the brilliantly leaping gazelle

One of the reasons why yesterdays post was so angry is because it makes me angry when people who’ve been quite happy to be fellow travellers with the Conservatives when it suited them to be so, have now discovered they have a conscience, and thanks to Twitter and Facebook, they can advertise it.

It’s like the flagrant inequality that began under Thatcher and continued unabated until now never happened. That the pernicious benefits system was something that affected other people, as long as their own cosy, well-ordered life was untouched, it was alright. Alright if others had to pay the price, in blighted lives, thwarted ambitions and potential never realised. Basically, if other people suffer, well it’s better than me suffering.

It’s a bit like that pitiful waste of oxygen in ‘Question Time’ a few years ago, who admitted that she’d voted Tory because she thought it would benefit her and her family but now they were going to take away her tax credits it reduced her to tears. She quite happily admitted to voting Conservative, so she was presumably comfortable with cuts to benefits for the sick and disabled then – as she wasn’t sick or disabled. And very relaxed about cuts to public services – as long as they weren’t the public services her or her family used. Totally unconcerned with a Conservative government trying to create a ‘hostile environment’ not just for asylum seekers, but increasingly for everyone. Because the more people fear losing things, the more they fear.

She was the modern day embodiment of the famous poem ‘First they came..’ by the Pastor Niemolloer, describing the Nazi Party’s gradual takeover of the German state involved removing dissenting views, helping to create a mindset of ‘Take them, do what you want to them, I don’t care, I’ll do whatever you want, just leave me be.’

Until now, of course.

Suddenly they’ve realised the blindingly obvious, that its not hedge-fund managers, footballers or ‘celebrities’ we depend on in a crisis. It’s the nurses and doctors who former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt waged a long battle with over their pay and conditions. It’s the police whose numbers have been cut by over 20,000 – 14%- since 2010. And the UK’s ambulance service, which too has seen over 3,00 jobs cut and it’s budget slashed not forgetting the fire brigade, who when London mayor, Boris’s Johnson oversaw the closure of 10 fire stations. The list could go on and on, but you get my point? People quite happily voted Tory when they thought it would have no negative impact on them. But now they realise how by not voting Labour at every election they’ve been able to take part in, they have fucked us all. Yes, they can “Clap for Carers’, sign whatever online petitions they want or wear badges or T-shirts proclaiming their support, but that will do fuck-all-nothing if they continue voting for the status quo.

It’s like I posted yesterday, it’s about as much use as a cement football being concerned now, now it’s like watching your house burn and wishing you’d got insurance. But back when this could’ve all been stopped, at every election that’s returned a Conservative government, not in the 2000’s so much, as in the 1980’s and 90’s. But Twitter didn’t exist then and if it isn’t shared, talked about or liked on Twitter, then it hasn’t really happened.

The Conservative Party have an ideological obsession, almost pathological belief in the notion that whatever the state does, the private sector could do it both cheaper and more efficiently. We know its bollocks, but inexplicably when people are told they can have lower taxes and better public services, they believe it. They don’t question what ‘free at the point of use’ means when it’s used to conjunction with NHS funding. People don’t ask the questions for the good reason that they know they may not like the answers.

Mind you, the clue is right there in the fucking name!

Con –servative.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me