Frank lost hope in One Nation – then found pigs really might fly
Whilst the rest of us are busy being polite, it’s Frank’s job to find out what’s going on and say it like it is.
The election result may have been a nightmare but Frank found an inspiring film restored his belief that One Nation does still exist.
The dawn of 8 May was glorious. Food banks and PIPs gone, a social housing glut, no A&T units, a mandatory Living Wage, the Bedroom Tax relegated to a bogey man in an old English ghost story. The pound had held its own against the dollar and the City had not taken its ball home in a mendacious sulk. I was just waiting for world peace, an end to child poverty, global warming in remission and Sepp Teflon Blatter to be indicted for corruption when I bumped into a flying pig and woke with a start.
A few days later, my wife, a disabled tax payer, was unlocking her car on her way to work when a passer-by said resentfully, “They’re still givin’ ‘em all new cars, I see”. Picking his sorry entrails out of her teeth, she yelled “I am a net gain to the treasury, you gullible, stereotyping ******”!
So the sight of disabled people and immigrants with assets was still provoking Victorian resentment. Nevertheless, as the government had only just officially declared its new direction, I said hopefully “It’s early days and perhaps those ******* have not yet got the message that we are One Nation Returning to Compassion”. “You think”, said wife, ominously.
As One Nation was rolled out in all its glory, wife dumped each new trophy of the government’s intentions in my chastened lap. “A new justice minister in favour of capital punishment”, she said. “An equalities minister who is anti-gay,” she declared. “An anti-abortionist in charge of maternity services and a disabilities minister who voted for the Bedroom Tax,” she spat. After ‘flogging off national assets’, ‘social housing in bargain buckets’, ‘erasing the child poverty target’ and ‘returning to compassion by dumping human rights’, I had had enough. I joined her in High Dudgeon, clutching a ticket to Lost Hope.
From that vantage point, all became clear. This is a con trick in which ordinary citizens are the mark and austerity the mode. Its purpose? To create anxiety about survival and trigger divisive human behaviour, like dog-eat-dog and scapegoating. Fake guardians of equalities? Appointed to aid the repeal of protective laws and ration resources. Europe? A new decoy, to take our eyes off the back yard at home. The fraud? Dismantling the state and re-routing public assets and revenues into private pockets. The code? Everything the new government says is the opposite of what it means: One Nation? Divided Nation. Compassion? Dispassion. Equality? Inequality. We are being robbed of resources, of our collective humanity and of the very meaning of the words we use to defend ourselves.
“Marvellous!” said wife, saying it twice before I realised it was not the new code. We sat and watched Marvellous again. Stoke City Football Club of the 1990s employed Neil ‘Nello’ Baldwin, a guy with learning difficulties, as their kit man and Keele University thanked him for 50 years service with an honorary degree. Back in One Nation, Gavin Harding was appointed Mayor of Selby, the first Mayor with Learning Disabilities in the UK. When Sepp Blatter, another con artist, resigned after 17 years of hiding in plain sight, I finally tore up my ticket to Lost Hope. Pigs might fly after all.
