That’s a natural dynamic, but it is one that is governed by education and personal choice.

It becomes
more acute when we relate it to any recognized form of abuse and especially when that abuse
becomes legitimised by social institutions.
Most abusers do it simply because they can. Just that. And because they can, they push it and
push it and push it to breaking point. So, as a society, we tolerate the most abysmal bullying, either
in the deluded self-confident idea that we’re pulling our weight and upping our game, or martyring
ourselves for our children, or holding some moral high ground, or we determinedly join the abusers
and see how far we can push our own interests. Because “…you can’t beat em...” It takes far more
strength to endure abuse than it does to inflict it. Those who fall victim to abuse can gain confidence
from this principle, but what does it say about abusers? Most people who endure abuse don’t want to
have to be that strong. We make it difficult for them to be anything but superhumanly strong, to
endure, because the constraints upon our services and staffing doesn’t allow for easier, gentler,
interactive options that show them how they can understand and appreciate the power they have
within. Many services actually exploit that lack of power.
Strength, true strength, actually turns this dynamic on its head. True strength wants the
empowerment of those who are deemed weaker or more vulnerable. True strength has the power and
determination and patience to find the best way to do that. Every parent knows that. Every criminal
knows the legal prerogative is tipped in their favour rather than for victims. Why is it taking so long
to tackle this? Well, all you have to do is ask people if they want capital punishment and hanging
brought back and you have your answer. Strength / weakness? Ignorant people must keep the
pendulum swinging, it seems. And we don’t have the time to educate them because we just cannot
stop; we cannot interrupt holidays, or Coronation Street, or the Olympics, or wars. We cannot
possibly take money away from any of our normal routines, to deal with a crisis. We know this, on a
national and international scale. True strength doesn’t have to impose itself. True strength isn’t
dictatorship and it doesn’t have to hide itself behind a guise, as western democracy does. We can
turn the tables; but to do so, we have to stop employing and rewarding liars, cheats and psychopaths.
As long as politicians keep telling us this type of person is our best hope, the best example of how
we can preserve our self-interests, by this façade of market confidence (we’re not even in denial
about, anymore), we don’t have to contemplate any other way.
Next time you’re in a bustling city, take a look at each individual. How tiny we are in reality.
Yet each one is forging their way in life, trying to make their life a little easier for themselves or
their family. We all have this power. We all have immense individual power, to endure, to love, to
support, to influence, to survive, to care, to take initiative, responsibility, create, design, contribute.
We all do it and we enjoy doing it. Even the most ardent criminal will do that in measure (even
Mugabe and Hussain, whilst having to constantly watch their backs, of course). But what about
people who have suffered the ultimate loss and still do it? Shouldn’t they be our inspiration? When
you look at a little girl who chooses not to have treatment for her Leukaemia, (I suspect her parents
are being vilified as we speak) and the time she has left to make of her life what she can; it is tragic
and shocks us to our core. And the teenage soldier who, rather than be forced into combat – because
“they’re asking me to kill women and children, mum, and I just can’t do it,” – committed suicide.
Shouldn’t he be our hero? Well? Yet, we glorify those who make decisions to take the lives of
younger children than these.
The point is all our lives are that precarious. Most of us don’t ask for much out of life, so,
why is it so bloody hard for us to get it, in a country that abounds in luxuries? I’m not advocating
socialism or communism, but come on… someone somewhere is taking the piss. All we ask for is
reasonableness, a little perspective. That’s all.
I watched ‘Pride of Britain’ and saw Brown sitting next to Kevin Spacey and Michael Caine.
Of course it’s a staged environment down to the music and choreography, though they keep it
straight forward. And I think it’s good to get all the screen icons in there as the audience. Believe it
or not, they have real lives behind all the privilege and celebrity and the most genuine and crafted
artists have their feet planted firmly on terra-firma. But as each heroic individual came up to collect
their award you could see the envy in the eyes of every audience member, save Trisha Goddard, in
awe of the bravery of ordinary little girls and boys and some of them feeling just a little fake, I
suspect, save Trisha Goddard. We call these heroes extra-ordinary to distinguish them from the rest
of everyday people when they’ve found themselves in extraordinary situations. But they don’t claim
to be any different to others and the tragedy is I don’t think they are. I say tragedy because there are
millions of people who equally sacrifice their lives. We have to wait for some extraordinary
situation to call people heroes then we falsely attach ourselves to this sense of pride, as if these
previously unknowns are part of us, one of ours, like we were involved in their rearing, associated
with their success because we have the same nationality. Like if we’re in Jaipur and someone
discovers we are English – “Oh, yes… Michael Caine, very fine man – ‘you are only to be blowing
the bloody doors off!’” Yes, it is great that we have such heroic people in our country. But there are
people like this all over the world and the people who keep their country going doing menial tasks
day-in day-out and getting no thanks, no acclaim, no notoriety, are never singled out; also dealing
with all sorts of difficulties that are direct results of poor government and injustice. They make our
nation great because they don’t let cut-backs and lack of support stop them tapping into their
humanity for no reward. Then I watch Brown get up and I ask myself – how the fuck can you have
the nerve to stand up and speak, when you’re the one that exploits and pressures and extracts all that
resilience and makes it necessary for these people to find alternative means to support people they
care about. Leech – what would you ever do for nothing? (See chapter – ‘Take the biscuit’).
I mean – imagine how much government and health officials spend on offices, equipment
and stationery to make themselves look good, in comparison to how much they’d actually need if it
was simply what was practical for fulfilling a task. Take the highly inflated costs of office,
stationery and business supplies in general! Compare this with, say, the supplies a soldier needs in
the field, like a decent armoured vehicle, or what a Matron needs to run a clean ward, or the level of
patient care that would be at least adequate. I suspect you’d find it an interesting contrast. Look at
the privileges at the disposal of a member of parliament to say the limits imposed on police budgets
or the wages of any emergency services personnel. Dustbin men have had to take a pay cut in order
for school dinner ladies to get their no doubt deserved pay rise. Isn’t something cock-eyed? It’s the
do-more-for-less culture, as long as it’s not MPs’ and company executives’ budgets. I can give you
numerous examples of this but you probably have plenty of your own. The government has a prime
role in establishing the values we think are fair and to create a fair working practice and moral
environment for all, but they have abused that authority and privilege. They should have some
privileges for doing a tough job, but their egos and celebrity outgrow the interests of the electorate.
The ship may be sinking, but keep the band playing. They turn the process of politics from objective
debate into personal pursuit of ego and career above all. It’s cock-eyed and been getting more and
more cock-eyed, year on year, to the point where they now talk about a compete overhaul of the
political process to regain the trust of the electorate. They don’t talk about it for very long, I noticed.
The panicky rhetoric will turn out to be more crow. We’ve never had greater cause or motivation for
a revolution, but the people in real power, the bank moguls and multi-national execs are not keen for
things to change that much. They had it too good and too cushy manipulating the weak for years, so
don’t for fuck’s sake strengthen them now.
I’m watching David Cameron change, in front of my eyes, from a friendly new face who
rides his bike to work (good on yer mate, balk the congestion charge, like to see you do that when
you’re PM), to a popular and seemingly singularly sellable leader of the opposition, to a pretender to
the throne of PM, to a potential PM in waiting. Now this is a well trodden course and no doubt
anyone’s confidence would grow, naturally (even if he has no different policies to offer). But
immediately the polls suggest he is a credible successor to Brown, his body-language is different
(you get a better picture with the sound off), visibly strutting like the cock of the roost, puffing his
chest out and cock-a-doodle-dooing in front of everyone, like as if we’re all in awe of him. He
shares poll position in the media and that’s no mean feat next to Brown, Bush, Obama and
Hamilton. I watch him crowing to his pen at the party conference with the reincarnated William
Hague (glad to just be in the job) propping one shoulder and the aspiring George Osborne enviously
biding his time, soaking up the atmosphere and thinking how it should be him stood up there, how
differently he’ll put things when it’s his keynote speech, after he ousts Cameron, once they’re in.
And the whole stage setting of conference with all his cronies around him, like the messiah telling
parables to a crowd gathered on a hillside, and I look at all the faces with their collective
compromise and individual back and tongue-bitten scepticisms, all set to fulfil one goal, not policy,
not overturning corruption or transparency and reducing waste of resources, not one of their
hypocritically stated objectives, just one… that of office. Office at any cost, any rhetoric that can
persuade voters. Fuck content and real concerns, just talk the talk, crow it with the sternest face you
can muster, like old leaders used to, show you’re made of the same stuff. Fuck the fact you’re a
product of the same process and problems and have the same solutions - show you’re a fighter, a
fighter for justice, for the British way. Show that you’re prepared to go the whole hog, to occupy the
place above your peers, to lead them. To the exception of them, knowing that this is the moment,
your moment, that they’re all gathered in that one space to do one thing. Your bidding. Because if
they don’t do that right now, they don’t stand a hope in fucking hell. Then I thought of Hitler.
We have soooo moved on from Hitler, eh? The only saving grace of a democratic
dictatorship is that the leader may not last as long. A society that has to spy on each other so much
as is done in Britain really cannot proudly call itself enlightened, or fulfilling its duty of care, or a
land of freedom, or a rich nation. We are so progressive (it is only twenty years ago the Stasi were
tapping peoples phones and following them in East Berlin) but the disease of British politics is that
they’re all far too busy comparing each others’ dicks in the urinals and crowing about it.
It is “Rip-off Britain,” “Take the piss Britain” where a rise in oil prices and recession
actually means – ‘quick, we can rip people off more while we have an excuse to pin it on, because
we can’t let the share-holders suffer or be a failing business.’ This is a land that will not pay
compensation and apologise for taking people’s lives through neglect, or change practices, even
after expensive legal battles. It is a country where a company can continue repeatedly risking
people’s lives using the same equipment in full knowledge of uncovered design flaws. It’s a land
that will house its soldiers’ families in damp mouldy homes. It’s a land that will not pay for life-
saving treatment that actually prevents critical illness for millions, but will pay highly to blanket-
cover most of the population with a low-risk drug that most of them will never need, except those
who have a very rare case of a non-life-threatening disease. It’s a land where you can be slapped on
the wrist for deliberately riding your bicycle on a pavement, shouting to unsuspecting pedestrians
“GET OUT OF THE WAY, I’M NOT MOVING!” and killing someone’s daughter who didn’t react
quickly enough. It’s a land where your basic human rights can be totally ignored if you happen to be
suffering some extreme mental difficulty. It’s a land that will see it’s elderly unable to turn on their
heating (I’m only forty-six and sat here in thick socks with a hot water bottle to save on fuel; my
hands are fuckin freezing and I don’t feel the cold easily, thank goodness), or penniless and sitting
in their own shit, freezing under multiple layers while Fat-Cats line their offshore bank accounts
with more zeros than they’ll ever need, made by over-billing people who are far too trusting and
have good morals about paying their way. At the same time as OPEC’s leader decides to build his
brand new high-rise Arab City from the proceeds of hoisting the oil prices; British Petroleum
announces 160 Billion shared between its shareholders during the same quarter that saw energy
prices rise over 45% in the UK.
Psychopaths now abound but it isn’t schizophrenics wielding machetes in the street. More
people will turn to greater crimes but who started the trend? It is already apparent within legal
organisations like the power and oil companies. The press will apprise us of the increasing danger of
mentally ill people, since everyone who gets caught committing a crime will plead diminished
responsibility and a history of depression, or psychiatric treatment, as a matter of course. But there
will be no justification for this increase in mentally ill spongers and thieves. It has become a
legitimate route to fame and fortune, for some, you only have to watch ‘Britain’s toughest village.’
Forthcoming documentaries will include, ‘We created our own town, though incest,’ and ‘I head-
butt and rob pensioners because I had stem-cell treatment from a Stag.’ But what we really want to
see is him being drowned in saliva and piss, being battered with walking sticks by a gang of
incontinent pensioners. Or being strapped to a chair in a care home lounge for his six year sentence.
Something’s got to give. People want it to change and many work for this change in any way
they can, usually for nothing and often against the popular avenues for what is regarded as success
in their field. They actually fight the bureaucratic disease that hinders them and some succeed for a
while, until the system and everyone who ‘buys into’ it kicks or burns them out. Many skilled
professionals have given up on trying to reform the system from within. Government officials won’t
do things for nothing. They won’t even contemplate a reduction in their budgets, privileges or
expenses and they’ll waste as much as they can to make sure the next year’s budget increases. This,
while they sit on millions that they’ve invested abroad. One council authority’s homelessness
department let slip to me that, it built up three million in its own account, over a five-year period.
Bravo. This, while they dithered over what they should do for those who were sleeping in doorways,
every day of that five years, without knowing where their next meal was coming from. Give the
accountant a rise, I say. Sterling job.
Lives just do not figure in the reported accounts. Capitalist democracies have even bought
into militant and criminal expediency and are exporting it just as much as its supposed enlightened
and superior methods of governing, (which is worse than people who are pushed into such desperate
measures due to having little to subsist on). We should be way past comparing our system with that
of dictatorships around the globe. But there is no democracy in this country. It is a dictatorship. It is
a hierarchy. There is no political choice because no one has the guts to be different. It is not
prepared to put its money where its mouth is and that is why it can only project this façade of being
a rich country. A brave face is all it’s good at. Because that’s the only thing you can do when you
know it’s all slipping away from you.
I’m not saying do without commerce or capitalism, it has its use and I think we should
celebrate the good things it achieves, the things it contributes to; yes, promote those things and give
businesses incentives to benefit the community. But those kind of incentives need to be monitored
with common sense. I’m not at odds with people becoming rich; there will always be disparity but
anyone who sits on millions while someone cannot feed, clothe and shelter themselves – especially
those who make their millions imposing such situations – is inhuman, to me. They should be
culpable, but the government don’t just allow that to happen, they have the same mentality of
penalising the most vulnerable.

“Those who care more will always be at the mercy of those who care less.
In all areas of social, political and institutionalised denial, we have to
overturn this fundamental principle. The only way to achieve this is to
reassess what we regard and reward as strength and weakness.”