Thoughts for VE Day…
If a business-led PR company were running the government…
… making a big show of leaders as suffering heroes with little blond children would be more important than solving an actual problem.
… statements made today would rely upon you having forgotten statements made last week.
… workers’ holidays such as May Day would be replaced by big patriotic days commemorating wars.
… calls for proper pay and working conditions would be drowned out by big ‘let’s all cheer on the working heroes’ campaigns.
… paying grants to relatives of dead key-workers would be preferred to paying live key-workers properly.
… an initial trial of getting everyone to stay at home would be quickly scaled down if giving kids time off school and adults time off work resulted in their thinking about their situation and beginning to take action.
Please don’t stop thinking
When the government asks you to remember war heroes, please really do remember people like Harry Patch and Harry Lesley Smith – and when the government tells you you can’t have any money because we spent it all on the virus, please remember that…
Not good at business
… the government continued in its economic fecklessness, among other bungles, losing millions in buying in vast numbers of tests that proved ineffective, and being taken for a ride over a vast consignment of not-safe PPE.
Not short of money
The government found bail-outs for companies of the Richard Branson kind, that pay no tax, and have already cost us billions, and Tescoes, who spent their grant money on shareholder bonuses, but couldn’t pay their workers decently.
Remember what we learned during lockdown – What our vulnerabilities are – how easily we can be stripped of access to food, money, housing, access to doctors, dentists, opticians and audiology, access to friends and family. Remember how blasé the government can be about deaths by number (“we may lose some loved ones sooner than we might wish”).
Remember who was vulnerable – your granny, our key workers, people too sick to work, who the government see only as a demand for pensions and social care, people who are inconvenient to the government.
Remember what we liked about the lockdown – clean air, safe roads, time to think, talking to people online…
Decide who to trust
Don’t trust the media, don’t trust business funded political parties (I think that means all of them).
Talk to people you do trust. Get to know more people, and build your network of friends you trust. While you can’t meet up, e-meet, email, telephone or write letters.
Try the People’s Assembly movement
or
or
or
or just ask around amongst your friends and on social media, and organise yourselves locally.
as always:
Kay Green 
2 responses to “If…”
I certainly agree that the peace & quiet of having little to no traffic has been blissful, where as I normally can’t have my front window open because of traffic noise and fumes it is now fresh air and I can hear the birds singing. It’s also nice to be able to cross the roads safely without taking your life in your hands, waiting for a gap to make a mad dash to the other side.
I personally, probably along with millions of other Benefit claimants, am also very much enjoying not having to attend the dreaded Jobcentre appointments. I can’t tell you what a huge relief this is. I wish the Jobcentres would remain closed as they serve no real purpose, they don’t actually help anyone, just bully and harangue people. The Benefit system has continued to function without the Jobcentres and shown that they are not needed, they are an unnecessary expense and their permanent closure would save the country a fortune as well as improving the mental health and happiness of millions of people.
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Very good point Trev! I do suspect one of the reasons the Govt ministers are getting jittery about the lock down is that we’re realising just how much of what the DWP and other nightmare orgs do is unnecessary. I think they know people’s toleration of their systems is draining away.
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