December 14, 2011

I wrote this for me

This is my brain on a page so don’t expect neat answers. You should know as well as I do by now that’s not how things go. So take it in the spirit it’s intended.

I’m struggling. And frustratingly why I’m struggling are matters way out of my control. It’s them lot that are doing my head in right now. You know, the people sent here to Represent us. Them, the political class. They are really and truly getting on my tits and worst of all I have no way of making a difference. Influencing them. Letting them know. No way of changing things. No way of asking them, politely, if they would please stop fucking with my country. A country, or in fact more a collection of peoples, I never realised quite how much I cared for until that lot starting messing with us (I guess that’s a silver lining though right?).

I’m not sure if it is with the end of the year approaching, this madness with Europe, or what exactly, but I appear to have reached my final straw. What I do know is that I’m deeply sad and struggling to deal right now.

Ridiculous huh? Why waste my time and energy thinking about such things you say. Why not just ignore them and let them go to hell while we get on and try and keep our lives on the road. Focus on what you can control. Laugh at their idiocy. And I know you’re right. But...

Perhaps I lack the coping strategies needed to survive this madness. My whole life has been defined by relative stability. Stable (wonderful) family. Stable education. Stable jobs. All set to a backdrop of *relatively* stable politics who took running the country seriously and understood the need not to fuck over its people too much for fear of revolt (NB yes I bear a major grudge against Bliar and his wars and others with their issues before him, but equally I am grateful for growing up in relatively sane times).

But these are not sane times. And for reasons far beyond the control of any single politician in all fairness I know.

But more and more I’m starting to feel like I’m living a perpetual One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest groundhog day (to mix my movie metaphors). Moments where you're not sure who precisely is mad - is it me or is it these people. These people who claim to be looking after us, looking after our best interests. Our national interests. But who are these people? Where do they come from? I don’t know people like these in real life, these people sent to “represent” us. And I happen to know a lot of people and this is not my country. These are not our people. Yet how are they somehow in charge of decisions that, everyday, are irreparably fucking with the future of our country.

And this isn’t a party political point. I am clearer now than ever that my beliefs are not represented in this polarised big P political space right now.

And what are those beliefs you ask? (it’s ok if you don’t care less) I guess I’m what would be sometimes be typecast as a liberal lefty. But that doesn’t do me justice. These labels are far too one dimensional and don’t truly capture what’s in our hearts. I’m sure I’m not *that* unusual in thinking this. That I don’t belong, don’t need to belong, to a tribe.

What I do know is that I believe in a role for the state, a state that has a moral obligation to use our taxes as efficiently and effectively as possible to support us to provide for ourselves and above all provide for those that need our collective support. A state that also protects our civil liberties and freedoms of expression.

So what does that make me? A lefty Tory? A liberal Labour type? A Lib Dem?? None of these things mean anything to me.

Sure I helped out on the last Labour campaign as the party most closely aligned to my beliefs (well I say that, but probably the party I’ve grown up closest to in my family but in all honesty they mostly no better represent me than any other, or at best marginally so). But even then I only joined the party the day after the 2010 election as a protest membership and now, just over a year on, I am trying to break those ties as I have lost faith in them as I have any other party politics.

(now if I could only get a reply from the Labour Party on how I unsubcribe, but no-one is replying to the bloody email I sent them the other day. All help appreciated on that one...)

What I see more clearly than ever is that the system is broken. These people don't represent us. More than that, they don't reflect us. They are not in our image, and therefore not able to speak on our behalf. They are only capable of spewing whatever first comes out of their power addled brains distorted by corrupting compromises and relationships with economic elites.

I mean, would a man keen to represent the people he serves, a man who lost his child to a disability, be capable of halving support to thousands of families facing the same plight while signing off on policy after policy that support millionaires to continue to thrive unaffected by the crisis many of them were in no small part a contributing factor in?

Would a party keen to represent the interests of the squeezed middle continue without policies waiting for the opposition to fall on its own sword, without proposing its own line on how it would act differently to protect the people it claims to represent?

Would a party keen to represent its supporters’ views compromise time and time again on its key values and policies with little in return, a party more concerned with how they are represented on nightly news than delivering on their promises? Is that all we’ve got? Is that how our futures are being determined now at this time of madness?

Rest assured, we are not the mad ones. We're not. I'm sure of that now. I think. I mean I am confused. About how we got here. About where we go from here. About who what when where and why. About how we fix this.

Shit. I knew I’d reach the end of this without having anything meaningful to say.

So here I am shouting in the dark....