TELL YOUR CHILDREN
“I believe that the children are the future
- The Vandals
Tell your children, when they ask,
the true cause of their dismay this holiday season.
Tell them the truth about the last 14 years:
how it could so easily have been avoided
if the country they were born into
exhibited just a little more empathy,
self-awareness
or even basic intelligence.
Tell them about the Conservative Party,
and a project called Austerity.
A straight-up transfer of wealth from bottom to top
A policy whose architects were born into unimaginable wealth
and privilege
but who decided to use those advantages to entrench further economic
disparity.
Tell them the names George Osborne and David Cameron
Men apparently born to rule
who once torched banknotes in front of the homeless
and had the temerity to claim “we’re all in this together”
as if every last one of them is not isolated from the
effects of their actions.
Merrily ensconced in a web of parachutes and safety nets
they so casually deny to others;
all hail the awful, gilded world of action without
consequence.
Tell them about the 335,000 excess deaths attributed to this
policy decision,
as documented in a recent academic study
in the Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health.
Tell them about millionaires in the Cabinet
who lecture us endlessly about “hard choices”
while signing away public services with the stroke of a pen.
A raft of “difficult decisions” which reveal so much about
the people making them
yet say still more via the road not taken:
Choosing instead to lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses
and protect the interests of the gambling industry
rather than help those in genuine need.
Tell them about the so-called “Big Society”
and its interminable proliferation of food bank use in a
nation of plenty.
Tell them how the Conservatives voted repeatedly to let children go hungry
and had to be shamed into corrective action by a Premier
League footballer.
Tell them why their local community hub is crumbling
and staffed by volunteers;
About how former Education Secretary Michael Gove insisted
that children should be reading 50 books a year
while his government engaged in a systematic mission
to close down every public library in the country.
Tell them about Iain Duncan-Smith and the Department for Work and Pensions.
About the systematic hounding of those unable to sell their labour
About continual sanctions, online forms and hoops that must
be jumped through:
the kind of bureaucratic labyrinth of which Kafka would be proud.
Tell them about a company called ATOS,
which turned the disabled into numbers on
a Spreadsheet for the sake of private profit;
About the Poundland scandal, and enforced volunteering for less
than the minimum wage.
Tell them about their co-option of the word “compassionate”
so late in the game:
About the sheer effrontery of the notion of a “Compassionate Conservative”
A term bandied around like some deranged badge of honour
As if being compassionate should not be the fucking default.
Tell them about a concept called “Brexit”:
an internal party-political squabble transposed to national nightmare.
About “lower energy bills”, “more cash for the NHS”;
all lies told brazenly and fake promises broken.
An eight-year farce with no end in sight
Economic isolationism
with precisely zero benefits;
Its adherents slinking quietly away
like so many shuttered storefronts.
National sovereignty restored: a label on a pint glass
A lovely blue passport like back in the old days
God save the fucking King.
A nation finally brought to its knees, too proud or
pig-headed to beg
for the teat of communal assistance;
Boy, we sure know how to stick it to those global elites.
Tell them about Theresa May and her “hostile environment”,
and about the 83 naturalised British citizens
wrongfully
deported as part of the Windrush Scandal.
Tell them about a “swarm” and “invasion” on our seas
About “vile people smugglers”
About boats found washed ashore with dozens of missing inhabitants
and an administration having to be actively dissuaded from
installing wave machines
in coastal areas
to beat back the tide.
As if we haven’t been telling refugees for years now that
our way of life is superior
or driven them slowly inwards towards our hallowed isle
through decades of armed conflict that we helped propagate.
But just remember who the real enemy is next time you go to
the polls:
a five-year-old girl from Syria
and a single mum from the Sudan.
Tell them, then, about Priti Patel and Suella Braverman:
Children born to immigrant families
who couldn’t summon the common decency to extend the same opportunities
to others.
People whose chronic lack of empathy was such that they made
it their “dream”
to deport those seeking a better life.
A finer example for your child’s aspirations, you never could hope to set;
Dream big, kids,
for one day you too could rank among the world’s most
irredeemable bastards.
Tell them about Awaab Ishak
A young boy in Rochdale whose short life lasted just 24 months
and who died of complications sustained from untreated mould
in his Council flat.
Tell them about how the Secretary of Housing had the temerity and the gall
to call this situation “unacceptable”
As if the party he is a proud, paid-up member of -
a party in which a full quarter of its MPs are private landlords -
hadn’t voted for years against making rental properties fit for human
habitation
or choked the social housing sector of vital funding.
Tell them, then, about a tower block in Grenfell
That seething, smouldering eyesore
A monument to corporate and legislative malfeasance
which is somehow still allowed to stand when 72 of its
former inhabitants cannot.
Tell them about the design flaw baked into the system
which allows its subcontractors to play an endless round of
pass-the-parcel,
one in which the music ultimately stops but there is no
responsibility,
accountability
or - more accurately –
liability
to be found gift-wrapped at the centre.
Tell them about Boris Johnson
That lovable, philandering rogue turned “Man of the People”.
This buffoon, this charlatan, this posturing circus clown
with whom the average citizen
shares about as much in common as they do with
a garden-variety hog.
Tell them about one rule for them and another for the rest of us:
about parties which raged in Downing Street while the nation sat obediently in
forced isolation
Merrily taken for the fools we are
for allowing ourselves to believe that this man could ever
be one of us.
Tell them names like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries:
People who bemoaned the erosion of respect in public life
while blithely facilitating acts of state violence and
cultural vandalism.
Tell them about David Amess,
the stick to beat your hypocrisy with:
Martyred and sanctified
But whose voting record exists in perpetuity for all the
world to see.
A man who cared more for animals than he ever did about
welfare recipients
or the less able-bodied
But who smiled a lot at local events, so that’s okay.
A “nice man”, all things considered;
Beatified in death like Thatcher before him.
But be sure to tell them all how now is “not the moment” to
discuss these things
Because have you ever noticed
how now is never the moment.
Tell them about an imported “Culture War”
which saw those born into a gender which is not their own
used as a political punching-bag for the sake of scoring
cheap points.
Tell them about fusty poets removed from the syllabus
About manufactured outrage
About reading lists “hijacked” by black authors
About university speakers “cancelled”;
All stories wilfully misconstrued to inflame those with a
vested interest
in maintaining the status quo.
Tell them about how “freedom of speech” was supposedly under
attack from
Gen-Z snowflakes
And how “virtue-signalling” applies to every act of rudimentary social
conscience
bar, of course, the wearing of a poppy.
Tell them how all these measures
which, coincidentally, have a disproportionate effect on
people of colour
were summarised in a report that claimed – perhaps somewhat
audaciously -
that institutional racism is a myth.
Signed, sealed and delivered;
It’s life, Jim, but not as you know it
Hundreds upon thousands of citizens gaslit on a national
scale
as they’re told they need to “change the narrative”;
As if the concept of racism itself has somehow been
overstated
in spite of all lived experience
and basic evidence to the contrary.
Tory Blue, yet still white through and through.
Tell them about the ongoing criminalisation of protest
and the mindset of a government which hands out 10-year jail sentences
for vandalising statues of slave-owners
but refuses to prosecute or even sanction corporate tax
evasion.
Tell them about Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism,
and how isn’t it strange that Conservatives only seem to give
a fuck about these issues
when it serves their own immediate political ends.
Tell them, then, about Prevent and Islamophobia
About the weaponisation of the term “woke”,
trotted out as a noun to belittle those who’ve finally
become wise to their bullshit.
“Wokie” the new “darkie” -
the ultimate modern-day dog-whistle;
the unsayable made palatable for mass consumption.
Then tell your children, in light of all this,
how you expect them now to grow up and become
functioning members of an increasingly-multicultural society
without having ever been taught anything meaningful about
history
or diversity
or tolerance.
Tell them about Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng:
Farcical adherents to a 40-year-old discredited economic
theory
which insists the wealth will one day “trickle down”.
Neoliberal ideologues whose comedic antics wrought disaster
for millions
while delivering ridicule on a global scale.
The ultimate in bitter irony:
“Live by the markets, die by the markets”
A failed experiment turned national punchline
The final decimation of the dream of home ownership
The joke, as ever, merely on us
while predatory speculators grow ever-richer betting against
the pound
and we’re all left to ponder how the only thing that ever
“trickled down”
was the distinct feeling of getting pissed on from a great
height
and being told to pretend like it’s raining.
Tell them about the much-vaunted promise of “strength and
stability”
while delivering neither;
About refusing to allow ourselves to get “taken back to the
1970s” of high inflation,
strikes and social unrest
Before taking us right back to the 1970s of high inflation, strikes and social
unrest.
Tell them about a prolonged cost-of-living crisis
and how taxpayer money was handed to energy companies already generating
billions
in surplus revenue.
Tell them how they allowed essential commodities like water,
transport and energy
to be run for private gain ahead of the national interest;
About a health service in ruins
and a mental health crisis become national psychosis.
I just checked in to see what condition my condition was in:
Anxiety, depression, burnout and fatigue the “New Normal”
in a country where we’re told that “No-one wants to work
anymore”
Small wonder
in a world of zero-hours contracts, casualised labour and
demonised collective action
Worker pitted against worker
Sector against sector
Mick Lynch, the “Christmas Grinch” for having the audacity
to stand up and say:
“No more.”
Tell them about the myth of competence:
About names like Michael Gove, Grant Shapps and Jeremy Hunt
Men of infinite indistinction
Jacks-of-all-trades but masters of none
Shuffled from one cabinet post to another as a “safe pair of hands”
while everything they touch turns gradually to shit.
King Midas in reverse; a true emperor without clothing.
Tell them, then, about the Great Magic Trick:
the myth of “Levelling Up”
That infernal sleight-of-hand which deprives communities of basic sustenance
for the best part of a decade
That slashes funding
That starves vital services of the oxygen they so
desperately need to survive
and then claims to ride in on a white horse as our noble
saviour.
With one hand they taketh, and the other they give back:
bestowing so generously upon the grateful masses
that which was already theirs to begin with.
’Twas ever thus in the endless merry-go-round of a party
who do not believe in the idea of a State,
and whose figurehead and contemporary spiritual role-model
once said:
“There is no such thing as society”.
Tell them about a party which supposedly did “so much for women”
by electing three grotesque incompetents to the nation’s
highest office
Then tell them the names Zara Aleena, and Sabita Thanwani, and Sarah Everard
Victims of institutionalised assault, harassment and murder
and a police service perverted to the core by the perpetual
need to be “tough on crime”.
Tell them all about these “shocking tragedies”, which strangely remain neither
a shock
nor even much of a surprise
to the majority of women.
Tell them about the absence of consent education in your child’s classroom
and a wilful, singular failure to observe the basic
relationship between cause and effect
because we all just need to “let children be children”.
About how phrases like ‘toxic masculinity’ are considered
“unhelpful posturing”
rather than a vital social imperative.
Tell your children,
your sons in particular,
in the absence of meaningful government action
to respect and honour bodily autonomy and biological
difference
while embracing commonality.
I will say it once more but now shout it with force:
FEMINISM
HELPS
MEN
Tell them all this while showing them Andrew Tate’s array of shiny fucking cars
and explain how they’ll likely never be rich, despite their best
intentions.
Tell them about the myth of aspiration
The great lie of a meritocracy which seems to exist only for
those
with the requisite means, motives, opportunities
or accident of birthright.
Tell them how this was part of their grand scheme all along:
the stick that follows the carrot to direct us all
straight down the nearest rabbit-hole.
Tell them about just existing
Day-to-day and week-to-week
Paycheque to paycheque
One casual wrist-flick of circumstance away from joining the ranks of the
destitute.
It is exactly what they want
For they consider it a moral failing
to be poor and without means
in a system designed to keep us all locked firmly in our place.
Tell them, then, about a world in which the only art celebrated
is that with a proven commercial value.
About how anyone who belittles university degrees in “Mickey Mouse subjects”
should be stripped of the right to read a book, or listen to
music,
or enjoy any form of visual entertainment
Since it is so often conveniently forgotten that your daily
source of escape
represents another person’s dream, calling, or source of
employment.
Tell them, yes, about a global pandemic and an illegal war
waged by a lunatic dictator
But let them never be used as an excuse
- as they so often are nowadays –
for their own party’s political shortcomings.
Tell them about endless debates on BBC bias while an entire schedule is given
over for
ten whole days
to rolling coverage of a monarch’s death
The speed of accession validated with not one dissenting
voice allowed to speak in opposition
Because have you ever noticed
how now
is never
the moment.
Tell them all these things. Tell them that basic
numeracy is instilled at Primary School-age,
and how the majority of adults will never have a use for
GCSE Maths beyond the age of 16.
Tell them about the slashing of alternative energy programmes,
then seeming
somehow surprised
by the advent of a global energy crisis.
Tell them how they voted en masse to allow water companies
to dump thousands of gallons of shit into our rivers and
seas.
Tell them about tuition fees trebled and student debt multiplied;
About PPE procurement scandals and millions in missing taxpayer funds;
About peerages handed out like tombola prizes to cronies and oligarchs;
About endless attempts to force through boundary changes in a further bid to rig
the electoral map in their favour,
and the wholly superfluous introduction of voter ID to ensure just that.
Tell them about the distortion and sabotage of the referendum on voting reform
so that proportional representation remains off the table
for at least another three decades.
Tell them about their stupid fucking “power stance” at Tory Party Conference.
But above all else, tell them this:
Tell them what it felt like to barely survive this cold,
hard winter
To have lived freezing, broke and without hope
Tell them to remember this feeling
To hold it in their bones
and revisit it at the ballot-box for generations to come.
Tell them all these things, and remind them:
That
is what it felt like
to live
under a Conservative government.
C.C. Jan 2023
