Winter's here for another week, that's for sure. I don't remember how I felt last time we had this weather, which I'm sure was a year ago. This isn't unseasonal or abnormal weather. I've gotten 'soft', though that's the language of toxic masculinity, the same culture that compels white van man (and it's only him that I see) to forego masks (and trousers). It's the pandemic. There is going to be a vast culture shock when this is all over and whatever passes for normality rushes in, filling the vacuum like air escaping a baloon.
Let's be clear; the government's bizarre heel-dragging over the issue of borders is because they don't want to stop oligarchs and their lackeys. They want their money. Buy up working class properties, all at the behest of people claiming to care about the working class, like the Labour mayor of London. Despite all the racist shit he has to put up with, he's just another crony capitalist. London needs that money, it's in a permanent state of financial transfusion.
I'm not the first to say it, but say it I must. To add my voice to the chorus: if you want to honour the memory of Captain Sir Tom (or is it Sir Captain?), then fund the NHS. If. Of course they don't, anymore than they want to honour the memory of an old fella whom no one had even heard of (especially the Tories) prior to his perambulations. In fact they only learned who he was because of their failings: he felt compelled to act because the NHS was, is, in dire straits. That it remains so shows how his and their ideology fail alike, though for different reasons.
He failed because he bought into the state supported notion that one must act within the system, thereby serving as a pressure valve. Taking the focus away from where it should be: government inaction. His intentions were beyond reproach, but the dismal spectacle of an old boy wandering around his garden for charity evoked sympathy which more than the cause itself compelled a response. If the cause was the primary motivator for donations then people would have acted directly. They haven't, and won't, and that is the problem with acting within the system. This isn't to castigate Tom, but he's a product of this system and its culture, even more intensely given he was a soldier. Don't question things.
Now he's a hero. Ok, why? He's a hero to the ruling class for precisely the reason I've just said. As far as I'm oncerned he's a well meaning decent old guy who's life was stolen by him by the people he ended up supporting. It's tragic beyond words. His effort didn't protect and it didn't help save the NHS. There's no doubt it will do some good, which is commendable, but this is an all or nothing deal: either support the NHS properly, campaign directly and fight the Tories, somehow, or be co opted through the system by them. Now they lionised him. If he was truly effective then he'd have been a threat to this system, and thus a real asset. Such people don't get statues or the praises of the confused and the little Englanders on Twitter and in the Daily Mail.
It's sad that his last days weren't spent in luxury and comfort (in whatever way he would have wanted). Instead, the government his actions unwittingly supported put him hospital from where he never returned.
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