There’s so much crap on the internet these days – have you ever read this blog? – from people showing photos of their dinner or announcing their blood pressure, to a world that really isn’t waiting, that sometimes you need to give your head a big wobble and remind yourself that it’s not all like real life. But sometimes there’s something that resonates, that makes total sense; in this case a tweet from someone called Jimmy Anderson, who is not to be confused with the cricketer Jimmy Anderson on the simple grounds that it’s not him. Anyway, on the social media page X, he posts this:
“For I was hungry and you called me a scrounger, I was thirsty and you pumped sewage into the water, I was a stranger and you imprisoned me on a barge, I needed clothes and you said it was a lifestyle choice, I was sick and you told me it was nature’s way of dealing with me…”
It resonates, it makes sense, because it is so palpably true. Every word. The ‘You’ is Rishi Sunak’s putrid, hateful government which foments hate, promotes culture wars and, frankly, lies to us in the same way as Boris Johnson lied to us. And Jimmy’s post is bang on.
- For many years, people on benefits have been presented to us by politicians as scroungers. Ten years ago, George Osborne, chancellor of the austerity heavy Tory government, in which some Lib Dems took jobs, said this: “Where is the fairness, we ask, for the shift-worker, leaving home in the dark hours of the early morning, who looks up at the closed blinds of their next-door neighbour sleeping off a life on benefits.” Osborne didn’t pick out a particular person or group on benefits, the great unsaid was that everyone on benefits was “sleeping off a life on benefits“. It’s been a theme of Tory politicians ever since, as they introduce vacuous “crackdowns” which thrill the elderly Daily Mail demographic who see everyone on benefits as scroungers, except them.
- It is a matter of fact that the rivers and seas around Britain are full of sewage, much of which is untreated. If anything sums up the Conservative party since 2010, shit being tipped everywhere is literally it.
- They – the government – has presented refugees and asylum seekers as scroungers who all wish to rape and murder us. The truth could not be more different. The Tories have neglected and underfunded the home office and allowed massive backlogs in asylum applications to accrue and have been forced to house some applicants in hotels. Hotels are too nice for Johnny Foreigner so instead many have been moved to the Bibby Stockholm, a legionella riddled engineless barge; essentially a prison ship.
- Sewer … sorry … Sue-Ellen AKA Suella Braverman has decreed that homelessness is a “lifestyle choice” and that it will become a civil offence to supply a tent to a homeless person.
- Those who were in the room with Boris Johnson said he believed that “Covid was nature’s way of dealing with old people” who should “accept their fate” and let younger people “get on with life“.
“Jimmy”, if that’s his real name (you don’t always know on X), is demonstrably correct on all counts. Because the language he refers to has been carefully chosen to provoke the hard of thinking via their media megaphones. I would like to think that most people could see through the hate and rise above the constant culture wars, but what worries me is that many seem to believe them.
Just look at the political reaction to the proposed pro Palestine/anti-Israel march scheduled for this coming Saturday, which just happens to be on Armistice Day, a solemn date for people around the world. While I would prefer the march to be held on another day, it is ironic that a protest nominally about seeking an armistice in the Middle East should be weaponised by Rishi Sunak and Braverman into what the latter might describe as a “hate march“, with suggestions that marchers should trash the Cenotaph. The march isn’t scheduled for the same time as the Armistice ceremony and has not been routed anywhere near the Cenotaph itself. Why do politicians make us so angry? Because they want us to be angry, that’s why. They want us to think they are on our side against the scroungers, foreigners, homeless people and the wrong sort of old people who all take and never give and cost lots of money, money that could be used, for example, as tax cuts for the better off.
To be honest, I’d probably prefer to look at photos of people’s dinner, or find out their latest blood pressure readings, instead of the calculated cynicism of Sunak’s tawdry, unpopulist government. It might be slightly mad, but it’s not vicious. a better kind of crap, maybe?
