I spent a few days in Birmingham and had a very pleasant time. I had often pictured Birmingham as a city from future’s past. I thought The Bullring was a massive concrete amphitheatre, where disgruntled vagrants and victims of social injustice would fight to the death for a square of beige protein and a bottle of tonic wine, cheered on by a chorus of bloodthirsty Brummies. But no, it has a Selfridges.
One morning, I was walking to Birmingham New Street Station and I witnessed two police officers arresting a young homeless girl, of no more than 16 years old, simply for being homeless. She was handcuffed, tears in her eyes as these two guys in high-visibility jackets kicked her sleeping bag and coat in to the gutter and led her away. My feelings of anguish were then exacerbated by the fact that within one of the busiest train stations in the country the sole police presence was a cardboard cut-out of a police officer outside WH Smith. The image of this girl has been permanently scratched into my memory like a bad tattoo or a novelty pop song.
The following day I began to receive updates from the world of social media about the anti-austerity march that was happening in Dorchester in support of the Special Care Baby Unit and Kingfisher Ward of Dorset County Hospital. It was actually great to see people turning out in such numbers for a very worthy cause. Not since the anti-war protests of the early 2000s had there been that many people on the streets of Dorchester trying to make their voices heard about something they thought was inherently wrong.
Something more fundamental is bothering me though. Public Space Protection Orders, the law that has made sleeping rough an offence, as well as the closures of essential public services, are what people voted for. They voted for cuts. They voted for austerity. They voted to have theirs, or more accurately, the freedoms and services afforded to others, removed or limited. I’m aware not everybody voted for it, in fact a very large proportion of the country voted against these sort of aggressive, polarising policies but enough people said ‘yes’ to these things to make them a reality. If you voted for this, this is your fault. No one else’s, yours and all of the people with the same backwards, ill-conceived ideas of progress and prosperity that you have. It’s depressing and it’s infuriating. It’s 2015 and we live in a world where money is more of a priority than making sick kids better. Thanks, Britain.
Is this what our grandparents died for? The freedom to arrest homeless teenagers for sleeping in a doorway? The freedom to close a ward that takes care of seriously ill infants because it’s not financially viable? A “long term economic plan” should not involve slashing everything straight away, which by definition is surely a short term plan. Gideon (sorry, George, as he prefers to be known) Osborne, seems to be on a massive ideological ego trip, his sole motivation is to make as much money as quickly as possible regardless of consequence. I can only assume he is trying to raise enough money to build a Death Star.
There’s been a fire-sale of the last remaining stakes in Royal Mail and RBS is soon to follow at a massive £7+billion loss to the tax payer. How many care units would that money keep open? Even Iain Duncan Smith is concerned about the level of cuts! A man so callous and cold he probably lives under a damp rock and eats orphans. He is worried! That basically means that this time next year you’re going to have to queue at Beachy Head.
Can we really not do any better than this? Is my best hope for the future to simply stock up on tinned food, bottled water and hope that disease or nuclear war get me before the Government does? I’m aware that many dismiss these ideas as “leftie” or “socialist” nonsense. I wouldn’t consider this to be about sides. It’s about basic, fundamental principles. The left is a complete mess. Labour are like a bunch of drunk toddlers learning to tie their shoelaces. They don’t know what they’re doing, have done, or are going to do in the future and I have not aligned myself with them or any particular political party or organisation. It’s about right and wrong, compassion and progress. Actual progress, not money in the bank.
