The language being used by the government isn’t merely deceitful, or lying, their language is a weapon and their words have become weaponised.
It is impossible for the government to not know the deaths they’ve caused, the hunger and poverty they have created, the evidence is concrete and everywhere to see. In almost every town and in every city there are homeless people, and they are homeless through the wilful inaction of the government to provide adequate affordable housing for people. It would make economic sense to build houses, it would boost the economy and create jobs, but the government is not building social housing and is getting rid of the little that is left.
Theresa May’s Easter message was about coming together. Every word in it was complete nonsense from the head of the most divisive government in UK history.It was a sound stream of willful deception in a country in which hate crime is continuing to rise, particularly against disabled people.
In ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’, Robert Pirsig wrote, “And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good – need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
Who is Theresa May to tell me what I should think or feel in any way about anything? Who does she think she is to tell me about coming together? I am not a child and, thankfully, certainly not her child to spout her nonsense and deceitful words at.
I’d have to abandon all reason and sense to believe a word she says. She is neither my elder nor better, in fact, in her deceit, she is a posturing elitist nobody, temporarily occupying a position she has no right to occupy. Anyone who sets out to lead by deceit is an imposter, toxic, presumptuous, dangerous and also ridiculous.
The harm she and her government are responsible for is without any mitigating factors. Austerity is a lie, imposed for ideological reasons and on the back of a financial crisis which had nothing to do with the people who are being harmed and who’ve died as a result. She is a posturing windbag who is not telling the truth, manipulating words for self serving purposes.
Words have the power of life and death in them, they can build up and they can destroy. One of my jobs as a community and youth worker was to reshape the language being used against young people. The media has a particular responsibility in this, instead of reporting or dealing with behavioural issues, they label young people as thugs and hooligans, creating a culture of fear around young people. Call a child stupid, clumsy or useless for long enough and you’ll get a child who conforms to your words, a stupid, clumsy or useless child, a child who will meet the expectations you have placed on them, not to perform better but driven to do worse. It is no good telling a child you’ve called stupid to do better, they’ve already heard the ‘stupid’, anything that follows is useless and pointless.
I wrote a story once called ‘Soda Jack’, a boy who grew up constantly failing to meet his high achieving parents expectations, who was always a disappointment to them and was told so on a daily basis and punished for his failures. As he grew up, he lived out their expectations and lost himself in a world of drink and drugs. Over time his voice grew hoarse and laboured and he always carried a bottle of soda to ease his throat, until he took his own life. A failure made, but not born that way, who lost himself in the unkindness of others, who learnt to fail and never recovered, not even his name, known only, and buried, as Soda Jack.
I am an old man now, retired, and I am not deaf to what the Tories have to say about people like me. This is what was said by a group of Tories in a book called ‘Britannia Unchained’, who accused ‘the “baby boomer” generation (that’s me) for seeking to raise taxes for young workers to pay for their lavish pension pots’. That is the heart of the Tory message, a message of division and hate as I struggle along on my ‘lavish’ state pension.
The writers of that book are MPs in parliament today, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss, pursuing their policies of hate, eradicating the poor on a daily basis. The gloss that May tries to cast as a the cover on her policies are merely a disguise for a party and policies that are rotten to the core.
Instead of being beaten by their words I choose to write about them and expose them and oppose them, as many others do also. There is no passive response to their lies, they are designed to hurt and destroy lives, as are their policies. This is a rogue government, the enemy within, which has nothing but ill will and contempt for the lives of ordinary people and none of us will be safe until we are rid of the lot of them.
KOG. 07 May 2017
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/easter-2017-theresa-mays-message
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/aug/22/britannia-unchained-rise-of-new-tory-right
