s been during an era of more acceptance. We must be heard, we must be seen, we must be fierce. We, as a united group, will not have our rights supplanted by people who do not understand or care to understand our humanity.
Pride must be mobilised as a march of warning, as the sound of doldrums to make those who would stand to take our rights away- as a threat that coming for our community will not end with peace, but will bring back the radical queer movements of the 70s and 80s- staged die-ins, tv channels being overtaken, protests. We are a people whose oppression is not a “debate” as the more literate amongst the bigots try to say- we are humans, with rights and dignity we will not lose to appease the pathological amongst us.
Danger Signs
The reason I chose to write this piece is the sheer amount of anti LGBTQIA hate crimes taking place across the UK at the moment- worldwide, anti LGBTQIA sentiment is as always, a frightening topic. But in the UK, it seemed to have reached a point of normalisation that was refreshing. You weren’t beleaguered by bigotry in the street often, and people didn’t ask the retinue of foolish questions that are invasive and degrading in equal measure.
It seems that in recent months, hate crime has spiked against the community again, and at a time of danger, we should be focusing on coming together to offer support and foster discussion on how to be safe- but instead are mired in efforts to enlighten the more foolish amongst us who subscribe to anti trans sentiment, or feel that it doesn’t affect them because they are “lucky” enough to blend into heteronormative society.
If a concerted effort is not made by the entire community, these issues are never cured, only banished into the dark to fester, and it’s re-emergence is a worrying sign of things to come if we don’t rise up as one to combat the never tiring bigotry that hides in the shadows.
The concerted but quiet efforts of bigoted politicians has been the cornerstone of the issue with a sliding backwards of movements against the community. From the mainstream acceptance of politicians like Priti Patel who was, is and continues to be outspoken in her dislike for progressive rights for gay people, the prime minister himself referring to us tank topped bum boys, foolish errors in judgement like former PM Theresa May and then a compounding of the error, Kier Starmer, visiting an anti LGBTQIA church who foster conversion therapy- the dismantlement of the LGBT advisory board by ostensible equalities minister Liz Truss, the mainstreaming of transphobia in politics by (at best) misguided and at worst radicalised MP’s like Rosie Duffield or Jess Phillips who stupidly tweeted a conspiracy theory about a trans murderer then refused to apologise… And the fact that the anti trans arguments are, naturally, recycled tropes from homophobia.
For fun, lets pick them apart!
*Insert LGBTQIA person here* is a pervert!
From “gays shouldn’t teach because they are paedophiles” to “trans women will wave their genitals around/ look at my genitals”, genuinely WHY – is being part of this community linked to the idea that we are naturally perverted. It seems that any LGBTQIA behaviour is linked intrinsically to the idea of sex, sexual gratification or sexual arousal. Gay men couldn’t just want to be teachers for the same banal reasons as heterosexual people. Trans women couldn’t just want to use a bathroom because they feel comfortable surrounded by people with their own gender presentation. The bathroom fallacy is always my favourite to pull apart, and as I mentioned in another piece, if you’re afraid of the arousal of those around you in a bathroom the next issue will come with lesbian, gay or bi people being forced to use some mythical third bathroom option to prevent what heteronormative folk see as a natural result of shared space.
To not adhere to societal expectations does not automatically match the (frankly overused in this instance) moniker of pervert. Enjoying leatherwear or being a drag queen does not automatically feed into some deep seated lust for unsafe sex acts. This eagerness to tie members of the community to the anchor of perversion is to cast a huge swath of the community overboard to sink in the ridiculous seas of meaningless buzz phrases we’ve been fighting against since sentiment against us was coined. I’ve done drag 6 times. It’s not sexual, it’s fun to do something outside of the gender norms.
People also tend to conflate drag and trans people- I’ve never understood that trope either. To do drag is to adopt a persona other than your own and create an exaggerated look that matches that- usually, but not always, a feminine one. To be trans is to feel that your gender does not match what you feel it is.
At it’s heart, this sort of sentiment is meant to “other” us, to dehumanise us. But every single human is human, no matter how good or bad they are, and to not fit your societal expectations is not automatically set to run parallel to not being deserving of, at very least, respect.
*Insert LGBTQIA person here* is trying to convert our children!
We can’t. Firstly as I’ve mentioned, I’ve no idea how I’d go about converting someone to gay – either people have those feelings or they don’t. I don’t know the first thing about making someone feel something they don’t feel. Secondly, even if we could, I wouldn’t.
I’ve slept with questioning men, men who wonder if they might have gay/ bi feelings. It never ends well – usually with being completely disregarded, sometimes with hate crimes… If my sexuality is so repellent to you why precisely would I want to foster that with you? And why, oh why, would I want to raise a child into a sexuality that (despite coming with good things), has been the cause of a significant portion of unhappiness for me in my life- usually at the hands of other people.
*Insert facet of the community here* is innately sexual, and shouldn’t be spoken about!
I am a gay man. Is it sexual when I go and buy stamps? Is it a part of my sexuality when I look at shoes in a shop? Is it a gay perversion when I go to the bathroom, make a cup of tea, answer my work phone, dry my clothes, itch my foot?
So often- too often, we are reduced to pastiches of the worst kind, sex crazed, kinky people who are only about that. We all brush our teeth (I hope), eat food, read, sleep… And I feel it prudent to ask people outside our community to please stop reducing us down to what we do with our genitals, and what we think about. Equally, a message for those in the community as much as outside of it- you don’t have to have engaged in same sex acts, or have transitioned, to be LGBTQIA. A gay or bi man who has never had sex with another man is still gay or bi. A trans man who hasn’t been able to start transition due to the woeful state of trans healthcare in the UK. It’s not about your perception of another person’s acts or presentation, it’s about theirs.
Opening a dialogue about LGBTQIA issues for younger people would not just help LGBTQIA youths but also those suffering their own issues- for example, speaking about the increased isolation and depression rates of LGBTQIA youths would also, naturally, have benefit for those who feel those same feelings but who are NOT part of the community. Speaking about the pressure that comes with sexualisation in a community where sex is (often but not always) the common denominator or reason you gain attention, would also feed back into those who are sexualised against their will in modern society. It can only give benefits to give an honest and open dialogue about difficulties people face, and the normalisation of those individuals.
Let’s stop catering to reactionaries & radicals
If you are genuinely so radicalised as to believe people will go on years long waiting lists for hormones and gender reassignment surgeries, or who will face ostracization from family and friends to live openly as they are, you are frankly more privileged than you could know. I, and I’m sure it’s not just me, am thoroughly exhausted of catering to fools who believe this nonsense. Their views should be scorned, ridiculed, debunked and those who cling to it like driftwood at sea should be shamed. You don’t get to cling to beliefs that are damaging in a very real way to huge groups of people when the evidence you are wrong -and you are- exists in such abundance. You are the anti-vaxxers of sexuality and gender presentation, buying into scurrilous conspiracy theories in place of thinking critically about human nature and the diversity encoded into our ways of reproducing. You shouldn’t be entertained or catered to, because you choose ignorance in a way we cannot choose our sexualities (to my knowledge) or genders.
Religious or “philosophical” entitlement to bigotry
Lets keep this brief for the Maya Forstater supporters in the room. Your choice to believe in all the wizardry of books about magic beings who create afterlives and moral lists of how we can be good people is yours, and you’re free to make it. But why you think for one moment that your beliefs should be able to impact on our right to live, our right to access healthcare, our right to urinate in public in peace, is one of the most confusing and yet enduring arguments in modern society. If you want to believe that all gay men are ravening predators, or that trans folk are somehow suffering from AGP (google it, it’s frankly too ridiculous for me to even explain), that’s not because you have founded proof of it- it’s because you choose to believe in bottom line bigotry, because your desperate need to “understand” something you’re not a part of means you are willing to believe nonsense recycled by others who are not a part of the community- or at best, are outliers of it- instead of putting aside your desperate need to apply prejudice and actually speak to the people you so fear and attempt to understand them. That, I assure you, is a problem, an issue, a shortfall, an imbalance with you- and is not something that should labour the life or happiness of a member of our community. To sum up -get a life, get an education- or get out.
Concluding words- and actions
Pride being a protest is a message that’s been gently moved to the back, in favour of a rebrand of a more peaceful word like, celebration, memorial or similar.
We exist in spite of those who would see us killed, beaten, bruised, arrested, raped, converted- and pride is a stark reminder that we can, that we should, that we must stand in defence of ourselves and each other, shoulder to shoulder in this constant march towards progress.
To know that we exist in a world where we could be murdered based on something so comparatively minor which has been made important by the collective idiocy of the society we’re in is exhausting sometimes- and it’s a sentiment that’s shared with many other members of society. Women face increased risk of violence, both physical and sexual, and yet a significant portion of gender criticality is based around the idea that cis women are somehow at loggerheads with trans rights. To deny the commonality is to deny common sense- and yet anti trans radicals do this often.
Society at large sees heterosexuality as a norm to be applied, chased, obtained, whereas I see all sexualities and gender presentations as the norm- genetic quirks but notable enough to be part of a melting pot of societal norms- there is not, and should not be, a hegemony of any one over another. Coexistence, surely, is the norm in a society who can and should foster acceptance.
And if society can’t foster coexistence, as the saying goes, it can expect resistance.
Mandel, a vocal Rowling supporter who also thinks that friendship with Neo Nazis is a good idea
I feel like a traitor writing this piece. The last thing that’s needed is yet another cis person wading in to explain to other cis people the feelings of people who never ever get platformed and listened to. But it’s hard to stay silent when you see the damage of a ramped up hate movement being done to your friends, and so many other cis people determined to swing another axe at the base of trans rights. Over 50% of women in the UK accept that trans women are women; but the very vocal minority who do not are becoming ever more radicalised in their efforts to tar all trans folk as deviant. Anti trans folk like Rosie Duffield or Rowling will speak from double spread newspapers and in front of sympathetic journalists about how they’re being silenced, missing the irony, and platform seekers like Maya Forstater will throw away any decency to cling onto misinformed bigotry in the face of evidence to the contrary, shifting what was insisted as “biological reality” to philosophy just to propagate the hatred. What will it take for anti-trans people to accept that demonising an entire minority because of their perceived slights is causing damage to everyone- not just those they hate and fear?
Gender critical beliefs are a strange set of tenets which confuse anyone who doesn’t ardently subscribe to them- and still manages to flummox those who do.
“Women are being erased!” are you a woman? Are you being erased? Or is the definition of woman being widened for inclusivity? Does inclusion dilute or just offer more perspective? I’m sure you can guess my answer.
“People are being brainwashed into being trans” Fear not! There’s a 7 year waiting list, endless demeaning meetings and discussions, I’m sure anyone “brainwashed” will wake up from that.
“Trans women are men seeking to access women’s spaces for devious reasons” perhaps as a society we should address the problematic behaviour of so many men if this outlook on male behaviour is so widely shared – but trans women aren’t men, so blaming them for cis men’s actions is foolish and wrong.
“The world is going woke!” Enjoy your Forstater victory if you will – you’re perfectly entitled to think bigoted thoughts but, much like if I threw racial epithets around at work, if you are transphobic you will be fired. Think what you want, no one is the thought police, it’s just expected that if you’re transphobic you’ll either educate yourself out of bigotry or stay in that mind-set and keep it to yourself.
I’m loathe to mention the cis women at the Olympics who have been stopped from competing, or been asked to present her genitals to prove she is a woman because her performance was so good; but sometimes the only way to capture those who are indifferent to the plight of trans folk is to mention these women: because when it can be applied to you as a person, suddenly it becomes more of a threat. Caster Semenya has been told she must “lower her testosterone levels” so she can compete in women’s events. But as a cis woman, who is the arbiter of what is a “womanly” testosterone level? And do those who decided this think that once you are over a certain level of testosterone you are not a woman?
There are so many arms to the nuance of the debate: the erasure of non binary or intersex folk in the debate, the harm done to cis women (Like Caster Semenya, disqualified for her body’s hormone production or Tabitha Chawinga, who was forced to strip naked in public to prove she is a woman) that it seems gender critical people overlook, and trans people will bring up these examples to show the harm being done- only to be met with accusations of agenda pushing. There’s also the case of anti trans folk who will blithely confirm that “only women can have periods, only women can get pregnant, only women can give birth”- excluding as always any trans woman OR cis woman who doesn’t fit that paradigm which frankly borders on elitist- I know several women who can’t conceive and menopause ensures any woman who lives to experience it does not have periods. We’re to the point of gender criticality where you will read anti trans people speaking about hip structure and bone length or number of ribs as if that in any way affects how people live on the daily- I think if you lie awake at night counting your womanly ribs you’re entitled to do so, but whether that’s a disturbing view to take on your body is not for me to answer for fear of upsetting people.
Anecdotally, I suffered from gynaecomastia for months as a teen boy and essentially grew TINY breasts which subsequently went away. This, according to gender critical thinkers, is something only women can do naturally: so what am I? Usually you’ll be met with “people like this are outliers” which is correct but also discounts the valid experience of people who do not fit the stereotypical growth patterns experienced by many. Incidentally around 1.7% of the world is intersex, which is close to the number of people that would have died in the initial wave of COVID had there been no vaccine. That number, this number of outliers? 132600000. Seems like not an insignificant number of people.
Rather than meeting people outside of the gender norms with scorn and repulsion, perhaps there should be some give on the gender critical side, a consensus that their understanding of their own experiences, bolstered by endless rhetoric from their own circle, does not explain why people transition, or continue to transition even in the face of relentless abuse, even when facing 7 year waiting lists, under accusations of perversion or mental illness, with the threat of hate crimes from insults to rape and murder looming heavy over their heads.
Personally I’ve tried to have productive discussions with gender critical folk before, to try and understand the depths of their mistrust and hatred of trans people, especially trans women, and I’ll be honest: it frightens me. Not every time, but often enough, folk who ascribe to gender critical beliefs are frighteningly radicalised into believing that all trans women- in fact, not just trans women but anyone they see as a man- are dangerous opportunistic predators. I’ve tried to argue for trans women repeatedly in this discussion and am always met with unproductive replies about me being a “prostate haver”, a “beard”, a “misogynist”. In my eyes it’s reductive to ignore the point that gender critical feminism at its heart sees anyone that gender critical people see as a man, as a threat.
Cis Men are the Problem
Is the view that men are a threat incorrect? Probably not, unfortunately. Seeing the statistics following the murder of Sarah Everard where 97% of surveyed women had said they have experienced sexually inappropriate behaviour, it’s absolutely understandable that women would be cautious, nervous and mistrusting of men. But conflating trans women, a different demographic to cis men is a mistake: as does bringing up articles about trans prisoners sexually assaulting women. Sexual assault is a horrific crime that anyone can experience and too many people do- one person experiencing sexual assault is too many. But tarring all trans women with the brush of a sexual offender is disingenuous – should we tar all lesbians with the brush of sexual predator because some lesbians commit sexual assault? Or do the same with gay men? Should we ban gay and lesbian people from their gender’s bathrooms because they might be uncontrollably aroused by their fellow users? The idea of this is ludicrous and rooted, as is the anti trans rhetoric, in the idea that any deviation from gender or sexuality deemed “the norm” is automatically a disorder, perversion etc.
Anti trans rhetoric comes from a place so close to homophobia that it clearly shares a postcode and seeing the arguments recycled for the 21st century is disconcerting: living in a time of the trans panic, I sense I understand how LGBT allies felt during the gay panic of the 70s and 80s. Having to defend trans people from the automatic association with pervert is demoralising at best, and seeing a group of people determined to ascribe gender presentation with perversion is a frustrating experience at best, when you see the damage done to people simply trying to live out their lives in peace.
Watching gender critical people be further pushed to think that the truth of trans is tied to sexual arousal is confusing. Being trans isn’t linked to sexuality- it’s why there are gay, lesbian, bi, asexual trans people. And every trans person has had to explain, repeatedly, at length, that transitioning is not linked to sexual arousal or fetish- it’s a deep seated need to be on the outside as you are within and that is something I don’t believe anyone who is not trans could understand, or experience- but can most assuredly empathise with.
The reason it’s so frustrating to see the trans panic be framed as “philosophical” or “a debate” is that there is no debate here: one side want to maintain their rights, improve their healthcare and societal standing so it’s adequate and doesn’t come with years of waiting and demeaning processes, create a supportive atmosphere for youths who feel the same. The other side will throw accusations of paedophilia or grooming, they will shout over rights that trans people have had for longer than I’ve been alive, warning of dire consequences that just never seem to happen, and wrongly ascribe blame to trans women when it should be aimed at cis men.
Even the desperation of trans people to distance themselves from problematic trans women – because every demographic has problematic people within it- does nothing to assuage the fears of the gender critical crowd. Folks like Yaniv or White (if you know them, you’ll understand) are widely disparaged amongst trans activists and yet the gender critical folk will still continue to apply the miscreancy of these outliers to all trans folk as a rule- it is an established practice of gender criticality to ignore the facts for the sensation.
No decent trans person would support a man who donned a wig and a dress to access a private space for nefarious reasons – I’ve seen as much said by at least 3 of the most prominent trans activists. And when it comes to spaces like prisons, forget gender presentation –why are sexual predators being housed with people in general- having someone invade your body is a base betrayal, and those guilty of it should be housed away from anyone and everyone else.
Gender criticality boils down to the idea that men are dangers, and perceiving men that way is a huge, systemic societal problem that needs to be addressed (because it is not an idea without merit) and, it is my firm belief, would salve the fear anti trans people hold because it is ultimately cis men, sexuality irrespective (as a gay man who has experienced multiple instances of gay men not understanding the simple concept of consent) who are the instigators of the issues women (and other men!) face.
Additionally, one of the faces of gender critical beliefs is Graham Linehan who now publishes a blog to espouse gender critical beliefs after being kicked off twitter for his relentlessly hateful conduct- he has made a new career out of being the face of a hate movement, and I’ve no doubt that history won’t look kindly on him. But one has to wonder what on earth is in Linehan’s mind when it comes to supporting a movement that looks so unfavourably on men- and in fact, why a movement based around the idea that men are dangerous seem so willing to accept him as one of it’s ringleaders. In my personal view, Linehan appears to be a pet of the gender critical crowd, useful because he is a man telling the gender critical supporters that they are correct, that men are something to be feared, insidious, and that trans women are the highest example of this. One wonders how Linehan is so intimately familiar with how these imaginary devious trans women who are, despite years of having the rights he contests, think… or in fact what he himself thinks, if he’s so convinced that supporting the ideology that all men are opportunistic predators thinks.
It’s an unfortunate reality that many men must be taught how to comport themselves when it comes to consent and decency, and this stance is often met with flat denial- usually from the men most in desperate need of hearing it. But again- trans women are not men, and shouldn’t be held to the same values as a cis man- whether you think they are women or not is irrespective of this point- trans women have a vastly different perspective and lifestyle than cis men do- or they would not be trans women.
Looking at the LGB alliance I can only feel scorn for a group of people whose ostensible mission is “Stop being bigoted to us- but keep being bigoted to THESE people”. Their mission is so debased as to only need to be looked upon with disgust. Splintering the community that has supported each other from it’s necessary inception is a fools errand, and to condone certain forms of bigotry as long as it doesn’t affect you is horrifying.
Supporting trans people is to support a tiny faction in society who desperately needs to be protected from the increasing radicalisation of people who deny science which backs trans lives, who insist without evidence that trans people are dangers or in any way “wrong”. I can’t help but feel after such a long time in this debate, if you haven’t come to the conclusion that supporting trans people is right and fair, perhaps you’re lacking in some of the empathy you’re desperate for people to apply to you in your “struggle to be heard”.
If wearing makeup, womens clothing, hormones, your literal brain telling you, and shared experience don’t make a woman- what does. Because it certainly isn’t the continuation of bigotry.
The government are drawing up plans to have up to 10,000 army personnel – who are reserve personnel – handle the shortfall in delivery drivers to try and forestall mass hunger issues. Again, I and many others are asking the sensible question – what will it take to wake our fellow Britons up to the reality that we are being overseen by politicians too inept to oversee the basics of admin- never mind a country’s complex issues.
Let’s start with the fact that the 10K army reservists being prepped to be called in to deliver food during the shortage caused by “the pingdemic”, or, as anyone with any common sense has realised- Brexit, are already hauliers and will be called up from their regular job- as Hauliers- to work army reserves- to deliver food. They will call them away from their job bringing goods, to go and do their job… delivering food.
Does it make sense to you? No, it doesn’t me either, or in fact, anyone with even a droplet of common sense swimming lazily through their frontal lobes.
Lets also look at the depth of the problem. What is 100,000 – 10,000?
Its 90,000.
So – we’ll still be short 90,000. But some of that 10K are already doing the job they’re being called away to do, so we’ll still actually be about 93,000 people short.
Even if this arrangement is temporary, we know that to actually resolve the problem, the government will eventually have to offer some sort of work programme to hauliers in the EU to attract them back to the UK to do the job they’re not currently here doing. Firstly, this will infuriate those whose job it already is (and who for some reason think they will be paid more money when the fact is, there is a shortage of bodies to do what they do). Secondly, it will further imperil both the EU and the UK when it comes to rising covid infections- the “third” (it’s the fourth) wave of the pandemic will likely be off the back of whatever the UK does to attract people here to do more haulage.
There’s no denying that the “pingdemic” may have had an impact of course- but this fails to be an excuse now the app has been turned down- it will now only “ping” you under more specific circumstances. So why is the army being drawn up to cover this shortfall? If the app will stop impacting then maybe we could just wait… I saw an article (roughly translated) from Germany, absolutely excoriating the british press for their complicity in pushing the government mandated line of the “Pingdemic”. Every country has covid, every country has an app to trace infections- but only England decided to throw off the brakes. If this was such an error and cause the “pingdemic” a careful partial cautious lockdown would have negated the worst and allowed business to continue as normal, or as the government apparently wished, covid would have torn through the population and caused “herd immunity” quickly – this has not happened for reasons that are still unclear.
Ah- so…it’s because something else is causing the issue, isn’t it.
See how the barest scraping of common sense debunks the myth of the pingdemic being the contributor to empty shelves?
Still the government and British Journalism persist with the lie, enabled by a press trained to clap like sealions, rather than do the job of journalists. Any journalist worth their salt in another country would show the hubris of the government in persisting with Brexit and severing trade during a pandemic (or, in fact, at all…). They don’t mention the terrible deal that the lead negotiator (as I’ve mentioned before) has stated is unserviceable and how we “can’t go on like this”- using the deal that HE negotiated.
Weekly in the UK we are subjected to Lord Frost’s vacuous complaints that the EU is not accommodating the UK. But let me ask the question that Brexiteers should ask themselves: Why should the EU bow down to us? Why should they recognise our “special relationship”? Why is it up to the EU to renege to make sure that people don’t go hungry here? After all, we’re the ones who voted for this- to the EU, this is ostensibly exactly what we voted for and what our government made a deal for.
Equally, even if the EU is being underhand it’s vital to remember that the EU are bound to make the UK’s dealings harder so as not to incentivise other member states from leaving. Can you blame them for this? The EU relies upon itself to survive, and equally is running as normal without the UK- is the UK Running well without the EU? The empty shelves and delays and escalated prices for deliveries and goods say no.
Johnson as usual has avoided any mention that the repercussions of Brexit are flying in our faces, though apparently the Conservatives expect a mass back bench rebellion when the food shortages hit their supporters and themselves- because predictably, nothing matters to Conservatives unless it directly affects them. Instead he’s spent £150,000 on Union Jacks in a year. He’s spent £100,000 of taxpayer money on new paintings for government premises. He’s floated the idea of ships to pay homage to a king that only fervent royalists cared for. How does any of this- ANY OF IT- help the working class of this country to live well.
It’s confusing to see a country of people adversely affected by these decisions roll over time and time again to accept it- I genuinely am running out of empathy for people who can’t keep up with the obfuscation caused by the press, because there’s only so many times you can draw the Dot to Dot for them to see the clear impact of inept politicians and how that ineptitude often turns into the issues they face- from an education system which may have failed them, to a media that teaches people that all of their woes can be ascribed to the 402 migrants who come to the shores of the UK every day VS the 503 people a week dead of Coronavirus because of Johnson’s desperate need to inflate an economy that threatens to collapse anyway, on to the government itself who seems desperate to impart the lesson that fealty to a flag is more important than a functional health system or fresh food.
The body politic of the UK have formed up around the idea that speaking on Brexit is verboten because we may upset the poor, sensitive Brexiteers. Starmer’s labour won’t point to the chaos unfolding in fear of the splashback from ardent Brexiteers but perhaps that’s exactly what’s needed. It’s time to stop pandering to people who cannot be told common sensical facts without playing whataboutism or denying reality. If you voted for Brexit- and if you support it still – you are enabling this government to play a foolish game of chess with your wellbeing which you see as secondary to an imagined sovereignty. Whatever issues you may have had with the EU are, frankly, imaginary- they didn’t impact on your daily life, especially in the way that the repercussions of leaving have done, except in very rare cases.
Even the deals signed with other countries which, inexplicably, Liz Truss seems to have been headed up to discuss, pale in comparison to the convenience and common sense, not to mention the actual material rebates, of our membership to the EU. We’re also told that the benefits of leaving the EU won’t be felt in our lifetime- so we’re supposed to cope with food shortages, a shortage of staff, no options for relocation without lengthy visa processes, safe in the knowledge that our descendants MAY feel benefits.
People often refer to Johnson as a libertarian, but the only liberties Johnson has fought for is the right for us to die at others’ hands, or to fret over food as the shelves grow barer and barer.
Who needs an oven ready meal when you have an oven ready deal?
Food shelves run empty up and down the country, tensions flaring in Ireland, and the entitled attitude of long term politicians who seem to think that Britain being a world leader in economics 150 years ago entitles us to special dispensation from the people on whom we spit in 2016. Just when is England, specifically, going to admit that Brexit was a mistake so we can start moving forward and repairing it’s fallout?
I’m talking to my friends this morning, almost on the edge of hysterical laughter at how ridiculous things are. With freedom day having passed and seeing daily spreader events taking place and precautions lifting as employers encouraging their staff to delete the track and trace app, you would assume we have enough to deal with – there were reports last night on the 21st of July, that there were NO PICU beds left in the country (paediatric ICU)- these reports, whilst unsubstantiated, came from a senior paediatric doctor via her social media so carry more weight than an anonymous report.
Additionally, outside of healthcare and service roles, workers returning to office after exposure to people now living “as normal” will begin to fall ill and be away from work. The slow crumbling of the UK workforce will come to the fore over the next fortnight as hospital admissions climb at rates we haven’t seen in months. So you’d be forgiven to assume that we have quite enough to worry about, simply as we’re all getting closer and closer to falling sick.
However, if you’re focusing intently on the already imminent disaster of the pandemic, you’ll also be treated to the media’s newest collective spinning of the truth – the “pingdemic” (which, incidentally, is one of the most ridiculous concepts I’ve seen in my 33 years).
The fact that the track and trace app is alerting people to isolate and actually doing its job effectively is a surprise to me- I’ve seen how ineffective the app was at the height of the pandemic, so to see it working to this extent is terrifying- the statistical rates of capture for the app was bad, so if it’s working at this rate- we are in a real mess.
This isn’t a pingdemic- it’s the app doing what we have allowed the government to spend a projected £35 billion on it to do.
As the UK workforce lowers either by actual sickness or isolation, the government flounders out message after message- it’s advised that you must isolate mandatorily or not but dont not isolate if you want to not isolate when you’re advised that you must isolate- it’s the tory way. Fans of three word slogans they are, so perhaps their ongoing message throughout 2020 and 2021 should have been “confuse, distract, ignore”.
But on to the reason I felt the need to write this.
Brexit is, put plainly, a fucking disaster.
It’s already cost more than every payment the UK ever made to the EU. It’s already alienated literal health workers that I had long term connections with- they left the UK because they didn’t feel welcome here by a country that voted to sever ties with their mother countries. It’s caused endless division between people on either side who are convinced that they are right, it’s made families tear themselves apart, it’s allowed the bolstering of authoritarian bluster from a government whose only concern is to hide their deceit and enrich themselves and their fellows. Now, in what I confidently say is still the middle of this worldwide pandemic, it’s causing shortages in food, whilst also increasing the consumer cost of goods.
Additionally, barely a whisper in the press that the new deal that the UK has struck with Australia pales into comparison with the EU and that it also manages to undercut British farmers- another huge demographic who voted leave and are now reaping the costs of their own determination to ignore facts and political forecasting that always warned them (please note that as a country boy myself I’m not blaming all farmers, some I spoke to were very much pro co-operation with the EU). The press is, as I’ve pointed out before, firmly in favour of pushing party lines even in the face of the obvious: journalism seems to have taken a very generous step away from providing the public with what they need to know, and towards telling us what we want to hear for an easy life, and I’m sure the 52% will be reluctant to be told that their decision to TAKE BACK OUR SOVEREIGNTY, TAKE BACK CONTROL and all the other slogans- were a poor decision which should never have been in our hands.
There is a point that I’ve made numerous times and always been attacked for- and it’s not because we made what I still maintain is the wrong decision. My job has almost nothing to do with EU import/export, EU citizenry etc and Brexit has still caused myriad issues. But that is the issue- millions in the UK voted on our membership to the EU with absolutely no idea what it actually meant, what it did or did not do for us, the real positives or negatives. Such debating wizardry should have been left to people whose job it was to understand the finer details- but of course, those people are those like Nigel Farage who for years enjoyed the fruits of the UK’s membership to the EU, and has built a career off of being xenophobic, or Lord Frost, who negotiated the deal so bad that we “cannot carry on as we are” under it’s terms. We were always set to fail, and the issue with the leave campaign is, and was, that they were free to lie- which they did in earnest. The truth is a boring grey little thing and it’s immutable- it can be spun, but facts cannot be changed and the fact was that we were well placed in the EU, that we enjoyed privilege other member states didn’t, that our citizenry benefited from further protections. A lie can be anything! Money for the NHS, money for you, freedom, taking our borders back, booming economy! Sell those lies and of course people will stand behind you- as they did. The reality is, unfortunately, grim.
Fishermen are struggling, we’ve seen more job losses than the Nissan Gigafactory will actually create, I’ve seen multiple healthcare staff (EU, British AND of other nationalities) emigrate prior to or during the transition period listing Brexit as the reason, our standing in the global perception has sunk because of the churlish behaviour of openly xenophobic idiots like Farage or Hopkins, or from the idiocy of a man like Lord Frost who believes his say so means that we can override the Northern Ireland agreement… Let’s just pause there to examine the word “Agreement”. An agreement is not “we can do what we want”, it’s a set of terms which both parties agree to, which dictate the behaviours of each party. It speaks to the long bred line of imagined British superiority that has led to a situation where after four years of negotiations with a trade bloc, our highest place negotiators think they can state “we cannot go on like this” under the terms that THEY agreed for us!
I’ve said it before that it’s not the job of the working class to worry about the economy- that should rest in the hands of those who, as civil servants, are appointed to oversee it- and yet the fallout of their ambivalence hits US! The working class, most directly.
So we have less food, the food we have is more expensive, and the places the scant food is available are also hotbeds for COVID because nobody needs to wear masks or social distance- and with the virulence of the Johnson variant, it doesn’t matter if “only one or two people” break the rules- it will still spread amongst those who do choose to do the right thing.
Ireland as a whole has been caught in the middle of the ridiculous exchanges of the UK and EU from the start of this process- and the EU has not been blameless, much as the more hardcore remainers (I am one) would sometimes protest. It’s pragmatically common sense that the EU would be harsh on an ex partner specifically to discourage others from leaving and facing the same blockades- but to fully heft the weight of this mess on the EU is disingenuous- the continued poor behaviour of the UK (England… Westminster…) brings the selfsame worst case scenarios that we have been predicting and being told about since the day after the UK referendum that set us on this course.
The reason the media, so attuned to the message they should be pushing for the government, are pushing the narrative of the app is to further the rampant infections that are coming. The foolish short term thinking of those in power is that many, many hundreds of thousands- perhaps millions, of people will get sick, recover, and carry on working. No thought about death, disability from long covid, job loss, these people’s families who are dependant on them- no. Force infection through lassitude, blame the citizenry for “not doing what was right” when we’ve seen that the moral mandate of some folk in the UK is to do whatever they want whilst loudly repeating buzzwords like “sovereignty” and “freedom”. They hope that people will delete the NHS track and trace app and that the reported number of infections drop as people just stop caring about reporting their results. They hope that they can blanket the media with distractions as the virus rages and mutates through a disturbingly compliant populace. And they hope to distract from the simple fact that their own lack of expertise in writing trade agreements outside of the European Union means that in addition to this, we face greater cost for less choice of goods. But of course, all in the name of that famous word, sovereignty, I’m sure.
On day one of “freedom day” rioting shakes London as anti- lockdown protesters sizzle in the sun, desperate to be angry about something. Watching the scenes which, by the way, continue to make my frontal lobe itch, I have to wonder: What is it that it will take for the left to stop fighting amongst itself and wipe the floor with the right wing roaches forcing us all to endure their madness?
Every single day without fail I watch in confusion. There are so many issues that need to be ironed out, addressed, discussed, debunked, dealt with- there is no denying that. But anyone who can’t see the right eagerly throwing fuel into the gaping maw of the culture war engine we’re all riding must be wilfully blind.
Crime Sinister Johnson so recently declared that he REFUSED to partake in culture wars- this, the man who has eagerly poised his pen to pontificate on people of colour, on the LGBTQIA, on muslim women, who has so brazenly displayed his ambivalence towards the women in his life. Johnson stokes controversy in his wake, and it is one of the things I’ll admit he does well – he cannot breeze past a subject without infuriating someone involved with it.
But this is bigger than Johnson himself.
The media in the UK is owned and operated by oligarchs with a vested interest in keeping their fellows in power. The discord sown makes them money, makes their lives better, towering fortunes built on the rickety limbs of the unfortunate fools propping up these monoliths who so willingly believe the falsehoods and narratives spun for them by newspapers with an average readability age of 12.
So many people look at the simple fact that the media favourably paints their political fellows and think this is some loony leftie idea- digging feverishly through issue after issue they find one scant article critical of the government and wave it in front of you, screaming SEE?!! as if this offers proof paid that we’re wrong. We don’t quite live in a regime catered entirely to the right- so naturally, criticism pops up. But in a country currently feeling food shortages by Brexit, suffering a heatwave from climate change, and with no restrictions in place to prevent the spread of a virus which can cause myriad debilitating issues, the press focuses on the usual piffling nonsense- Katie Hopkins being rightly deported from Australia.
The scenes in London today – There are “anti lockdown riots” on “freedom day” – paint an image of the perpetually angry at nothing but desperate to blame something wash of people who don’t understand why their lives are the way they are and filled with the need to fight for a cause- a cause they don’t seem to understand or even know about.
A more charitable person than I would firmly blame terrible educational governance and in my calmer moments, I know that a country that insists on educating people the traditional way- shouting facts at them even if they don’t learn that way- then turfing them out into a world that doesn’t teach critical thinking, only to let them be engulfed in said rhetoric of IT’S THE GAY FOREIGN LEFTIES MAKING YOUR LIVES BAD, can muster some sort of understanding. I struggle.
I make myself sound like I’m above all this – I know full well I’m ocean deep in what could ostensibly be painted as anti government radicalisation, with the leftist propaganda the government sweats privately about ringing at all times in my ears. But I’m not willing to believe that the politics of standing up for everyone instead of propping up the rich is the greater of two evils when the current group in charge are quite literally casting its own citizens, voters- fellow humans – into the bottomless pit of a mass health crisis for the economy.
If there’s a person in the world who doesn’t live in a remote clearing somewhere who doesn’t think they fall victim to the rhetoric they choose, they are foolish.
Of course I see that in my case, it’s THE RIGHT WING UNCARING NUT CASES WANT ME TO SUFFER TO ENRICH THE ALREADY RICH- But when I’m given so much evidence to back that up, how can I ever feel like I’m wrong?
I digress.
The right seems to come at it’s issues with one mind- the simple mind of “we need to win”. It doesn’t matter how far fetched the idea is- watch the right back it. You can reel off a list of the things Johnson has let us down on and get the same answers back:
“he locked down late multiple times” He had no choice
“his cabinet has been illegally funding PPE contracts” He cant possibly know everything that’s going on
“he refused to work with the EU on procuring ventilators” Who wants to work with the Corrupt EU
“tory donors funded his flat even though he said he did” he deserves to have a nice place to live
“he said let the bodies pile high” lies from Dominic Cummings (even in the face of FREEDOM DAY…)
“he let “eat out to help out” happen” that was Rishi Sunak
“he tried to get out of isolating” he did the right thing in the end
And the irony is, I’ve seen people who have said these EXACT sentences to me laughing at the blind obedience of Trump supporters.
Oh, there is a comparison that Johnson supporters hate. They can’t, or won’t see, through the miasma of their dedication, that they’re willing to do as the Trump supporters do and reshuffle reality to allow Johnson infinite rope to hang himself, along with the rest of us.
The madness of the right backers will always confuse me.
But so too, does the madness of the lefties I regularly interact with.
Holding politicians to account is vital, necessary and important. But the endless castigation of politicians on our side who are, to an extent, powerless against a right-aligned media, and who are woefully underrepresented in parliament thanks to the (admittedly outdated) FPTP system, does no one any good- except those who wish to maintain power.
Starmer’s labour is mired in issues so deeply we can barely see it- only a fool would deny it. From internal issues relating to transphobia and an unfortunate resurgence of Islamophobic rhetoric, to supposed “long time labour supporters” declaring their refusal to vote for a party that “conditions children to be LGBT”- Its LGBTQIA by the way, at least be correct in your stupidity, the labour party has issues that need to be addressed and the daily insistence that all is well is tiring. Another issues of course is the weighty ghost of Corbyn. Endlessly we’re told that he would have been the magical panacea to fix all woes- I’m not quite so confident in Mr Corbyn as others, though I didn’t dislike his politics. But ultimately, I can see why Labour, and Starmer in particular, struggle. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – a political savant Starmer is not. Even I, who pay close attention to politics, sometimes fail to see why he comes down where he does on the issues he speaks on. But he is not, as so many people regularly say, a red tory. And frankly I’d take a fractured government over one who pours outright malevolence. Somehow, week after week, month after month voters still stick to the frayed threads of the well travelled lines we’ve been fed since January 20 – “it would be worse if Corbyn got in”.
No. It wouldn’t. How could it be worse? Abject dereliction of duty in an ongoing health crisis, corruption with public funds, billions thrown away on an app that fundamentally does not work run by a woman literally famed for data loss – which also happened, a health secretary forced to walk the plank so backbenchers can make money, a home secretary who used public funds to buy off someone she bullied, credit taken for a vaccine program they had little to do with, care homes flooded with the virus at the hands of a man who only cared about reaching an imaginary testing figure he made up on the spot, a new health secretary with close links to privatised healthcare – and at the top of it all, a prime minister so embroiled in hate speech, ignorance, lassitude and outright ineptitude that how he holds a position more senior than lamppost is beyond me.
Anyone else of some sort of sense can see that a government which cares even vaguely for the people it oversees would have fared better.
So begs the question- what on EARTH has to happen before England (in particular, as the spoilt brat of the UK) realises that the infighting around Starmer not being everything of the 27 things the traditional labour camps want him to be, means that this continued warring means that we’ll just keep seeing Johnson or his acolytes succeed.
There are so many suggestions for alternatives: Zarah Sultana- An amazing politician who is far too young to be in the highest office in England.
Andy Burnham- He stood up to them! True- what else does he stand for…? Great choice.
Recent Labour Joiner John Bercow! – Probably would be a good choice for some- but forget absolutely any far left representation, Bercow appears to be precisely one eyebrow hair’s breadth over the line of centre left, though I’d be happy to be proved wrong.
Angela Rayner- who can’t even admit she stood directly next to Corbyn at a photo op.
Frankly at this point I don’t care who heads the Labour party- come who may, just get the corruption moving, drain the wound, burn out the corruption.
I’ve explained many times that I’m not actually a hardcore labour supporter and I’d love a further left alternative. So many people have said that I and people like me should start a new party (like for example, the NIP- a wonderful and absolutely infeasible idea), which is a brilliant way to even further divide an already ratbitten left. I’m a pragmatist at heart, and stand behind the left that I see having a chance to take power from the tories. Frankly it doesn’t matter who they are- and this, reader, is the crux of it. I think I have the attitude the right do- but on the left. I don’t care if Kier Starmer isn’t the best leftist politician we’ve ever seen. I just want the tories out of power, and after that we can damage control. If Starmer is the devil so feared by many we can oust him and install one of the many other choices people feel prepped to back over him. But until we form alliances, we’re doomed to keep the cycle of conjecture until there will come a reckoning where, whether we want to or not, finally the realisation that we might have to back a leader that some of us don’t like- if it means ridding Westminster of the current devils so determined to make the system work for them at the expense of all of us. Is that Starmer? I do not know- there are people much more politically savvy than me who think he is, and he is not, the man to lead the charge against the tories. But I and a friend of mine both agree that I’d cheerfully see a rotisserie chicken in office over the clumsy bumbling of a buffoon like Johnson.
I plead with anyone who reads this to understand that the unfortunate truth, whether you want to accept it or not, is that an undesirable option is still an option, and without a cogent coming together of the different facets of the left, we’re doomed to sit under the conservatives until this country collapses in on itself- quite literally from the response to the COVID crisis alone.
It doesn’t have to be Starmer, but it has to be someone. So stop squabbling and start working with those you might not necessarily agree with or resign yourself to this- this utter mess- this sham government- ruling over you for the foreseeable future. A shoddy government we install can be dealt with – one who actively works against us to the baying of the ignorant will only keep making our lives worse.
Reader, I have to be honest. I didn’t think this would happen. I assumed that, at some point, someone would talk common sense into the admittedly plankish head of our esteemed Crime Sinister Johnson. But as tomorrow looms with no last minute sanity from our erstwhile government, some thoughts.
When I saw that Sajid Javid, a man who has been health secretary for less time than I’ve had bell peppers in my fridge, confirmed that he’d been diagnosed with COVID-19, my first thought was “right, well his name is now Sajid Covid in every video I make about him”.
I felt a small hope that perhaps this might prompt Westminster to realise that their diet eugenics plan probably wasn’t so brilliant after all. And most of all, I felt absolutely sure that Javid, as was shortly confirmed thereafter, would have shared a room with our mop haired muppet prime minister- and I wondered how he was going to escape this one.
I don’t want anyone to suffer from COVID-19 – I’ve seen, in front of me, someone die in a very similar way to the way this disease kills you if you’re so unlucky as to suffer that fate. I’ve heard someone complain that they’re drowning in their own pleural fluid. It’s not something I would wish on anyone, best friend or worst enemy. It’s part of the reason I’ve been so careful throughout the pandemic, acting as best I could without going absolutely insane. You can imagine, then, my dismay when this morning’s news brought an update that both our illustrious thatch haired goon of a leader AND Rishi Sunak would NOT be isolating as we have, for the last twelve months (delayed, “world beating” app) been told is the “right thing to do”.
The outcry from the public was thunderous and for once I was pleased that the British public were outraged by something. But fleeting that feeling was because of course, they did their little U turn and all the Johnson fans jumped straight back on the bandwagon.
I have to wonder exactly what “freedom” it is that people are missing? Those who haven’t wanted to wear masks haven’t been doing. Many a right wing grifter has been proudly declaring in their ignorance that they never downloaded the crap and trace app. And as for social distancing, the amount of sweaty headed idiots I’ve had spluttering at me throughout the pandemic is… many. I think I must have a different understanding of freedom. People seem to think that risking other people’s lives, hell, their own lives, is fine. I can’t tell you how many people have told me we just need to “get on with…” whatever. Our lives? Bit difficult when I’ll be worrying about passing on a virus to anyone I care about that might mean heart failure, coma, death, long term lung issues and more.
I’m not sure what the people desperate to go “free” think will happen next. We’re all up for the chopping block now. Likely we’ll all be sick, some of us very much so. The shops they’re so desperate to avail themselves of will shut again due to sickness. The coffee shops will become endless breeding grounds for the disease. Hospitals will fill and shut down.
Doesn’t seem like much of a freedom day to me.
I suspect if I get COVID-19 I’ll be okay, though my chances of long covid are still high. Who knows.
But I want this blog post to stand as an epitaph for anyone I love who I lose. I’ll write your name here, and that will give me the fuel for the fire I’ll summon to utterly destroy the enduring legacy of the charlatans running our government who allowed this disaster to unfold.
EDIT: It is Tuesday, 24th October 2023. At the start of October, over 10,000 people died. 2.3% of these deaths were attributable to coronavirus.
CW: I have copied highly offensive (but censored) wording of Johnson’s own writing- if youare a POC please take caution in reading this. If you’re a white person- read it and absorb that this is who we have in charge.
Boris Johnson’s refusal to acknowledge, condemn and apologise for his outright racism is yet another canker on the face of a country already under strain from several angles- begs the question, why won’t people who made mistakes just admit to them and condemn them? And further to that- is an apology enough to POC for us to be able to accept that we’re currently being ruled by racism?
I’m not a POC, and I worry all the time that being brought up in simple ignorance means I’ll say something offensive. I’m sure some people’s first reaction to that is a hearty eyeroll but I know exactly what it’s like for someone to say something really rude without even really meaning to and the internal “what the hell… do I say something? That might be awkward. Maybe I’ll just leave it. I’m pissed off now”. It’s exhausting and it must be worse for a person of colour, especially because their whole lives have been blighted by the conversation more and more people with less and less actual understanding are weighing in on- what is racism, what is acceptable and how do we stamp it out?
It’s only recently that the UK government commissioned a report that we were all glad to see be requested- an in depth look into institutional racism in society. Hopes were high that the report might be able to find where our society was landing against people of colour, and how this could be adjusted so that it was reduced to vanishing- hopes that quickly disappeared before the report was even disclosed when Munira Mirza was added to head the report up. Why, you ask? Here’s an excerpt from the Guardian article, showing that Mirza believes her own personal experience is universal- rather than being borne by the privilege she has attained:
Mirza attended Oxford- that well known school for the elites- but somehow is able to believe that she is representative of all POC in the UK. I’ll leave you to search up her other quotes about racial divisiveness in the UK- there are plenty.
To defend the PM, rather than asking he show contrition, is something that’s confused me since I became aware of his divisive verbal diarrhoea- so many people leaping to his defence- including himself. I’d have some respect for someone who came forward and apologised for their actions, explained that they had hideous views once and condemn them now having learned how poisonous they are- but ultimately it’s not for me to forgive- it’s not a violation of my existence. People of colour have the ultimate say as to whether the comments he makes are forgivable. Perhaps this instance, then, was a simple slip of the tongue.
But Crime Sinister Johnson’s tongue is, if anything, very slippery:
These comments, he proudly published himself! Source: the prime minister’s own writing in the press
His response?
Source: politics for all on twitter
Please re-read his column, and tell me what context there could be for that?
I don’t know: can someone else tell me what context is needed to use that language, and to imply some kind of imaginary verisimilitude in damning the actions of a person doing their job, referring to the transgressor as “indigenous”.
Johnson wants to distance himself from a culture war, and yet so conveniently forgets his multiple bloody handed instigations of racial division. Unable even to condemn, decry or apologise for these words, he fails to see how his rhetoric started the battles he’s now begging to bow out of.
The instigation of a “culture war” (what culture- being a person of colour?) pre-dates our erstwhile PM though of course. But can a man who has pushed this divisive wording over and over whilst hiding behind the self assured illusory comforts of a person like Mirza or Priti Patel really claim ignorance? You need only look at the sentiments he uttered about kneeling for racial equality (he falsely attributed kneeling to the Black Lives Matter movement despite repeated clarification from the England football team that kneeling was apolitical and a simple but powerful act to show solidarity against racism), literally refusing to condemn racism on and off the pitch – then his speedy turnaround to “shocked and appalled” when said racism tore through the internet like a thunderbolt.
As several prominent people have said since- you don’t get to refuse to condemn people who boo an apolitical act to show solidarity with victims of racism and then act surprised when racism finds footing in the country you run- especially when you have a pathological incapability of apologising for your words.
Lies? Stupidity? Or Just Callous Indifference?
I’ve started to believe that Johnson is just blissfully unaware that every word he throws off the cuff has disastrous consequences- look at the evidence.
He made a speech recently where he confirmed that it “only makes sense” to wear masks in enclosed spaces during another building wave of the coronavirus pandemic- only to be photographed not wearing a mask in his chauffeur driven car with his security and driver- IN THE SAME DAY.
People have taken his words about “freedom day” and twisted them, there is no denying it- but how he can cast off the mask mandate and not realise the abuse he’s foisting on anyone who needs to enforce it for their own good… he is either very foolish or just as callous as his regular mistakes indicate. Perhaps both, but I refuse to believe neither. Anyone who claimed masks were “not necessary” after the 19th in the face of this building wave of infections must either be extremely incautious… or extremely devious.
Back on Johnson’s terminal indifference to his own racist remarks, we had another ridiculous and transparent attempt to silence POC in parliament today- because originally there were NO people of colour tabled to speak out against the recent events in the press and public! At the speaker of the houses’ insistence, MP Zarah Sultana was added to the roster- and when she, a POC speaking passionately about anti racism, was speaking- she was told to lower her tone (!) by a tory MP!
Led by a man whose flippancy with racist terms, can we truly be shocked that they feel so empowered to speak over someone who will have (not may have- will have) suffered racist abuse in her life.
Johnson’s insistence that his racist writings are taken out of context is beyond disingenuous- there is no context he could write the things he has written, that would lead to a belief that it’s anything other than the stoking of division and some form of self aggrandisement on the basis of his own lily white hide.
Let’s speak about another incident shall we?
No proof unfortunately, but MP Dawn Butler recounted a story where Natalie Rowe, writer of “Whipping up a Storm” was at a party and Johnson approached her, carrying a watermelon and making monkey noises- tell me I’m missing context, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Summing up
People like Patel and Mirza whose infamy amongst the country as apologists for the abuse heaped on persons just like them are unwittingly enabling Johnson to compound this behaviour. He’ll never learn his lesson whilst his enablers continue to whisper that he’s doing right, that people just don’t “get” him- and until he understands that his verbosity and generosity with racial gaslighting has real world consequences- like the events of the BLM protests, like the events of the football rioting, like deepening distrust of the establishment when a report written to help the existence of POC is bastardised and sold on lies to expunge the conscience of wilful racists like Johnson et. al- this will only continue and worsen. The only question is what the final blow to push POC and their allies over the boiling point will be, and if it’s close or far.
As Crime Sinister Boris Johnson is set to reopen the country with zero restrictions on the 19th, a quick reminder that a vast chunk of England seem absolutely fine with walking gently into mass hospitalisations, long covid cases galore and, indeed, the needless deaths of our loved ones.
I don’t like the conservatives.
You might have picked up on this simply by standing near me for more than 10 minutes, watching my internet videos or reading this blog- or simply sensing that I possess a moral compass that I actively try to align to true north when I can.
I haven’t liked them for a very long time, and frankly it started out as a grumbling resentment that the party of “family values” so openly touted a distaste for me and people like me simply based on my sexuality which still persists to this day with the animated ancient mummy herself Baroness Nicholson leading the charge.
But over the years this grew from a distaste to a naked hatred- not necessarily of conservative voters though I do find conversation with right wing voters entertaining because the pretzels they can knot themselves in to escape the reality of voting for bigotry is truly impressive- like watching one of those people that can fold themselves up to fit in a box.
Am I saying that all bigots are right wing? No… having stepped further and further left I do sometimes worry that some of my fellow far left folk fall prey to a different type of bigotry, one that assumes that we’ve always been how we are- “sensitive souls”, those who care about the people around us enough to hear them out and try to accommodate them. The fact that the left sometimes continue to condemn people even when they apologise openly for their behaviour confounds me- though I often find it right to do so when the apology is contrite and focuses more on the feelings of the accused, rather than sorrow for the harm their actions caused.
Nevertheless I do feel an open dislike for conservative voters to be quite apt at the moment, as we’re watching England in particular careen towards what I and others like me see as an abject humanitarian disaster. Below is a graph that shows the figures in England on lockdown day 2020- vs the repeated fuckups of a government run by a shaven orangutang in an ill fitting suit, vs now.
Source: google data on COVID cases in the UK
I’ve listened with numb horror to every bit of news coming from Downing Street for several weeks, sure that it was more right wing pomp, the showmanship of a man convinced that if he acts rough and tough despite looking like a dishevelled fop, people will laud him as a tough, decisive leader when we know- from the literal mouth of his previous adviser and sundry leaks- that he is incapable of doing the job which the tories wangled him into.
But no. Here we are, heading into literal disaster, a worst case scenario so unutterably dire that I cannot process it- and still bay the tory voters, “we just need to get on with our lives”.
Were this not a matter of life and death for others and, who knows, maybe even myself – I’d sit back and watch as these people lose their grandmothers, wives, cousins- and suddenly realise that maybe charging naked into a bush fire isn’t quite the brave notion they think.
But I know many vulnerable people who will be paralysed with fear in their homes, unable to take vaccines, unable to visit shops during the day for fears of crowds of people so excited to return to normality that they’ll cheerfully sacrifice the over 1.5 million seriously disabled among us who, and I can’t believe I have to write this, also deserve to “return to normal”.
Of course I’m not foolish and I know that the internet is a vacuum and people will spout their nonsense there, only to toe the line when the chips are down – but the sheer number of people excited to reach “freedom day”, an odious term coined by the office of our lacklustre leader, feverish to ditch masks which are treated like the lead at the neck of a particularly ferocious dog, terrifies me.
Firstly, a word on oppression- the reactionaries’ current favourite term.
If your oppression consists of the act of wearing a bit of material on your face so you can walk into asda for some custard creams and a pint of milk, or being asked to not breathe directly down the neck of the people in front of you at the pub- what a privileged, easy life you must lead.
The types who feel this is oppression are so quick to compare it to Nazi Germany which proves beyond doubt they’ve never actually read history books or accounts of what exactly it was like to live in Nazi Germany. To think that we walk amongst people so cosseted that they believe that mask wearing, an act that protects others more than yourself, is oppression, would be laughable if it were a pastiche- so ridiculous that you wouldn’t believe it.
I remember seeing this meme about six months into the pandemic and even though it made me laugh, it also made me sigh and understand that this was the “normal folk” I was expected to walk around with. It simply said something to the effect of “any zombie movies after this will be really unrealistic if a huge portion of us don’t go running towards the zombies to prove how undeadly they are”.
That meme has become a mental symbol of how I’ve coped for so long- making comedy out of the growing insanity of the country to get by, because to look at people’s behaviours factually I think i’d have snapped in May 2020.
Heading to disaster
I wake up every day, a little bit amazed that we’re allowing the tories to just blow the doors off the pandemic because “if not now, when?”- we were told so many times we had an amazing vaccine rollout- surely it does it an injustice to open before it’s finished? But people don’t care. A worrying portion of people somehow function in their daily lives whilst equating vaccines to poison, population control, tracking and an exhaustive list of other fundamental nonsense.
I can never imagine what it’s like to be someone so insane as to think that almost every scientist, doctor, nurse, politician and more, in the whole world, sat down and said “so we’re going to pretend that this virus exists/ so we’re making an evil vaccine- don’t tell anyone though, we’re making a new world order for *insert laughable reason here*”.
All of that- the disinformation that’s been allowed to spread, unscrupulous characters trying to shill their idiocy to a nation all too willing to believe the one person who says no when 99,999 other people say yes, a government headed up by a man who, we now know without a doubt said “let the bodies pile high in their thousands!” rather than facilitate a lockdown out of a fear of his friends’ pockets getting lighter, has led us to this moment. As we stand on the precipice of what I confidently believe will be a disaster for the people of the UK, I think I’m more offended for the people failed by the education we were given by a state in disrepair who believe the nonsense than I am by the man so callous as to push for it.
There seems to be a worrying amount of credence to the notion that Matt Han-dsoffmywifeyou-cock was removed from his role by angry tory backbenchers who knew he was throwing rope at an intern he hired with public funds, who then facilitated the installation of Sajid Javid who would be their mouthpiece for the end of lockdowns. The reason? Isn’t it always money? Need you ask.
I don’t have the spoons today to go into the Brexit reasoning behind reopening, plus I think that brexit is only a factor, not THE factor in reopening. Plus saying Brexit three times usually gets you mobbed by angry people who are genetically incapable of speaking in cogent arguments.
And now for some pretension!
I feel like Cassandra. If you don’t know who Cassandra is, here’s a little history on Greek tragedies for you.
Cassandra was a woman gifted by fate to see the future- but cursed to never be believed when she told people what she saw.
I imagine if Cassandra were here now she’d be screaming at the top of the shard, begging people to stand up against a government who seems to be falling just short of eugenics, as people point and laugh and call her crazy. But we don’t need Cassandra to spell this out to us- we have doctors, scientists, immunologists, people whose roles are to study pandemics past and advise us on how to get through it, telling us en masse that this is a bad idea.
Of course there’s conflicting opinions- people saying it will work – but we live in a world where Nazis still exist so to speak for the mental acuity of individual, educated people who speak out in favour of the erasure of measures, is not exactly ground breaking, nor does it mean that they are the pied pipers we should be following.
My concern comes for the people of the UK who may – I hope I’m wrong, I don’t want to see abject suffering and mass deaths of course and woe betide the tories if I lose someone I love- be facing a nightmare from which the escape will be long, arduous and filled with the suffering of those we care for most.
I repeat, I hope things work out okay- but if things do go wrong, I hope Johnson and the scum who enabled the disaster to unfold are hoisted high from their own petards and castigated by the masses they’re so willing to throw to the wolves, all in the name of the post-Brexit economy.
I suppose my main question is as simple as this: how and why are so many people absolutely fine with the possibility of getting sick themselves, of their families getting sick, of losing friends, loved ones? The usual answer seems to be that “we’ve sacrificed so much”- begs the question why we’re so keen to sacrifice more.
In a country utterly obsessed with woke cancel culture, with media outlets like the BBC and the guardian facing daily callouts on it’s factionalisation of the transphobia row, where racist events like the euro cup are fully expected by POC and their allies and where anti LGBTQIA sentiment is slowly burning backwards- can we really claim surprise that those pushing for tolerance are getting happier and happier to claim the weighty mantle of “radicalised” against the other side?
Here’s an excerpt from an email I’ve just sent my long time friend Pam: “People will literally twist themselves in knots to avoid actually confronting their implicit biases cos they cannot admit that we might be in the wrong and have work to do to make the world a better place; It’s up to everyone else to take the blame, it’s everyone else’s job to do the work to make the world better. The second you say hey so maybe our country is racist its IT IS NOT PEOPLE ARE JUST SENSITIVE CANCEL CULTURE WOKE SNOWFLAKE… it’s literally more work to cling to your rhetoric than just admit it and work on yourself.”
I often laugh when I read the endless epithets I’m gifted online by the supposed anti woke brigades: woke, weak, snowflake, SJW. What’s thrown at me as an insult, I wear with pride. If it’s woke to care about others, weak to be offended by hate speech, snowflakey to demand racists are held to account then I am the SJW you so angrily proclaim me to be, and I couldn’t be happier about that.
I’m also not quite sure what a “radical leftist” is, and why they are apparently so dangerous. I hardly plan to break into the houses of parliament and force Boris Johnson to respect people’s pronouns at gunpoint. It just so happens that I’m very much frustrated by injustice and therefore, loud about it’s removal from a society that has the means but not the wherewithal.
Easy as it may be to rest in your ignorant shell, there comes a time where those with any moral fibre become embroiled in the fights that may not directly involve us and suddenly become aware of the impact we can have just by standing shoulder to shoulder with others.
I can’t tell you how many times a month I’m asked if I’m trans because I defend my trans brothers, sisters and enby folk. I’m not trans, and I can scarcely imagine their struggle- but imagine I have, to the best of my abilities. But you shouldn’t have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to empathise with their plight.
As a white (as fuck- I am roughly the colour of fresh milk) cis man, I will never understand even a corner of the struggle that POC face in a country with such blatant systemic racism oozing from every crack in it’s wall of ignorance- but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathise fully with those who suffer from it, and want to do what I can to chip away at that wall, to expedite the drainage of such disgusting pus that festers in the wounds of every heart it infects.
Today, as is par for the course, my insistence that a man who tweeted the N word, blaming the POC players for England’s loss at the Euros led to me being compared to Nazis. This comparison always confuses me: Nazi ideology was based on only the able bodied arian white folks being the cream of society, able to live on the backs and deaths of anyone who was other, on the subjugation of those seen as lesser- and the weakness of a mind who compares a demand for consequences to that is beyond the stupidity I can muster the energy to comprehend.
Nazism is the most abhorrent system of thinking that’s been widely accepted and known to humanity- so for internet weaklings to compare holding people to account for their own actions, to conflate holding people to account for refusing to absorb the simple truth that racism is appalling and only believed by fools and willing bigots- should be, but is not, laughable.
The invective that right-wing aligned people throw at the supposed “woke” always misses the fundamental hypocrisy that nazis were… far right politically.
As right wing populism grows underfoot, as it snakes into the houses of parliament, the left are further demonised by a press monopolised by right wing punditry: from Rupert Murdoch’s empire to what I can only equate to “tabloid-lite” papers like the daily mail, England in particular is beset by bigotry at every turn, and every word carefully selected by journalists to toe the line and maintain the fiction that England isn’t steeped in the blood of the people of colour who were dragged here to build it, manufacture for it and better it at their own expense, is another brick in the wall mentioned above- as one falls out, another journalist who believes the rhetoric that white people could ever truly understand daily racial abuse will simply slide another block in.
Is it any wonder…
That leads me to the whole point of this post: Is it any wonder that, as this system propagates itself even in the face of it’s own hypocrisy, as it grows and maintains itself even under growing calls for it’s examination, it’s dismantlement, it’s replacement with equity for all who share this land, that those who have patiently or impatiently watched it’s sinuous twisting of the truth for it’s own benefit, have grown tired and become, to use the descriptor the right so love- Radicalised.
I’m not quite sure what reaction right wingers expect from me when they call me a radical lefty. “Yep” is usually it. I am. They see the moniker of radical as a terrible thing, because of course they equate it to the oft-disparaged, even in their own rags, far-right.
Here is the difference.
On the far left we have people willing to fight for equality, equity and fairness in a system that’s always been kiltered to cater to the few instead of the many.
On the far right? Literally nazis.
The Myth of the “Tolerant Left”
It’s been said before many times but it bears repeating that the tolerant left is a myth.
Do we “tolerate” (a word anyone who follows my video posts will know I detest), or as I prefer to call it, accept people whose needs and wants are different to our own? Absolutely. Do we try to cater for those who need different requirements than us to exist with dignity and prosper in a world that caters to homogeny? We do, or we try.
What we don’t, won’t and can’t tolerate under our wide arching but moral beliefs, is bigotry.
If you think we should accept that people have a difference of opinion on whether tomato soup is the best soup, I can cope with that. Accepting that you think gay people are disgusting, that POC are lesser than you with your white skin etc, that’s quite another thing.
To tolerate the existence of beliefs that mean others should suffer for their existence when it harms no one and is as normal as any other is the cognitive dissonance I feel the right are well known for in leftist circles.
There are many right wing arguments I’ve gone to pains to debunk over the years, including: Gayness is not a choice, but even if it was it’s still not unworthy of respect in a democratic society, hiring practices that prioritise people of colour are not “biased” in a country where POC are underrepresented in many workplaces and specialities, trans women are not comparable with cis men.
But as time goes on I’ve realised that all I’m doing is recycling talking points to shut right wing mouthpieces up when they begin their usual ignorant sermonising. You can not change the mind of someone who has willingly immersed themselves in bigotry, even if it’s more work to continue to cling to and push said bigotry- because the terrifying reality for these people is that they would have to question themselves, realise that the bias is with them, that they are in fact in the wrong, and they’d need to do work on themselves to improve- so the choice comes to continue to cling to bigotry over questioning their own internal bias and ask whether it’s worth keeping that ignorance alive, or letting it die and becoming something else.
The war on woke is essentially a bunch of people claiming that they’re fighting for their freedom – their freedom to remain ignorant in a world filling, daily, with information that proves their choice to stick to ignorance makes them part of the problem.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’m told that the fact I’m not willing to compromise and have calm discourse with racists and bigots and scumbags, oh my, is the reason for their continued ignorance- so let me spell this out for you: We are not your mothers. We are not here to teach you. The resources exist in the world to help you- you need only stop knee jerk reacting with your fragile emotions towards the changes that keep happening, and listen to POC, listen to minorities, read the books that are written about these topics- and realise that when you simply start to address those inner biases you’re doing the same thing we did to become your most terrified title: woke.
So Many Causes, not Enough Time
One of the strangest things someone said to me recently is that they’re surprised I have enough time to work when I’m so busy being a “woke warrior”.
The short answer is: if you care about black oppression, trans rights disinformation or the other glaring issues you see daily – you’ll make time. I’m surprised people have all the time in the world to watch a 1 hour and 20 minute football match which includes kneeling for BLM, LGBTQIA representation and a hugely diverse set of players and still miss the point of the hilariously mistitled “gesture politics” that take place. Again as I’ve argued with someone recently, if you see these things as gesture politics you’re probably likely to not have ever needed to see that representation and therefore are incapable of understanding how much it means to those who do. If you think a rainbow armband or taking the knee are unnecessary then please tack on the words “for you”. Because for those it represents, many are thankful to feel like we’re cared for by others who may or may not be like us.
The mental gymnastics involved in decrying kneeling against racism, only to go on and leave so many racist comments a 19 year old player for your country’s team that he deletes his social media, or to give the usual tired bleating of “the gays forcing it in our faces!” but say nothing when a gay man walking down the street in liverpool is assaulted so badly he’s convinced he is about to die, is quite something to watch play out in real time.
It may be easier to simply start questioning why these things are being introduced to you, why they please those they’re for and why they annoy you so- simply because you’re suddenly made aware that the world does not cater to you exclusively, and that others deserve the same basic experience of existence without conflict that you have.
Wrapping up…
This blog was essentially a place for me to write down my thoughts as I grow more frustrated with the country I’ve been raised in, to get to grips with my own frustrations when it comes to politics. It’s become one of the few things I have that allows me to vent my anger at a world so screwed up that I willingly paid for it to be hosted. I don’t even really care if others read it. I just wanted a space that was mine, where I could write down my thoughts and explore my ideas out loud.
A few people have said they appreciate it and I’m very glad of that. It’s becoming more isolating to hold moral views- I’ve tried to reason with people I grew up with who refuse to let of of bigotry, I tried to gently explain that I’m allowed to exist as a gay man with people who think gay sex is worse than murder, I’ve tried to gently express hope that I’ll be accepted- no more.
It seems that as we’re accused more and more of being extreme, so we have to become that. The country takes drunken lurching step after step to the right, and as we dig in our heels, lean back and pull on the tautened rope we’ve thrown around it’s neck, we become more tired and less capable of patience.
Blamed constantly for “radicalisation”, I’d like the right wingers who throw the labels I’ve brought up in this blog post to ask the question: do you blame us? Do you take ownership for your own part in our radicalisation, as we have to become louder, more indignant, more insistent to work to counteract your hateful rhetoric? Or is it, as is always the right wing way, our own fault: no one is responsible, it’s a hum dinger, clearly people are just magically becoming radicalised by… I don’t know, society, music, drugs, instead of the appalling behaviours of our fellow man- otherwise known as you.
After another loss at a football tournament, the curtain was pulled back and never has it been clearer that the peace and security of a nation depends wholly on the satisfaction of white men.
I don’t know if you were unfortunate enough to witness the myriad scenes of violence, unrest and vile behaviour across this nation yesterday. If you weren’t you must be an expert at avoiding social media for the good of your own mental health.
To witness the scenes yesterday, you’d be forgiven in believing that finally the uprising of a frustrated proletariat was underway. But no, the “gentleman’s game” was reaching it’s conclusion at Wembley.
People were drunk from 9am, and in a country in the grip of a serious pandemic and on the verge of unleashing it’s populace on “freedom day” in 7 worrying days, we saw scenes like nothing I’d have pictured before it and hope not to see again.
Jubilation there was not- from watching a man hoisted in the air and sniffing a line then screaming at his cheering fellow gammons, to the streets crusted with litter, cans, glass and blood, or the violent scenes at wembley basically the entire day, who actually enjoyed anything yesterday is a mystery to me.
My neighbours broke covid restrictions- again- to have a viewing party of the game.
Of course many who may read this blog post would decry it as the minority of people- and yet I have to wonder at what point we accept that this minority is a terrifying amount of people, minority or not.
Twitter is awash today with reports of racist violence, racism, attacks on people who were simply walking by at the time these Neanderthals decided to unleash their smooth brained stupidity on the nation who so quickly disavows their actions.
Lets look, as we should, to our leadership for the reasons this country may be in the mire it is…
Prime Minister Wafflestick McMuffintop suggested that the team should be lauded as heroes- always with your fingers off the pulse prime minister, because it’s nothing to do with their actions on the pitch that they should be held up as heroes for- it’s the fact that Marcus Rashford has created and maintained a sustained campaign to feed hungry school children, victims of your twelve year austerity and more than lacklustre choices for Education Secretary. It’s people like Gareth Southgate running a sustained campaign of inclusion even in the face of his team facing abuse from their own fairweather supporters.
Home Secretary Priti Patel whose famed distaste for anything outside of homogeny, from anti LGBTQIA views to the most restrictive bills on immigration since Enoch Powell’s inflammatory anti immigration posters graced our shameful nation, was seen condemning the racism on twitter- mere weeks after endorsing kneeling and booing the players.
The hypocrisy of two people who mock, ridicule and deride what they see as “gesture politics” to then flip flop on their views stinks just as much as any of the political corruption that daily oozes further from Westminster and over a beleaguered nation where these negative attitudes thrive, and move further from the dark corners to which we’d like to banish them daily.
A side fact- thanks to tory interference in a bill lodged by Labour, it’s officially possible to face more jail time to assist someone seeking refugee status in england (which is NOT ILLEGAL for the 10000th time), than it is to rape someone. Tories voted down a bill to punish rape as a more severe crime whilst Patel pushed through legislation to give those who aid refugees a possible DECADE in prison.
But again, let’s look at the parallels. Loath as I am to invoke the name of Ms. Sarah Everard in this mess, the rage I feel towards a nation that fosters scenes like THIS
Source: getty images
Where came minimal or NO police or security intervention, and yet the peaceful and impassioned vigil for a woman murdered by a policeman brought about violent arrest of women standing up for their right to feel secure in the street.
Why, we ask ourselves- knowing the answer. That women, defenceless against the thuggery of police with batons and riot shields, are easy targets for brutality – but these embittered, empty headed scumbags can do as they please because no amount of policemen could tackle the tide of thuggery they wish to commit.
We live in the illusion that police can and will protect us- but against this, we must ask, how? What threat did women standing up against murderous police pose, that could have been matched by this? Nothing- it is simply that when the targets are easy to take down, suddenly the police leap into action.
Let’s then look at my favourite comparison so far: The BLM protests.
Even if every BLM Protest (less than 6% of BLM protests were violent) had created swaths of damage, comparing a social movement combating THIS VERY THING- Racism and white entitlement- are unfairly compared. Every BLM protest I went to was peaceful – simply there to share the pain and lessen the load of people of colour in a country that does not and will not support them to better their lives by curtailing the entitlement of the people who maintain a system fundamentally made to hold them down.
To conflate BLM protests, a cause with righteous anger behind it, to thugs throwing bottles at each other because some rich men were kicking a ball, is the most hilarious false equivalence.
High irony that the disgusting Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts bill isn’t in action – I wonder whether it would have made the slightest difference in these scenes which have so disgraced our nation- unlikely. The bill is purely designed to quash dangerous activities like gentle protest against racial inequality, a government mired in corruption or to silence those already silenced by misogyny.
Let’s also look at the scenes no one needed to see- one man had a lit flare placed somewhere that only his wife should see when he leaves a room, and another decided that thrusting what can only be described as a knoblet at the air was appropriate.
My favourite comparison to make here is that the people there would cheerfully say the stock homophobia lines like “They’re just forcing it on us” or “why do they need a parade where they’re all naked and being sexual”.
Pride, again, is a protest against a heteronormative system that holds us down, under the thumb of- well, these people. Not once at any pride parade have I seen a penis or breasts. But the ignorant flag wavers so proud of themselves for these displays will believe the salacious lies of hate groups like the LGB alliance who so often compare sexuality with sex and stir up hatred against the groups they claim to represent- and they refuse to see that a parade to show that we’re proud of who we are even in the face of hatred is important and necessary and is not lesser than the need of a football fan to insert a lit flare into his anus on camera.
My disgust in this country grows every day- the fostering of a government who doesn’t even have the popularity of the nation, disgraceful acts by large groups of people who claim that it’s their right to boo anti racism gestures as they foist racist abuse on the players they cheer when it suits them, a police force built to crush opposition to anything but what is deemed by the government as acceptable; and of course, the rallying cry of the gammon- “if you don’t like it here just leave”, something I now find much harder to do, because you brexit voting sausage rolls took away our right to free movement.
In Conclusion
I made this post to piss off the gammons who so indignantly shout mental discord as if they understand what they say. To continue to watch this country wallow in it’s own filth is proving to be exhausting, and not just for me I’m sure. You can decry yesterday’s behaviour as “not all fans” all you want and you’re correct, but the fact of the matter is- it was anticipated. We aren’t the only country who gets violent when football is on, or other sport- but perhaps that speaks more to a societal problem with men who won’t publicly cry when their mother dies, but will cheerfully rip things cemented into the ground out of place because their sports team lost.
As a nation we need to address the underlying problems that these events bring out- the thuggery, racial hatred, ignorance and discontent of people let off the lead to act like fools with… what recompense but anger online.
And if you understand how many people realise that we live in a nation where you don’t feel safe because men aren’t happy then you’ve missed a stupendously obvious point- I don’t even have the spoons to give you resources to make you see the problem with that very salient point.
In a country with normalised ID for every citizen, mandatory ID to vote is par for the course- so why, in a country where photo ID is not state subsidised or at least heavily discounted, are the British populace fine with new voter restrictions- the right to vote is one of the most basic there is. Is it fair to pay for the privilege?
It seems a far stretch to call the new legislation to implement mandatory voter ID “voter suppression”, but a rose by any other name still smells as sweet, and restrictions on voting still restricts voters.
You may be fooled into thinking that the government had sound reason to fear voter fraud and it’s impact on electoral integrity – until you read the ONS stats on voter fraud convictions in England. Those out there I’ll politely term as reactionaries- or less politely, fucking idiots, will go with the already laughably piffling figure of five hundred and ninety five reported cases.
In a group of countries with 66.65 million people, we’re already looking at the gentleman’s inch of political issues- add to that that all but SIX of those cases being dismissed without charge, two being given police cautions and FOUR convicted. So you may be forgiven for calling this government their favourite moniker- snowflakes- for overhauling the actual law to prevent a crime that four people have been convicted of.
The issue, the insidiousness and, indeed, the explanation behind the implementation of restrictive voter suppression techniques- which have, by the way, been imported wholesale from the good old US of A off the backs of their election – comes down to the voters it’s most likely to affect.
When you look into who the bases who most regularly vote for political parties, suddenly what seems to be a strange lapse of sanity becomes a crystal clear attempt to further solidify the tories’ death grip on the throat of a nation that- simply looking at figures- didn’t want them in the first place.
Popular or populist?
The tories won the biggest popular vote since 1979 in 2019 with an astounding 43.6% of the total votes- it’s a huge margin. But when comparing that to the total number of votes cast this means that over half of voters did NOT want tories- nothing to say of course about those who did NOT vote, whose opinions we can’t guess at and frankly who I don’t give the time of day to during political conversations, because not voting then complaining is the intellectual equivalent of letting someone kick you in the leg then complaining that you let them kick you.
When you realise the implications of a party with less than half the country’s votes implementing the insidious rule the tories have palmed on us, you suddenly realise the farcicality of the recent legislations being passed- from voter ID to stripping our right to protest down to the bone. A party who traditionally caters to the older generation and doesn’t wholesale represent the youth of the UK has implemented restrictions on voting that will- not could, but WILL, impact on younger voters and poorer voters. Shockingly, the people less likely to vote for the tories- not LABOUR per se, but not tory- are the young and the more economically poor.
Ah, so here then is the crux of the issue. The tories aren’t concerned about voter crime, they aren’t worried about the already sterling job that those who invigilate for voting being compromised. This is- arguably- an attack against the people who could potentially swing votes away from their parties.
Let’s now discuss the pricing of documents that you’ll need to vote.
A new passport in England costs between £75.50 and £85.
The above info is taken from the government website itself and means that those of voting age, on the national minimum wage, would need to work 12 hours specifically to cover the cost of a document which is now mandated for use in the democratic and vital process. Half a day of work to save the money to cover a document that you will now need to exercise what is a fundamental, and vital right to employ to ensure that you are represented in this country.
Let’s now look at obtaining a new provisional or full driver’s license in the UK.
Much more reasonable! Until you consider that purely paying between £34 and £43 pounds is a misnomer- either you’re paying this fee to have a driving license you only need to prove your legal age for various reasons and vote which means this is a cost brought to you SPECIFICALLY AND ONLY to vote, or you need this license because you are planning to learn to drive- which costs, buy and insure a car and use it- which costs – so the actual costs are much higher if you want to implement this ID document for it’s purpose, and if not- you are literally paying money to be able to vote, which you can do for free now.
I could then further break down how this would make voting infeasible when factoring in more expensive food prices, rent or a mortgage, transport to work, petrol, car insurance and basic necessities to live but you get the idea I’m sure- this move by the government means that those who are paid the least are now vastly less likely to be able to afford the basic documents needed to have their say.
When you compare this against the current system where voting incurs only the cost of getting to where you vote, or not even this cost if you vote via postal vote- you’ll need to forgive me if I look confused about the necessity of mandatory ID.
This of course the Government could combat somewhat, by bringing in an optional UK Personal photo ID card – an idea floated when I was just reaching the cusp of the voting age, but said to be too close to surveillance and a nanny state.
This is still true- but if the goalposts for voter freedom are to change, then so is the necessity of the state providing an affordable way for it’s citizens to cast their vote, otherwise this legislation can be called by it’s true name: a voter suppression bill.
A better way?
Stacey Abrams, US politician, led a storming campaign in Georgia running from 2016 to present to ensure that disenfranchised voters- or as I like to call them, people adversely affected by legislation just like this one- were able to access the provisions needed to cast their vote, and the time is nigh for a politician in the UK to take up our own seat at this table. The UK government, failing as it is to import anything successfully post Brexit, did manage to import the voter suppression bill passed in what I can only call revenge for Abram’s amazing work, so I’d heartily suggest that UK politicians who do value the tiny flakes of democracy we still treasure here do their work to ensure that this bill affects the minimal folk it will – because I guarantee you this will affect voters.
There are many other people who would be adversely affected by the implementation of this bill – for example, those who are legally barred from driving due to disability. Herein of course is another issue we need to discuss – the right wing fervour to disregard the rights and freedoms of disabled people. This would limit people who cannot work due to disability and who cannot drive to – exactly what options for ID documents to vote? And are we convinced that those who invigilate will have sufficient training as to recognise the scant options left for people- not an insignificant group mind you – who would be effectively limited by this foolish legislation, or forcing them to vote in more drawn out ways which may impact on them in different ways as usual not thought of by a government too interested in pandering to it’s own voter base at the expense of everyone else- and, ironically, sometimes it’s own base.
To conclude…
I’ve been accused of many times of being overly critical of right wing governance and the irony is, i don’t know how I will react the day I’m finally under a more left leaning government. I’d like to think my moral compass is aligned as closely I can get it with basic decency, and if I felt a lefty government was letting down it’s people I’d be just as critical. I suppose this small paragraph is going to stand as a testament as to whether that happens in the future- provided we aren’t stuck under authoritarian rule as long as I live due to the machinations of those uncaring clowns in power now.
Speaking of moral compass -I ask you, readers who value the true basic right enshrined to us all to vote, please contact your local MP and lodge your displeasure with the disgraceful legislation being pushed through parliament. Sitting angry does very little to help those in need who can’t speak out – so you do it.
And while we’re at it – ENGAGE YOUNG PEOPLE WITH POLITICS.
I don’t care what political party you’re aligned with – with exceptions, if you’re a nationalist fuckwit please kindly visit your closest pier and walk off it – please encourage your children to understand the absolutely vital role they will play if they engage with and vote in political discourse in this country. The tories are the party of keeping old people’s money secreted away. Young people need to find the people who represent their morals, their values and who offer them an alternative to the bleak decade we’ve just had. They have a chance to change the future for the better- for themselves and heck, for us too. Whether that hefty mission of undoing the damage of the conservatives lies with labour or another political party, discovered or undiscovered, I’m unsure. But I know for sure that young people deserve to have their say irrespective of this disgraceful coup of a bill. Help them realise how vital their voices are.
Let’s get some things out of the way first: I am a woke, lefty do-gooder. If that upsets you, it’s a problem you may want to consider discussing with an experienced GP. This blog is my own version of part human/egg hybrid Dominic Cummings’ effusive ramblings on the monster he installed in Westminster, and if you disagree that is your right- but whilst it is A right, it does not mean you ARE right.
I’ve always been somewhat politically aware, but was one of the crowd who gleefully sleepwalked through British politics at large, designating it “out of my control” or “someone else’s problem”. This issue seemed to renege with age, and as I became aware of the power of the proletariat I felt something greater than I- a collective will to better the country which I was born in.
As I’ve grown though, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of the stupider, the louder, the more uncouth running roughshod over traditional politics- from the human custard era that was Donald Trump’s wittering presidency, having to watch a man masturbating his own ego for a nation of people who didn’t even vote him into power, to the closer to home installation of the perceived bumblingly innocent and somewhat daffy Boris Johnson, or even looking to countries like Brazil with angry little men like Bolsonaro in charge; politics has changed and seems to have become a game for those who are happy to stand on the neck of morals for the sake of being seen as “strong”.
I finally broke and created this blog to get some of the words I’ve had rattling around my head down in word format, though I’ve been creating internet videos making pastiche of British politics for around 7 months now- the only way to manage the ever increasing political rage I feel.
As ridiculous day after ridiculous day rolled by, my patience and understanding of British politics has been worn down to the type of nub I expect both Johnson and Trump to be concealing in their oft-stained slacks. I am done with being pleasant to people who disagree with me politically because my politics are aligned to “for the good of everyone” in a nation whose politics daily seem to slide more into “for the good of the rich” or “for only me”.
I savour the daily insults from red faced lunatics who call me woke and sheep and weak, because the more they rage that I’m NOT LIKE THEM the more I am convinced that I’m on the side of right. And though I always treat my own views with a healthy dose of scepticism, the high irony of people who can’t even work out the hierarchy does not include them telling me that I am the stupid one, the sheep, the weak one, is a hefty source of amusement in a world with scant other resources to entertain me.
Kill The Bill
Today, in my virgin post on here, let’s talk specifically about the latest tory travesty – the death of non manufactured, and therefore helpful, protesting.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill was passed in parliament yesterday by a margin of 100.
This bill lays a heavy blanket of suppression down on everyone- regardless of political affiliation, though clearly those who are not in support of this government will suffer most. Protests, even one man protests, cannot take place without assent from, and collaboration with, the police- who, in the age of the BLM protests are often the subject of said protests. Protests by their nature are meant to be disruptive- they are, at their core, a show of the power of the proles, a demonstration that whilst we accept governance we can and may voice our displeasure with a simple show of bodies and chanting. This has been a right since time immemorial- and the false conflation of protests and riots has become laughably common in today’s society. Those with no sense of nuance will happily conflate the two, and decry those who partake in either- those people are usually the privileged who are either lucky enough to be unaffected by social issues or who simply don’t care.
The police already had too much confidence in their role as mediator of protesting- look at the vigil for Sarah Everard, in which police cornered and injured women who were standing up for their right to be safe- against men, but also- POLICE, because Everard was murdered by one of their own- subsequently other police were suspended for making off colour jokes about murder on WhatsApp- of course, we had the usual mumblings of “it’s just a few bad apples!”, but as usual the revisionists who want to protect the establishment so conveniently miss the finisher of that saying- “a few bad apples spoils the bunch”.
Again the police showed themselves up at the counter protests for this dangerous bill in Bristol, were accused- and it was proven with video footage- of using their riot shields as weapons, slamming them down on the backs of hapless protesters whose crime was… sitting. A nurse who was at the protests said “I cannot express how quickly it went from peaceful chants to head injuries. Not just bumps of a shield. I’m talking in excess of 5cm lacerations to the top of the skull – all of the ones I saw were struck from above.”
The larger picture of legislation this prohibitive passing is that we now live in a country where we must meekly accept the whims of politicians who do not live our lives, who do not understand our woes and yet who feel entitled to lay down edicts as to how we should operate as a society. But this is indicative of a society who has spent years, even before Conservatives came to power, being governed by those who do not understand the lives of those who fill the country. It has long been a source of frustration for me that we have health secretaries who have never worn a stethoscope, education secretaries educated at the finest private institutions, whose yearly rates are more than some parents make in twelve months combined; those best placed to govern are those who experience the life of those they work for.
Focusing back on this bill though: even in countries like Russia- a literal dictatorship- do protests take place without assent from the police- when Russia’s hope for independence from Putin’s rule, Navalny, was arrested and sent to essentially a horribly unsafe prison his group protested in the street- until, of course, Putin counteracted; now anyone seen to be allied with Navalny is a terrorist and STILL they protest.
In Bolsonaro’s Brazil, the streets are currently awash with violence after Bolsonaro’s bumbling has allowed COVID-19 to ravage the country- a country ruled by a maniac is protesting. And in our supposedly free nation, with our magical sovereignty that hasn’t changed one jot post brexit, that right, that fundamental right- is gone.
The fact that we operate in a society that politicians are trying to control the masses is not a shock- this has been the case since fiefdoms were the order of the day. The shocking part is that no media outlet, no prominent celebrities, barely any political figures, and almost no actual voters, humans in the street – are as furious as I am about this.
The UK now has the most prohibitive laws against protests in Europe- purely because Johnson and his crony Patel- want to make sure that we are toothless in our fight against their corruption – and the British public at large seem willing to simply lay down and accept it.
It’s such a fine irony to grow up in a country where you’re constantly told about our proud legacy as those who stood up to fascism and died in the fields to protect other’s freedom. Our freedom has just been decapitated before our very eyes, blood still warm on our cheeks, and the fools it affects are just happy to let it go on.
Those who so proudly claim the doings of their own blood in wars are the ones so keen to support the tories, because somehow the conservatives have convinced people that they are “the party of Britain”, but to those I’d like to pose a question: is it truly patriotic to nod, smile and accept your country with all its faults, or is it patriotic to work for change, to expel the negatives and to work for your country to be something bigger, better, to remove the obstacles in society so everyone can live freely? If you truly believe that sheep-like acceptance of the status quo is patriotism i guarantee you that the relatives you so proudly edify would be ashamed of you, and would tell you that this is how fascism starts: acceptance that the state can and will do what it may, and that you must agree, blank eyed and fervent.
My question, therefore, to the British populace at large, is simple: How long will you continue to lie down under tory rule- not governance, but rule- and allow this feckless band of grifters to dictate to you how you should live? And what, if anything, will it take for you to realise that you’re marching to their beat, not yours?
Update- Contact your local MPs
I hereby include an email I sent to my local MP and his response: it’s vital to contact your local representation and make yourself heard.
Daviemoo is a 36 year old politically fed up cis gay man living in North West England. He has bylines in The Egalitarian, Byline Times & created Politically Enraged as a weapon to be used against any government who oversteps its bounds when it comes to the people they claim to represent.
I’ve been working in recruitment specialising in medical personnel for a decade. I’m slowly building a following on social media, where I can regularly be found waxing angrily about the state of modern society, planning to study a masters degree in politics and media and on my podcast where I speak in non-expert terms about the state of modern politics and how it should be addressed.
Having always been aware of, but not always influenced- or enraged by- politics, this blog is my way of coming to terms with authoritarian laws in the country I’ve been raised, and a written journal of my hope that we change. You can find my social media at @daviemoo and @politicallyenraged on insta and @daviemoo on Tiktok!
I enjoy the gym, playstation, Amy Winehouse, Beverley Knight, cooking, music and horror movies.
Politically Enraged 