Readers might be somewhat put off by a silly, perhaps frivolous, attempt to portray the Labour and Tory leaders as characters from a movie, but the truth is that we’ve gone a very long way beyond that, so please bear with me.
For over a week now I have had a growing ache in my body, a wrenching ache that has steadily increased. I have felt the need to rest more, to sleep it off, but it is relentless and the very simple fact is that I am living on the edge of tears that will, at some point, release, but the problem remains.
I am outraged at the farce this election has already become, the power games Theresa May is playing, the lies and deceit and the vile twisted spectacle of it all.
My response has been mixed, from sharing some of the stories going the rounds which I felt needed sharing, to mocking and satirising the whole damned ludicrous ‘thing’, to sharing the policies that should be the real story but which are being smothered to the point of banality by ‘spectacle’.
The facts are that we’ve lived through seven years of Tory hell and thousands of people have died. They are stealing our NHS right from under our noses and if they get in again it’ll be all over for our most treasured institution and our greatest national achievement. They have turned the national safety net, our system of social security, into a secret penal system driving people into despair and death and attacking the weakest and most vulnerable people in the UK. Since 2010 food banks and food bank usage have gone through the roof as has poverty. And those are but a very few issues that we face which will, of a certainty, get very much worse if the Tories get back in.
I am getting on in years, I live on ‘my’ state pension, I have terminal cancer and I struggle with mental ill health and the brutal callousness of the Tories has had a dramatic affect on my life. I have little hope that my remaining years under a Tory government will be in any way peaceable and the reality is I do not expect to survive another five years of Tory misrule and their callous brutality. I do not require anyone’s pity, but I do require of myself that I face reality. I will fight these bastards to the bitter end but I have no plans to lose my sense of humour, my love of life and nor do I have any intention of giving up fighting for justice, but it hurts and it hurts badly.
I’ll find the release in need in tears, I’ll take their healing balm and I’ll go on, I will not fall into despair, endless depression and futility.
This is no film, some romantic dreamscape in which good triumphs over evil in a pre-scripted plot, but nor can I ignore these times in which the plots of a million films are being lived out. because this is fundamentally a war of good against evil, although I never thought I’d live to see such a thing.
Since coming to power in 2010 the Tories have been conducting a war on the poor with brutal contempt for our lives. Theresa May can hide in her exclusive gatherings of the Tory faithful, to the exclusion of all others, including the press, and pretend she’s the ruling matriarch of Britain. She may even believe she has some divine right to rule and she may be planning a coup if she does not, who knows? We’ll certainly never know from her or her sick party of the privileged.
Jeremy Corbyn won’t play their games, he won’t join their macabre pantomime, nor indulge in the name calling, dirt scraping, tactics so beloved of the right. And yes he does rather resemble Obi-Wan Kenobi, played so well by Alec Guinness and Theresa May does resemble the evil Emperor Palpatine played by Ian McDiarmid. And there is steel in Corbyn that May can neither emulate nor overcome. The force is as strong in Corbyn as the farce is in May. Overcome we shall, overcome we must, because our lives really do depend on it. This is the fight of and for our lives.
KOG. 05 May 2017
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/social-care-scandal-tory-cuts-9836261
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2016/05/05/benefit-sanctions-are-britains-secret-penal-system/
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system
