austerity – Observations and Misunderstandings

As I drove through the small village near my home at about five minutes past eight this evening I noticed people had lined the street and started clapping as I approached. It’s good to have my existence celebrated finally. The strange thing is that having stopped their 8pm clap for carers session, some actually clapped in my direction as I drove by. I was in a delivery van so I wonder if they saw me as some kind of hero putting my life on the line to deliver them their bread. Still, I just drove on. I did contemplate hooting the horn as I drove through but I didn’t want to play along with whatever it is they’re doing. To be completely honest, I think the whole things a charade and it’s stupid. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure there are some exhausted and not to mention ill nurses out there and I appreciate and respect them for doing what their doing, there’s just something empty about this whole clapping show. Each Thursday at 8pm people line the streets, clap and bang pots. It’s a lovely gesture but I suspect for many it’s hollow.

It’s worth pointing out that were I live in both Northumberland and the Scottish Borders, Tory MPs were voted in to power recently. Perhaps these people banging pots could instead just not vote for them next time. Who gives a shit about what you think if you clap your hands and then vote for the very people who actively weaken those you’re clapping for. The mind numbing hypocrisy just seems lost and maybe that’s the worst part. I want to hang a banner from my window highlighting this but I’m concerned the attention it might draw to the bakery below me may not be ideal. I just want to slap everyone and point out that they’re idiots. There’s too many idiots.

People talk about ten years of Tory government and their ideological attacks on the NHS as being the reason for it’s current struggles but that’s not accurate. Either people have short memories or they’re just playing party politics. While I would trust Jeremy Corbyn with the NHS, I would be curious to know people’s opinions on Tony Blair’s version of a Labour Government. But really we can go back as far as Thatcher and the first real inroads of a neoliberal movement to destroy something that has helped so many. In truth actually we could go all the way back to Nye Bevan and the Tory government he had to fight against to establish the NHS we all love and cherish now. You see, it’s not just ten years of Tory austerity. Or forty years of neoliberalism. These bastards have had it in for free health care since the very beginning. Don’t believe their lies. And if you vote for them, save your breath, and save your effort each Thursday night. If you truly cared for the carers you wouldn’t be voting for that self-serving mob. It’s not bloody hard to understand.

I want to talk about how the narrative being pushed is of the NHS as a sick patient needing put on life support. Struggling on it’s last legs, like an exhausted charity it needs donations from the public, twenty odd million from some old fella who walked around his garden a few times for example. Civil society in action once more, people being leant on to save the day. It’s the corona version of climate change, the people making all the changes; recycle to save the planet but don’t dare look into the corporations doing all that polluting and the governments complicit in their poisonous behaviour. Once more we as a people are stepping up when required, it’s amazing really because it shows what we can do when we have to. It also highlights how little our governments are fulfilling their end of the social contract we signed with them when we chose to vote and place them in power. Are they not supposed to use our tax payments to fund the NHS? It isn’t as if there isn’t the money available, vanity projects like the HS2 rail line and arms deals like the Trident nuclear submarines make this abundantly clear. The government spent twenty one million on consultants and advisers trying to find ways to save thirty billion in cuts to vital public services, such as the NHS. Let’s just say Captain Tom’s money can at least cover that. If they have the money when they want then, it must be safe to say this chronic underfunding, nay criminal underfunding; can only have been intentional.

But I won’t talk about that. I won’t talk about the lack of PPE for nurses and doctors, about how it appears that the government are either incompetent, which is alarming, negligent, which is alarming or they are intentionally acting in a way that is contrary to their public protestations, which is slightly reassuring because it means that everything is at least normal, and normal is safe remember. But I won’t talk about that either.

It’s not about being defeatist, I just can’t be bothered because if I did it would probably just end up in a little rant and that seems pointless. Also I always imagine this must be obvious to everyone and they know already and are either outraged or ignoring personal narrative conflicting information. Considering the media are doing such a blatant support act of the current government that even Piers Morgan has become a hero of the disillusioned masses, I probably shouldn’t make too many assumptions. It is a shit show really and it’s a frustrating one. There’s something within us that wants and believes those who commit wrongs unto others are in one way or another punished for it. Yet politicians and those lobbying politicians seem to not only walk free, but walk off with a disproportionate share of the pie. That is why if anything we don’t live in a rational world. Or maybe we do, maybe it is irrational to imagine things may change for the better and the delusion can end. All is random then and each day just unfolds with everyone scrambling around hoping they see it out and wake up in the next. And if that feels real now, dear lord just imagine what that’ll feel like when the revolution comes and people start chopping off each others heads. I know who I’ll be going for though and it won’t be my neighbour.

Tag: austerity

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