Indulge me in writing the second entry in as many days but I have another short tale to tell. The kind that could only happen to me. You remember some years ago when a man walked uninvited into my house and asked me if I was selling any ‘ciggies’? Well this is in that category, that field of the downright batshit bizarre, though it doesn’t quite top it.
It is dark when I get out of work at this time of year. Without wishing to depress you too much just five days on from a crushing Tory victory at the General Election, it is dark when I leave for work in the morning also. Like many people who work nine to five (8.30 to 4.30 but who’s clock watching?) I see hardly any daylight during the winter months. This lack of daylight is central to the farce which unfolded this evening.
Emma works until 5.00pm. It is about a 10-minute walk from her place of work to mine, where we park the car. We do this because, when I remember to renew my blue badge, it is free to do so.. So tonight I’d asked her to pop to Gregg’s for some sausage rolls. Are you even from St Helens if you don’t have pastry products for your tea once in a while? As a consequence of the Gregg’s stop I was a little earlier getting to the car than Emma. It was only a few minutes but long enough to convince me that I needed something to pass the time.
Like anyone else these days social media on my phone is the go-to method of killing any waiting time. I was idly scrolling through Twitter, pondering whether the appointment of Clare Balding as RFL President will make any more difference to the sport of rugby league than the appointment of her predecessor Tony Adams did. I started tapping out a comment on the BBC’s linked tweet to the story when I heard the rear door on the passenger side of the car being opened. I didn’t even look up from my phone at first. I assumed it was Emma, which on reflection is odd because she never sits in the back of the car. At the time though I just thought it was possible that she had decided she couldn’t be arsed to move my wheelchair to the boot but that was always a long shot. It was not Emma.
I finally turned my head to look at the recently opened door and, staggeringly, found myself confronted with a man clambering on to the back seat. Bold as brass he just climbed in like it was the most routine thing in the world. I hadn’t felt this violated since my last stay in hotel NHS. There was a surreal moment where we both paused to just look at each other before he eventually climbed back out from whence he came and said, in a thick scouse accent;
“Ah....sorry mate. Wrong patch.”
Wrong patch? Who says that? And then it hit me. He must have thought I was a drug dealer. And now he was apologising in the way you might apologise for burping in a lift.
Without wanting to stereotype he had the look of an addict. Confused expression, a skinny physique that made Zammo from Grange Hill look like Anthony Joshua, and several gaps where his teeth used to be. It was a moment Victor Meldrew would certainly not have believed. To his credit he soon scarpered, apologising again as he walked up the hill and out on to the street. I didn’t have time to say anything as he left, momentarily dumbfounded that the local druggies now mistake me for their top supplier. Do Liverpool drug dealers really hang around outside Universities in red Vauxhall Astras? Or was he just so spaced out that the colour and model of my car were an irrelevance? Will any parked car suffice for an addict if it has someone sat in it idly scrolling through Twitter on his phone? It would appear so.
My car is due for a service this week. I might ask them if they can give it a luminous spray to make it absolutely clear to the ne-er do-wells among us that I’m not the man they’re looking for.
Tuesday 17 December 2019
Monday 16 December 2019
Take His Legs
I got into a long and fruitless Twitter debate last night. It was my own fault as these things often are. I had to make my point. I couldn’t leave it, even though I know that through this platform I can have as much say as I like and people are far less likely to come back at me. Maybe I like the conflict of the more instant Twitter slanging match exchange. Freud would know.
Most of all though the argument raged because I believed what I was saying. I still do. I was responding to a number of tweets about Adam Hills’ Channel 4 documentary about Physical Disability Rugby League (PDRL), the brilliantly if a little obviously titled Take His Legs. At this point I hadn’t watched the programme. Now I have and we’ll talk about that later. But had I seen these tweets after seeing the programme I would have felt the same way and got into the same fruitless debate.
The film follows Hills as he attempts to set up one of the UK’s first PDRL teams in Warrington. They claim to be the first and they may be, but to be the first to play you have to have somebody to play against. So Leeds, a team which included Hills’ Last Leg co-presenter Alex Brookes, must have at least a share in that honour. From that first meeting with the rhinos, a defeat, the Wolves PDRL team are followed on a journey which takes them on a three-game tour of England and to Sydney, Australia to take on Hills’ boyhood heroes, the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
All of which sounds like compelling sport mixed in with an opportunity to get to know the players off the field woven together by a superb comic talent. And it is. We get to meet several members of the squad. Seven-year-old Leon was almost written off at birth, given weeks to live and then developed cerebral palsy at two years of age. Another has a visual impairment, another a problem with his hands which doctors can’t really explain beyond calling it a ‘phenomenon’. If Hills is the star off the field then Tony, who suffers very severe anxiety and depression, is the star on it. He’s rapid, to the point where it is said that Super League players talk about his pace.
I wish some of those commenting on the film on Twitter had talked about Tony’s pace. He is a prolific try-scorer for the Wolves, describing his running style with a self-effacing humour as ‘a bit like Forrest Gump’. Unfortunately this was not the focus of the Twitter chat. Nor was anything else these people do on a rugby league field. The focus was on how ‘inspirational’ Tony and his team-mates are and how they have ‘overcome’ their disabilities to do something they say they never thought they would be able to. One female Twitter user was moved to admit that the whole thing made her cry.
Here’s the problem. To focus on these things is inspiration porn. Inspiration porn is the portrayal of disabled people as inspirational merely for existing and doing everyday things. Including playing sport. At one point Brooker tells us that his involvement in PDRL was the first time his disability had failed to get him out of sport. He’s joking of course. He’s a comedian. That’s what he does, but you can tell from the awed reactions of the Twitterati that they believe him.
The narrative here is that you don’t play sport if you are disabled. But that’s bollocks. I played wheelchair basketball from the age of 13 until my early 30s. There was nothing inspirational about it. My mum didn’t worry any more than she would have done had I played football, rugby or cricket with my able bodied friends at that age. It was totally unremarkable. If you had told any of those kids who trained with me on a Thursday night at Fazakerkey that they were inspirational they would have looked at you with deep suspicion. We weren’t trying to inspire anyone. We were trying to win and have fun like any kids in competitive sport do.
Back to Warrington and Twitter, were noted rugby league journalist Trevor Hunt reacted to the film by suggesting that the Wolves PDRL team should have won BBC Sports Personality Of The Year Team Of The Year because.....spoiler alert.....they did go down under and beat the Rabbitohs to claim the first PDRL World Club Challenge title. This is a magnificent achievement in a sporting context but if we’re viewing this as sport alone can we really argue that it belongs in the same stratosphere as England winning the men’s cricket World Cup? No. To put it up alongside that is to view it through the prism of overcoming adversity or obstacles. That framing of disability as an obstacle to be overcome, a burden, is textbook inspiration porn and I won’t have it in the house.
You could argue that some of the participants play along with the narrative. One, Jason, talks of PDRL helping him ‘come out’ about disability as if it were something about which he should be socially ashamed. Others in the group talk about a trip to play away at Wakefield being the first time they have been on a bus ride, or the flight to Sydney their first time on a plane. That’s great for them if that is the case but the trouble is that it paints a picture to the didn’t-they-do-well-ers watching on of disability that is patently false in most cases. By the time I was 15 I had been to Wakefield more times than is reasonable in any sane person’s lifetime. Disabled people do stuff, and they don’t want praise for it. They’re just trying to live, like you.
But I don’t blame them for participating in it. What rugby league player worth his salt would turn down an opportunity to fly to Sydney to take on the Rabbitohs for a world title which is then celebrated with Rabbitohs owner Russell Crowe? Of course they’re going to do it, and if that means serving up some good old fashioned inspiration porn as an indirect consequence then so be it. That is several steps up on the morality ladder from the absolute whoppers who take part in the Undateables to sate the public’s appetite for ‘ah....isn’t lovely?’ voyeurism.
I know most of you reading this are one of them so apologies for the generalisation, but it seems to me that the able bodied always have to have someone to feel superior to. It’s almost like we should exist to shake them out of whatever rut they have got themselves into. ‘Well if Jeff With No Head can become a Go-Go dancer in LA I can bloody well motivate myself to mow the lawn on Sunday afternoon.’. But we’re not here for that. We are here as equals, human beings who are just as filthy about having to get up for work in the morning as you are.
Do watch Take His Legs. It’s available to download on whatever Channel 4’s catch-up service is calling itself this week. For all the flaws I have pointed out it is a great sports documentary in its own right, with a liberal sprinkling of the kind of predictable but no less successful humour that we all carry with us as a defence mechanism. But if you do watch it, watch it for these reasons and not because you want to be inspired by people just getting on with their lives.
Most of all though the argument raged because I believed what I was saying. I still do. I was responding to a number of tweets about Adam Hills’ Channel 4 documentary about Physical Disability Rugby League (PDRL), the brilliantly if a little obviously titled Take His Legs. At this point I hadn’t watched the programme. Now I have and we’ll talk about that later. But had I seen these tweets after seeing the programme I would have felt the same way and got into the same fruitless debate.
The film follows Hills as he attempts to set up one of the UK’s first PDRL teams in Warrington. They claim to be the first and they may be, but to be the first to play you have to have somebody to play against. So Leeds, a team which included Hills’ Last Leg co-presenter Alex Brookes, must have at least a share in that honour. From that first meeting with the rhinos, a defeat, the Wolves PDRL team are followed on a journey which takes them on a three-game tour of England and to Sydney, Australia to take on Hills’ boyhood heroes, the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
All of which sounds like compelling sport mixed in with an opportunity to get to know the players off the field woven together by a superb comic talent. And it is. We get to meet several members of the squad. Seven-year-old Leon was almost written off at birth, given weeks to live and then developed cerebral palsy at two years of age. Another has a visual impairment, another a problem with his hands which doctors can’t really explain beyond calling it a ‘phenomenon’. If Hills is the star off the field then Tony, who suffers very severe anxiety and depression, is the star on it. He’s rapid, to the point where it is said that Super League players talk about his pace.
I wish some of those commenting on the film on Twitter had talked about Tony’s pace. He is a prolific try-scorer for the Wolves, describing his running style with a self-effacing humour as ‘a bit like Forrest Gump’. Unfortunately this was not the focus of the Twitter chat. Nor was anything else these people do on a rugby league field. The focus was on how ‘inspirational’ Tony and his team-mates are and how they have ‘overcome’ their disabilities to do something they say they never thought they would be able to. One female Twitter user was moved to admit that the whole thing made her cry.
Here’s the problem. To focus on these things is inspiration porn. Inspiration porn is the portrayal of disabled people as inspirational merely for existing and doing everyday things. Including playing sport. At one point Brooker tells us that his involvement in PDRL was the first time his disability had failed to get him out of sport. He’s joking of course. He’s a comedian. That’s what he does, but you can tell from the awed reactions of the Twitterati that they believe him.
The narrative here is that you don’t play sport if you are disabled. But that’s bollocks. I played wheelchair basketball from the age of 13 until my early 30s. There was nothing inspirational about it. My mum didn’t worry any more than she would have done had I played football, rugby or cricket with my able bodied friends at that age. It was totally unremarkable. If you had told any of those kids who trained with me on a Thursday night at Fazakerkey that they were inspirational they would have looked at you with deep suspicion. We weren’t trying to inspire anyone. We were trying to win and have fun like any kids in competitive sport do.
Back to Warrington and Twitter, were noted rugby league journalist Trevor Hunt reacted to the film by suggesting that the Wolves PDRL team should have won BBC Sports Personality Of The Year Team Of The Year because.....spoiler alert.....they did go down under and beat the Rabbitohs to claim the first PDRL World Club Challenge title. This is a magnificent achievement in a sporting context but if we’re viewing this as sport alone can we really argue that it belongs in the same stratosphere as England winning the men’s cricket World Cup? No. To put it up alongside that is to view it through the prism of overcoming adversity or obstacles. That framing of disability as an obstacle to be overcome, a burden, is textbook inspiration porn and I won’t have it in the house.
You could argue that some of the participants play along with the narrative. One, Jason, talks of PDRL helping him ‘come out’ about disability as if it were something about which he should be socially ashamed. Others in the group talk about a trip to play away at Wakefield being the first time they have been on a bus ride, or the flight to Sydney their first time on a plane. That’s great for them if that is the case but the trouble is that it paints a picture to the didn’t-they-do-well-ers watching on of disability that is patently false in most cases. By the time I was 15 I had been to Wakefield more times than is reasonable in any sane person’s lifetime. Disabled people do stuff, and they don’t want praise for it. They’re just trying to live, like you.
But I don’t blame them for participating in it. What rugby league player worth his salt would turn down an opportunity to fly to Sydney to take on the Rabbitohs for a world title which is then celebrated with Rabbitohs owner Russell Crowe? Of course they’re going to do it, and if that means serving up some good old fashioned inspiration porn as an indirect consequence then so be it. That is several steps up on the morality ladder from the absolute whoppers who take part in the Undateables to sate the public’s appetite for ‘ah....isn’t lovely?’ voyeurism.
I know most of you reading this are one of them so apologies for the generalisation, but it seems to me that the able bodied always have to have someone to feel superior to. It’s almost like we should exist to shake them out of whatever rut they have got themselves into. ‘Well if Jeff With No Head can become a Go-Go dancer in LA I can bloody well motivate myself to mow the lawn on Sunday afternoon.’. But we’re not here for that. We are here as equals, human beings who are just as filthy about having to get up for work in the morning as you are.
Do watch Take His Legs. It’s available to download on whatever Channel 4’s catch-up service is calling itself this week. For all the flaws I have pointed out it is a great sports documentary in its own right, with a liberal sprinkling of the kind of predictable but no less successful humour that we all carry with us as a defence mechanism. But if you do watch it, watch it for these reasons and not because you want to be inspired by people just getting on with their lives.
Friday 13 December 2019
Election 2019 - A Better Class Of Bigotry
If I didn’t know where to start writing a blog about a Prime Minister hiding in a fridge I certainly don’t know where to start with a blog about that same Prime Minister winning a majority of almost 80 seats in the General Election. Yet somehow startlingly, chillingly, that is exactly what has taken place.
The whole situation defies belief and is, from that standpoint, almost impossible to analyse. It’s the morning after the night before so emotions are still running a little high, but I have not felt this negatively about British politics since I became old enough to vote. To give you an idea of how long ago that was the first General Election I was eligible to vote in was in 1997.
How could Britain do it? How could they vote so overwhelmingly to elect a man who not only hides in fridges to avoid interviews but also openly uses racist, homophobic and Islamophobic language and tells lies at an extraordinary rate? This is where we are now. Our politics is so broken that Johnson was viewed as the least worst option. Unfathomably there are people who call themselves centrist, even traditional Labour supporters, celebrating the prospect of another five years of austerity. Another five years of the continued deliberate underfunding and possible sale of the NHS. Another five years in which a further shift to the right and an anti-immigrant agenda is inevitable.
I’m not really a fan of Jeremy Corbyn. The right wing media will always be out to destroy a Labour leader so the terrible coverage he received was never enough in itself to produce this result. There had to be something else about him that didn’t impress the electorate. I can see why there is mistrust of him. There’s a doggedness about him that can be interpreted as arrogance. He is single minded, unwilling to deviate an inch from his course despite his unpopularity of which he must have been aware. I can’t go on social media without someone accusing him of being antisemitic. Do we really believe that the legions of media experts and image consultants who work in politics hadn’t noticed this perception and pointed it out to him? Why did they do so little to dampen it? No smoke?
I have never heard Corbyn say anything that could be considered antisemitic but the allegations are so widespread that they had to be dealt with regardless. That hasn’t happened. Even I as a Labour voter cannot be sure that he doesn’t hold those views. It’s fair to suggest that he hasn’t done enough to make those doubts go away. That cloud hangs over him to the extent where I can see why a lot of people have chosen not to vote Labour.
Here’s what I don’t get. In the red corner you have a man tainted by the whiff, the suspicion of these prejudices. But over in the blue corner you have Johnson, an openly racist, homophobic, Islamophobic miscreant. If we accept that they both have unsavoury prejudices why is Johnson’s bigotry more palatable than Corbyn’s? The statistical evidence shows that this result is not merely the product of Labour supporters abstaining from backing a man that they believe is antisemitic. In many of the key constituencies that changed hands the Labour vote compares favourably in terms of the actual numbers of votes cast with that of most General Elections since 1997. The result has come from a surge in Tory votes in these areas. There is actually an appetite now for right wing policy.
Of course Brexit is the variable which offers both a sinister explanation for that appetite but also a slither of hope for Labour. The failure to leave the EU since the 2016 referendum has been the biggest and often the only issue for some voters during this campaign. It is not by accident that Sky billed their coverage using the phrase ‘The Brexit Election’. There will be those who voted Tory simply on account of Johnson’s much repeated promise to Get Brexit Done. On the rare occasions that Johnson did turn up in front of the cameras he repeated this three-word mantra to the point where it became a parody. Whether discussing health, education, transport or changes to how we use VAR Johnson would always drag the conversation back to Brexit. He reinforced the message that he was the only leader of the three main parties guaranteeing Brexit. Labour offered a referendum on a newly negotiated deal with an option to remain while the Lib-Dems were totally committed to revoking Article 50 and remaining in the EU.
The trouble with Johnson’s position on Brexit is that it was and is another lie. Just like he will not recruit another 50,000 NHS staff, just like the 20,000 more police officers he pledged are the same 20,000 officers that his party’s austerity agenda took away, so he cannot just Get Brexit Done by the end of January. His so-called ‘oven ready’ deal requires much more negotiation to determine the UK’s trade relationship with Europe and any alternative deal with the USA could take years. In all of that delicate negotiating the futures of both the NHS and the peace in Northern Ireland could be frittered away or used as bargaining chips. This is the cluster-fuck we have allowed.
The good news is that even if voters believed him this time around (and why would they when he won’t even tell us how many children he has?) their support may be a one-off. The hard of thinking complained that Corbyn’s Brexit policy wasn’t clear but what they meant by that is that it wasn’t quite Brexit-y enough to reflect the 2016 result. It’s not difficult to understand the concept of a renegotiation within three months and a referendum within six. There was no confusion. Voters understood that fully. They just weren’t happy with it. It may be that Labour are being punished for that and that their support will return when EU membership is not the first item on the electorate’s agenda. Whenever that might be.
By then of course we will likely be out one way or the other. That is unless the notoriously duplicitous Johnson changes his mind again. If that happens there will be absolute scenes when all those people who flipped for him, who prostituted their morals on the altar of Brexit, get wind of it. But it could happen. The Prime Minister has written lengthy arguments for and against EU membership over the last few years. He’s a journalist. That’s what he does. He’s good at it. If he has problems securing the Brexit he wants he could just turn on the mumbling clown persona again, find someone else to blame and convince people who should be ideologically opposed to him that he’s on their side and will fix it.
Much also depends on how Labour respond to what is looking like their worst defeat since before the Second World War. Corbyn has not yet resigned even though he should have done so after losing to Theresa May in 2017. In losing to Johnson he has surpassed himself in the field of proving oneself incapable of electability. He has at least pledged that he will not contest the next General Election. So that’s something. The fact staring everybody in the face, and that Labour have failed to realise since Tony Blair came to power 22 years ago, is that the majority of voters occupy the centre ground.
If you can win the battle for the support of voters who are not tribally attached to one of the three main parties you usually put yourself in a position to win. If Brexit has dominated this result then the centre ground will continue to be crucial once EU concerns are out of the way. Many centrists have already acknowledged this and called for a Keir Starmer type figure to drag Labour back from its left edge. What they have not explained satisfactorily is why, if they are centrists unwilling to vote for the extremist Corbyn, did they choose to lend their vote to the extremist Johnson? It seems we can turn a blind eye to some forms of prejudice if we believe it will produce the Brexit we have all obsessed over since the referendum.
The whole situation defies belief and is, from that standpoint, almost impossible to analyse. It’s the morning after the night before so emotions are still running a little high, but I have not felt this negatively about British politics since I became old enough to vote. To give you an idea of how long ago that was the first General Election I was eligible to vote in was in 1997.
How could Britain do it? How could they vote so overwhelmingly to elect a man who not only hides in fridges to avoid interviews but also openly uses racist, homophobic and Islamophobic language and tells lies at an extraordinary rate? This is where we are now. Our politics is so broken that Johnson was viewed as the least worst option. Unfathomably there are people who call themselves centrist, even traditional Labour supporters, celebrating the prospect of another five years of austerity. Another five years of the continued deliberate underfunding and possible sale of the NHS. Another five years in which a further shift to the right and an anti-immigrant agenda is inevitable.
I’m not really a fan of Jeremy Corbyn. The right wing media will always be out to destroy a Labour leader so the terrible coverage he received was never enough in itself to produce this result. There had to be something else about him that didn’t impress the electorate. I can see why there is mistrust of him. There’s a doggedness about him that can be interpreted as arrogance. He is single minded, unwilling to deviate an inch from his course despite his unpopularity of which he must have been aware. I can’t go on social media without someone accusing him of being antisemitic. Do we really believe that the legions of media experts and image consultants who work in politics hadn’t noticed this perception and pointed it out to him? Why did they do so little to dampen it? No smoke?
I have never heard Corbyn say anything that could be considered antisemitic but the allegations are so widespread that they had to be dealt with regardless. That hasn’t happened. Even I as a Labour voter cannot be sure that he doesn’t hold those views. It’s fair to suggest that he hasn’t done enough to make those doubts go away. That cloud hangs over him to the extent where I can see why a lot of people have chosen not to vote Labour.
Here’s what I don’t get. In the red corner you have a man tainted by the whiff, the suspicion of these prejudices. But over in the blue corner you have Johnson, an openly racist, homophobic, Islamophobic miscreant. If we accept that they both have unsavoury prejudices why is Johnson’s bigotry more palatable than Corbyn’s? The statistical evidence shows that this result is not merely the product of Labour supporters abstaining from backing a man that they believe is antisemitic. In many of the key constituencies that changed hands the Labour vote compares favourably in terms of the actual numbers of votes cast with that of most General Elections since 1997. The result has come from a surge in Tory votes in these areas. There is actually an appetite now for right wing policy.
Of course Brexit is the variable which offers both a sinister explanation for that appetite but also a slither of hope for Labour. The failure to leave the EU since the 2016 referendum has been the biggest and often the only issue for some voters during this campaign. It is not by accident that Sky billed their coverage using the phrase ‘The Brexit Election’. There will be those who voted Tory simply on account of Johnson’s much repeated promise to Get Brexit Done. On the rare occasions that Johnson did turn up in front of the cameras he repeated this three-word mantra to the point where it became a parody. Whether discussing health, education, transport or changes to how we use VAR Johnson would always drag the conversation back to Brexit. He reinforced the message that he was the only leader of the three main parties guaranteeing Brexit. Labour offered a referendum on a newly negotiated deal with an option to remain while the Lib-Dems were totally committed to revoking Article 50 and remaining in the EU.
The trouble with Johnson’s position on Brexit is that it was and is another lie. Just like he will not recruit another 50,000 NHS staff, just like the 20,000 more police officers he pledged are the same 20,000 officers that his party’s austerity agenda took away, so he cannot just Get Brexit Done by the end of January. His so-called ‘oven ready’ deal requires much more negotiation to determine the UK’s trade relationship with Europe and any alternative deal with the USA could take years. In all of that delicate negotiating the futures of both the NHS and the peace in Northern Ireland could be frittered away or used as bargaining chips. This is the cluster-fuck we have allowed.
The good news is that even if voters believed him this time around (and why would they when he won’t even tell us how many children he has?) their support may be a one-off. The hard of thinking complained that Corbyn’s Brexit policy wasn’t clear but what they meant by that is that it wasn’t quite Brexit-y enough to reflect the 2016 result. It’s not difficult to understand the concept of a renegotiation within three months and a referendum within six. There was no confusion. Voters understood that fully. They just weren’t happy with it. It may be that Labour are being punished for that and that their support will return when EU membership is not the first item on the electorate’s agenda. Whenever that might be.
By then of course we will likely be out one way or the other. That is unless the notoriously duplicitous Johnson changes his mind again. If that happens there will be absolute scenes when all those people who flipped for him, who prostituted their morals on the altar of Brexit, get wind of it. But it could happen. The Prime Minister has written lengthy arguments for and against EU membership over the last few years. He’s a journalist. That’s what he does. He’s good at it. If he has problems securing the Brexit he wants he could just turn on the mumbling clown persona again, find someone else to blame and convince people who should be ideologically opposed to him that he’s on their side and will fix it.
Much also depends on how Labour respond to what is looking like their worst defeat since before the Second World War. Corbyn has not yet resigned even though he should have done so after losing to Theresa May in 2017. In losing to Johnson he has surpassed himself in the field of proving oneself incapable of electability. He has at least pledged that he will not contest the next General Election. So that’s something. The fact staring everybody in the face, and that Labour have failed to realise since Tony Blair came to power 22 years ago, is that the majority of voters occupy the centre ground.
If you can win the battle for the support of voters who are not tribally attached to one of the three main parties you usually put yourself in a position to win. If Brexit has dominated this result then the centre ground will continue to be crucial once EU concerns are out of the way. Many centrists have already acknowledged this and called for a Keir Starmer type figure to drag Labour back from its left edge. What they have not explained satisfactorily is why, if they are centrists unwilling to vote for the extremist Corbyn, did they choose to lend their vote to the extremist Johnson? It seems we can turn a blind eye to some forms of prejudice if we believe it will produce the Brexit we have all obsessed over since the referendum.
Wednesday 11 December 2019
Election Eve - Don’t Hand Power To Zuul
Where do you start when trying to write a blog about a Prime Minister who hides in a fridge? The only other examples of such behaviour that spring to mind are these;
Indiana Jones in order to survive a nuclear detonation
Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuul!!!!!!
Film buffs will know that the former was one of the least ridiculous set-pieces of Steven Spielberg’s ill-advised fourth instalment of the Indy franchise - Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, while the latter as every 80s child knows refers to the Gatekeeper of Gozer who lurks between Sigourney Weaver’s eggs, milk and peanut butter while waiting patiently for her Dana Barrett character to come home so she/he/it can possess her spirit. Forgive the indecision on pronouns there. I’m not woke enough to be certain of the pronouns of the Demigod minion of Gozer,
Where were we? Oh yes, Johnson. Your Prime Minister. He has been notoriously difficult to interrogate during this General Election campaign. He had agreed to be interviewed by the BBC’s political verbal torturer Andrew Neil but pulled out after seeing Neil interrupt the other major party leaders into submission. Johnson’s main rival Jeremy Corbyn came out of his ordeal with Neil as negatively as is possible for a man who is smeared more often than the peanut butter in Dana’s fridge. Seeing this, Johnson took evasive action and reneged on his agreement to appear on Neil’s show.
Despite his distinctly right wing leanings Neil did his best to shame the PM into sitting down for that chat he promised. Neil delivered a lengthy and stylish monologue, the theme of which was basically the slippery cowardice of Johnson and a run down of the lies he was evidently not prepared to defend on national television. Have you heard the one about the 50,000 new NHS staff which is really 31,000 new NHS staff and a commitment to try to prevent 19,000 current NHS staff from quitting under the strain of a woefully and deliberately underfunded service? Or the one about the 20,00 extra police offers that are the 20,000 that were taken away by heavy-handed austerity measures? It was scathing, but it did not alter Johnson’s stance. He knows that he is considered selfish, racist, homophobic and unfit for office. Why would he open his mouth and prove it?
Avoiding the gnarled former This Week presenter’s grilling is one thing but you might have thought that Johnson would be more open to a discussion with the altogether gentler Good Morning Britain duo Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid. Morgan has been known to hack the odd phone or mock up the odd front page photo to get a scoop, but these days he’s a sofa-softie who is only permitted to be slightly more demanding of his interviewees than Phil and Holly. Surely someone who is hoping to continue as Prime Minister for the next five years, who has in his own words negotiated a ‘fantastic, oven-ready Brexit deal’ and who sells us EU departure on the basis that he will be able to make yet more ‘fantastic’ deals with Donald Trump and other world leaders can handle a few minutes on Breakfast TV?
Evidently not. GMB’s reporter asked for those few minutes, a request which seemed to spark a degree of panic in Johnson and his team of aides. One such, his press secretary Rob Oxley, was seen mouthing ‘oh for fucks sake’ at the prospect of his man having to face anything as terrifying as some light early morning questioning on his campaign and the policies he hopes will win him a majority at tomorrow’s big vote. This is where the fridge came in. Johnson was visiting Modern Milking, a small business in Pudsey, Yorkshire when he was approached by GMB’s man. It seems that in the absence of any better ideas from his team Johnson was bundled into the nearest available hiding place. Like Zuul only he got inside Dana’s fridge door (if you’ll pardon the expression) all by himself, without any help from a panicked Tory press team fully aware that their man is an electoral liability.
He soon emerged beaming that Etonian simpleton smile, carrying a crate of milk bottles, playing up to the lovable clown persona that was funny on Have I Got News For You in 2005 but is starting to wear thinner than a Soccer AM sketch. We were told that he had been prepping for another interview which had been previously agreed. That’s a stretch. Who could he possibly have agreed to give an interview to if he’s too scared to take on the collective might of Morgan and Reid on GMB? CBeebies? Nickelodeon?
Meanwhile Johnson’s champion, the repugnant BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, was again busy trying to take the heat off her man. Behind every man there is a good woman they say, so it makes sense that behind every snivelling, scheming chancer there must be a woman of similar disrepute. Just as Fridgegate threatened to gain momentum Kuenssberg took one for Team Boris by blathering on about postal votes and how many might be of a Tory persuasion. Firstly, how does an organisation that can’t choose which of its staff gets to interview the Prime Minister be privy to supposedly secret votes cast in an election that hasn’t yet got under way? And secondly, if they do have that information isn’t it illegal to share it with their viewers? Even though there are only 14 of them left. Only 12 still take Question Time seriously and they are all either related to Nigel Farage or they are adolescent boys hoping for the despicable Emily Hewertson to get more screen time. But it’s the principle. If it is against GDPR for me to write someone’s name in the subject field of an email sent from my work account then disclosing information on General Elections that haven’t happened yet has to be a little bit on the Harry Redknapp side.
It wasn’t the first time this week that Kuenssberg tried to detract attention from a Johnson gaffe. Earlier in the week your PM was questioned by a reporter from a local newspaper in Yorkshire (how did he get so close?) about a photograph of a young, clearly very ill boy lying on the floor in a Leeds hospital due to the absence of an available bed. This happened, in the fifth largest economy on Planet Earth. Naturally Johnson didn’t want to talk about it, so proceeded to take the phone from the reporter and casually plonk it into his pocket like a schoolteacher confiscating a packet of fags from some spotty teen.
Kuennsberg’s response and that of ITV Tory apologist Robert Peston? Take to Twitter to announce that Health Minister Matt Hancock had been ‘punched’ while out campaigning. Tragically for the credibility of journalism and for people like me who would quite like to see Matt Hancock get punched while out campaigning, the story wasn’t in the same postcode as the truth. What had actually happened was that Hancock had walked very gently into someone’s outstretched arm which happened to have been extended at an inopportune moment. The ‘punch’ story was nothing but an attempt to bury the controversy around the boy in the hospital and the confiscated phone. When that didn’t work as a strategy the Tory PR machine then attempted to discredit the story. The rumour that the whole thing was staged by the mother of the boy spread on social media like......well......a smear on Jeremy Corbyn. It has since been verified by the newspaper involved but is still being questioned by the same kind of ignoramus blurts who insist that nobody has to use food banks due to Tory cuts.
We’re less than eight hours away from the opening of the polls as I write this. The final days of the campaign have shown, if we didn’t know it already, that we are living in the same kind of post-truth era that we have seen in America since Trump came to power. There will be consequences if we do not act tomorrow by voting Labour or for the party most likely to stop the Tory candidate in areas where Labour cannot win. If that means holding your nose, closing your eyes and voting for a party you dislike, do it. Just get the Tories out.
If we fail to do that then Corbyn will be partly responsible. Whether the accusations levelled at him are true or not (and who doesn’t have a few doubts about the nice grandad act?) he should have recognised his unpopularity is a barrier to removing the Tories from office. A moderate Labour leader would be making mincemeat of the far right fascists who have seized control of the Tory Party, backed as they are by vacuous vegetable-heads who justify their choice to inflict suffering on the most vulnerable with the phrase ‘but.....Jeremy Corbyn’. And backed as they are by the once impartial, public service broadcasting giant that is the BBC.
But in the end we still have an opportunity. Don’t hand power to a fridge dweller with sinister intentions. Don’t hand power to Zuul.
Indiana Jones in order to survive a nuclear detonation
Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuul!!!!!!
Film buffs will know that the former was one of the least ridiculous set-pieces of Steven Spielberg’s ill-advised fourth instalment of the Indy franchise - Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, while the latter as every 80s child knows refers to the Gatekeeper of Gozer who lurks between Sigourney Weaver’s eggs, milk and peanut butter while waiting patiently for her Dana Barrett character to come home so she/he/it can possess her spirit. Forgive the indecision on pronouns there. I’m not woke enough to be certain of the pronouns of the Demigod minion of Gozer,
Where were we? Oh yes, Johnson. Your Prime Minister. He has been notoriously difficult to interrogate during this General Election campaign. He had agreed to be interviewed by the BBC’s political verbal torturer Andrew Neil but pulled out after seeing Neil interrupt the other major party leaders into submission. Johnson’s main rival Jeremy Corbyn came out of his ordeal with Neil as negatively as is possible for a man who is smeared more often than the peanut butter in Dana’s fridge. Seeing this, Johnson took evasive action and reneged on his agreement to appear on Neil’s show.
Despite his distinctly right wing leanings Neil did his best to shame the PM into sitting down for that chat he promised. Neil delivered a lengthy and stylish monologue, the theme of which was basically the slippery cowardice of Johnson and a run down of the lies he was evidently not prepared to defend on national television. Have you heard the one about the 50,000 new NHS staff which is really 31,000 new NHS staff and a commitment to try to prevent 19,000 current NHS staff from quitting under the strain of a woefully and deliberately underfunded service? Or the one about the 20,00 extra police offers that are the 20,000 that were taken away by heavy-handed austerity measures? It was scathing, but it did not alter Johnson’s stance. He knows that he is considered selfish, racist, homophobic and unfit for office. Why would he open his mouth and prove it?
Avoiding the gnarled former This Week presenter’s grilling is one thing but you might have thought that Johnson would be more open to a discussion with the altogether gentler Good Morning Britain duo Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid. Morgan has been known to hack the odd phone or mock up the odd front page photo to get a scoop, but these days he’s a sofa-softie who is only permitted to be slightly more demanding of his interviewees than Phil and Holly. Surely someone who is hoping to continue as Prime Minister for the next five years, who has in his own words negotiated a ‘fantastic, oven-ready Brexit deal’ and who sells us EU departure on the basis that he will be able to make yet more ‘fantastic’ deals with Donald Trump and other world leaders can handle a few minutes on Breakfast TV?
Evidently not. GMB’s reporter asked for those few minutes, a request which seemed to spark a degree of panic in Johnson and his team of aides. One such, his press secretary Rob Oxley, was seen mouthing ‘oh for fucks sake’ at the prospect of his man having to face anything as terrifying as some light early morning questioning on his campaign and the policies he hopes will win him a majority at tomorrow’s big vote. This is where the fridge came in. Johnson was visiting Modern Milking, a small business in Pudsey, Yorkshire when he was approached by GMB’s man. It seems that in the absence of any better ideas from his team Johnson was bundled into the nearest available hiding place. Like Zuul only he got inside Dana’s fridge door (if you’ll pardon the expression) all by himself, without any help from a panicked Tory press team fully aware that their man is an electoral liability.
He soon emerged beaming that Etonian simpleton smile, carrying a crate of milk bottles, playing up to the lovable clown persona that was funny on Have I Got News For You in 2005 but is starting to wear thinner than a Soccer AM sketch. We were told that he had been prepping for another interview which had been previously agreed. That’s a stretch. Who could he possibly have agreed to give an interview to if he’s too scared to take on the collective might of Morgan and Reid on GMB? CBeebies? Nickelodeon?
Meanwhile Johnson’s champion, the repugnant BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, was again busy trying to take the heat off her man. Behind every man there is a good woman they say, so it makes sense that behind every snivelling, scheming chancer there must be a woman of similar disrepute. Just as Fridgegate threatened to gain momentum Kuenssberg took one for Team Boris by blathering on about postal votes and how many might be of a Tory persuasion. Firstly, how does an organisation that can’t choose which of its staff gets to interview the Prime Minister be privy to supposedly secret votes cast in an election that hasn’t yet got under way? And secondly, if they do have that information isn’t it illegal to share it with their viewers? Even though there are only 14 of them left. Only 12 still take Question Time seriously and they are all either related to Nigel Farage or they are adolescent boys hoping for the despicable Emily Hewertson to get more screen time. But it’s the principle. If it is against GDPR for me to write someone’s name in the subject field of an email sent from my work account then disclosing information on General Elections that haven’t happened yet has to be a little bit on the Harry Redknapp side.
It wasn’t the first time this week that Kuenssberg tried to detract attention from a Johnson gaffe. Earlier in the week your PM was questioned by a reporter from a local newspaper in Yorkshire (how did he get so close?) about a photograph of a young, clearly very ill boy lying on the floor in a Leeds hospital due to the absence of an available bed. This happened, in the fifth largest economy on Planet Earth. Naturally Johnson didn’t want to talk about it, so proceeded to take the phone from the reporter and casually plonk it into his pocket like a schoolteacher confiscating a packet of fags from some spotty teen.
Kuennsberg’s response and that of ITV Tory apologist Robert Peston? Take to Twitter to announce that Health Minister Matt Hancock had been ‘punched’ while out campaigning. Tragically for the credibility of journalism and for people like me who would quite like to see Matt Hancock get punched while out campaigning, the story wasn’t in the same postcode as the truth. What had actually happened was that Hancock had walked very gently into someone’s outstretched arm which happened to have been extended at an inopportune moment. The ‘punch’ story was nothing but an attempt to bury the controversy around the boy in the hospital and the confiscated phone. When that didn’t work as a strategy the Tory PR machine then attempted to discredit the story. The rumour that the whole thing was staged by the mother of the boy spread on social media like......well......a smear on Jeremy Corbyn. It has since been verified by the newspaper involved but is still being questioned by the same kind of ignoramus blurts who insist that nobody has to use food banks due to Tory cuts.
We’re less than eight hours away from the opening of the polls as I write this. The final days of the campaign have shown, if we didn’t know it already, that we are living in the same kind of post-truth era that we have seen in America since Trump came to power. There will be consequences if we do not act tomorrow by voting Labour or for the party most likely to stop the Tory candidate in areas where Labour cannot win. If that means holding your nose, closing your eyes and voting for a party you dislike, do it. Just get the Tories out.
If we fail to do that then Corbyn will be partly responsible. Whether the accusations levelled at him are true or not (and who doesn’t have a few doubts about the nice grandad act?) he should have recognised his unpopularity is a barrier to removing the Tories from office. A moderate Labour leader would be making mincemeat of the far right fascists who have seized control of the Tory Party, backed as they are by vacuous vegetable-heads who justify their choice to inflict suffering on the most vulnerable with the phrase ‘but.....Jeremy Corbyn’. And backed as they are by the once impartial, public service broadcasting giant that is the BBC.
But in the end we still have an opportunity. Don’t hand power to a fridge dweller with sinister intentions. Don’t hand power to Zuul.
Friday 6 December 2019
All Heart - No Common Decency & Respect
We are six days away from a General Election. As each day passes by I become more and more convinced that the right-wing blockheads we have in charge are untouchable. No matter how low they sink with their repellent attitudes and behaviours they are still the party most likely to form a majority government after December 12. How is this possible?
We are becoming increasingly like the United States, where currently a racist, bigoted disability-hating sex-offender continues to hold the highest office in the land. Every allegation thrown at the despicable Donald Trump is simply met with a metaphorical thumbed-nose before he goes about his business unflustered. All nay-saying against his administration is fake news as far as he is concerned. The American electorate has now become so obsessed with trying to reverse cultural diversity and with pushing their right-wing white supremacy agenda that they are prepared to tolerate this and more from the person who is supposed to be their ultimate statesman. And as long as we in the UK have Johnson and his vacuous band of planks in control we will veer further in the same direction.
Further evidence of the Tory villainy came to light today when at one hustings event a Conservative party candidate was actually filmed suggesting that disabled workers should be paid less than their able-bodied counterparts. This is an old trope used by the Victorian maggots that are currently in power (has anyone seen Jacob Rees-Mogg lately?). The Conservative party candidate for Hastings and Rye Sally-Ann Heart embellished this vile point of view with an extra nugget of ignorance as she spoke to the people of her constituency at the event. She told them that the reason that disabled people should be paid less was that some of them ‘don’t understand money’.
So now not only is the work we do less valuable than that of our colleagues, it doesn’t really matter anyway because none of us know what to do with the reward we are given for our efforts. They might as well just pay us in chocolate buttons and have done with it. After all, which of us hasn’t gone into a shop to buy something, reached into our pockets for our wallets or purses only to find mysterious bits of paper and shiny pieces of metal that we just cannot for the life of us identify. All we know is that they all have a picture of a pensioner wearing a crown that looks a bit like John McEnroe in a certain light. What are they doing there? Where are the magic beans that we thought we would be able to spend at Marks & Spencers and Tesco? We only came out for a fucking loaf.
Heart tried to justify her comments by suggesting that the idea - which apparently comes from a piece written by Rosa Monckton in September 2017 for Tory toilet roll substitute The Spectator - was that working for lower wages was about the ‘happiness for work’ of disabled people. Staggeringly Monckton has a daughter with Downs Syndrome. I shouldn’t be surprised. I have encountered many parents of disabled people who undersell the abilities of their children. Their instinct is to protect them because they view them as more vulnerable. But that comes from a wider lack of education around disability and the potential of those who are affected by it. The message from Monckton and Heart appears to be that it doesn’t matter if we are paid a pittance, we should just be thankful that we are being given the opportunity to go out and mix with all you normal folk.
I’m not going to argue that working doesn’t enhance your life in ways that are not necessarily financial. When you don’t have a job to go to you can spend large parts of your day sitting around doing nothing much of anything, waiting for everyone you know who does have a job to become free at the weekends. All while watching some of the most awful television ever made. This gets depressing rather quickly. It might be difficult to get out of bed at 7.00am, especially with a kidney function that currently stands at a surgery-prompting 16%, but it is far better than the alternative.
Joining the work force has helped my mental health immeasurably. Yet that alone is not enough to wrench me from my pit every morning. If you took away all or part of my salary, which is fairly modest as it is, then I might start thinking that days on the sofa are a more attractive proposition again. I have On-Demand TV now. The days of Jerry Springer and Homes Under The Hammer are over. The suggestion that anyone, disabled or otherwise, should work a full time job for anything less than the minimum wage is an appalling attitude that belongs in an era centuries before this one. It is exploitation made worse by the fact that they would try to dress it up as a favour for all those poor, disabled folk who don’t get out much. It is terrifying, unforgivable ableism. As much as there may be some people who don’t have a total grasp on the mathematics involved in monetary transactions, it appears that there remain some politicians who don’t have a grasp on common decency and respect.
Let’s humour Heart for a second. There are no doubt some people who don’t understand the full implications of finance and how to handle money, so let’s assume I don’t for a second. Does that mean that I don’t have bills to pay? That I don’t have a mortgage or rent to pay? That I don’t need to buy food, clothes or heating? Heart probably cannot imagine that I have any of these needs. She’s too wrapped up in her own Tory wankerbubble which assumes that disabled people are less valuable souls, there to be pitied or used for what amounts to slave labour. I find it hard to believe that this needs saying, but whether you understand money or not we all have financial responsibilities and requirements. Nobody, not even people that Heart considers of less value than her who may or may not be able to count, can get by without any money.
I wonder – if Heart were to meet with some unimaginably awful accident involving the front of my Vauxhall Astra that left her less mobile but unaffected mentally – would she consider it acceptable that she should either stop working and be paid by the state or else receive a reduced salary for the work she currently does? If that ever happened to her she would find out quickly that everything she previously believed about disability is nonsense. You still have to get on with life the same as anyone else. You don’t get charged less for a Big Mac in McDonalds because you happen to use a wheelchair. Although a man did once give me a pound to buy a burger in the branch in St Helens town centre when I was about 11. But that is another story about how ableism also involves leaning too far the other way and believing that disabled people should be looked after entirely without the need to worry about things like working and making money. That’s also a pretty offensive mentality which does nobody any good.
The problem with Tory ideals on disability, and indeed those of a good number of ignorant dimwits of all political persuasions is that they are held with a deep conviction that life-changing disabilities are things which happen to other people. When it does happen to them they cannot comprehend it for a long while afterwards, and sometimes never really do. There is a cultural obsession with fixing disability instead of learning to accept it. We should be focusing on modifying the world to embrace the differences between people but we are not, still in 2019. Every time an able bodied person gets mangled in some horrible accident the narrative is about how they will walk again and how, if they don’t, they will feel and be treated as if they are less human than they were before. I can attest that unfortunately, unforgivably, they absolutely will be treated differently should something like that happen to them. But that problem does not belong to the person with the disability, it belongs to society.
There is enough ableism in the world without these Tory grubs trying to use it to save money. No doubt they view taking money from disabled workers as a more justifiable means of boosting the coffers than taxing the top 5% of earners a little more, a policy for which Jeremy Corbyn is currently being vilified by the right wing media. Otherwise known as the BBC. Whoever is pedalling it, it is abhorrent ableism and it has to stop. Let’s not be like Trump’s America. Let’s vote these turds out on December 12.
We are becoming increasingly like the United States, where currently a racist, bigoted disability-hating sex-offender continues to hold the highest office in the land. Every allegation thrown at the despicable Donald Trump is simply met with a metaphorical thumbed-nose before he goes about his business unflustered. All nay-saying against his administration is fake news as far as he is concerned. The American electorate has now become so obsessed with trying to reverse cultural diversity and with pushing their right-wing white supremacy agenda that they are prepared to tolerate this and more from the person who is supposed to be their ultimate statesman. And as long as we in the UK have Johnson and his vacuous band of planks in control we will veer further in the same direction.
Further evidence of the Tory villainy came to light today when at one hustings event a Conservative party candidate was actually filmed suggesting that disabled workers should be paid less than their able-bodied counterparts. This is an old trope used by the Victorian maggots that are currently in power (has anyone seen Jacob Rees-Mogg lately?). The Conservative party candidate for Hastings and Rye Sally-Ann Heart embellished this vile point of view with an extra nugget of ignorance as she spoke to the people of her constituency at the event. She told them that the reason that disabled people should be paid less was that some of them ‘don’t understand money’.
So now not only is the work we do less valuable than that of our colleagues, it doesn’t really matter anyway because none of us know what to do with the reward we are given for our efforts. They might as well just pay us in chocolate buttons and have done with it. After all, which of us hasn’t gone into a shop to buy something, reached into our pockets for our wallets or purses only to find mysterious bits of paper and shiny pieces of metal that we just cannot for the life of us identify. All we know is that they all have a picture of a pensioner wearing a crown that looks a bit like John McEnroe in a certain light. What are they doing there? Where are the magic beans that we thought we would be able to spend at Marks & Spencers and Tesco? We only came out for a fucking loaf.
Heart tried to justify her comments by suggesting that the idea - which apparently comes from a piece written by Rosa Monckton in September 2017 for Tory toilet roll substitute The Spectator - was that working for lower wages was about the ‘happiness for work’ of disabled people. Staggeringly Monckton has a daughter with Downs Syndrome. I shouldn’t be surprised. I have encountered many parents of disabled people who undersell the abilities of their children. Their instinct is to protect them because they view them as more vulnerable. But that comes from a wider lack of education around disability and the potential of those who are affected by it. The message from Monckton and Heart appears to be that it doesn’t matter if we are paid a pittance, we should just be thankful that we are being given the opportunity to go out and mix with all you normal folk.
I’m not going to argue that working doesn’t enhance your life in ways that are not necessarily financial. When you don’t have a job to go to you can spend large parts of your day sitting around doing nothing much of anything, waiting for everyone you know who does have a job to become free at the weekends. All while watching some of the most awful television ever made. This gets depressing rather quickly. It might be difficult to get out of bed at 7.00am, especially with a kidney function that currently stands at a surgery-prompting 16%, but it is far better than the alternative.
Joining the work force has helped my mental health immeasurably. Yet that alone is not enough to wrench me from my pit every morning. If you took away all or part of my salary, which is fairly modest as it is, then I might start thinking that days on the sofa are a more attractive proposition again. I have On-Demand TV now. The days of Jerry Springer and Homes Under The Hammer are over. The suggestion that anyone, disabled or otherwise, should work a full time job for anything less than the minimum wage is an appalling attitude that belongs in an era centuries before this one. It is exploitation made worse by the fact that they would try to dress it up as a favour for all those poor, disabled folk who don’t get out much. It is terrifying, unforgivable ableism. As much as there may be some people who don’t have a total grasp on the mathematics involved in monetary transactions, it appears that there remain some politicians who don’t have a grasp on common decency and respect.
Let’s humour Heart for a second. There are no doubt some people who don’t understand the full implications of finance and how to handle money, so let’s assume I don’t for a second. Does that mean that I don’t have bills to pay? That I don’t have a mortgage or rent to pay? That I don’t need to buy food, clothes or heating? Heart probably cannot imagine that I have any of these needs. She’s too wrapped up in her own Tory wankerbubble which assumes that disabled people are less valuable souls, there to be pitied or used for what amounts to slave labour. I find it hard to believe that this needs saying, but whether you understand money or not we all have financial responsibilities and requirements. Nobody, not even people that Heart considers of less value than her who may or may not be able to count, can get by without any money.
I wonder – if Heart were to meet with some unimaginably awful accident involving the front of my Vauxhall Astra that left her less mobile but unaffected mentally – would she consider it acceptable that she should either stop working and be paid by the state or else receive a reduced salary for the work she currently does? If that ever happened to her she would find out quickly that everything she previously believed about disability is nonsense. You still have to get on with life the same as anyone else. You don’t get charged less for a Big Mac in McDonalds because you happen to use a wheelchair. Although a man did once give me a pound to buy a burger in the branch in St Helens town centre when I was about 11. But that is another story about how ableism also involves leaning too far the other way and believing that disabled people should be looked after entirely without the need to worry about things like working and making money. That’s also a pretty offensive mentality which does nobody any good.
The problem with Tory ideals on disability, and indeed those of a good number of ignorant dimwits of all political persuasions is that they are held with a deep conviction that life-changing disabilities are things which happen to other people. When it does happen to them they cannot comprehend it for a long while afterwards, and sometimes never really do. There is a cultural obsession with fixing disability instead of learning to accept it. We should be focusing on modifying the world to embrace the differences between people but we are not, still in 2019. Every time an able bodied person gets mangled in some horrible accident the narrative is about how they will walk again and how, if they don’t, they will feel and be treated as if they are less human than they were before. I can attest that unfortunately, unforgivably, they absolutely will be treated differently should something like that happen to them. But that problem does not belong to the person with the disability, it belongs to society.
There is enough ableism in the world without these Tory grubs trying to use it to save money. No doubt they view taking money from disabled workers as a more justifiable means of boosting the coffers than taxing the top 5% of earners a little more, a policy for which Jeremy Corbyn is currently being vilified by the right wing media. Otherwise known as the BBC. Whoever is pedalling it, it is abhorrent ableism and it has to stop. Let’s not be like Trump’s America. Let’s vote these turds out on December 12.
Tuesday 3 December 2019
Dignity, Respect & Other Unrealistic Nirvanas
Today is International Day Of Persons With Disabilities. Since 1992 December 3 has been marked by the United Nations in an attempt to ‘promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilise support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities’. Twenty-seven years into their campaign I’m a bit concerned by its progress.
Twenty-seven years seems like a long time. It is so long that Everton have won a meaningful trophy within that time. We have had six Prime Ministers, 10 full-time England managers and 47 different Sugababes line-ups. But when you are devoting only one day a year to the cause you should expect progress to be slow. International Day Of Persons With Disabilities registers in the national consciousness about as much as World Wetlands Day (February 2), World Day For Water (March 22), Wrong Trousers Day (June 24) and International Day Of Photographing Your Dinner (September 12). Ok, I made that last one up. Every day is World Photographing Your Dinner Day.
The point is that ‘special’ days like these are a misguided if well-intentioned token gesture. Their very existence merely encourages the notion that we can forget about disabilities, wetlands, water and our trousers for the rest of the year. There’s no responsibility attached to our ignorance of these things if we have the safety net of one 24-hour period out of every 365 spent half-heatedly encouraging people to do something that should, by now in 2019, be automatic. Supporting the ‘dignity, rights and well-being’ of disabled people shouldn’t be an effort. It should not be marked on your calendar as the day you will make a big push towards the lofty ambition of not being a total arse. Least of all your advent calendar which should only ever be used for the consumption of small pieces of chocolate.
This seems obvious but I have to tell you that there are still a sizeable number of people out there who haven’t grasped these dignity and rights concepts. Let me give you an example. The building where I am employed (I know, maybe we’ve taken this whole equality thing too far) has a very steep ramp which leads on to the main streets. In the absence of anything resembling a cafe or coffee shop on site I have to negotiate this ramp to get out for my lunch. I won’t lie. It’s hard work. I hate it. So much so that I have started taking a much longer route, visiting a supermarket much further away to avoid it. Yet the physical exertion required is only one reason why I have given it the swerve. The other is that I cannot push up this ramp without members of the public offering to help me and, in extreme cases, completely ignoring me when I politely decline.
The whole situation is embarrassing for everyone. If I have declined an offer of help, sometimes two or three times, then it surely becomes an actual crime to then put your hands on me and start pushing me anyway. Where is the dignity? Where is the respect? Has International Day Of Persons With Disabilities taught you nothing?
Of course it hasn’t because, as we’ve discussed, the only evidence you will have seen of it anywhere in the media whether mainstream, social or other is this thousand-word letter of complaint on the subject. It’s not a big deal, but then for the reasons we have seen that is probably a good thing. The last thing I want is to be lulled into believing I have dignity and respect on December 3 every year only to wake up on December 4 to find that nothing has been done -still in 2019 - to make trains legitimately accessible and that forcing a disabled person to sit in front of their partner (rather than next to them) in the theatre is still acceptable in polite society. That would bee too much to bear, wouldn’t it? I’m keeping my expectations low.
When you able bodied folk are not demonstrating your sense of superiority by insisting on providing physical assistance that has been declined, and scratching your heads about why a disabled person needs to sit next to anybody at the theatre, you swing wildly in the other direction into the realms of inspiration porn. Suddenly you are not worthy, and begin romanticising perfectly mundane tasks performed by disabled people as if they are Herculean efforts. It is not a compliment to tell a disabled person how well they have done to avoid killing themselves this morning, or how fantastic it is that they can drive a car or drink a beer (not at the same time).
Paralympians are relentlessly targeted too, as if their sporting prowess has been achieved ‘despite’ their disability. The implication is that their achievements are only valuable because they have arrived in what are perceived to be trying circumstances. But when a para-athlete is training to win gold they are not thinking in terms of overcoming a disability. They are thinking only of winning. Of beating the opponent. It is sport and disability does not enter into it.
This message never quite seems to hit home. The effect of it is that those of us who are not on telly like Ade Adepitan, who are not in the House Of Lords like Tanni Grey-Thompson and who have not won her multiple Paralympic titles and those of many others are viewed in an even dimmer light than we were before. Having seen what has been possible to achieve for these highly talented, highly dedicated people, thoughts start to turn to why there are some disabled people knocking about that haven’t matched that level of attainment. Aren’t these people just lazy scrounges? The Paralympic ‘Superhumans’ as they are often depicted on Channel 4 have become the standard by which the rest of us are judged. If you’re not breaking records, influencing political debate or both then you really mustn’t be trying very hard. It has become almost impossible for disabled people to be viewed as ordinary or, dare one utter the shudder-inducing term.....normal. We are either celebrities to be revered for all the wrong reasons or we are pitiable, inferior Undateables fodder who definitely need a push up a steep ramp whether we like it or not.
I have been alive for 16,127 days. You can actually Google that. I haven’t been sat here for the last two hours trying to work that out and having an internal argument with myself about whether leap years coincide with World Cups or Olympic Games. It’s the latter, if you’re wondering. But anyway, 28 days dedicated to dignity, respect and well-being in a life spanning 16,127 days and counting hasn’t been nearly enough. We have a long way to go.
Twenty-seven years seems like a long time. It is so long that Everton have won a meaningful trophy within that time. We have had six Prime Ministers, 10 full-time England managers and 47 different Sugababes line-ups. But when you are devoting only one day a year to the cause you should expect progress to be slow. International Day Of Persons With Disabilities registers in the national consciousness about as much as World Wetlands Day (February 2), World Day For Water (March 22), Wrong Trousers Day (June 24) and International Day Of Photographing Your Dinner (September 12). Ok, I made that last one up. Every day is World Photographing Your Dinner Day.
The point is that ‘special’ days like these are a misguided if well-intentioned token gesture. Their very existence merely encourages the notion that we can forget about disabilities, wetlands, water and our trousers for the rest of the year. There’s no responsibility attached to our ignorance of these things if we have the safety net of one 24-hour period out of every 365 spent half-heatedly encouraging people to do something that should, by now in 2019, be automatic. Supporting the ‘dignity, rights and well-being’ of disabled people shouldn’t be an effort. It should not be marked on your calendar as the day you will make a big push towards the lofty ambition of not being a total arse. Least of all your advent calendar which should only ever be used for the consumption of small pieces of chocolate.
This seems obvious but I have to tell you that there are still a sizeable number of people out there who haven’t grasped these dignity and rights concepts. Let me give you an example. The building where I am employed (I know, maybe we’ve taken this whole equality thing too far) has a very steep ramp which leads on to the main streets. In the absence of anything resembling a cafe or coffee shop on site I have to negotiate this ramp to get out for my lunch. I won’t lie. It’s hard work. I hate it. So much so that I have started taking a much longer route, visiting a supermarket much further away to avoid it. Yet the physical exertion required is only one reason why I have given it the swerve. The other is that I cannot push up this ramp without members of the public offering to help me and, in extreme cases, completely ignoring me when I politely decline.
The whole situation is embarrassing for everyone. If I have declined an offer of help, sometimes two or three times, then it surely becomes an actual crime to then put your hands on me and start pushing me anyway. Where is the dignity? Where is the respect? Has International Day Of Persons With Disabilities taught you nothing?
Of course it hasn’t because, as we’ve discussed, the only evidence you will have seen of it anywhere in the media whether mainstream, social or other is this thousand-word letter of complaint on the subject. It’s not a big deal, but then for the reasons we have seen that is probably a good thing. The last thing I want is to be lulled into believing I have dignity and respect on December 3 every year only to wake up on December 4 to find that nothing has been done -still in 2019 - to make trains legitimately accessible and that forcing a disabled person to sit in front of their partner (rather than next to them) in the theatre is still acceptable in polite society. That would bee too much to bear, wouldn’t it? I’m keeping my expectations low.
When you able bodied folk are not demonstrating your sense of superiority by insisting on providing physical assistance that has been declined, and scratching your heads about why a disabled person needs to sit next to anybody at the theatre, you swing wildly in the other direction into the realms of inspiration porn. Suddenly you are not worthy, and begin romanticising perfectly mundane tasks performed by disabled people as if they are Herculean efforts. It is not a compliment to tell a disabled person how well they have done to avoid killing themselves this morning, or how fantastic it is that they can drive a car or drink a beer (not at the same time).
Paralympians are relentlessly targeted too, as if their sporting prowess has been achieved ‘despite’ their disability. The implication is that their achievements are only valuable because they have arrived in what are perceived to be trying circumstances. But when a para-athlete is training to win gold they are not thinking in terms of overcoming a disability. They are thinking only of winning. Of beating the opponent. It is sport and disability does not enter into it.
This message never quite seems to hit home. The effect of it is that those of us who are not on telly like Ade Adepitan, who are not in the House Of Lords like Tanni Grey-Thompson and who have not won her multiple Paralympic titles and those of many others are viewed in an even dimmer light than we were before. Having seen what has been possible to achieve for these highly talented, highly dedicated people, thoughts start to turn to why there are some disabled people knocking about that haven’t matched that level of attainment. Aren’t these people just lazy scrounges? The Paralympic ‘Superhumans’ as they are often depicted on Channel 4 have become the standard by which the rest of us are judged. If you’re not breaking records, influencing political debate or both then you really mustn’t be trying very hard. It has become almost impossible for disabled people to be viewed as ordinary or, dare one utter the shudder-inducing term.....normal. We are either celebrities to be revered for all the wrong reasons or we are pitiable, inferior Undateables fodder who definitely need a push up a steep ramp whether we like it or not.
I have been alive for 16,127 days. You can actually Google that. I haven’t been sat here for the last two hours trying to work that out and having an internal argument with myself about whether leap years coincide with World Cups or Olympic Games. It’s the latter, if you’re wondering. But anyway, 28 days dedicated to dignity, respect and well-being in a life spanning 16,127 days and counting hasn’t been nearly enough. We have a long way to go.
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