Your Guide To Voting

Some people believe that voting is a waste of time. Many of those people are anarchists.

I don't think that's true. One doesn't need to support the system or those within it to use it to effect whatever changes can be wrought. My goal is to see class consciousness grow within society because without it meaningful social revolution is impossible. Until that time voting is the only tool we have. This is important for one fundamental reason:

If we don't vote, the Tories remain in power (though of course there are no guarantees and a ton of caveats). It is a shit situation.

Class consciousness cannot rise while people are battered by Universal Credit, disarmed by WCA tests and generally atomised by the cruelty of deliberate and ideologically driven impoverishment. People are too busy trying to put food on their table to worry about structural problems. Who can blame them?

So if Jeremy Corbyn can ameliorate some conditions - why on earth would you not support that when it's plainly in our interest to do so? You don't have to believe he's the second coming, you just have to vote out the Tories. This is also important because it sends a message to society; it puts them, as a ruling class, on notice. They and the values they represent are not welcome.

So why would you not do this?

It makes no sense to me: if you're putting ideology above the working class then your ideology is just a pile of ashes and you're the smartest person in the workhouse.

I agree with the ideology, by the way. They will use our vote for their own ends. They will try and propagandise it. But what is the alternative - simple answer: another term under an increasingly and shockingly hard right Tory party led by the most self entitled and egregiously buffoonish clown I have ever seen. This guy's bullish stupidity makes Theresa Mayhem's standoffishness look like warm embrace from Santa fucking Claus!

That's the alternative. That's what not voting achieves. We are where we are and we cannot move forward with ideology alone. There isn't sufficient revolutionary impetus and, if all that's required (and certainly all that I ask) is that you take five minutes to cast a vote, is that really too much to ask?

Labour has a chequered history for sure. It also currently has some (not all) members in councils engaged in violently damaging policies of social cleansing and gentrification. This is awful. but ask yourself: is that more or less likely to continue under a renewed Tory government? There is a good reason to believe that, under a Corbyn Labour government, the ground for that kind of behaviour will be much less fertile. Again there are no guarantees, we just have to do the best we can.

But to argue that Labour is as bad as the Tories because of things like this, which I hear often, is just facile. Clearly and demonstrably false; simply compares policies. Labour has plenty, many of which are reasonable and tolerable improvements, if not ideal. Conservatives have...? So far nothing - though we know what will happen: welfare entitlement will continue to be strangled, the NHS will be sold to the private insurance market, likely the US (something they have sought to do for decades), and Brexit will impoverish our economy turning us into a one party state and a tax haven benefiting no one in the working class, despite what they have misguidedly chosen to believe (that's a discussion for another day).

This is a period of shit choices, but they are still choices. We can make them, we can use what little power we currently have as part of the struggle to move forward. While these are shit choices to us and far from ideal. However, to the ruling elite, that power is something they would want us not to have and would seek to diminish as much as possible - why else do they want to introduce voter ID?

Look I despise jingoism and the "poppy fascism" brand of vote propaganda. But we don't need to buy into that to use our power against them. That power is precious though, regardless of whether you believe in said propaganda. Use it or lose...everything.

The Bitter Taste of Victory

Warning: this might sound incredibly ungrateful.

Yesterday the brown envelope arrived. It's been three months since my WCA. During that time I have prepared myself, as best I could, for failure. However it appears I have, again, succeeded. At least in respect of the Work Related Activity Group. The upshot of this is that I continue to attend compulsory biannual (at least for now) Work Focused Interviews. In fact my last one was a week or so after the WCA appointment. It was also a complete waste of time for reasons I've mentioned before. These interviews cannot help since they, essentially, are about victim blaming.

By my calculations I anticipate the next will be in January. It could even be next month. Failure to attend will affect a claim so passing the WCA is no guarantee of piece of mind at all. I am still having to watch the pennies in case the DWP pulls the rainy day button. It's insane really, that money has to be saved and not spent accordingly. Putting it back into the economy would be a better situation all round you'd think.

Believe me I could spend it!

It's a bitter victory because for three months I've institutionalised myself to the possibility of failure. Now that hasn't happened I'm still no better off in terms of freedom. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad not to have failed. I consider myself desperately lucky in that respect. But the arrival of success as a reality is a more mundane reality that imagined. I thought about what I might like to do with the money. That I might treat myself, but of course that just brings back the concerns about money, something that's forever been a source of guilt in my life.

I have never been a rich person, though, fortunately again, my circumstances are better than many. I'm lucky that I have a decent enough roof over my head and don't need to use a foodbank. But these are such basic concerns that, in 21st century Britain, surely no one should have to worry about their basic needs being met. Yet we know that isn't the case.

The amount paid on benefits really is such a pittance that you can't make informed choices at all. With enough money I could make significant changes and at least try to move forward. Yet the mindset of our leaders is such that it is best to keep people near poverty. Depressingly they criticise benefits as being a trap without realising the trap comes from the pittance they begrudgingly offer. Something that's merely a political football.

Yes I've succeeded. I'm damned lucky to have done so. But the reality of that success is just the realisation you are not any better off than before. In fact I have no idea when the next WCA call up will be. It 'should' be a year or so. But it could be anytime, though much likely to be later. It took them two years to organise this one and even that wasn't conducted properly (perhaps that was for the best!). Meanwhile I'm forced to attend work focused interviews and be dazzled with the dearth of opportunities that are on offer. Sooner or later my claim will be migrated from ESA to Universal Credit, or so I'm told. Won't that be fun.

What I need this system cannot provide. It is administered by people who see you as weapons in the political war for votes. Not people to invest in.

I hope this doesn't make me sound too ungrateful. I've won a prize. I just don't see how it changes my life. Things should be better than this. No one should have to deal with this rotten system to begin with. It's only a victory because the alternative is so terrible. The prize of not starving for an indeterminate period - until your next assessment. Round and round it goes

Mental Health - Tesco remix

In which I attempt to explain the lived experience, at least mine, of mental health. Let us paint a picture using...black...black like the crows eyes mother!

Ahem...

So I was going to talk more broadly. But having just returned from Tesco I have more succinct example of living in capitalist society with stress, suitably mundane. I'm short £3.58 (taunted by a receipt and my own ineptitude) because, caught by the stress of shopping and dealing with those godforsaken self service machines, I forgot to collect my change. The staff couldn't help. Of course that can't: it's a fact of capitalism that would lead that person, not Mr Tesco, to take the blame if they refunded my the money - which Mr Tesco could easily afford -  and found I'd scammed them. So they have to assume I'm not being honest.

That's what capitalism does to people. People who aren't Mr Tesco. People like me and I'm sure thousands of others struggling every day with not enough of anything except stress. Those machines are a nightmare and of course the shop itself is large loud and full of equally stressed people.

Although I can afford this, it doesn't mean it isn't a loss. I'm lucky in that I've saved my income for the inevitable (yet still distant as of writing) cancellation of my ESA and the forced migration onto UC.

I was just buying food and yet it has, thanks to capitalism and stressed mental health  (as if the two aren't connected), become onerous and difficult. Automated checkouts rarely work leaving the user to impotently rage at its programmed (and thus false) politeness while the minimum wage staff are replaced. No one wins here (except the lucky fucker who walked off with my change no doubt unawares).

There is no forgiveness for your mistakes. This system and the society it has bred cannot tolerate mistakes. Instead it labels you as at fault - which is technically true but the emotional weight is unnecessary. You are thus seen as a failure. Society shouldn't divide people like this, we all make mistakes, it's just some of us can't afford to endure that.

That's what it is to live in crisis, and, thanks to the Tories and their reforms, increasing numbers are having to.