I was talking on twitter (as I do) last night? This morning? I can’t remember now. I was discussing the current government’s latest attack on the vulnerable, this time using the exam system as a political points scoring system, turning children’s education upside down.
I think it is possible that education needs some attention.
I think it’s utterly wrong that it’s a party political issue – education and health should be outside the sad little tit for tat that our increasingly homogenous political parties engage in.
I hate politicians.
Yes, I hate them. I hate the way they sit in ivory towers and make sweeping pronouncements about lives they know nothing about. I hate their self righteous lying as they dip their hand in the expenses tray and pretend that they are doing nothing wrong while wiping out benefits for people living on next to nothing. I hate that if I dislike this government (and how I do) my alternative is the last lot, who were an authoritarian nightmare, spreading lies and besmirching the reputations of home educating parents everywhere, in a quest for ever increasing control of every aspect of our lives.
How would it be if we didn’t have politicians? What do we need them for? They don’t balance the books, that much is horribly apparent. What is it that they are doing for us? They aren’t looking after the vulnerable, instead they are attacking them and people are dying in fear and poverty.
Yes, in this country, in this land of plenty, people are dying in fear. You read that right. It’s down to the welfare reform bill, and it is utterly disgusting that we aren’t up in arms about it and marching in the streets. But we’re not, we’re not even signing the petition against it in any great numbers.
I think there’s a reason for that. I think we can’t face the real issues of what is going on around us, or we just crumble and fall. And we can’t do that, we have to keep on keeping on, you have to do the washing, the washing up, the shopping, figure out who needs to be at cubs, when the swimming lesson is, how you are going to make ends meet when jobs are hard to come by and the world is tough.
And this is how they win. The politicians, the unchanging political class who remain unaffected by the changes they impose on the rest of it. Want to work out how benefit cuts affect them? They don’t. NHS cuts? Not bothered, they’ll go private. Schools being changed – their kids are at private ones anyway.
It’s utterly utterly wrong. But though I’m desperate, I don’t know what to do about any of it. Do you?
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