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And here’s another thing. BI, your duplicity knows no bounds. Post-prawn, on the other board you’re frantically virtue-signalling your concern for mental health, depression, addiction, etc.
To your credit, you have commented before about your own problems. But despite this, many of your brother Tories would say to you ‘Snap out of it Bucksiron, control yourself! And if you don’t, it’s your own fault for being so feckless. Just take responsibility, show some effin’ backbone and get a grip, man!’
It’s the position of classic neo-liberalism. It claims you are responsible for your own actions, that you can ‘just say no’ to all sorts of ailments and temptations, whether they are in a bottle, a brothel or a betting shop. Something has made you like this, and what you’ve learned, you can unlearn. So get on with it, and take back control.
Yet, your own direct experience tells you that it’s more complicated, especially the causes.
Let’s look at this more closely. For example, have you ever reflected on the insecurity and anxiety caused by the removal of social safety nets and employee rights? Or, how it feels to go to work while also needing a foodbank or after begging for Universal Credit? Have you ever paused to consider the stress it causes when people suddenly can’t pay their mortgage or energy bills, and have to beg their supplier not to cut them off, or the way it makes them feel they can’t support their families at Xmas, and are only one payday from destitution?
The material effects are bad enough, but the psychological effects are incalculable.
Just ask any doctor.As you know very well, being in control of your own brain and behaviour isn’t always an option, so people need help. But now just consider the difficulty in obtaining it. The waiting times, the lack of resources, the staff leaving the caring professions – the nurses who have left the UK after Brexit, the junior doctors who are leaving because the conditions are so god-awful bad that it’s making them ill, and the carers who can’t afford to care because the pay is so low it’s better to be stacking shelves, or flippin’ burgers. Then, there’s the humiliation of discussing your pathetic finances in order to qualify for UC.
But, mental health is not just about financial and medical resources. Communities themselves bring important social benefits. Alas, they too have largely disappeared from many areas. Just witness the decimation of South Yorks when the mines closed without a proper exit plan of ‘what next?’. When the work went, so did the informal network of care and support through the proximity of friends, relatives and workmates. A community who would talk, lend a hand and chip in, when times got tough. And in its absence the results are there for all to see, particularly in high levels of crime, and of physical and mental illness.
So, when it comes to the contradiction between sound mental health and your support for small state, unbridled free markets, small pensions/benefits, and of course Brexit, you haven’t a leg to stand on, because the economic and social effects brought about by all these are literally driving you and many others mad, BI.
But there’s a solution. For happier, healthier communities, you just need to take responsibility, get a grip and never, ever, vote for the blue lot again.
Brilliant post Gurny, considered, well thought out and on the money. Wait for the tripe, unconsidered and totally inappropriate response from the usual suspect.
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“Any company run in the same way would have gone out of business years ago”.
The idea that business directors don’t get high pay, lots of perks, bonuses, fat pensions and never play golf was a joke, wasn’t it?
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