Shitting Ourselves12 The Underclass Can't Count

The discriminatory British class system has seen many good developments through the success (and partially through celebrity) of so-called working class people. It still exists because we still use those terms. There is a pride to it. It is said we love a tryer and the ‘underdog’ in the UK. But we hate losers. There is no place for losers in the class system. Being physically disabled but mentally sound doesn’t make anyone a loser but, somehow, suffering ongoing mental difficulties of any kind is equitable with being a thieving druggie shit-bag. And if their illness doesn’t show, except for in subtle ways, they’re now regarded as a drain on the community. Tax payers are being badgered into believing that no-one has legitimate reason not to work. But what incentive is there for employers to consider employing someone with an illness? What reassurance is there, that the work they want to do will accommodate their illness and not exacerbate it, or that they won’t be placed under more pressure? None. There are reports on good practice and you can have a tribunal for discrimination. But the broader issues are not thoroughly worked through, as long as the government can cut public dependency on welfare. It doesn’t matter if a person is fighting their mind and emotions daily with all their might; it will count for shit, especially if they’re the type who don’t hit the bottle, or drugs, or kick off in public. They can’t be that ill and the government expects them to just snap out of it, so they can bail out more bankers. If they get their way, tax payers will be forced to follow their callous disregard whether they agree with it or not. They showcase a few cases of proven benefit fraud to promote the idea that everyone is shafting the system. They won’t show legitimate cases of severely disabled people who have been totally undermined and victimised by government and institutional policy. People who suffer with progressive illnesses are being denied benefits and dragged through the mire of appeal tribunals. Some are even penalised on the current level of help they barely get by on. But in the glossy pamphlets, this will appear as periodic reviews to ‘assure that a person receives all their entitlements’ not to see where they can make cuts. The poverty line, before the energy bills soared, was set at a hundred and fifty pounds per week. I want to see a documentary featuring Maggie Thatcher in disguise, attempting to exist on this and having to attend the humiliating medicals and work interviews and dealing with creditors and rent offices and doing her shopping etc. The most vulnerable people who cannot work and maybe do not have the level of awareness and spirit left to fight any injustice, will be expected to subsist on less than half that. I suggest that if this happens, all those worse off should invite themselves to politicians’ lunch and dinner engagements, or enter any town hall canteen at lunchtime. That’s the easiest trade off for keeping them off the streets with their machetes, since it became compulsory for someone with depression to carry one with them at all times. It isn’t the amount spent on methadone for heron addicts, or social services transport and facilities overheads, or the wages and expenses of benefit fraud investigators (what’s that – four or five investigators to one fraudster over maybe three years?), costing the tax-payer twelve billion per year. No… it’s those sponging ill people who don’t want to get out of bed. Don’t show us any ill people that actually spend their time industriously in support of their families, as carers, or volunteers; don’t show the consequences to them physically, from exerting themselves to the degree they can, in work they’d never be paid to do. Don’t tell us the actual percentage of fraudsters and the amount investigations have saved the purse – no, just pick out a couple of obvious cases and tar everyone with the same brush. That’ll get the vote. Yet many ill and vulnerable people contribute invaluable support to society. So, we call someone a loser based on a shallow cursory glance at a particular state they find themselves in, or a propensity for uncalculated comments to attempt to feel included where they are not wanted, or their dependency on a particular thing, or worse – their financial status, or their lack of contribution to society. We might look down on a road sweeper, but we’ll applaud Anthony Hamilton, or that Chinese CEO that Prescott was so fond of, for cleaning toilets. A road sweeper can be the biggest shit-stirring half-hearted skiver, but he’s contributing to society so he can hold his head up. A road sweeper in a crisis may be a life-saver, but at a party he’s only a road-sweeper – even in the mythological east-end square, where equality is the subtext and every entity has to claw tooth and nail (A-list celebrities included) through the morass of life’s extremes (save violence and intimidation – substitute plot and theatrics) to perpetuate their artificially cheeky, ballsy working

class status. It takes successful millionaire actors to convey the spunky struggling downtrodden. One or two of them may have started life in that suburb and made their current success courtesy of the role. That’s called ‘authenticity.’ But whatever the road-sweeper is (even if an A-list celebrity at a party), whatever class, however genuine or not, he may be a dad and he certainly is a son, a neighbour and a passer-by, but so what, anyone can be that, right? Some who consider themselves winners say, ‘I don’t suffer fools gladly.’ And we all know if you want to do something well, you get skilled and informed people around you. But who isn’t a fool at some point? Who doesn’t do foolish things? They don’t, obviously. How many people do we respect for a particular expertise, yet dismiss their petty immaturity, rudeness or downright ignorance? Being at the pinnacle of some career or achievement never stopped someone being a fool. Some are revered as leaders. On the other hand, imagine all the fools that have enhanced our lives, in entertainment, in relationships, in youth and old age. How many idiots make us laugh and we love it, even if they do not amount to much else in our estimations. Even narcissistic, alcoholic misanthropes can be amusing and even loved, but they’re usually actorrrrrs, even if they’re like that in real life, so they’ve made it. Not that they’ve been lucky; they’ve turned it into an art form or they must have bloody good reasons for being the shit-heads they are and good on them for putting two fingers up to the establishment. You have to be on telly to do that. So… how do you want to be treated when you’re a fool? Someone who says ‘I don’t suffer fools gladly’ just hasn’t woken up to life, for me. Or it translates into, ‘I prefer to surround myself with people who fit my evaluations.’ It’s intended as a self-recommendation and we all know how valuable that is, but it betrays a lack of humanity and deluded self-importance. Plenty of people have lightened up on this score – until they get picked for Big Brother. Self-importance is valuable but using this philosophy to sustain exclusive selfimportance comes before a fall. Your evaluations would soon change after one of them. And maybe even your associations. When it’s an illegal French-Algerian road sweeper that picks you up out of the gutter and does something none of your friends and family did, where’s your class distinction, racist, nationalistic, patriotic, moral, religious high ground, all of a sudden? ___