For many of us, certain issues in the news are idiosyncratic. Our PM raging against musicians being disgusted with a genocide taking place in Gaza, when it's clear for most rational thinking people that this is exactly what the government and the press should be echoing. Yet, we still sell Israel arms and we still call the debris in the IDF's wake 'terrorists'. How fucking stupid is that?
I mean, if you want to create terrorists, carry on doing what you're doing. No one likes terrorists, but this is becoming a bit like pitting Little Botherton Primary Girls' school Under 10s football team against Real Madrid. Whatever Hamas have done, if you want to look at this from a biblical standpoint - an eye for an aye and all that, except this is an eye for a full autopsy.
You do know the bombing of Gaza and the continued assaults on the West Bank carried on all throughout Israel's unprovoked attacks on Iran. They also sent drones into Lebanon and Syria, but this doesn't appear to have been dwelt on. We, rational people, are looking at this and seeing a massive power grab. The pretence that Iran was on the verge of having a nuclear weapon has literally been Netanyahu's go to warmongering since 1996! He wheeled it out every half dozen years or so since; Iran is a difficult country to deal with but one suspects if they're doing something insidious it would probably be as a line of defence rather than aggression. Iran is a ridiculously poor country considering how much oil it has. They can't really afford to be aggressive, it costs them too much.
But that's a digression. Yet, we don't really see that in the press. Like labelling 'freedom fighters' terrorists, the press feeds us what the press wants us to see, but there is little balance and their language parrots the government's. We are being told one thing and many of us are seeing something completely different. You see a picture or footage of an atrocity taking place, it's authenticity or general existence is under the scrutiny of the same group of people telling us that this is a 'war' when there appears to be absolutely no evidence whatsoever that there's even a fight going on. Israel says it has a right to defend itself, don't the people they're killing have that right as well?
Meanwhile, while our government is passive aggressive about defence, they're mired in a growing feeling that they're a bunch of absolute wankers who literally couldn't organise a party at Number 10. It's like the last lot just changed into different body suits and carried on looking like buffoons. Jesus, we are handing power to a bunch of capitalist fascism bumboys who will utterly destroy everything you've ever believed in. The thing is it's this disability cut bill that's properly fucked them over. This is something that would have haunted any of the previous five Tory leaders and been unpopular.
The thing is the disability bill is out of control and with an aging population it is not going to get easier. There are obvious ways of dealing with that but Rachel Reeve's tied to her Tory-Lite principals so wouldn't entertain them. We have some of the lowest taxes in the world for some companies and there is a growing disdain for 'shareholders' who are prioritised over services or rights. Why are shareholders of the UK's water industries still getting bonza handouts every year while they pump billions of tons of raw sewage into rivers that took 40 years to restore to how they should have been, only for all that work to be flushed away?
The government could raise taxes on these things. A 5% increase on tax for this specific area would still have the UK as the cheapest taxation rate in the area and you can't tell me that companies are going to leave in droves. It has always been a fallacy that big businesses will pull out of the UK if taxes are higher. If they put a levy on bonuses, making them subject to 50% tax, these shareholders are still getting free money for their investment, they're just paying for the privilege. If they sell their shares that's good for the stock market and new investors who are happy with the rates. It's not rocket science. I'm about as proficient in economics as I am speaking Portuguese.
The thing is by targeting the disabled they came across as cruel and heartless, something a Labour Party would normally never be accused of. Just about everybody knows someone who is in some way disabled and their disability can be something that doesn't impinge on their daily life too much to things that are so catastrophic they are unlikely to function in everyday life. To decide to universally question that across the entire disability benefit claimants list and add stress and worry to already difficult lives is a dereliction of duty, especially as there are other ways to get money that this government appears too frightened to do.
We've witnessed a kind of dehumanising of disabled people over the last 20 years; they're well represented on TV and presumably radio and it tells us that disabled people can work. No one doubts this, but if someone has a physical or mental condition where it is impossible for them to work then these people should be given lifetime exemptions from even having to deal with a benefits agency unless there's a change of circumstances. How often do we hear about a severely disabled teenager made to go through the ordeal of attending a meeting to prove they are unable to attend a meeting? We already put our disabled people through more than we put tax avoiding millionaires and the only people I can see who think that is right are arseholes or rich people.
How do you assess people with severe mental health issues when there's inadequate mental health facilities? It's madness to target this area of benefits when there are so many alternative routes the Chancellor could go.
Tax the rich more and good riddance to their pittance if they choose to leave. We cannot be held ransom by rich people who control all aspects of our daily life. A fact of life is cuts happen because prices rise and prices rise because some rich bastard wants more money. The problem with this is there's an awful lot of angry people fleeing to right wing politics and its isolationist Nationalism because they think this will solve matters when all it does is hands the powerful more power and your life gets more miserable. Look at history, look at films about wars and authoritarian governments. The lack of food and resources. People spying on neighbours hoping for some reward for outing an insurrectionist. It's the stuff of fiction some of you will cry. But it's not. People live like this now, all over the planet and not all of them are scumbags, probably very few and they all have one thing in common - they're all governed by right wing governments.
I mean, when was the last time you heard a journalist ask a minister why they're picking on the poor and not the rich? Why is what Bob Vylan said to a generally in agreement crowd so despicable and Israeli soldiers shooting babies not? Why is that?
Why is that and why aren't we being a platform to ask why is that?
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