Monday, 5 October 2009

"Caring" for the infirm and the disabled.

Introducing Disasterdly David and Boris the Bonking Bludgeon.

4th October 2009

It’s the eve of the pre-election-year Tory Party Conference and Thatcher clone, Disasterdly David Cameron, can’t wait to remove the skin of reasonability that he donned in order to win over the public, in order to reveal the true blue extreme Tory, who he really is.
Has he got this right?
In 1979 his role model waited until she had stepped across the threshold of 10 Downing Street before she peeled off the first of her coat of many colours and began to reveal her true self. This included quoting the words of St Francis of Assisi to the television audience on the eve of her election to government before embarking on a ten-year programme of bringing chaos, fear, patronisation, and disregard, to the elderly, the infirm, the disabled, the working (soon to become the "under") class, and, the children of all of the above.
She had, of course, ridden to mass popularity on the claim that she had been raised by that most humble of trades people, the local grocer. This fact that could be manipulated to make her appear as having been raised in a working class, or, at best, lower middle-class environment. As we got to know more about her it became obvious that her childhood experiences had been far from typical of those of others of her age group who were raised in families of these types.

Disasterdly David has, for his own reasons, played his cards much closer to his chest when it comes to revealing details about himself which might reveal the person who hides behind the coat of many colours that he has worn since he came to public attention.
So what do we know about him?
We know that he attended Eton public school from where he graduated to Oxford University, the well worn route to success for many a Tory politician, and yet he chose to end his first public broadcast as a prospective leader of the Tory party by telling the listeners to "keep it real". The phrase, belonging to current youth street culture, sounded both incongruous and patronising when delivered with the accent of, and amid the flow of, received pronunciation, bestowed on him by his upbringing.
Since then his attempts to get on down, and, "keep it real" as a man of the people have seen him riding a bicycle to work to prove his green credentials, a "stunt" revealed by the press who published photographs of him being followed on his bicycle by a car in which his briefcase was travelling.
"Keeping it real" for Disasterdly David, does not include a direct answer to the "have you smoked pot?" question that journalists have thrown at every eminent politician of the last decade or so. The questions this evasion raises are: 1: did he use it? and he is refusing to say so because this may alienate the well-known law and order lobby within his party, or: 2: did he not take it and is he refusing to say so because this might damage his "street cred" with those who really do keep it real.
Among his pre-party leader achievements within the Conservative party he was an adviser to Norman Lamont at the time of the "Black Wednesday" stock market crash, before becoming and adviser to the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, a man whose policies and persona were in keeping with all of the universally loathed aspects and attitudes of the Conservative party which saw them dumped by the electorate at the 1997 general election.

And so we arrive at October 4, 2009, the eve of the final Conservative party conference before a general election and the introduction of the first "true blue" Tory policy by Disasterdly David. At the time of highest unemployment since the 1970s we might reasonably have expected Disasterdly to tell us what he and his advisers propose to do to address this. But no. Disasterdly wants to brag about how he and his chums plan to bully and intimidate the infirm and the disabled by forcing ½ million of them to return to work.

Now, speaking as someone with disability I know that he cannot possibly mean this. Most of us, the ‘disabled’ that is, are unemployable because no one is going to employ someone with a history of breaks in employment caused by an illness or disability. This is especially true when there are millions of other unemployed persons without such a history.
As disabled persons we know this to be a fact because many of us found it impossible to obtain paid employment during the years of plenty we have just lived through. Those persons of disability who are employable already work while the majority of those of us who cannot would love to. My own, not untypical history, includes continuing to work for ten years after I was first ‘medically advised’ to stop working. This period included, after five years, gaining further qualifications to obtain alternative employment when my disability led to me being ‘medically retired’ from my chosen career.

Disasterdly David's experience of disability is said to be comprehensive. He claims this to be the case because he has a severely disabled child who requires 24 hour care.
So what?
As distressing as his child's disability might be, his experiences bear no relation to those of the majority of those of us with disability, or of thoser who care for us. In fact, the ways in which different people manage and cope with their disability and/or chronic illness is so subjective that, apart from common symptoms, it is impossible to compare any one of us with any other.
Disasterdly’s son is representative of a small minority of "helpless" disabled persons. It is unlikely that he will ever experience the feelings of uselessness that so many of us with disability feel because we are unable to fully participate in the society in which we live. This includes being unable to gain full time employment either because it is physically impossible, or because better qualified persons (in this respect) than Disasterdly David tell us it is medically unwise for us to attempt to do so.
The assumption of Disasterdly David and his chums that many of us "CHOOSE" a lifestyle on invalidity benefit in preference to employment is so ridiculous that it would be laughable if it were not so patronisingly insulting. For five years I have struggled to keep hold of my own home. Because of my invalidity benefit I am given relief from paying my community charge, (money denied to my excellent local government department, not national government), but the expense involved in purchasing and maintaining my home and essential services means that I have £30 a week for food, toiletries, cleaning products, and, clothing. I find it almost impossible to conceive that anybody could think I would choose to live like this.
To "sugar the pill" of their bullying philosophy Disasterdly David and his chums are telling me their proposed actions are intended "to give me a better life". Rubbish. If they really want to give me a better life they should invest money into research that will lead to the mending of my damaged spine and nerves, the relief of the permanent pain I experience as a consequence of this, and the cause and treatment of my lifelong depressive illness, once manageable, but now permanent and all consuming because of the permanent chronic pain I experience. If I was not also diabetic I would not be able to afford the items on my monthly prescription which address these other ailments!

Beware. If you are a woman, an immigrant, retired or infirm. Disasterdly David's other current pet project, that of concealing his climb down regarding a referendum on the European community by saying there will be a referendum and debate of other community issues, is doublethink for a planned reneging on the social welfare aspects of the European Community.
Disasterdly and his chums are looking for an excuse to return to the type of bullying of all minority groups that they perpetrated in the past. Now, as a member of two minority groups which have never been adequately protected from the excesses of national governments because we are too small in number to affect things with our votes, (I refer to the mentally ill and the disabled), I can tell those of you who have grown up under the protection of those charters to prepare for a big shock.

One of the things Disasterdly refuses to discus is his membership of “Elite” Oxford University group “The Bullingdon Club”. This group appears to have existed for no purpose other than serving the hedonistic ambitions of the members. A colleague of Disasterdly in The Bullingdon Club” was Boris, the Bonking Bludgeon. Given the Bludgeons predisposition to blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time Disasterdly must live in trepidation of a light being shone into this murky corner of his life at any moment. For all of his faults it is unlikely that Disasterdly will resort to sending the heavies around to silence him, this being one of the Bludgeon’s reported favoured solutions to dealing with those he or his chums disagree with.

So who is the Bonking Bludgeon?
Despite his reputation for wearing his heart on his sleeve it is interesting to note from their reactions at the time of his election as Mayor of London that neither Paul Merton or Ian Hislop were aware of the extent to which Bludgeon was utilising his apparent buffoonery to seduce the voting masses when he frequently appeared on their current affairs satire programme “Have I Got News For You”. Was the BBC ever so cleverly manipulated?
I have resisted adding the term, “Buffoon” to the Bludgeons title here, as some of the reporting media do, because that term implies an unsophisticated and embraceable human vulnerability. The Bludgeon’s manipulation of the media on his way to obtaining the Mayoralty betrays an ambitious calculating personality hiding behind his floppy fringe and mischievous schoolboy grin.
The truth is that he got elected to the Mayoralty because he promised his friends in the suburbs that he would scrap Ken Livingston’s “green” policies of extending the boundary of the traffic “congestion charge” and taking action to reduce the numbers of petrol consuming four wheel drive “People Carriers” that clog the roads throughout and around London at school drop-off and collection times.
Sadly, he also got elected because idiots like me thought he was so un-electable that we did not bother to vote. Sorry world, but we learned, and in the words of Pete Townsend, “We won’t get fooled again”
Within days of being elected to his new role Bludgeon demonstrated both racist and sexist traits, and he rejected the questions of one television journalist by “La La La-ing” over her questions in the manner of a petulant 6 year-old. I bet we will never see him responding to Jeremy Paxman like that.
So why “Bonking”? Well, that’s how he is known around the world because, at the time of his election to Mayor, that is how the foreign correspondents of the world media described him as they recounted for their readers how Disasterdly David had sacked him from the shadow cabinet because he, the Bonker, had lied to Disasterdly when confronted about a reported love affair. There goes the innocence and the credibility then, he is a proven liar, not the ‘lovable rogue’ terms like ‘Bonking’ and ‘Buffoon’ imply. Quite disturbing when considered alongside the fact that nearly all of his appointed right hand men, (yes MEN, not many women here), have already been forced to resign for carrying out actions he either sanctioned or was aware of. On The evidence of his term so far he is not fitted for the role of Mayor of Trumpton, let alone Mayor of one of the world’s major cities.

So why does the Bonking Bludgeon appear here. Well, Disasterdly David is well aware of Bludgeons ambition to oust him one day so I think we should be too.
In apparent defence of Disasterdly’s attempts to conceal his climb down over the European Community referendum Bludgeon is reported to have “suggested the Tories could offer voters a "consultation" on relations with Europe”.
The interesting thing is that he does not attempt to define the areas of proposed consultation.
One of the major similarities between Disasterdly and Bludgeon is that they are both very skilled at throwing out Headline grabbing sound-bites that they refuse to elaborate on or justify.
Those of us who survived Thatcher are very familiar with this tactic. Watch this space.

References:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/05/conservatives-eu-lisbon-treaty-referendum

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/4502656.stmPublished: 2005/12/06 15:13:44 GMT: © BBC MMIX

http://www.24dash.com/news/Central_Government/2009-10-02-When-Boris-Met-Dave-TV-documentary-not-political-stirring-Channel-4

http://www.cbc.ca/news/reportsfromabroad/murray/20080429.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/so-who-is-david-cameron-and-why-are-we-so-keen-to-know-the-truth-of-his-past-511159.html

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