Wednesday, 28 June 2017
"Why haven't you killed yourself yet?"
I can not adequately describe what the assessments for the sick and disabled are like for those whom have never experienced them. As though the validity of your whole being is called into question. That your illness or disability (or both) that you have struggled with, railed against and finally gotten help for is now nothing, you are nothing. A waste. A liar. The words of doctors and nurses meaning nothing the words of The State humiliating and degrading you.
"Why haven't you killed yourself yet?"
My lone vigil after the first assessment for my darling suicide watch is still an ache in me. One that years later makes me weep uncontrollably. That we came so close. That they pushed him so far. Three weeks. Three weeks and everyday I woke to the dread question "is it today I lose my husband?" Will I lose him too?
So you cry in the bath so they don't see you. You clean and cook and smile and joke. You fight. You write letters and take calls and fight for him, fight so he will live. You pray and pray and pray.
You use diet patches so you eat less because you don't want anyone else to have less food. You live on next to nothing and you don't complain, no matter the ruined Christmases. You hold it it because holding it in and holding it together are not a choice.
You win. Sort of. Then all too soon you have to fight again. Wiser this time, savvy even, but still fear that shadow darkening over his face once more. That dread creeps over you. The taste of tears in the back of your throat and death's shadow falls over his face again. It bleeds out all the colour from him, and try and remember that he has blue eyes.
You make yourself all kinds of promises. Ones you can't keep. Never again. Never again but then that envelope heavily hits the mat and the dread, the humiliation, the horror of it washes over you and you are sobbing again, shaking uncontrollably.
Yet you are one of the lucky ones. So many dead. So many you half knew and never knew vanished into that long bureaucratic death.
I don't think you understand yet. Stand or sit before these people and they will judge if you deserve to live, with any kind of dignity or even at all. For them to look you up and down and tick a box and ruin what little life you have.
Saturday, 17 June 2017
Keep Calm
Keep Calm and Carry On?
In the wake of a multitude of trauma and tragedies this country and people have faced these last few months I am getting a bit sick of people who haven't been directly affected telling those that have how they should feel and react.
"Calm down."
"Let's not get angry."
"Stop shouting and being unreasonable."
"You're not being logical."
Fuck off. Just fuck right off. Pain and grief are psychologically and naturally full of rage. It is a normal human reaction to the sudden and needless death.
I mean how many dead children is an okay amount to lose? How many people do you have to see die before your eyes before you are entitled NOT to be calm?
How many Government lies about these deaths are an okay number of lies? How many communities destroyed is too many?
At what point is outrage okay?
"I lost a hamster once in 1983, I think their taking this grief thing a bit far!"
Grief is not logical. Grief is not some containable emotion. It is the tearing of something intrinsic.
It is our basic human need to connect and if you have no idea how loss feels then your either really lucky or a sociopath. Neither of which entitle you to police people's real and raw emotions.
This Government is (and this Prime Minister is) culpable for these tragedies because of her policies people have died. They waged war on our public services from the police to the fire service, demonised and threatened immigrant communities all while taking away safety regulations for their own profit.
Direct, and logical.
These are the facts.
The facts are not pretty and it is likely that there will not be justice or truth for these people as there are gag orders placed on the media preventing them from telling it.
When is it enough?
When it's your baby?
When it's your friend?
When it's your community?
We must let these communities and even as a country feel it, feel it all. We must not become numb the the pain of it. We can not normalise these tragedies. We can't afford the cost in human lives to "keep calm and carry on" any more.
Friday, 16 June 2017
Red Tape and Politicians for Hire
Red Tape and Politicians for Hire
Less than two weeks ago I was sat with a pot of tea and some scones discussing politics. It was just before the election. I said that one of my main problems was that politicians and government officials from the Local Authorities to councils often based their actions not for the good of the people they were serving but for themselves, either directly or indirectly.
This clear nepotism and conflict of interest was irksome to me because it effectively removed the will of the people from the equation.
I cited our own councils past and present who use companies that are related to them to do work and seem to waste millions of pounds that is never found. They build buildings they don't need, and then can't use, and strangely it is never reported. They reclaim hundreds of vintage and expensive housing parts (from boilers, slate roofs and copper piping) replacing them with cheap and shoddy new models and get paid by the council for it.
The Local Authority used to be run by one man who had his wife acting as headteacher for 3 separate schools at the same time. No-one seemed to do anything about though they all knew it was a big problem.
We know that healthy care insurance companies lobby and pay money to Conservative companies that push and pull policy and rip off and sell our NHS. We know that Tory MP's voted to remove the rights and safe guards for residents with an overwhelming majority of them being landlords themselves.
"Red Tape" has been painted as boring, mindless, pointless bureaucracy but in reality it was hard won and woven from the innocent dead as a means to curtail the power of the rich to treat people with utter disregard. By demonising "red tape" and "health and safety" and ridiculous and pointless and making it seem as though they were "helping" they robbed people of health, safety and even their lives. By marketing it at "machismo" and those whom defend it as "whiners and whimps" at great many people believed this rhetoric; especially amongst those whom probably weren't allow scissors at school.
From removing guards on trains (their whole job is train safety officer was created to make sure something weighing about 180 tons going any where from 65 mph to 120 mph and full of people with hundreds of moving parts and so on was safe) to over crowding our juvenile detention centres; it all comes back to the utter disregard for basic human welfare. The right to life and health is not something given, so it is not one that can be taken away. It is inherent, innate, and important.
Red tape is the legal binding of those without care for human or animal well being.
One of the reasons I was so concerned about Brexit was because many of our laws do not have enough red tape. From food safety to enforcing our human rights, the EU laws were our safeguarding.
We need to bring back the joy of red tape. The glee of the poor man binding the rich. Let the rich admit our worth, be it financially or otherwise. Let them be forced to admit our humanity while tied and gagged with shiny red tape.
Less than two weeks ago I was sat with a pot of tea and some scones discussing politics. It was just before the election. I said that one of my main problems was that politicians and government officials from the Local Authorities to councils often based their actions not for the good of the people they were serving but for themselves, either directly or indirectly.
This clear nepotism and conflict of interest was irksome to me because it effectively removed the will of the people from the equation.
I cited our own councils past and present who use companies that are related to them to do work and seem to waste millions of pounds that is never found. They build buildings they don't need, and then can't use, and strangely it is never reported. They reclaim hundreds of vintage and expensive housing parts (from boilers, slate roofs and copper piping) replacing them with cheap and shoddy new models and get paid by the council for it.
The Local Authority used to be run by one man who had his wife acting as headteacher for 3 separate schools at the same time. No-one seemed to do anything about though they all knew it was a big problem.
We know that healthy care insurance companies lobby and pay money to Conservative companies that push and pull policy and rip off and sell our NHS. We know that Tory MP's voted to remove the rights and safe guards for residents with an overwhelming majority of them being landlords themselves.
"Red Tape" has been painted as boring, mindless, pointless bureaucracy but in reality it was hard won and woven from the innocent dead as a means to curtail the power of the rich to treat people with utter disregard. By demonising "red tape" and "health and safety" and ridiculous and pointless and making it seem as though they were "helping" they robbed people of health, safety and even their lives. By marketing it at "machismo" and those whom defend it as "whiners and whimps" at great many people believed this rhetoric; especially amongst those whom probably weren't allow scissors at school.
From removing guards on trains (their whole job is train safety officer was created to make sure something weighing about 180 tons going any where from 65 mph to 120 mph and full of people with hundreds of moving parts and so on was safe) to over crowding our juvenile detention centres; it all comes back to the utter disregard for basic human welfare. The right to life and health is not something given, so it is not one that can be taken away. It is inherent, innate, and important.
Red tape is the legal binding of those without care for human or animal well being.
One of the reasons I was so concerned about Brexit was because many of our laws do not have enough red tape. From food safety to enforcing our human rights, the EU laws were our safeguarding.
We need to bring back the joy of red tape. The glee of the poor man binding the rich. Let the rich admit our worth, be it financially or otherwise. Let them be forced to admit our humanity while tied and gagged with shiny red tape.
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