Are you tired? Tired of being told to be vaccinated? Tired of being told to social distance? To wear masks? To wash your hands? Are you tired of the tyranny of a government commanding you to follow orders like a sheep? How tired do you think we are of dragging you all along with us and suffering at your hands?
MY BODY MY CHOICE. It was, I’m sure, perceived as a master stroke when whichever cosseted little snowflake decided to appropriate the abortion rights moniker in the war against sense that is the anti vaccinations/ anti lockdowns/ anti masks movements.
However, I’ve never caught a virulent case of pregnancy via a handshake or sharing a supermarket aisle with someone.
Your body is your body – but your choice to walk around as a disseminator of a virus that has killed 4.5 Million people is not your own to make- except under a government that is either wilfully negligent or terrifyingly inept.
To imply that you are able to walk around with impunity is already false- were you found to be carrying a dangerous disease communicable by breathing or touch, you would, against your will, be forced to quarantine for the good of everyone around you. Were you walking around emitting radiation you would be caught, cornered and isolated. This is not new, it is not news, and it is certainly not controversial. You are not being shot, beaten, broken for the crime of existence- you are being prevented from spreading disease. If you can’t make a distinction between a desperate attempt to prevent societal damage and death, and TYRRANY – the issue doesn’t lie with your fellow countrymen or, loath as I am to defend them- the government.
The irony is that we currently have a government in place who are supremely unconcerned with infections en masse so my defence is- like any tory lines about “protection” – fictional.
Equally I see many people desperate to make a false equivalence between coronavirus and HIV.
HIV is bloodborne and can only be passed in certain circumstances I very rarely find myself in with strangers- that’s the difference with covid, and if you can’t make that distinction without an internet stranger pointing it out, I urge you to keep your mouth closed out of fear that you will suffer mortal embarrassment.
To be regularly called hysterical by people who reach histrionics when asked to wear a mask, to stand a slight distance apart or who regularly storm the wrong places to protest a vaccine is exhausting.
To see the dregs of our society – dregs, dear reader that I’m not afraid to call them any more- holding back our progress in defeating this virus that’s stolen a year and a half of our lives makes my stomach fill with hot rage. Here we sit, handcuffed to awkwardly squirming anti-everythingers who just want to “get on with their lives” as they refuse to follow even the smallest inconvenience to it, prolonging the issue.
How long are we as a society going to forment these weaklings? Do we really have to speak to people like they are children to explain why this is necessary? And if that is the case, why is it we who must suffer as they rage and flail against the symptoms they cause?
Frankly, the last 18 months has fundamentally changed how I feel about my fellow humans. Seeing the endless nonsense recycled, only to be called to heel by the reason of experts- to see it recycled again in a clown-filled repetition of garbage garbage garbage assailing the truth – has made me embittered towards my fellow people- and yet still I do what we’ve been told will help without question. But why? Why should I continue to do what experts recommend when so many others wont? If they wish to be so cavalier with my life, why shouldn’t I be with theirs? The answer, I fear, is that it is fundamentally who we all are as people- surrounded by those who are “reasonably sure” they are right and their surety may kill me, as we try to protect them and may be giving our lives or health for it.
As the government who are supposed to oversee the welfare of the country continues to tacitly accept this disgraceful lack of safety from a legal and societal standpoint, I find myself more amazed than ever that we continue to assent to their twisted rule. Under the thumb of Johnson, who is hoping to eliminate the job of vaccines minister because he wishes to “move on” from COVID, this dangerous situation will grow, spread and entrench into the very stones of our buildings until our half-safe way of life becomes normal… even as the rest of the world returns to normal, away from the gaslighting the UK faces on the daily.
I don’t see wearing a mask, getting vaccinated or any other measures taken as cowardly- I see an inability to change your own behaviour as the world dictates as weakness.
And many more of our fellow man are shamefully weak than we knew.
I often find myself wondering how on earth we’re in the state that we are. Though I’ve always been on the left, I remember being compelled to at least not argue with right wing political figures as I grew up, in the understanding that there must be some secret logic behind their points. But lately I’ve found myself pondering what this new type of political discourse is, where it’s from and why it manages to wield both a sneaking insidiousness and yet sound a klaxon of it’s own intolerance. What happened to the days of the polite bigot?
IN THE 70’s, 80’s and even 90’s in the UK, political discourse seemed to be ruled by intellectual titans- strong figures who, like or dislike, could never be called stupid, bumbling, liars. People so entrenched in their conviction that argument seemed futile even when you had rebuttals. Political discourse was something I avoided despite a slowly burgeoning interest in the area, because those at the forefront of it’s application were people more eloquent and confident in their correctness than I was capable of feeling at the time.
But oh, how times change.
Looking at parliament with a dirge like depression, you can be forgiven for missing the bright spots on modern political discourse. I, biased to the left as I am, am always enthralled to hear political treasures like Zarah Sultana or Dawn Butler speak. In fact just last night I watched Sultana speak openly about her experience of Islamophobia and her disappointment of it’s lack of handling- seeing someone I admire so being open about her difficulties was saddening. Sultana is a politician who cares about everyone equally but who also does not countenance nonsense- and that is a dual quality that politicians so sorely need and yet lack.
Butler’s insistence on calling out lies, falsehoods and ineptitude has been a boon for all who are fed up of the naturally disingenuous exchanges in parliament, and her unflinching dedication to speaking on all matters BLM has been amazing- especially when conflated against “that” interview where she had to sit next to a spluttering Isabel Oakeshott who denied the Prime Minister’s racism even as Butler repeated his racist statements to her face.
Reactionary is one of the most regular words conservatives levy at the left, and without a hint of irony. Right wing outrage is a culture now, a widely disseminated culture where a headline can bring people to paroxysms of rage but when explained without the clickbait titling. “Winston Churchill Foundation Cancels Its Namesake” was bound to piss people off – until you realise they changed pictures and the name slightly for very sound reasons and he is still very much there.
The idea of cancel culture is also propogated by people who are objectively the opposite of it.
I can write blogs and make videos all day about trans rights and equalities in the UK, but no media outlet would pick them up no matter how well sourced, written, spoken about. But gender critical MP’s like Rosie Duffield- who has just released a thread on twitter paradoxically claiming she stands for LGBT rights but refers to trans women as male bodied- can enjoy a wealth of interviews in print, on tv, and more- and Labour MP Duffield might be, but transphobia is at it’s heart not an argument FOR women’s rights, it is an argument AGAINST trans people’s liberties- and much like any other reactionary idea can be dispelled through the simple medium of… learning about the issue.
As this type of political shift continues though, our old tactics for the control, manipulation and dissemination of information to disenchant those ensnared, or to allow people to make truly informed decisions, simply do not apply.
The issue is that objective truth is a stubborn little thing. The truth is one solid fact- a lie can be absolutely anything to chip at, break, smash, crush that solidity down to pieces. The issue of dealing with serial liars is that if they don’t like what you’re saying they’ll just make up a counter point to it.
Additionally, the defenders of this new type of politics worsen the situation with every article, clip or sound bite- a political commentator the other day stated that Boris Johnson making up figures instead of knowing them off the top of his head was not lying… a well known, renowned political commentator, okaying the lies of the Prime Minister.
Ultimately in a world that allows for the dishonesty, gaslighting and sheer ineptitude of this type of politics, we are, as a society doomed to suffer under it’s rule.
Today, illustrious Crime Sinister Boris Johnson announced a 1.5% tax hike to NI to “pay for social care”. Johnson’s manifesto literally stated that they wouldn’t do this, as did Johnson in a litany of public appearances pre-election- so tell me Tory voters: why should we trust what he says it’s for, when he said it wouldn’t happen in the first place?
I’VE SPENT SOLIDLY the last 24 hours arguing with people online about how I’m sick of being told, as a 33 year old single man, that it’s my fault I don’t have a mortgage. I actually had a not insignificant amount saved with an ex, who kept that money when we separated because he is, and if you’re reading this- you are- a huge piece of shit. And I’ve worked hard since 2016 to pile money away into a savings account, only, at the start of covid, to be met with a sexy little 0.1% interest rate which means I might as well have slit a hole in my mattress and started feeding fives and tens in there to accrue interest from the bed bugs.
No amount of “not buying coffees” will help when the cost of living just keeps going up, whilst my salary has more fixation than a pathologist’s latest patient.
My favourite part of these fruitless exchanges though is how older generations rail endlessly against young people protesting an increase in NI. “When I was younger we were miserable” is a fair point until I then ask why, if life was so hard and you were so miserable, you want to pass that experience off onto us- isn’t the whole point that we make the next generation’s lives easier? But that’s also wilfully missing the whole “we’re in a pandemic after a Brexit we didn’t want and we were there for 9/11 and that whole thing messed us up” thing. Our lives aren’t easy, haven’t been easy and- between, Brexit, pandemia, tax hikes and general tory ineptitude, will continue to be this way.
When you actually look at how much this increases our burden by, especially the poor, we’re much worse off. Plus everything is getting more expensive and we have more necessities these days. And there’s always that fun little graph that shows the parity between house prices and salaries go from the width of my hopes that the tories might do good, to the width of my conviction that, under them, we’re roughly fucked.
There’s always a suspicion that things like that graph are too simplistic- so today when I saw someone with a massively detailed one showing that property prices are marginally cheaper up north – but job prospects mean it’s harder to find the money to BUY one. Fun!
Ultimately we’re having our shows run by a man who thinks £150,000 for a newspaper article he wrote between taking MDMA and drinking chateauneuf is “pocket change”, so I don’t really like knowing he’s responsible for how much comes out of my take home.
Frankly it is difficult to see an end to the misery heaped on us by the government, and the complicity of the voting base who even now are filling my various inboxes with “CORBYN WOULD HAVE RAISED IT BY 5%” rather than dealing with that nefarious little thing, reality, is causing me something akin to grief.
Trapped here on plague island, I cant help but feel that we’re so numb to the misuse of the system that no one actually wants to fix it.
Here are some of the stock responses I receive from fellow brits that drive me insane.
“All politicians are corrupt”
Why do we accept that? Why not remove every last one until we know those who embezzle and bedazzle and lie and cheat are gone and honest people who wish to improve the country are in place.
“It could be worse”
Of course it could, but just because I only have one broken leg doesn’t mean I’m flagging people down to snap the other one.
“But Corbyn!”
Tories need to be told to get over Corbyn’s loss even more than Corbyn’s staunch voter base still do.
“He’s doing his best”
He is the prime minister, not a 3 year old doing a finger painting of a butterfly. Grow up.
Therein is the issue! People are so numb to what talented politicians, reliable politicians can do, that we’re willing to accept a cabinet built like an Ikea knockoff, stuffed with so many inept Johnson stooges that they can do a terrible job so long as they tell him he’s doing well.
And loath as I am to insult Labour, this is a government whose opposition should be decimating them in the polls. Whatever issues Labour has need to be fixed NOW because the continual infighting and lassitude of the left is actively contributing to this government’s ineptitude.
Lately I’m consumed by wondering what the match that will light the ever increasing tinder will be. Why wasn’t it broken promises made for Brexit, delayed lockdowns, mass deaths, callous disregard for those in care homes, jokes about our lost family members, PPE scandals, health secretaries sleeping with mistresses hired on our dime, another one throwing off all safety measures, blatant data manipulation, dereliction of duty by a foreign secretary, the anger over a home secretary castigated by the police and, now, the French, the embers of the always smouldering culture war flaring up to burn a PM who “refuses to involve” himself- but fans the flames, always, with his past and present words, increased NI which will specifically hit the poor more than the rich, food shortages, HGV Driver shortages, broken manifesto promises, inaction on unsafe flat buildings, mass deportation of those with the right to be here, an education secretary boasting of his CO2 protection system that is our children’s only safeguard and isn’t installed, tory MP’s involved in sex scandals, harassing their constituents and workers… Wherever you look at whatever level of this government corruption oozes like thickening blood to scab over an ever more septic wound.
Look at that list there and tell me why this country and it’s citizens are not in open revolt over JUST THIS.
The British public seems all too happy to roll over and show it’s delicate underbelly to a government ready to rip it open and revel in the entrails.
It is not moral, right or smart to blindly support your country- either country of origin or the country in which you live. Patriotism, at it’s heart, is about making a country more than it was, better than it was- but in a post truth state, the diminishing of a country is now seen as sovereignty.
The definition of “sovereignty”
Whichever example you would like to choose, from the US election and the subsequent attempt at a coup from ardent Trump supporters, to Brexit and the ongoing disaster of it’s completion – it fails to strike me as a positive to refer to yourself as “a patriot” these days.
And as the BLM movement educated me on the atrocities, both historical and disturbingly current, that the UK Empire committed in the name of “Queen and country” and I joined marches, stood with my neck burning in the sun in honour of people I wanted to show solidarity (at the very least) with and saw groups of angry thugs- they don’t deserve the title of “counter protesters”- I found myself amazed how many people flocked to defend stones like the Cenotaph or statues of slave traders or Churchill himself, rather than the lives and liberties of their fellow countrymen- their fellow humans.
The blank stares of a statue do nothing to uplift your national pride until, apparently, they are under threat- then suddenly they must be protected. Why, I wondered then- and still do now- did the angry Anti-antifascists decide that we as a group would target and damage a war memorial? Did they not know about the foreign regiments whose names were carved indelibly into that stone alongside their white British fellows? Did they not understand that they were protecting a monument that stood as a testament to lives lost to protest fascism?
I fear the answer is no. Looking at those facts I am on the verge of almost laughing at the absurdity of the situation – but it comes from a darker place. I strongly recommend the podcast “enemies of the people” episode 3, with host Dr. Maria W. Norris, expert on radicalisation and terorrism & Alex von Tunzelmann on Statues as Stories, which gives depth and nuance to the discussion of why statues as controversy and their desecration, relocation or revelations of their history is not actually a new and frightening concept in other democracies.
Nationalistic thinking is not, necessarily, a terrible thing. But when nationalism becomes fanaticism and the failings of the state are overlooked or even embraced by its populace in the name of “Making America Great Again” or “Taking Back Control”, or “Building Back Better”, you find empty rhetoric and those backing the changes paradoxically suffering from the issues created from this small minded “anti-other” way of life.
Reading studies that link white nationalism and racism, there is an oft assumed stance that racial politics is an ungentrified aspect, purely of modern politics itself, that those of the mid and upper classes are not racist- and this view is perpetuated by those who wish to keep this incorrect distinction:
It appears that what I often call white nationalism is by it’s nature multi class, but certain classes actively attempt to hide their association with it.
Racism and nationalism are closely intertwined- to see someone from another land as “other” and to decide that you cannot wholly be from a country based on the colour of your skin (everyone has seen the awkward exchange between David Lammy and the “you’re not British” woman, surely), and the idea that racial disparity both does not exist but is also responsible for negative (and often false) tropes directed at people of colour is yet another complete misconception of basic information, either wilfully misinterpreted or misunderstood.
The push back against critical race theory is ludicrous – if you are proud of your state and wish to understand it’s formation then accepting it’s mistakes is a key part of the continued societal growth. Ignoring it’s seemly underbelly in favour of pretending that no mistakes were made allows for resentment from those who suffered to rot the foundations formed from these heinous acts. Instead of acceptance, reparation and growth taking place, denial weakens the fabric of the society.
But again, this comes back to the schroedinger’s insistence that the UK Empire did nothing wrong, that the conquering forefathers of America were correct in committing their atrocities against indigenous peoples or enslaving people and decimating their cultures was simply a part of history that needs to be glossed over because they were products of their time: Which is it, that they did nothing wrong or that what they did wasn’t wrong at the time and so should be overlooked?
I wonder how many people who are able to blithely write off the crimes of our past would be willing to do so were it people like they who had suffered for the benefit of imperialism. To blithely state that your country has done nothing wrong is to condemn it to stagnate- for only through acceptance of wrongdoing can we learn from our past and grow to do better. And it is this strange mismanagement of fact that I find nationalists so often miss.
If your country has arguably damaged itself in standing in the world through a display of xenophobia – yes, Brexit was seen as such globally – backed up by endless examples of small England syndrome in the press:
and to compound this by pretending that you will still be seen as you were after endorsing such disparagement and in fact promoting it, you are blinded by… what? Patriotism?
Patriotism after all is not simply the act of supporting your country blindly – it is supporting your country to be better. Brexit allowed us to shuck off the imagined chains of EU Beauracracy, and the sovereignty so many were eager for has, at long last, arrived… in the guise of a PM whose personal life is a graveyard of personal scandals, a home secretary who took from public coffers to pay off victims of her bullying and who was accused of working with foreign powers in her previous role. We had a health secretary who conducted an affair at a crucial moment during the pandemic, a new health secretary who claims he is “opening a new hospital” when he is simply opening a new wing of an existing hospital- even today, we have an education secretary so inept that he appears surprised when questioned on the fact that schools are already back and do not have the vital equipment he promised to attempt to mitigate COVID spread.
In addition we have food shortages, businesses going bust, industries that unknowingly relied on EU buyers or products who vociferously backed brexit failing as a result of their misinformed choice, doctors are prioritising who can have blood tests because there are no blood tubes and even if they existed they can’t be delivered… It appears that our sovereignty is the freedom to undo any perceived greatness in the name of political snobbery, and to damage our society at fundamental levels, and all the while those who backed the severance of our EU membership cheer and sing the national anthem in the face of the brexit fallout.
When our alleged greatness came at the expense and hard work of foreign nationals either forced into servitude in chains or brought to the UK through schemes and requirements- then unfairly deported- was it really our greatness in the first place, or did we just allow others to come here, express their greatness and then speak over them to proclaim our wonder at what we achieved.
Am I patriotic
No.
Why would I be patriotic when the examples of perceived patriotism we have so prominently at the moment are disgraced ex presidents who were twice impeached and who performed coups to try to maintain power in the face of a democratic vote? Or a prime minister whose perceived bumbling belies a man desperate to obtain power but uninterested in dispensing it for the gain of those in need?
Patriotism has always been an odd concept to me- I don’t owe anyone my fealty just because I was born on an island they also were, or that they govern. I am my own person, and my patriotism extends to ensuring that I support the democracy of the system I’m included in- and at the moment, I see no democracy. And I may feel a spark of patriotism if the UK could face up to the atrocities that made it instead of shirking it’s chance to move forward into an age where we don’t cower from our past but embrace that we can be different and better.
Until UK citizens realise we are falling victim to a denial that perpetuates a class and racial divide that allows rule by elites who do not know or care about our struggles, and until we reframe nationalism away from fanatic flag waving and gesture politics, so will the cycle of make mistake, forget mistake, make mistake continue.
The union jack at it’s core now represents unsavoury things to me, and that is truly a shame. I used to think of it as a symbol of quintessential UK togetherness and now I only seem to see it hanging limply from buildings empty because it’s staff are unwell with covid, or on the twitter profiles of rampant xenophobes who want the freedom to starve, get sick and will all the while offshift blame onto remoaners or foreigners or whoever else a compliant media will highlight that day.
This is the British dream you need to wake up from – the ruins of the country around you are your fault- those you decry are the ones who tried to prop it up on their backs and were crushed under the weight of your arrogance.
After a spate of anti LGBTQIA crimes, the met police have released “safety tips” for rainbow community members- tips like “avoid dark areas” and “don’t listen to music” and now I as a member of the community ask the police – when will you attack the perpetrators instead of chastising the victims?
(In this article I’ll regularly reference women and LGBTQIA people- I understand that there are women in the LGBTQIA, so please bear with me – as an inclusive feminist, and as a man who sees intersectionality and the commonality of struggles between all women and all other members of the LGBTQIA, I want to write a thorough and fair piece to anyone and everyone who experiences the unhelpfulness propagated by the rhetoric of the advice above. I would never purposely discredit or prioritise any one group’s difficulties over another, but I write from my own experience as a cis gay man and unfortunately suffer from my own bias as I write. I understand your struggles as best I can and I hope this article does justice to it, as much as it can but would be more than happy to edit or add as may suit you. Please also bear in mind I’ll be discussing sensitive themes.)
I RECIEVED A SURPRISING amount of blowback to a video I created speaking about my displeasure with the narrative the met police are offering regarding the spike in anti LGBT+ sentiment in the UK. A few people said they felt I was making parallels that didn’t exist- that the police were simply suggesting people take accountability for their safety- as if those of us who are regularly offered this waffling and useless nonsense for our own protection are normally the hapless first to die at the start of a horror movie- we hear our boyfriend being brutally slaughtered downstairs but still go to investigate, we run up the stairs and hide in the closet instead of going for the front door. The suggestion that women or LGBT+ people don’t take our safety seriously, and need to be offered empty advice like “don’t go into the dark areas like parks” is ludicrous.
It’s also proscriptive towards those of us- of which there are many – in the community, male, female or enby who don’t live in some theoretical well lit, safe, upscale apartment block with security and friendly neighbours. LGBT+ people take many shapes and forms, and can live anywhere from town houses to run down flats- and suggesting we avoid the very areas we may need to live in due to personal circumstance is insane, and feels like a rebuke against people whose lives are difficult already due to circumstance- from being ousted by family members to having life altering trauma that prevents full time employment, warning us away from areas that may be unseemly is pointless when we may live there as our only option.
Much like the edging-very-close-but-not-just-saying-it’s-your-fault rhetoric, this is another patent attempt by an ineffective and indifferent police force to off-shift blame for crime from those who feel entitled to commit them, knowing the advice focuses on the narrative of the victim placing themselves at peril rather than the perpetrator being discouraged. Women, cis or trans are asked about what they were wearing, gay men are judged for their presentation or- as was the case for both myself and a male friend- we’re asked if we went to places we didn’t even know are cruising spots, if we went wanting sex then regretted it, judged, shamed and then dispensed with no justice. This is the reality of life for women, LGBT+ people- and who knows how women who are LGBT+- and then WOC who are LGBT+ cope- presumably we are increasingly urged to entrench ourselves in our homes, seal every gap, sit quietly in a panic room and wait for change because apparently our mere presences provoke people to attack.
Taken from the ONS reports
Look at the increase in anti LGBT+ hate crime in the UK from 2011 to last year. No doubt the figures will have changed due to lockdown and in 2022 the met police will celebrate a job well done, failing to realise that when you keep people separate, their ability to attack each other is limited. But a dip in figures is not a change in sentiment.
The frustration in regards to this advice is that again, much as women are punitively advised not to go out, to carry their keys defensively, to check in with friends, walk in groups, plan their routes- it fails to address the root causes.
A society that commodifies the (in particular) female body as something that people are entitled to regardless of consent, that places the onus of blame on the visibility of skin or the friendliness of the individual is a broken society. And now to extend those less than useless (as evidenced by the tragic case of Blessing Olusegun, Sarah Everard, the horrendous acts of the Plymouth incel, the fact that 97% of surveyed women- NINETY SEVEN PERCENT- have experienced sexual assault) guidance again as if they are of any use at all, other than to tell us to lock ourselves away for our own protection, is insanity.
I feel like I’m quintessentially British when I write- I throw in a smattering of posh words and moan a lot so here are some things I’d like to see the police actually implement or action to perhaps make some sort of dent in this endless rhetoric that is damaging to anyone but cishet, and sometimes just cis, men.
Stop victim blaming
Suggesting limp talking points like “don’t go out in the dark- don’t listen to music- wear running shoes” is placing the responsibility on us- of course it’s common sensical and we all do it- so why waste the time telling us when you could be creating sustained education campaigns to impress on young men that they are not entitled to sexual gratification from other people. There could be a reiteration that crimes of these natures will be punished severely to the full extent of the law. The media could be approached to prevent the platforming of what SHOULD BE CALLED extremists, terrorists and more. No name, no notoriety. Crimes against women and LGBT+ people (and, obviously, the women in the community especially), should be prioritised as the stats continue to rise- with a focus on those who do experience anything being supported properly (this, in my experience, does not happen and leads to worse for those who have already suffered enough). Creating the narrative that we are responsible for other’s behaviour merely by showing skin or being open about our gender or sexuality is a complete dereliction of duty.
Earlier this year when news broke of an Iranian gay man, murdered before he could flee, the article stated that there was “worldwide condemnation”- and yet there was also a disquietingly loud smattering of those stating “why would he come out? would you really wave your sexuality around like that?” As though the crime of existing and being gay should be met with such swift and horrific punishment.
See source at top: Rest in peace Alireza
And then in Spain, a man was beaten to death by a homophobic crowd- again, condemnation, shock, outrage- nothing.
Now it’s common to, on the daily, open up the news apps to a small headline about another gay man, lesbian, trans person, couple, enby person, being beaten, bashed, robbed, chased, sexually assaulted. These crimes are horrific wherever they occur but are getting closer and closer to home, and it’s not the responsibility of those who may suffer from these crimes to take precautionary measures- it is for those who would commit the crimes to be discouraged through either the simple expedient of education or through fear of repercussion.
Start repairing trust in a community that has historic bad blood
Even I, as an extremely tepid and boring human, have had several very negative interactions with the police- twice related to my sexuality, twice not. But my trans friends, and several of my cis lesbian, gay and bi friends have had very negative interactions with the police based on their sexuality and hate crimes. I haven’t even bothered to report some of the things that have been done or said to me on account of my own sexuality- partly because I can manage, and partly because I know that often nothing comes of it.
Faith in an organisation that’s previously categorically failed to help the LGBT+ community and women is unsurprisingly worn thin- but the police never work to make reparations for communities they have historically (and arguably presently) let down. The right wing press demonised the police’s attempt to create vehicles with the pride inclusive flag, writing that the police should focus on “real” crimes.
The irony of this move is, it’s yet another cishet created move for “inclusion” that misses the mark but allows the community to suffer the repercussions. We do-not-care about flags on police cars. We care about a competent police force who will listen to and action our issues. We care about resolution to any crimes committed against us, and we care about the betterment of the society in which we live which currently seems to be slowly turning against us in a frightening way.
Protest has always been a key tenet of the LGBT+ community as we’ve fought for our rights to be who we are without judgement or, ironically, fear. But that right has been taken, and it’s a right that must be enshrined- yet has been desecrated by a flippant government seeking to avoid retribution for it’s actions. This move was, to our eyes, fostered by a police force desperate to be able to prevent public speech in dissent of it’s behaviours and so lends another unneeded nail to the coffin of LGBT+ trust in the force.
Societal change
Cis men won’t like the idea that society fails too many of them in the simple area of being taught that they cannot touch what people do not consent to- that they cannot (I have literally witnessed this behaviour and screamed at the individual) take pictures of girls in workout clothes at the bus stop at the bottom of Briggate in Leeds, that they should not open conversations with pictures of their genitals. Whatever it is that is not impressed upon them in their youths and as they grow must be implemented if we hope to make a society that allows people to feel safe. I as a cis man am regularly dumbfounded by people assuming I’m happy to receive unprompted pictures of their naked bodies. And the RAGE! The rage that is directed at you when you aren’t interested- as if looking at their bodies when I didn’t want to was some sort of secret reward. As if being told that I make them horny when I didn’t want to know is some elusive prize they want to award me. The depersonalisation of the other is a huge, foreboding problem with far too many men- some think their unprompted sexualisation is wanted or a gift we ask for just by existing in the same space as them.
Though the article is old, I doubt the systemic belief has changed much with no campaign to do so:
Others don’t care if their obscenities are received well, they simply want to get off to knowing that others are forced to see it. It’s flashing for the 21st century and the police should be impressing upon people that they can and will access records of conversations, and that if someone sends pictures like that unsolicited and without agreement, it merits punishment.
Before the “it’s not all men” crowd leap in, yes women should be subject to the same scrutiny- and yet I noticed an odd phenomenon when discussing this topic with straight cis men before- when I told them how annoying it is to be subject to something of an occasional deluge of pictures of penises, they told me they would love to receive pictures of vaginas randomly. It’s this disconnect in mindset I don’t understand and would like to.
These are the same people who, when I explained that I have been sexually assaulted by a partner who woke me up holding me down, taking off my underwear and taking advantage of me when I was exhausted and unable to consent, and more than once did say “no”, “stop” or “get off”, was met with either silence or indifference, told me that they would “love” to get woken up by sex.
You didn’t misread that. On three occasions I’ve disclosed to straight cis men (and two gay cis men…) that I was painfully sexually assaulted and their response is that they would want that to happen to them. Either their lack of imagination when it comes to consent is terrifying or a worrying proportion of men have distorted opinions when it comes to what sex is and should be. I’ve also had -specifically- several cis straight men tell me that they imagine it’s “normal” that eventually sex slows down and that situation occurs. And when people ask me why I, to this day, have trouble trusting men, it’s because of these statements and the actions of the person who did it to me.
Society needs to stop procrastinating at the peril of people who suffer these heinous crimes- sexual and simple violence- and come to an understanding of causality and change. Lives would be saved.
The UK media must be stopped
The anti LGBT+ sentiment has always boiled along in the background, my entire life. I remember disparaging articles in the daily mail when I was in my formative teen years, that gave people I cared greatly for the energy to rail against my sexuality as though I chose to make their lives more difficult by dint of who I find attractive. We haven’t yet reached the resurgence of openly and blatantly homophobic headlines like these compiled by Tony Reeves:
Disgraceful, isn’t it! And yet are we really- really- so far from this rhetoric?
Last year’s “poofters” and “d*kes” are this year’s “trans Taliban”, activists seeking to erase women, erase lesbians, roll back freedoms and rights, imperil people- and a disturbing portion of the community allows themselves to foster and promote these beliefs by buying into and actively promoting them. Nobody should go through what the LGBT+ activists did, and yet they did, so to perpetuate such scorn upon yet another community is a travesty of the highest proportion.
More cis people writing hateful books about trans people- demonising them, accusing them of propagating trans ideology and more. Joyce didn’t even interview a trans person for her book, focusing instead on burrowing deep in the echo chamber of the internet’s anti trans activists. Shrier’s book suggests that being trans is a craze rather than a divergence from being cis, and that the increase in people coming out as trans was a more accepting society and a deeper understanding of the nonexistence of the gender binary.
At the same time, we see regular reports of anti LGBT+ preachers extolling their dangerous platitudes about how we’re trying to de-sanctify the world, gay up Jesus, whatever else these curmudgeonly hacks want to push into their echo chamber. We’re asked or told to debate our right to be, to live, to love, to access healthcare- we’re forced endlessly to defend ourselves against accusations of trying to woo children into some imagined community initiation scheme, talked about, grumbled about and loosely tolerated until the first time a lesbian tells someone to shut up and then suddenly – SEE, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TOLERANT AND LOVING LGBT?
When all is said and done, the police will continue to mop up hate crime rather than look at ways to tackle it systemically and the problem will worsen, the media will continue to half heartedly demonise us for things out of our control, and make the worst of us the examples of the rest of us and until many of us have paid the price of their lassitude, the problems will continue. I’d urge the police to consider taking some actual action, doing some actual groundwork with the government to stem the tide of hatred leaking through every brick in the wall that holds us safe against those who would wish us harm. Is that too much to ask? Or do you need to clean my blood off the pavement to realise, too late, that I told you this was coming?
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.
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’s 23:06 on 21/01/2022 – since freedom day, 24,727 people have died in the UK from coronavirus. Twenty four thousand countryfolk, who have died at the hands of a government desperate to prop up their economy using the corpses of hapless Brits.
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.
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.
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.
Politically Enraged 