When Bush and Blair created terrorism to titillate our fear buds, I wonder how many people actually felt there was any kind of real and present danger? I recall at the time thinking about my community and the possibility of the arrival of some explosive strapped individual prepared to give his all to destroy our community, our way of life and our lives. To be honest what I felt more than anything was ridicule coupled with contempt for what they were manufacturing. The new reds under the beds had arrived, a new bogeyman to delight the xenophobes.
Back in 95 I had already taken the decision to rid myself of the one eyed monster that inhabited the corner of the living room, tired of the endless advertising and news drivel being transmitted into the heart of my home. I launched my television out of a second story window and to be fair it flew rather well, it was the landing that did for it.
That marked a turning point in my personal detox from socio-political bullshit. It is easy to say that it was my choice whether the thing was on or off, true as far as it goes, and that there were some good programmes, true also, but even switched off the television is a nagging presence because its an idea, a concept. It represents a diversion that requires no personal effort. The idea that there might be something on the box is a kind of abdication of real life and responsibility, not so much a past-time as a passer of time, do nothing time. It isn’t even cinema, which is an outing and an event in its own right. Television is just an endless stream of effortless blah blah.
Fast forward to today, terror is back and the problem is it’s not on the box, it is real and present in millions of lives. Welfare cuts, sanctions, zero hours contracts, Workfare, food banks, Atos assessments providing zero points for devastating disabilities, loss of benefits awaiting the decision makers to decide whether to reinstate them or not, whether people starve or not, poverty, hardship, despair and deaths.
This is real terrorism, a relentless onslaught of it, a daily diet for millions of people across the UK giving rise to teeth grinding anger and wide eyed despair and desperation. Individuals and families stripped of the means of survival and the greatest threat to life in the UK since the second world war.
Welcome to the extremism and terrorism of Tory Britain; the real and present danger of a war on the poor being conducted from the Palace of Westminster by politicians.
This is the first time since records began in 1961 that the fall in absolute child poverty has not only halted but is on the rise with 3.5 million children expected to be in absolute poverty by 2020, nearly five times the target. It should not need saying, but for every child in absolute poverty there is a family of one or more others suffering the same plight.
Since the government decided to make the poor responsible for austerity instead of the real perpetrators, the banks, the mainstream media has embarked on a campaign of demonisation of the poor making them out to be chancers, scroungers, malingerers, having a culture of entitlement and privilege. Nothing could be further from the truth. Poverty is and always will be violence, that it is being pursued so avidly by government and indeed mocked and ridiculed in parliament at a debate on food banks is a source of national shame.
As present we have yet to find a solution to this enemy within, these perpetrators of domestic terrorism, until we do the very least we can do is not be silent about it.
https://welfarenewsservice.com/uks-child-poverty-goals-unattainable-says-report/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/benefits-street-poverty-porn-celebrity-bbc
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/food-bank-debate-victory-getting-2941824