WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?
a lament on war, poverty, cruelty, corruption; a celebration of strangers
I am in an uncomplicated red wheelchair circa 1950 being pushed from my ward down a long cold corridor in a major teaching hospital. The wheelchair’s metal struts are not covered, they are cold. The balding overly jolly underpaid steward trots with me as his Trojan horse, insistently easing our way through the milling crowds towards the Scanning Rooms where some kind strangers will look inside my body and report to surgeons.
On our right, juddering towards my charioteer and I, are numerous elderly people, poor, tired, wasted by life, perhaps frightened if not unsure. Poorly dressed, poorly lived, sensing they are diminished, sensing they are unimportant, without having had nor presently having a meaningful life, with little family or community respect. Some are with a friend or partner, holding onto the other’s arm, often standing still staring at the multitude of somewhat confusing signs. Mouths partly open, panting, lost not just in the massive forlorn building but as well in being, in life. Wondering, where did it go, how did I become this, this nothing life, tired of life, of others and myself. Souls emptied by materialism and a hollow culture which lured their children away to the bright city lights but only into their own poverty.
Cash-strapped councils in England have already sold off 75,000 public assets since 2010 – from youth clubs to playing fields, to cash-rich millionaires.
Ambling towards us, mixed amongst the ancients, are exhausted mums pushing various large baby buggies festooned with coats, reused shopping bags and surrounded by wild or docile children, running, screaming, with aimless actions, flinging their heads and arms about, stressing the already stressed adults around them. There are those children with fire in their darting eyes and those with sand, staring mostly down, waiting for another backhand swat from their mums. Poorly dressed, poorly lived, sensing they are diminished, unimportant, without a meaningful life. Those mums and her kids are one of the statistics that tell us how little she earns, how much debt she is in, how she contributes to the dismal profile of poor, semi-skilled, semi-employed single women in England. That so aptly paints a melancholic image of hopelessness – this in the worlds 6th richest nation, inexcusably, inexplicably, beyond all the politicians and policy maker’s meaningless words.
The UK is Europe’s most unequal large economy. This has proven toxic for people in Britain on middle and low incomes.
Mixed amongst the elderly and the mums with kids and carts are young couples filled with expectation and fear. What will befall them? Will their child be healthy, safe, well cared for? Will they afford childcare? Will they be able to offer the children security in an insecure country? Or will the family disintegrate as the young parents sink into poverty and unhappiness to become more abused wage slaves, as many in the middle classes scorn them for their stupidity, ignorance, laziness?
The English working class have been bamboozled into believing they are as secure as the French or German workers, but the once powerful and proud class, decimated by purposeful unemployment, low wages and union busting, are 27% worse off.
People old and young but universally troubled, appearing weakened, ill, in poverty, distracted, angry, upset, impatient, wander from sign to sign.
This hospital corridor is modern Britain in miniature and then there are the foreigners, the brown skinned people, alive, helpful, kind, caring for our impoverished dying world. They, amongst the fine British staff, are specialist doctors, surgeons, nurses, cooks, cleaners, carers. Those I encounter modestly reveal their kindness and knowledge.
This too is modern Britain which our careless, ideological, wreaker-politicians (at the moment especially the tattered Tories) who want to stop these helpful people coming to these shores, and to throw out the students and these fine people who bring with them their traditional respect for their elders, their devotion to family, their educated backgrounds and their dreams of a better life for their children which they will sculpt out of their kindness to us.
In the US in 1965, CEOs typically earned 20 times the average worker's pay.
As of 2021, the CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio had grown to 399 to 1.
The median FTSE 100 CEO in the UK is now paid 118 times the median UK full-time worker.
Back in my hospital bed now, my surgeon’s assistant kindly assured me all will be well, that they do this operation 10 times a week, that it is normal for them and my chances are excellent.
I thank him and when he leaves, besides the shock of his information, the severity and details of the process, I feel anger at those who create the poverty, the uncaring bureaucracies, the endless stream of lies while attempting to engender hatred for the very people who will probably save my life and care for me.
Why do these immoral politicians do this? Because their ideologically incapable of understanding a true democracy is one in which the people control the lawmakers who legislate that the economic system must serve the people and not alone the wealthy.
“Across every major industry, prices continue to rise—this includes a 38% increase in the price of gasoline, a 44% increase in the price of heating oil, a 41% increase in the price of a used car, a 24% in the price of rental cars, and a 17% increase in the price of furniture. Further, Tyson Foods recently increased beef prices by 32%, the price of chicken by 20%, and the price of pork by 13%. As prices increase, corporate profits hit a record high of nearly $3 trillion in 2021, up 25% in a single year.”
This is not inflation caused by some distant unknow source, some economic voodoo magic, no, it is corporate arrogance, immorality and indeed a part of the plan to milk all of us for their inflated profits.
What is happening here?
Nothing makes any sense.
They close the workshop, they close the mill, they close the yards
and tell us its for the best...
we get our pay-off quids and set to make our sweet little sweet shops
with no financial business borrowing buying selling skills
and go bust to land upon the dole
as our Johnny wanting to be a boiler maker
and our Tracy doing styles see no applications now or ever more
behind the shuttered windows and the pad locked gates and doors
in this bleak mid winter
lasting oh so oh so painfully through all the seasons of our lives
and da goes upon the drink and I find no voice to sing or prey
while Johnny and Tracy experiment with encapsulated ecstasy
'cause Da and I no longer promise, point or offer even care.
What is happening here?
Young Jones told Da it's like the wind
unseen forces stirring somewhere off in unseen lands
and here the wind does blow a tiding spare
and we, while sitting on our hands and watching the coke cans tumble
and sale signs flutter
we sit upon our idles stirred only to cover our eyes when this wind
this unseen force
gusts through all the crevices of our lives
leaving cold hearts and cooler smiles glued upon our swollen lips.
What is happening here?
Young Jones told Da
we say the tree's a' blowing
though, says Jones, its not the tree a' blowing
but the wind that sirs the boughs
rising from the unseen source a thousand miles away
in those boardrooms and those banks
making comp-e-tition and econ-o-mies and inter-national-decisions
while Johnny in the clink for affray when on the drink
and Tracy with her pretty hair now mohawked purple
above her whitey face and swollen tum
leaves D a and I to scream each night against the distant wind.
What is happening here?
Da said we walked a road traveled by our parents
and their parent’s parents too
said next to which we built our churches and our clubs
our meeting rooms and more
we learned to read and claim our rights
and gave our kids security
now look says Da in his cups
look at what they done
closing pit and port and all
they've stamped upon the web we made
while he talks his doggerel stuff
my Johnny's to be done again
big time Johnny my little one
for beating a cop or two to pulp
and Tracy dead from drugs and all
with the tot who died inside and all
and all because as Jones did say
the wind unseen does blow amuck.
Thank you Rosie. Watching in a hospital the uncertainty, the ill, the confused, the tormented, the hopeful and expectant mostly clothed in poor education, unknowing, diminished while also seeing bang up against that, the kindness and generosity of the 'foreign' nurses and doctors (haunted and hated by the rightwing psychopathic establishment) is like watching a slow-motion tragedy playing out. Here we are, western capitalism slowly being eaten by its own ugly contradictions.
Robert - such an eloquent, heartfelt indictment of life in Britain - lived by so many millions; unacknowledged and ignored by as many more.... how did we come to this? Or were we always like this in Britain - I think so - it doesn't take much of a glance at our history to see our disdain for those who serve us and those who are poor and those who are different. Only now, the deterministic reaping of the inequalities of capitalism makes it all so much worse.