Tory Wedges Have Thin Edges

So this rather Nasty government are considering making the mentally ill conform to their idea of ‘treatment’ – or face losing their benefits.

Let’s leave aside for now the fact that this government have presided over the biggest cuts in mental health services ever. The fact that this leaves it as such a poor service that suicides have risen, self harm has risen, and getting help is a huge difficulty, with huge waiting lists already – even before a sudden influx of all these threatened mentally ill patients.

We’ll leave that aside.

What is more disturbing is that government is starting to adopt powers that it should never have: the forcible treatment of those who are ill.
They start with talk of ,talking therapies’ and ‘CBT’ – but what happens if the ill person complies with this, manages to get an appointment to see a mental health professional, and takes whatever treatment is deemed ‘right’ by the government – and does not get well?

Will this person then be judged to be ‘faking it’? And benefits withdrawn?
Or will they then be required to have deeper treatments – poisonous drugs that harm liver, brain, heart, hormone regulation, weight regulation? Or Electro Convulsive Therapy? Brain surgery?

The government is taking to itself powers to coerce ILL people into treatments that are – on test after test – often found to be only a few per cent better than nothing at all, yet which can substantially harm the patient’s physical health.
Yet, these representatives-turned-rulers (have a read of how democracy truly disappeared in 30s Germany) appear to show no end to their lack of compassion – they will do literally anything to ensure their gravy train is not derailed, almost any act to increase profit for corporations (in this case, Big Pharma), and all things needful to ensure that more and more people are denied their rightful benefits.

The disabled – and especially the mentally ill – were among the first to be exterminated by the National Socialists in the 30s; in the twenty-first century, their ideas rise again from the ashes of millions, which starts always with denigration, followed by denial, and ending in destruction.

What Have The Tories Ever Done For Us?

“Well, there’s the aqueduct …”

I can’t find any new aqueducts in the Tory reign. Education, sanitation, &c., were already there.
So what has the present crop of Tories done for us?

They’ve built a people that are eminently controllable. and selfish.
They’ve built a society – a Big One, I’ll grant you – that has lost its sense of accountability and decency; a society where community and solidarity in the face of adversity have all but vanished.

They’ve built a society that cares nothing for people.

A society that allows people – as this week – to turn to a Ward Sister in the NHS, and call her a ‘fucking bitch’. My wife (for it was she), as with all persons, may not be perfect sometimes, but she’s not a ‘fucking bitch’, and neither does she deserve such abuse.
The Tories have built a society of greed, intolerance and a sense of entitlement; where someone who, by working hard for the health of others, who diligently pushes herself beyond her comfort zone for others’ benefit can be abused and treated as if she were dirt on a shoe sole.

Because the Tories have created a society that has lost its coherence. a society that swallows whole – a camel, not a gnat – propaganda that would have made Goebbels blush. barely concealed, it is breathtakingly brash.

Nowhere does this show more than in the NHS.
The Tories have run down services, cut back on safety and training, starved it of funds; and, at the same time, raised the expectations of patients (and their relatives) to an impossible level, and – also at the same time – told people how nursing, ancillary and medical staff are lazy scum who care little for the needs of their charges. In deed, who, more often than not, seek to harm their patients, and make swifter their eventual demise.

It’s a society that allows people to treat NHS staff as the enemy, to be able to treat hard-working, dedicated staff as badly as they wish; to abuse them, to see them as objects of derision, suspicion and hatred.
To call a woman who, by working hours for free that she will never see back (or be paid for), who desires above all else to give the very best care, to heal and to comfort, a ‘fucking bitch’.
This is by no means an isolated incident. It happens to staff throughout the NHS day on day, week through week. It is relentless and endemic.
And it is fuelled by Tory dogma that seeks to makes huge profits for its friends from the suffering of others.

This is what the Tories have done for us.

The Long Goodbye

When I started nursing, the very first lecturer asked us all a question:
“Why do people come into hospital?”

Hands shot up. It was obvious.
“People come into hospital to get better.”

The lecturer shook her head.
“In many cases, people come into hospital to die. We help them to do that with dignity, with care, with compassion.”

It is something people seem unable to grasp, today; that, one day, we shall, as a natural part of life, die.
We have seen, recently, the new phenomenon of Medicine By Media – the ignorant and sheeplike furore caused by the media’s vilification of the Liverpool Care Pathway.
It was formulated – not so long ago – by the Liverpool Hospice Movement, as a protocol for giving a framework to the business of compassionately treating people with terminal cancer.
It was broadened when NICE decided it was an excellent, evidence-based protocol.

The hospice movement adopted it wholeheartedly, and the NHS embraced it. At last there could be an end to indecision regarding good, end-of-life care.

It was not always perfectly applied. This is life; motor cars may not always be well driven, and may cause premature death by this misapplication of their purpose, but we would not hysterically demand that all motor vehicles be removed from the roads.

Medicine by Media is a dangerous and stupid phenomenon. It is the unlearned preaching to the ignorant. It is neither evidence based nor anything other than a means to sell newspapers.

And now, when your parent/sibling/child is moving toward the end of their life, they will no longer have the safeguard of an evidence based, sound protocol to stop their suffering. Indeed, such suffering will be prolonged as doctors – nervous at being sued for not doing everything they can to prolong life – will subject your loved one to envy procedure to prolong such, whether this causes discomfort, trauma or pain.

When I am – at whatever point – at the end of my life, I hope and pray I will be nursed and succoured not by the media-driven need to extend my hold on life, but by a protocol that gives me dignity, compassion and a pain free exit from this world of shadows and dreams.

Vote Tory!

I have tried, without success, to help stem the tide of the Tory-held media’s assault on the welfare state and the NHS. Simply put, the main body of people cannot be bothered to support these institutions, preferring to watch them crumble and be put into mothballs by the Tories and their LibDem quislings; the flat-screen television is the opiate of the people.

As a lifelong and enduring Socialist, I feel there is only one course of action left open to me – to vote Tory at the next election.

Because, the only thing that will mobilise the people in the long term, is to have their security and their health taken from them. Only when this is actually gone – not just threatened – will people, seeing the death, suffering and reduction in living standards that now assaults them and their families, demand a government that works with the people, and not against them. Selfishness will, in the end, come round to bite the Tory arse, and abolish it for a generation.

This is a drastic step. However, given the comatose state of the people, and – more to the point – the lack of Social conscience within the so-called Labour Party, there is little else to do.
Labour have said they will not reverse the Tory assault on the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled; neither will they see fit to repair and support a revitalised and totally public NHS. They are the greatest blackguards of the century; they fly under a flag of convenience to promote their own desire for power and wealth. They abjectly fail any of the criteria which mark out a party as Socialist.
They fail the people; they have created the one-party state in the UK, and they have sold their people down the river for a life of privilege for themselves. Labour no longer sees the need to support the disabled, or the poor. Like their Tory and LibDem counterparts, they arrogantly parade their empty policies before the people.

Well, the Emperor has finally had his lack of clothes spotted.
I for one cannot support a lie.

So, I shall help to damn people like myself – and including myself – with a disability to suffering and possible premature death by voting Tory.

For only when all is laid waste before the altar of greed and self-serving power, will people at last move forward toward common ownership, common concern, and the common good.

Get Over IT

I’m mental ill hell yeah I am hell yeah so just get over it
I think that I’m a fruitcake hell yeah just you get over it
If you think that you are sane don’t seem no evidence remains from where I’m standing you just need to get over it.

If you think that my life sucks well hell yeah just get over it
I’m thinking that you don’t buy flowers for your wife and read a certain paper I’ll get over it
I didn’t see a curly wig but i guess that you’re a judge since you seem to find such pleasure in giving me the treasure of your oh so wide experience about my situation and my exact location in the world that you inhabit
If you judge me then you judge you and thats the bottom line of it so grow yourself some brand new balls, move on, and just get over it.

I’m mentally ill hell yeah so get over it
I think I’m a fruitcake hell yeah just get over it
If you think that you are sane don’t seem no evidence remains from where I’m standing you just need to get over it.

I dare say you got names for me and people who’re the same, oh hell yeah, just gettin over it
Giving labels like insane I am, bro, gettin over it
It seems a good idea to demean, a scheme dreamt up to keep us in our place and never let us go, hell, I’ll get over it
So carry on ’cause when you do it’s only you who seems demeaned by phrases and catcalls that means you ain’t grown no balls yet and you show yourself the bigot so take a spigot and insert don’t blurt your judgemental mess who’s the fool here I’ll leave you guess meanwhile I just got over it

Cos ’til you been here where I’ve been and returned to tell the tale
You ain’t got a right to judge or even make a noise about it
You just gotta leave your prejudice behind
And become real
And then you’ll feel that you’re in the process of gettin’ over it

Because this darkness that I live with isn’t sadness or badness it’s real evil deep and murky it’s lurking round the corner and the boogie man is true and you just make it worse, I sink into the quicksand and your hand is a thistle that you give me so I bleed and sink still further into the drink
It’s mountain fever with teeth it’s real hard beef it’s a cardiac arrest with glue pumping through my heart and treacle through my brain
It’s rain that burns and blinds distorts the lessons you were taught don’t mean a thing when someone says hallo I’m below suffering worse than a fox in a gin trap
So shut your trap, get a life go look for someone else to stand on, place your hand on, make it a grand one, a fast one it might just be a last one before you sink yourself into mire where I am
Find out life’s not glam no more that your home is no place of safety though lately you’ve been noticing it seems like anxiety
Cos if you diss me brother, sister, remember it might be you next up to your neck, and moreover, shit, you might find in the
Whirling dervish
Insane mainline
That you’re like me, and
There’s a chance you won’t ever get over it

Grow up and look around you one in four
Easy to come knocking at your door
Don’t despair, call me, I’m there for sure

I’ll help you to get over it.

Tyrant – A Fable for Modern Tyrants

oblivious to all entreaty
the tyrant built up stranger’s walls
a line of obfuscation
retreating from the calls
of desperate voices, long silent,
now crying for peace and bread
Instead
he gave them
bread and games
a new identity each day
a new spectacle of the saviour for his people

great the walls became, and broad,
so fifteen men could stand abreast
their solid battlement
entrapment for those held within
isolation for those kept without
who with entreaties still
Shouted
for sake of those they loved
for entrance to the vaulted halls
of plenty and of life

behind the solid division
smirking smugly sat the tyrant
his men compliant
bent easily to his hardened heart
the expression of his love a
stony will that had no regard
Artfully
he spun them round, a fairground ride
of human dross

the days, as is their wont, multiplied
themselves into the years
and those without sought succour
amongst themselves
seeing afresh the dignity of
Communal life
commonality of man and woman
and, despite taken from their soul,
they sought a lighter path

realising then
they had no need of the tyrant
they snubbed the daily leaning
and keening
About the walls
and made instead their own
daily bread

within the walls, the suckle of need
dried upon the whispering breast
and hunger for the power of old
Gnawed
upon the shrinking hearts
of those within
with empty guts they looked without
upon the new community of plenty
and life
from the safety of the high walls

they saw the food that was without
and spoke unto the tyrant, pleading
that they might go forth and
eat their fill
The tyrant led them out …

and learned then a great truth

greed is blinding to those who
proudly sit in opression

and when they built their
encircling fortress
in arrogance they forgot
that in order for it to not become
Prison

the tyrant should have
allowed, within the proud edifice of
The Wall,
the humility of a gate

The sun shrivelled them then,
And bleached their hides

And
The tyrant

Wept

As tyrants do, when their last breath
Falls due.

and those without never sought again
to be within
amongst the dead souls
who moved not
and neither
breathed
nor held power or dominion
Over aught.

©2013 R Wright.

Time To Stand – A Brief Call To Arms

 

Those who champion the cause of private, insurance-based healthcare, as opposed to free at the point of need NHS, should look at the example of insurers where a non-profitable risk exists.

I speak of flood insurance for people on a flood plain – it is becoming exorbitantly expensive, and may disappear altogether. For a while it looked like governments would continue to require insurance companies to provide such cover, but this was deemed anti-competitive. It violated the free market.

Directly similar, those who are in poor health will not be able to afford, or even get, health insurance, and will therefore suffer appallingly. To legislate for compulsory provision by insurance companies will also be a violation of ‘free market principles’.

 

Is that what we want in this affluent, cash-rich society of ours? The old and the sick denied proper care, denied basic human decency, freedom from pain?

 

Such things should not be part of a civilised society.

Such things should be thrown into the bin of history, at which memory we should all shudder.

 

Profit will not deliver universal care.

The two are totally incompatible, and diametrically opposed to each other. Money can only serve money; it cannot have two masters. It may well be a good misquote: you cannot serve man and mammon.

 

Fight for your country’s honour and decency, not by killing families in Iraq, Aghanistan, but rather by refusing – loudly and forcefully – to support those who wish to plunge this country into shame and dishonour.

 

If you do not fight, this will be our legacy to the children – fear of illness.

 

Fight.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

 

Satan,

 

Were you watching as they dragged my battered Jesus from his cell?

Did you gloat on how they’d tortured him, and beaten him so well?

Were there gleeful, loathsome parties in some lower fetid hell,

As a kind of celebration on the day Messiah fell?

Did you mingle with the crowd

Shouting insults vile out loud?

Spitting with them all

Holding them in thrall

Wallowing in pride

Demons beaming wide

Did you laugh the hours away

On Friday, Bloody Friday?

 

Did it give you hellish pleasure as they made him bear his cross

Along the via dolorosa, through the rubbish and the dross?

Did it make you feel triumphant, that at last you were the boss;

That Messiah had been broken, and his true men at a loss?

Did you catch his eye that day

A glance that was to say

You’ve lost what you had

You’ve got it coming bad

Im going to watch you die

Watch you shriek up to the sky.

Did he watch you mock that day,

On Friday, Bloody Friday?

 

As the rude iron nails were planted in his gentle, caring hands

And his ankles pierced with heavy blows, a torture all of mans’,

Did you smile with vile delight?  As all his erstwhile loving fans

Deserted him, the zenith of your plans

Must have seemed to you

To all come true.

For Messiah hung

Feebly strung

On wooden tree

Just for your glee.

Did you watch him, wordless, pray

On Friday, Bloody Friday?

 

And as they raised his cross up high, did you laugh deep in your soul?

As they dropped the cursed cross into its hellish prepared hole,

And he gasped in pain and terror as the nerves jangled their toll,

Did your inner being exultate as at last you got your goal?

You felt the triumph then

Over God and over men

Your blasted nether hells

Rang their dissonant bells

To tell the demons how

Satan’s rule was started now.

Every devil had his day

On Friday, Bloody Friday.

 

At the third hour, your power 

Spat out, and in hell’s deep bower

They rejoiced at victory won.

 

Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?

 

I thirst.

 

Blessed are they that thirst

 

It

Is

Finished.

Friday, Bloody Friday.

 

Temple curtain rent in twain

Thieves crying out in pain

Alone, unloved, 

Hung

Messiah.

 

But were you doubtful of the battle you had hard won, even then?

A huge round stone, you got your men

To seal Messiah’s body in

The cold grey tomb of death.

And, sure now that all was done

You head from tomb of the Son

Down down returning to your throne

Of blasted stone and mire.

 

Three days of celebration gone, did you at last arise

And look out from your portals, as the son began to rise?

And Mary heads toward the grave, I imagine your surprise

As loud she wails “He is not there” , the stone lies flat, unprised.

Oh would it be that I could have seen

The pain upon your face

As Messiah turned mortal death around

And ushered in his grace.

 

In caverns deep the wailing starts, a hellish song so full of dread

And dying hopes that you did aspire

All lie crushed beneath the heel

Of him that you thought dead

He is Alive! Your demons shriek; He is arisen! Flee!

For hell’s own boundaries are shook

And prisoners set free.

 

Oh, do you remember, long ago, the nadir of your days?

Do you remember all your power leeched by he who prays

Above and to the Father?  He who all fear allays?

 

Then recall, with deep’ning dread

The words you shrieked out to the dead;

The words that will not go away:

 

SUNDAY, BLOODY SUNDAY.

 

 

 

 

© Roger Wright 2004 

All rights reserved.

J’ai Peur

I spend much of my life in fear.

Fear and dread.

I am mostly frightened of things that have not happened, things that probably will not happen, and things that are not happening.

Yet, inside my head, fear lurks like a scarab, scratching and scraping at frayed nerve ends; never ceasing, except, perhaps, for that first few seconds of awakeness following sleep, when all the possibilities of a good day are crammed into a few, brief moments.  

I am a sufferer from a mental illness, I am not stupid; I know that certain things of which I am afraid are unlikely to happen, I know that the world is not as my head interprets it.  Yet, there is, seemingly, no escape from the dread that comes with every telephone ring, with every siren, with every knock upon theoor.  The unopened mail that is official has fear written all over it, as surely as if the sender had inscribed ‘Be afraid of the content of this letter’ in bright red crayon on the envelope.  Flashing blue lights that hint at emergency, arrest – cardiac and otherwise! – , exposure, lies; each whirring beat of the helicopter blade that hovers in the neighbourhood, looking watching, listening.

Shame of loss; losing a home, a loved one, a partner, a child.  Shame, indeed, of having the fear in the first place; as a human being, supposedly wise in years, it is unbecoming, as a Christian, it is damning in itself as commentators professional and personal remind you that the bible ‘says’ ‘Do Not Fear!’ many many times.  These are fears that you will be shunned not only by community, church, and friends, but by very God Himself.  The dread of letting down your family or your friends – actual, virtual, or imaginary – is a constant companion.

One is assaulted by doses of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – if one is lucky – from the psychiatric department, mostly which seeks to persuade kindly, but instead can instill the fear of failing the practitioner.  The drugs should alleviate the terror, but one is frightened to tell someone that they do not.

Living with fear is a by product of PTSD and depressive illness.  It is exhausting and it drains. It also, strangely, increases belly fat.  Prolonged Cortisol release, without breaks, can cause weight gain around the middle. Cortisol is a fight-or-flight hormone released when one is anxious or emotional.

I’m frightened of something that does not exist. 

I’m frightened of people laughing at me for being frightened of something that does not exist.

J’ai peur.

Je suis, tu es

I am silence.
Not just absence of sound, but loud,
cloying silence that deafens.
As whispers carry,
so am I heard; yet
neither seen nor felt.
I am silence.

I am destruction.
Not just planned Despite
of urban planning.
I am shattered bones,
shards of femur;
I am destruction

I am fear
No ordinary dread
that creeps behind.
I am the eye that looks
full in your face;
I am fear

I am despair
Not but the lack of hope
that darkness brings.
I am the pit that beckons,
Coldly,
when all else has fled.

Despair,
For I
Am come.