Fear

The world is a scary place. We all know that. Turn on the news and cry.

I feel like things are getting worse. The right wing is rising all over the world, as nationalism emerges as a twisted reaction to economic troubles and globalisation. Governments increase fear and hatred, finding scapegoats and enemies within and without to divide the people and justify violence and authoritarianism.

Here in the UK, the Tory government pushes ideological austerity, transferring wealth from the people to big business and the ultra-rich. A biased media means that it’s hard to even figure out what is true and what is propaganda.

George Osborne has released his budget, which was always going to be depressing. Once again, disabled people have been targeted for benefit cuts. What starts off as abstract economics becomes a devastating reality for people who are already struggling. It seems that the victims of austerity are those who started off with the least to lose. Of course it makes sense that they would target those with the least power, because what can we do?

This might affect me personally, what with the ESA cuts that have also been announced, but that’s not my biggest worry. I’m relatively well off. I’m mentally ill but at least I have my physical mobility. Benefits are not enough for an easy life, and increasing financial stress for people who are already sick is going to have a horrifying impact on thousands of people. I have a friend who suffers from fibromyalgia as well as currently battling cancer, and he has been sanctioned several times already, left with no money at all, for missing appointments he was never notified of. Now he will lose even more. How can we accept that? How could anyone think it is ok for sick and vulnerable people to be forced into penury in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth?

So I am frightened, and I am angry. I am also at a loss. What am I supposed to do?

I used to be politically active. In Guildford we had Surrey United Anti-Capitalists, and we campaigned, we marched, protested, leafleted, held meetings, supported strikes, spread education and debate, supported each other to not feel alone in a world that too often feels like it has gone mad.

Now I am living in a little town and I don’t know what to do. I feel strangely isolated, and it’s been so long that I don’t know where to start. There are definitely active, conscious people working for change in Derby. I have spent time with some of them and they’re brilliant. It’s my own laziness that has stopped me getting more involved, as well as focussing on my mental health stuff. But I can’t have a ‘life worth living’ (as DBT states its goal) without fighting to create a world worth living in. So enough of feeling afraid and disempowered. Things may be going to shit, but that just means it’s time to start building. The new world will stand in the shell of the old.

 

All tomorrow’s pills

And ain’t none of them good for parties.
Amoxycillin, prednisolone, ranitidine.
Ibuprofen, echinachea, evening primrose oil, herbal sleep aid (hops, Valerian & passionflower – about a quid from Wilko. I prefer something stronger but I do appreciate this stuff too. It do work.)
As seems to happen lot these days, I went to London, had a intensely excellent time, Anarchist Bookfair then catch up with mates I haven’t seen for ages.
Of course I must pay for all my joy, so i came back extremely sick. I blame the cat. I am so tragically allergic that I generally require medical help after staying with a kitty for over 36 hours. I spent 11 hours behind enemy lines this time and and was destroyed.

Some of my friends were already so busted that they were trying to carry out a clandestine (sorry for busting your cover guys) antibiotics swap to try get at least some kind of help for everyone’s chest infections and fresher’s flues,  so I assume I caught something from them in a perfect timing to combine with the cat asthma Catsthma? Can I call it that? Or is that too cute for a disease that had me coughing up blood and for once in my hypochondriac life, actually wondering whether to call 111 or whatever.
Learning curve: asthma is scary as fuck. Pain crushing your chest, gasping for breath through the froth and gunge that suddenly seems to be filling 90% of your airways. You’re dizzy and confused from lack of oxygen, trying to keep talking just to prove that you still can and that means you can’t be dying.

Next day, along with the pills up there, the nurse gave me my own inhaler, and may we never be parted.

Don’t Let #piggate Distract You Too Much: The Tories Are Still Fucking Us

Just to make things less fun, the truth is that politics is ridiculous and we’re all basically doomed. Capitalism has run rampant, and braying poshos and sociopathic financiers are firmly in the driving seat. Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is coming true, our leaders are financially illiterate, (and the whole concept of finance is also based on lies). Dystopia looms, as usual. The way things are going, the best we can hope is that the human race dies out before we destroy the rest of the planet as well.

I was going to use this post to ennumerate the many reasons to hate the Tories and the political system as a whole. But what’s the point? Everyone knows that disabled people are dying, gender equality is being set back, and of course a lot of people don’t have anywhere to fucking live.

Parliamentary democracy won’t ever change shit. Even the pretty weak appearance of Jeremy Corbyn, heading a Labour Party that is still mainly centre left/neoliberal has caused  the apparent threat of a military coup on top of rabid media attacks. In the Times today, it was claimed that the left wing are literally fascists, due to the influence of ‘deracinated Jew’ Karl Marx. I couldn’t make this weirdness up. If you step outside the bounds of corporate respectability (and by respectability, I mean giving them as much money as possible) then you will be taken down.

The massive inequalities in the system make true democracy impossible in its current state. However, this fact seems to have led to a total loss of energy to do anything. There must be a way to oppose the Tories, without also endorsing their power-hungry rivals or the faux-democracy of Parliament. We have to work out a sustainable way to live. Abolish the political class, power hierarchies and material inequalities. Then we’ll have a real chance of a future.