I am angry
I am really REALLY angry. I don't often voice my opinions on politics and such like (OK, Jon would differ with me there, so let's say 'in public'...), but I still get bombarded with other people's ill-informed cretinous musings on a daily basis: in person, through the media, etc. Why do people think I want to hear their bigoted ramblings? Why do people think it's acceptable to use casual racist/sexual/homophobic language in everyday speech? I honestly would like to go around thinking the best of my fellow human beings but, unfortunately, they show me on a daily basis that the majority of the British people should not be allowed to voice their opinions on ANYTHING. Because, even if they're discussing the state of their petunias, they'll immediately segway off into how their garden's less than perfect display either: is the fault of immigrants/gays/women; is down to too much rain which disproves global warming; is because 'they' stop us from using DDT to kill pests; is because we only have a fortnightly bin collection; is because next door's cat peed on it; is because the weather forecasters lied to us; is because of 'Europe'...
Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP, you STUPID people.
What has sparked this latest rant? Well, I think it's been on a slow burning fuse since the elections last year, because all of us trendy lefties knew that the Labour government was broadly shit and had let us down massively. OK, there were improvements in the NHS and taxes fell (yes, they did, don't just believe the crap on tax fed to you by your newspaper, get out there and check the facts for yourself, taxes were lower than under Mrs T and her cronies) but on the minus side they brought in student loans, let The City get out of hand and social inequality has got much worse, to mention but three. But we felt unable to criticise because they were Labour, so they must be good, right? Well, now the Tories are back and normal service has been resumed; we can let our critical faculties off the leash again. More immediately it's been caused bylast week's survey on how 23% of British people apparently think that immigration is 'our biggest problem'; our esteemed leader's speech on how 'Multiculturalism has failed'; Lord Carlisle's views that the UK has become a 'safe haven' for terrorists, etc, etc ad nauseum.
So, 59% of British people think that there are 'too many' immigrants and want them not to have access to the NHS and public services. They say that immigrants take jobs from British workers: BUT YET, at the same time, they want more foreign doctors, nurses and care workers. It's sooooo hard for me not to see this country as full of ignorant small-minded selfish bigots. The pond-life that are dragged in for these surveys... no I'll amend that, the pond-life that seem to make up the majority of the people whose opinions I have to listen to day after day, say that we live on a small, overcrowded island. No, we don't, have you flown over it lately? There's just acre upon acre of rolling countryside that isn't going to be built over any time soon. And now that the coalition government is shutting the economy down, there'll be loads of brownfield sites in towns and cities on which to build. Immigrants take our jobs do they? What, the ones you don't want to do, like: spud picking in Norfolk; wiping old people's bums; giving people good service in cafés; cleaning for less than the minimum wage; coming round to fix my plumbing and not ripping me off in the process? But, when your granny does need looking after, you'd rather we got a nurse or doctor in from a country that can ill-afford the draining away of its medical staff to do it? Perhaps you think they'll be cheap.
They don't like immigrants, but who's going to pay for the pensions of the pond-life in years to come? The way the state pension was set up a century ago, all the money your parents paid in went to pay the pensions of the people who had already retired. My payments are helping to fund the Caribbean cruises of those currently retired. But, as the population ages, there will be a higher proportion of retired people to workers by the time we retire: who's going to be paying the National Insurance needed to pay our state pensions then? Yes, those immigrants.
The quote, “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity”, has been attributed to many people over the last century, and I've got to say that this survey just feeds my prejudices that the majority of the British people are stupid – and selfish. I firmly believe that anyone who reads a newspaper other than the Guardian, Indie, Telegraph or Times should not be allowed to vote, and should preferably not be allowed to speak in public, except to say 'hello, nice day' or 'can I have a pound of potatoes please?'. The red tops, tabloids, call them what you will, peddle malevolent anti-social trash that their ill-educated dullards of a readership swallow whole and regurgitate as ill-informed anti-immigrant, anti-'benefits cheat', anti-Islamic bile (but I'm not completely sure that the 'quality' 'papers are necessarily any better, so I think the criteria on which I'd judge whether people were fit to vote would need to be refined further). These 'papers pander to the innate selfishness of the white working and lower middle classes, with their myths of 'someone's getting more than you and they don't deserve it'. Once we thought that the working class voted Labour because they wanted a fairer society. As soon as Thatcher came along and offered them cheap council houses it became clear that they had simply been voting Labour because they thought they could get more for themselves and stuff everyone else and were happy to change allegiance when a better offer came along. Fairer society? Stuff that if it means helping a woman and her child fleeing war in Sierra Leone; if it means contributing to an aid budget that helps people in poorer countries, so that they stay there and don't have to feel like they need to travel half way round the world to escape being starved, raped and brutalised; if it means funding parenting classes for single mothers so that their kids don't grow up into anti-social yobs; funding ex-offender schemes to help them become employable and not go straight back inside.
Multiculturalism has failed has it? Look at the ghettos in France, the racism in foreign football, the fact that every non-white foreign sportsman who comes over here says how nice the British are to them. The UK is one of the better integrated western countries, depressing as that may sound to those of us who grew up with the race riots of the '70s and hoped that improved education and tolerance would have brought about some sort of multiculural utopia by the 21st century. The places where multiculturalism is perceived to have failed and where the far right parties get the biggest share of the vote are the areas that are less racially mixed, that are mostly white. This is the fear-factor at work, promulgated by incautious ill-informed speeches like Cameron's. Previous data, as well as the survey mentioned above, have shown that the more we mix with other races or immigrants, the more positive we feel toward them. So, he thinks that sections of our society threaten it's laws and cohesion by, for example, believing that homosexuality is evil; protesting outside theatres showing plays they disagree with and threaten violence to the audience and participants; they withdraw their children from school because they object to the national curriculum; they pick and choose the sections of their holy book to support their hateful views; they burn the texts sacred to other religions; they threaten violence to members of the medical profession carrying out legal procedures – Muslims? Oh no, sorry, I was talking about evangelical Christians, my mistake. How about improving deprived areas, rather than decimating them, to ensure that all the people in those areas, black, white and Asian can fulfil their potential? How about improving all schools to give minorities and the white working class a leg up, rather than pouring money into 'free schools' for the already sharp-elbowed middle classes? Oh, and thanks Lord Carlisle; removing people's human rights will make us all safer will it? Well, I don't want to live in a country where citizens can be put under house arrest without being given a reason. Or does it make it OK if they're a different colour? I don't notice many far-right activists being given control orders. Internment didn't work with the IRA 30 years ago and it certainly won't work now. You'd hope society would move forward over the years not regress, wouldn't you?
Oh, and don't think that I'm just baiting the white working class. The sudden appearance of the 'squeezed middle' and their almost pathological whining is obscene. The fact that the top 25%* of earners will lose their child benefit in 2 year's time is NOT a case for national mourning. All the articles around this topic just served to show one thing: that being a 'benefits scrounger', 'benefits dependent', 'sponging off the state', having more children than you can afford to bring up on your salary, is a bad thing unless it's being done by the middle classes. The trotting out of case studies in the broadsheets focussing on the families of headmasters with 4 children whose poor ickle wifees will suddenly have to get a job because they're losing £2k of benefits a year was, frankly, pathetic. If you claim to be an intelligent person who can't make those savings from your existing income, or get a part time job of 6.5 hours a week (yes, that's all it would take and I bet you can fit that in around play school can't you?), well, I pity you, I really do, and I question whether you should be having children in the first place 'cos you're obviously TOO STUPID. The whole furore around this issue showed that the middle classes do not believe in self-reliance and have become a mob of selfish, whingeing ponces who would much rather continue to sponge off the state and allow the burden of the coalition's cuts fell on someone else, preferably the poor.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting the government. The whole panic around the deficit and the cuts needed to deal with it is deeply damaging for the country. I'm a dyed in the wool Keynesian and firmly believe that we should be pumping money into public works to get the economy moving. But, if there are going to be cuts, why shouldn't the top 25% of earners shoulder more of the burden than the bottom 75%?
Are you a bit sulky that you earn £35k and you're going to have to start paying 40% tax on the amount that you earn over that figure? Aw, diddums, just think that the upcoming tax changes will mean that 500,000 people who currently earn less than £7,475 will no longer have to pay tax. But that's not going to make you feel better is it, because you're a selfish git. Can you imagine earning that little? It probably wouldn't keep you in holidays for the year, would it? But some people actually do try to live on that. Unfortunately, it does also mean that all those poor ickle middle class women doing their 6.5 hours a week to make up for losing their child benefit will also not pay tax, but the world isn't perfect...
I can't believe how people can spout complete crap that they know nothing about and not realise how ignorant they are. After the election one woman said, “We must be the laughing stock of Europe because of the time it's taken for the coalition to come together!”. (That's the stock in phrase of these bottom-feeders, 'laughing stock of Europe'. I can never understand why, because most of the people spouting it are anti-European so why should they care what the Europeans think?). Until recently the Dutch held the record at over 200 days to form a coalition government, with the norm being more than 20 days – so the 5 days of negotiation at Westminster begins to look like our lot weren't really trying. One BBC commentator said at the time that, in Europe, the electorate would be extremely suspicious of a coalition coming together so quickly, because they'd suspect that the politicians had been cooking something up before the election. So, any chance of these people thinking, or checking facts, before letting their gobs flap open? I'll not hold my breath...
Oh, and our holiday in Syria? I'm seriously pissed off by this being met with looks of horror, as if we've just suggested holidaying in Helmand Province. Syria is simply one of the few countries in North Africa and the Middle East that DOESN'T go, "Oooo, American money! Gimme, gimme, gimme! Would you like me to bend over further Mr President to make it easier for you to shaft me - and is there anything you'd like me to suck whilst I'm down there?". The regime in Syria is no different from the ones in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, but people are quite happy to spend their long weekend in Marrakesh and, until this week, their Nile cruise and week at Sharm, or their trip to Petra. And it's sooooo much better than the ostensibly democratic regime in Turkey, but we're happy to have our cheap beach holiday there, aren't we? People happily flock to the all inclusive resorts of Mexico whilst the country implodes under the weight of its poverty; where kidnappings and mass killings are rife as the drug barons fight it out amongst themselves and with the army. So we'll have no more of the face-pulling when I mention my holiday plans, shall we?
Victoria Beckham is reported to have said that she's never read a book. Shut up you moronic stick insect this is NOT SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF! You have children, is this any way to encourage them educationally? 'I don't have time', she says, but I bet she can find time to watch prole-fodder TV. Your every move is followed by thousands of impressionable teenage girls from deprived backgrounds, is this any way to encourage them to strive to improve their lives? When all evidence shows that improving the educational attainment of girls improves their lives and the lives of the families they go on to have, you're telling them that it's OK to limit their reading to fashion and gossip mags? Limit their aspirations to having nice hair and nails and then some record producer will magically fall out of the sky and whisk them away from all this? If your next child is a girl is this all the aspiration and encouragement she can hope for?
Oooo, that feels better. I'm beginning to see why people off-load like this. Now, is there anyone left to offend? Let me think... Oh, yes... voting rights for prisoners are a good thing and should be brought in as part of their rehabilitation process and, whilst they're at it, the government can improve the education of prisoners to ensure that they can read and understand the political literature that'll be pushed through their door once they're released.
Paternity leave should not be extended, unless it becomes 'carers' leave and is available to everyone, not just breeders.
Get rid of parent and child spaces in supermarket car parks or, better still, move them to the very furthest edge of the car park so that the spaces near the store aren't clogged by 4x4s and chav-mobiles and so that the fat gits and their offspring can get some exercise whilst lugging their readymeals and 2 litre bottles of cola back to the car.
Get rid of the universal state pension. Why should someone who was at school with me and went on to become a brickie, or got one of those fantastic council jobs you hear people like Digby Jones wapping on a about, empting bins or wiping granny's bum in a care home (yes Digby, if those public sector jobs and pensions are so fucking good, why aren't more private sector CEOs queuing up to do them?), now have to wait until they are 67 to get their state pension, when we're paying state pensions to Paul McCartney and Richard Rogers (I have nothing against these people, they are simply examples of the extremely rich)?
I like Joey Barton and El-Hadji Diouf and think they're just nice, misunderstood boys.
Now that I can't think of anyone else to offend and I probably have reduced my Christmas card list by about 90%, I'll leave you with this thought: every day I thank whatever bit of sanity that's left in the political system, and you should too, that we don't live in a country where angry middle aged women can routinely get access to guns. Especially not those nice shiney black self-loading pump-action ones, oooooooo...
*A gross annual salary of £31,759 gets you into the top 25% of earners. If you earn above £44,881 you're in the top 10%. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8151355.stm
Labels: disadvantage, France, health, idiots, money, philosophy, politics, poverty, work
