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Loonies CAN run the Asylum!




I've made it a rule, throughout my career as a writer, never to write something when I'm really angry.  Or, at least, not to send it until I've gone through it again with a cooler mindset.. 

 But then again, I've never liked rules. So yeah: I'm angry.  And yeah - frankly my dears, I don't give a damn: I'm going to press the "Post" button as soon as I'm finished.

 Because I've just come from this site: http://bit.ly/1nn0xLU and the discussion concerning proposed further marginalisation of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses.

 The discussion centres around what comes across as a rather flippant idea to further deprive the lowest sector of society - people who are unable to work because they are - either temporarily or permanently - looney tunes.  

 In Machiavellian terms we - the citizens of la-la Land, are a pretty safe bet.  We have no power.  We are not "organised".  We have no Voice. We are also conveniently situated in the hidden part of Society - the muck at the bottom of the Ladder - where no-one but the occasional Minder ever visits; and where, let's face it, we can't cause any more trouble than is already seething about down here. Besides all of which, over-archingly, is the fact that we're not all playing with a full deck.

 Waving a wand to limit us to a weekly amount approximately equal to the price of taking a colleague out to luncheon is not, as some of the comments on the above article stated, "Evil".  Neither is Cameron.  They are just indices of the truism that we are all products of our environment. If you've never come face-to-face with, for example, the various native populations of Papua New Guinea, no-one could fault you for not being able to shape policy for them. If you've never climbed right down the societal ladder, closed your eyes and jumped into the dank puddle at the bottom of it, you are, however, equally unable to shape policy for pond scum.

 Now, as it happens, I DO know something about the native populations of Papua New Guinea. And I was privileged enough to be involved in creating one of their primary historical documents - the very first White Paper for Independence. (Gratuitous info. to indicate that I'm not talking through my backside: I was biPolar then and I'm biPolar now.) 

 But now I happen to know what it's like to live on Benefits and be biPolar ... and to be condescended to, pushed around, addressed in "simple English", threatened, and effectively silenced because I don't even have a foot on the bottom rung of The Ladder any more.

 And so do a considerable portion of other people throughout the British Isles.

 Like any other societal group, we are NOT homogeneous. There's good 'uns and badduns; there are the Tertiary educated and the functionally illiterate; there are kind and the contemptible; the strugglers and the bludgers. We are not a separate sub-species about whom it's impossible to know. And, like all other groups, we are bringing children into... well, not the world, but at least into our environment.  We aren't going away.

 And, goddam it, we are soul-achingly, mind-numbingly sick and tired of being viewed through intermediaries, rumour, disinformation, media, and overpaid, partisan members of those who still consider themselves - despite all evidence to the contrary, as the Ruling Class.

 We have minds, we have the right to vote, we have voices and we even have personalities. 

 And if no-one will seek us out then there are, indeed, those of us who will shout out in voices loud enough to be heard.

 This is my own, my native land.  I've spent a lifetime studying, researching, and living our culture, our history, our education, our societal mores, our language - and I have a lot to say.  I will not be muffled by the sounds of silence which, it appears, is incumbent upon us the minute we cash our first Benefit cheque.

 And I'm not going to humbly hand over all my power to the people who, over the course of hundreds of years, we have fought and suffered and died to give the right of representation to. If people can't, or refuse to, represent the entire sector of the population in which I find myself, then I'm not going to disregard the struggles and the bloodshed and the history of my country.  I'm going to make a noise.

 And, make no mistake, I am going to shout so damn loudly that someone will hear.

 I am NOT going quietly into any good night.

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