Personal Blogs

(Contains strong opinions, she's angry today, you have been warned!!)

I am angry today, very, very angry, about bankers and the whole austerity package that has been dumped on everyone, everyone that is, EXCEPT bankers and tax-dodging millionaires and billionaires. 

I watched the news during the week about Greece, and it really upset me to see people in such distress and to hear how the suicide rate is soaring. This part of Ireland had the dubious honour of the highest suicide rate in Europe at one time, and if you had to live here, believe me you would really understand why, but it's Greece and the banks we're on today, we'll get back to Ireland (North and South) another day.

What I don't understand about the whole austerity/economic crisis is this.

The bankers lent money, recklessly, to people who couldn't really afford to be borrowing on the scale that they were allowed to, BY the banks. Then the banks failed and they were bailed out of the public purse. Now the 'public purse' is your tax money, which I am sure you all know because I'm sure anyone who reads this blog is intelligent, knowledgeable AND politically aware!!!!

So when they failed, we bailed them out, (by the way do you remember anyone asking you, if you wanted to bail them out, no, neither do I). So the banks lost all the money, were given all our taxes to 'save' them and they still get to keep all the defaulted property. And now, they are busy throwing people out of their homes and taking back properties that rightly belong to us, THE TAXPAYER!!!! 

And here's another thing, why are they not paying back the money they received in the bail out FROM THEIR PROFITS? WE all have to pay our loans back so WHY DO THEY NOT HAVE TO????? This is wrong morally, ethically, politically and logically.

So why is no-one else asking these questions and challenging these bail outs? Why are the left and the socialists not screaming from the rooftops????

I'll tell you why, it's because the so-called party of the left, sold it's soul under Tony Blair and dumped the working classes. Tony Blair was no child of Labour, he was a Thatcherite, born and bred!!  And if you’re expecting Ed Milliband to do any better, then forget it, because he really needs to grow a pair and start standing up for something more than trying to out-soundbite bloody Cameron. (Wasn’t it great to watch him squirming at Leveson this week??? The whole thing, to quote Baby Herman, ‘STINKS LIKE YESTERDAYS DIAPERS!!!’)

And how did this whole rotten mess begin, well, it wasn’t with Gordon Brown as the Tory party would try and have you believe, it began with Thatcher. She smashed the working class political power base, the Unions (I know they needed some reform but they have been annihilated, helped in no small measure by the whole rotten Murdoch media empire and those other right-wing rags, you know of whom I speak), and then brought in the so-called Free Market Monetarist policies, which of course led to the opening up of the markets so we all could get rich, lifted all the banking controls and let the market take care of AND, regulate itself, and we all know how that turned out now, DON’T WE??!!!  Yes, because now we’re all rich and happy, aren’t we???  Oooops!

(Just on the subject of the Murdoch rags, it’s amazing how many ‘Irish Republicans’ buy The S** (it pains me to even mention it) and have the satellite dish up on the roof. They are quite happy to contribute to the media empire of Maggie Thatcher’s old mate and staunch supporter, funny that, but politics is a funny old game, innit?)

Anyway, back to the bankers and the spineless politicians who won’t stand up to big business and do the job WE ARE PAYING THEM TO DO. Remember that, AS LONG AS YOU ARE PAYING TAX, DAVID CAMERON IS YOUR EMPLOYEE, YOU PAY HIS SALARY, maybe, we all need to remind THEM of that.

So, what can we do about it all anyway, Greece, the whole mess? Well, here’s an idea to help the Greeks, why don’t we give them the Olympics to keep. Instead of this faffing around the globe every fours years, let the games stay in Greece where they began. I wonder do they have a copyright on them, or even if you can copyright them, and give them back the Elgin Marbles while we’re at it.

And why should we?, (I can hear Thatcher’s children cry) well, again, I will tell you why, because they are HUMAN BEINGS and they need help. They didn’t cause this mess, just as most of you didn’t either, but they are paying for it, big time, and let’s be thankful, the REAL Labour men of the past who set up the Social safety net, (so despised by the Right and which Cameron and co desperately want to get rid of) which just about keeps us from being completely crushed by austerity.

And let’s start talking politics again, turn off that drivel, X Factor, Y Factor, who gives a crap factor and lets start DEMANDING that OUR EMPLOYEES start governing this country for ALL the people in this country and not just for their friends and cronies, and REMIND your Labour politicians of what their party used to stand for before they were infiltrated by the Thatcherites, and remind yourself daily, (or at least monthly) of the working class struggles of the past, re-discover the writings of ORWELL, (read Animal Farm and dare to challenge the myth that it doesn’t apply to capitalism) find out about PETERLOO, TOLPUDDLE, the CHARTISTS, teach your daughters about the SUFFRAGETTES: remember the Miners and the Liverpool dockers, and the UNIONS who used to fight for the working classes, and how and why they began.

And if you do all that, you can be sure that when the revolution comes, you'll definitely be on the right side.

And finally and MOST importantly, when you have done all that, put on  a black beret with a star on the front, and shout out loudly and clearly while punching the air -

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!!!

(And if you don't know what that means, make it your business to find out, or else, just ask someone who lived through the 70's!!)

I read this book the other day, The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. It's about madness or what is, or is not, madness and it raises as many questions as it answers. 

Going insane might be one of our worst fears along with serious illness, or something terrible happening to our children but after reading this I am now feeling highly reassured. I am never going to worry about going mad at all again because after reading this, I figure we're all a little bit crazy anyway, and some of us may even be a whole lot crazy but if we're not really harming anyone and managing to function in our lives, well, where's the problem?? Because what is normal anyway?? Does anybody even know?? 

Well you could say that it’s normal to get up and go to work every day. Ok then, think about this -  is it really normal to get up and go to work every day, the way we do? 

To slog your way through crowds and traffic, to sit in a building doing stuff for a company or corporation, to make money for them so they can pay you money to buy stuff, most of which you don’t really need, for a house, you didn’t really want, to begin with. 

Then you take on a mortgage to pay for the said house which will ensure you have to keep your nose to the grindstone for the next thirty years when you can finally look forward to retirement (which by this time you will be too worn out and too tired to do anything) to find that the company CEO has raided the pension fund and disappeared into the ether and you are destined to spend your old age in fear and poverty after spending most of your life working your bollocks off for someone else!!! 

AND, along the way, you missed out on most of your children’s growing up, your partner is now a complete stranger with a life of their own, that doesn’t include you, and all because you had to be at work, in order to pay your taxes to a government that basically doesn’t give a crap about you anyway!!! Yes, THAT'S normal!!

If that's normal, then I embrace my insanity with glee!!  Hee, hee!! Because inside all of us, there is a little streak of insanity. It may not manifest itself as a medically recognised psychosis (although if the American Psychiatric Association has it's way, it may very well soon be) but it might just be a little obsession about collecting stuff, or how we dress, or cleaning; something along those lines, because let's be honest, we all have our little obsessions, don't we?

And what harm are we doing?  Ok if your shoe buying habit is the reason you haven't paid your rent in six months well, maybe there’s a little bit of a problem there that you need to think about but still, you're not crazy are you??  And what about the girl up the street who goes out to work every day dressed up like Mary Poppins, or the old lady who walks around like the queen on LSD, are they really harming anyone?  Because the truth is, isn't it our little insanities that mark us out as individuals? Aren't these the hallmarks of our uniqueness in the world?? 

Because what I now realize is that THERE IS NO NORMAL. We’re all crazy in some way and some of the so-called most normal things are the craziest of them all!!!

What I see happening within the world of psychiatry is similar to what happened back in the 19^th century, when the Victorian's did a study on sexual habits and labelled everything that wasn’t the Missionary position as sexually deviant. 

Basically the same thing is happening now with all human behaviour.  Anything that deviates from the norm (because we all know what normal is??!!) is now being diagnosed and labelled as mental illness and comes with its own line in pharmaceuticals. 

Roll up! Roll up!  Get you behaviour modifiers here, an emotionally-deadening pill for every little ill!!

‘WHAT YOU HAVE AN OVER-ACTIVE CHILD???’ (Fake shock and horror)

Here, don’t you know that a little Ritalin a day, will keep the pharmaceuticals in pay!!!’

If you think that’s a bit exaggerated, then I urge you to read this book, (if you haven’t already) because the really scary part of all this, is what is happening with children in America and, here too, so let’s not get complacent. Children are being diagnosed with all sorts of mental health problems. We’ve all heard of ADD and ADHD, ( I always had huge reservations about those two, even more so now!) but what about childhood bipolar disorder?? Now, there’s a happy little threesome, to label a child with!  Add to that, the huge rise in autism diagnoses and soon you will find that children everywhere are being medicated out of childhood. 

So, if you have an active child, don't take them to a doctor and definitely don't take them to a psychiatrist, take them to the park and let them run around, stop feeding them crap and let them dig that hole in the back garden and get mucky!! Who cares what the neighbours think!! Let them swing from trees, even better, join in and swing from the trees with them and, basically, go have some fun!!!! 

Because that’s what’s wrong here, we take ourselves far too seriously and have forgotten what it is to HAVE SOME FUN!!!! So let rip and let a child be a child and remember that you were once one too!!! Life’s too short to let it drift by on prozac and Ritalin. ENJOY IT!!!! .LIVE IT TO ITS FULLEST!!!! Because in the words of Noddy Holder -  ‘MA MA, WE’RE ALL CRAZEE NOW!’

So stop worrying and embrace the insanity because we are all in this one together!!!!! YEAHHH!!!

There are guy things like football and Nick Hornby novels and, you know, all those mass slaughter computer games where it takes three thousand rounds to kill one person. It positively encourages psychotic behaviour in the general population, as if they’re weren’t enough nut jobs running around already, and it seems to me, looking at what passes for men around here, that evolution seems to have stopped, not just stopped, if anything it seems to have gone into reverse and there’s another thing, it’s not just about football with guys is it?   

I mean what is that about, all that anally retentive stuff about who scored, who passed it to them, at what point in the game and from what position, what the weather was like and if the goalie was distracted by that slight touch of diarrhoea his cat had that morning, and what should the left back have ordered in the restaurant last weekend when his mother in law came to stay (steak not prawns, since you ask). You know all that kind of stuff that men seem get off on. Yes, I know women like football too, I do myself, but my interest runs to did they win or lose, it’s that simple. 

‘How did they do today?’ you ask someone.

‘They won two nil’

‘Great’ you think, ‘they won'. Nothing more to know, but no…men are never satisfied with just knowing the score, it’s all in depth analysis of the game, who did what, who didn’t do what, who should have done this, why wasn’t he taken off at half time, that free kick was a joke, that asshole couldn’t score in a whorehouse, that referee’s a prick…you know all that macho stuff. I mean, what are they trying to prove, what does it all mean, I’ll tell you what it means, it means nothing at all, just a load of empty vacuous claptrap that no-one really gives a damn about and, in the great scheme of things, has about as much significance as a pimple on an ant’s ass in sub-Saharan Africa on a wet Wednesday in April!!