Does this mean I am more relaxed than OH about the way New Labour is systematically dismantling this country?.
No. It means that while Old Holborn is of the type that would storm the gates of Parliament (OH here, too fucking right), I am of the type that would spend twenty years digging a tunnel and filling a train with explosives. Not for me the thrill of the chase, the tearing of limbs, the piano wire solution. No, I take a more slow and measured approach. I prefer to savour revenge.
Strike Old Holborn and he will strike you back at once. Strike me and I will do nothing more than remember it. Some time later, perhaps weeks, perhaps years, I strike back. It’s never fair and it’s never fists. I do not use hired thugs, or even party whips, to exact my revenge. Often I appear not to be involved at all. It doesn’t matter to me whether the subject knows I did it, only that it is done. I never threaten. I just do it.
But why, the Righteous will ask? What do I have to be angry about? I am not one of those to be taxed at 45%, in fact I stop work before I reach 40% because I won’t work for half pay. I have a business, I have a house, I have no debts other than a mortgage, I claim no benefits. I have not yet been tazered, I have not yet been fined for having one more than the apportioned number of bags in my bin, I have not yet been branded a terrorist for taking a photograph in a public place, nor have I been prosecuted for it. I have not yet been sent to prison because a policeman didn’t like the song I was singing.
I have not had my house raided because our highly-trained officers can’t tell the difference between marijuana and tomato plants. I have not caught Clostridium difficile or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or any of the other collection of drug-resistant deadlies because I don’t go to hospitals or even to doctors any more.
So why would I be angry? These things have not happened to me.
It’s simple. It’s because they can happen to me, and every day brings the inevitability of a prosecution for some trivial made-up offence, or even for something that is not actually illegal, even closer. It’s because those who should be there to prevent such things are actively encouraging them. It’s because those we try to talk to just dismiss our concerns with contempt.
It’s because the names of hardened criminals cannot be made public to protect their human right to a family life while the names of those men, most likely husbands in miserable marriages, who choose to find solace in the services of prostitutes are to be put on posters.
It’s because government ministers smoke in their offices in defiance of the law and face no penalty, while the elderly, the terminally ill and the mentally ill are forced to shiver in the cold.
It’s because government ministers enjoy subsidised drinks in their bars while our local pubs close down because nobody can afford to drink there.
It’s because all that tax I’ve paid up to now, and all the increasing amounts of tax I will pay in the future, have been and will be wasted on free televisions and sky subscriptions, furniture and all conceivable luxuries in MP’s multiple homes. On ridiculous schemes and idiotic initiatives. On ID cards and databases which are unnecessary and useless, and which are only there to intimidate and control. On criminalising the trivial. On police forces who now spend their time working out which internal club to join rather than catching criminals – and when they do venture outside, worry more about the guy smoking in the bus stop than about the drug-pusher at the school gates.
It’s because children, local busybodies and even the Women’s Institute are now official enforcement agencies.
It’s because council officials do whatever they want, to whoever they want, and are never held accountable.
It’s because of the smug, patronising pat-on-the-head politics we now endure. “Go away, little serf, this is politician business. You couldn’t possibly understand.” It’s because no question is ever answered. It’s because every attempt to express concern on any subject is met with ‘racist-Nazi-bigot-BNP-supporter-paedophile’. Yes, they call us all paedophiles now, when we disagree with them. To them, we have no thoughts worth hearing. Our proletarian babble must be silenced because it interferes with their counting of our money. If that is best achieved through fear, then the fear of being branded paedophile and added to a non-erasable list should do it. Well, not any more.
It’s because of phrases like ‘we have to start listening to people’ and ‘lessons have been learned’ and ‘this behaviour is unacceptable’ which crop up every day, spoken like learned phrases in another language by people who have no idea what they are saying.
There is much, much more. Every concern has been, and will be, dismissed by the Righteous as ‘just a small thing really’. Individually, perhaps. Together, there is now a very large mound of little things, and more are added every day that this government stays in power. I have no confidence that the next will be any better.
This government, and the next, and if we let it, the one after that, will not listen. They will not learn. So I have given up talking to them. I leave the politician-baiting to OH (See me winding Kerry McCarthy up). He’s better at it and maybe, one day, he will indeed storm the gates of Parliament.
I will not. That does not mean I have given up, browbeaten into submission by the Righteous.
It means that, metaphorically speaking, I have started digging that tunnel. It’s a much slower approach. It requires persistence and an unquenchable thirst for revenge.
I have both.