The View from the Hill

I took the long way back from Tesco (Express - that means it's slightly and inexplicably more expensive than the traditional superstore, and less well stocked). A nice walk down the hill, you know, the one through the farmland, toward the river and by the weir.

The farmer died a few weeks ago. He was a nice fellow. Apparently a few months, perhaps even years, ago he'd sold his land. Developers have been sniffing around for a few years now. Across their number they have tried to acquire multiple patches of land so they can make a profit of course. It's not about building to meet a need. We obviously have that, but these will not be affordable homes, nor will they exist in sufficient number to meet any reasonable demand.

This is just about making money from farmers that can't support themselves. This isn't NIMBYism, the land is for everyone to enjoy. Not just rich homeowners (whose number will now increase). I enjoy that land.

Or I used to. I could walk down that field, look out across to the hill, past the church. I could see the line of electricity pylons across the horizon. You might not think something so prosaic and unnatural could broaden the mind, but they served to define the parameters of that horizon, to bring to life, after a fashion. You take what you can from the world around you.

Unfortunately so do the developers. Now that view was obscured by metal fencing, locking walkers and ramblers into a narrow channel while leaving the labourers unmolested to cut a swathe into the land and lay the foundations for the houses that will steal my view.

I thought to myself: this is the last time I'll see that clock that hill and those pylons from that hill.

Every day a little piece of us is forever stolen. This is how they win.

If we let them

Your Daddy's Still Not a Nice Man!

This is a follow up; I've gone back and forth on this issue.

There's no doubt that a small group of anarchists will never be seen positively protesting the likes of the Tory elite and it's creepy darlings.

However reading this has made me think twice. I rewrote my original post as initially I was less forgiving to the Moggspring. While I don't want to see anyone's kids bullied or victimised or used as political capital, there are some mitigating issues here.

Firstly, it transpires that the protest was announced a few weeks ahead of time. So Mogg knew what was going to be happening. He was also clearly ok with being present - it, as he has gone on to say, was not something he felt bothered by.

Secondly, apparently, he brought his kids out during the protest. So not only did he not take them seriously, he obviusly didn't think his kids would either, nor that they would be in any danger (they weren't). Whether or not you agree with the actions taken, it's fairly clear and reasonable to suggest the experience hasn't damaged them. Good.

Mogg doesn't take this stuff seriously - and that's a problem. In order to defeat people like him - and we must - he must be made to feel the opposition constitutes a legitimate threat. I don't mean in terms of life and limb, to be clear. That he doesn't speaks to the arrogance of power, as reinforced by the media. Class War aren't there to be seen as positive by those gazing from the Overton Window. They are there to speak truth to power: to show that working class people are real, frustrated, and exploited. They demonstrated this by, rather benignly, addressing Mogg's nanny.

A fucking nanny. Clearly neither he nor his wife are up to the job of raising the six children they choose to have - three times as many as he allows those protesting him to have. Think about that.

This poor woman has worked for the Moggs for half a century. She's been there to wipe their bottoms, clean their bibs, and kiss the various 'its' the prodigy of the rich and powerful endure in their many mansions. Does she get treated well for this? We don't know she wasn't prepared - unsurprisingly, in front of her lord and master - to disclose her wage. But is it unreasonable to assume it would have been particularly generous given her station and her employer's belief in a vicious social hierarchy.

Regardless, the existence of this structure - of nannies and maids and butlers - is something that must die. It is a vile anachronism. No one should serve others in this fashion. No one should have 'betters', or lords and masters. This is dehumanising and degrading to the human spirit.

So, when it comes to the kids, their daddy is not a nice man.

Whether or not you agree with saying this, however calmly and non threateningly, to his children, whom he has chosen to wheel out (maybe even cynically), the fact remains. This is a truth they will have to rationalise at some point in their undoubtedly hyper-privileged lives. Their father (and he has a daughter) believes women should never be allowed abortions, even if they are victims of rape!

Of course tender age kids shouldn't have to ponder such realities as rape, but the truth is their father is a willing supporter of policies that are not just 'not nice' but actively destructive. He has a hand in the suicides of many, the suffering of thousands, and the deliberate starvation of many working class children throughout Britain. He deliberately and knowingly dismisses this through the tools of his class and privilege. That is, his world view is an artifice of class and power and that is why he must be brought down.

And rthat's before we address his headbanging pro-Empire worldview that would see the country burn. A site his kids will get to see from their mansion window possibly quite soon. His insane wrecking cabal of imperialists are happy to sell the rest of us down the river by any means possible to return us to a time that even time forgot. A collapsed economy in the name of King and Country.

If people think his children should be protected from the mean old man mildly insulting their father, then how are they going to feel when the revolution comes! When they lose their mansions and their father's wealth is expropriated and returned to the people?

Perhaps that's not likely to happen until well beyond the time their own kids are insulted by the grandkids of Ian Bone and Class War, but it must happen.

That doesn't mean they should be sent to the Tower, guillotine, or some other ghastly fate. No, they are human beings and should enjoy the same rights and provileges as the rest of us: food, shelter, clothing, health, fellowship and aspiration.

Just no more than you or I.

Your Daddy's Not A Nice Man!

Moggy, moggy, moggy....it's a rich man's world!

The sun rises and a group of protesters, called Class War, descend upon the (latest) home of the bewilderingly out of touch Jacob Rees Mogg. A man who thinks that rape should be rewarded with further brutality: the curtailment of women's rights is simply another assault the victim must endure. A man who thinks the existence of foodbanks - a symptom of cruelty and state created deprivation - is uplifting; thus he washes his soul in the misery he inflicts on others. The UnAmerican Psycho.

A man who thinks the Bedroom Tax is a carefully calibrated policy - yes, calibrated to fuck up the lives of many for no appreciable gain, such that they have to lie about the existence of a 'spare room subsidy' to mechanically justify its workings. A policy of ideology, not the remotest shred of pragmatism.

This man is abhorrent. His existence is an unwelcome counter productive anachronism supported, I would think, by a large business elite within his constituency. The mire from which this weed sprouts doing harm in god's name and, probably, god's accent. The lord, after all, is a plum-toned vicar from Hobbitonshire on the Wold after all. Heaven has no spare room subsidy.

So it's a fucking huge shame that, by allowing one idiot to address his kids, the points they had to make were lost. Inevitably the media were going to focus on that. Confronting Mogg is already an uphill battle in the eyes of the right wing media (which is 99% of the media).

Not a smart move.

But here's the thing. What they said was not untrue.

"Your daddy's not a nice man!"

Look. This is reality. Their father isn't a nice man. That's the truth. The real issue that should be discussed is the bizarre life this creature leads. He has a nanny for fuck's sake. His children are named as if they were Latin pronouns or adverbs. He doesn't live in the real world. He is functionally and genetically incapable of understanding our lives. How can he?

But

"Your daddy's not a nice man!"

Is not a good look. Like it or not, we live in the age of optics. One of the reasons Mogg does so well (ugh) is that he cultivates a privilege-cushioned posture of calmness. Something that's a lot easier to do when your own kids aren't starving.

That's the problem with the Class War debacle. There is a valid message that could have been put forward, that could even have involved, albeit indirectly, his kids without actually...involving his kids. That is: the Wee Moggs aren't going to sleeping on empty stomachs or waiting for a nutritionally bereft foodbank parcel. Their parents aren't going to be the ones struggling with the institutionally wicked deliberate chaos of Universal Credit.

They are not going to be on the sharp end of their father's policies.

"Your daddy's not a nice man!"

So instead of exposing the ridiculousness of this artificial human's lifestyle by throwing it into stark relief compared to the lives of the poorest, Class War resort to unfortunate type. They act like children who've discovered swear words for the first time. That's a shame because some of them are well read and should know better. The underdogs went for the dishonourable approach and the inevitable happened. What they could have done is what they did later focussing on Mogg's nanny and asking whether she gets paid a decent wage. Who knows if she does.

So the nation's kids will again go to sleep on empty stomachs, in poverty, and in crisis, all so the incredibly advantaged and privileged children of people who happen to have won life's lottery can have their feelings hurt. There is something desperately wrong here. None of this should have to be happening at all. But this horror persists because of stupid actions on the part of those opposing this system. We agree this system is intrinsically awful and cannot be reformed, but there is a journey to get past it and that journey is made steeper when you behave like a fool.

There should be no Jacob Rees Mogg's in this world. That should be the goal; no one should have this kind of power and privilege, look at what it does. I think Mogg is a mutant; a twisted product of radioactive society. Finance and privilege breed the dogs of capitalist war. For the good of us all they need to be taken down, their power de constructed and their wealth expropriated to be shared where it belongs - to all of us.

The Unkindness of Strangers

Or, The Internet Is a Shit Show.

Let's be honest. For all the wonderful things it brings, it is a very hostile place. Especially if you have mental health problems. That's not to say everyone using it is a horrible person, but that those who are face no consequences. It's the wild west and it's run by cliques and group think. If you fall foul of a prevailing consensus, things will go downhill and never change. In fact if you appeal or seek redress you will make things worse. The cognitive dissonance of this outcome, of the reasonable decision to try and clear things up only making things worse, is particularly toxic for mental health sufferers. For all the nice things and nice people that are online, the prevalence of toxicity remains a huge problem.

I don't know how to fix this; I am not an authoritarian and we certainly can't expect the likes of government (especially one that is killing the poor) to deal with this.

I feel obliged to point out that the above isn't a cover story for my own indiscretions. It is simply a statement of my own experience dealing with many online communities; they seem to be run by awful people. Individuals with a particular ideological, political, or social attitude that cannot be shifted nor reasoned with. If you fall foul of it, no matter how innocently, you will be treated pretty shabbily, all things considered.

This isn't to lose perspective - #firstworldproblems! - it is to point out that the internet offers a unique relatively open platform for discussion on a variety of issues. For individuals like myself that suffer social isolation it can also be a lifeline. That is why I take this seriously; to take that lifeline away through poor moderation or online bullying is actually a very cruel thing to do. Unfortunately one of the things that you cannot do online is admit your vulnerabilities because, again (and again perversely), this just makes it worse. In many ways this open platform operates like kids in a playground. It's desperately sad.

This is the new reality. It may not be what we want. It may not even be what we need. But for those of us with very little, it's what we've got. If I want to talk on certain topics the internet remains the best place to go. I don't have the opportunity to talk politics in real life. Yet when I try and do so online I have to navigate an invisible minefield of etiquette and digital mores that, if communication isn't your strong point, can trip you up. A box of text becomes a very different proposition than full human communication with its inflections, body language and tonalities. Something vital is lost in the translation between typing and sending, something that doesn't appear on screen.

For people who struggle to communicate well, perhaps if they are, like me neuro diverse, this becomes very difficult. People read what you have written as if it was something else and you will not understand why. It is as if you had written in a peculiar language that, to you, was as normal and clear as anything. Someone takes exception to a message that you felt was clearly written or well intended and that's where the trouble starts...

Because the internet is unforgiving. People's reactions will instantly redline. They will assume the worst and offer no charity. Benefit of the doubt doesn't exist online. If you fall foul of the moderation, then you will be excommunicated as if you'd punched the vicar in the face and pissed in the font. It is a ridiculous way to respond, it would never happen off line and for that reason I believe it to be unhealthy. In fact sa I type this I find myself assuming that whoever's reading this could be thinking "yeah, right...what did you say, what did you do?" Because of course I couldn't be saying this without being guilty of something, of breaking some forum rules. But that's the point, it can and does happen. It's toxic and it ought to be addressed. Unfortunately the only real solution is for these  communities to stand up and demand better of themselves. It's especially sad when it happens to progressive communities.

PS: hopefully the comments section is less onerous now, if people want to reply. Thanks