Mad

I remember writing back in the day that I'd started off vaguely left but was now politically apathetic.

Starting this job somehow has politicized me, again. Maybe because now there is no socialism in our political parties - No Socialists. Socialists All Gone.

Remember Maggie Thatcher, 'there's no such thing as society'? At the time I thought it was an utterly ridiculous thing to say - I didn't realise it was actually a statement of policy that the powerful would champion, that would affect the way things would be run for the next 100 years...

You know what makes me mad? The fact that most politicians, people in government who make policy decisions HAVE NO EXPERIENCE OF ANYTHING BUT POLITICS. They go to public school; they go to Oxford;they go to Harvard; they go to Westminster. Then they dictate how everyone else should live, without having any knowledge, any wisdom, any heartfelt beliefs gained through hard-won experience.

I was watching Panorama about the SATS (I knew I shouldn't, I knew it would make me irate, I just like to torture myself). There was Jim Knight, 'Minister of State for Schools', crapping on in that insufferable way about a system that everyone hates - the children, the teachers, the parents... what experience does old Jim have of education? What beliefs does he have, what ethos about learning? What does he know about it, but what some advisor has told him to say? Fuck all, that's what. The same for Ed Balls, (Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families)

('In September 2007, with his wife Yvette Cooper, [Ed Balls] was accused of "breaking the spirit" of Commons rules by using MPs' allowances to help pay for a £655,000 home in north London. It was alleged that they bought a four-bed house in Stoke Newington, north London, and registered this as their second home (rather than their home in Castleford, West Yorkshire) in order to qualify for up to £44,000 a year to subsidise a reported £438,000 mortgage under the Commons Additional Costs Allowance. This is despite both spouses working in London full-time and their children attending local London schools. Through a spokesman, Balls and Cooper countered the allegation by saying "The whole family travel between their Yorkshire home and London each week when Parliament is sitting. As they are all in London during the week, their children have always attended the nearest school to their London house." ' Wikipedia Bravo, Ed and Yvette. Staunch socialists, the pair of them. Oh, I know, personal attacks are unreasonable, and possessing qualities such as moral integrity has nothing to do with their ability to do a really great job in positions of power and responsibility...)

They know nothing, they probably wanted something sexier & more prestigious, like foreign policy. (Actually, even DEFRA is probably more sexy and prestigious than Education.) It's just a step up the career ladder and they really couldn't give a toss about it. They shouldn't be allowed into government until they've done a real job first. Imagine that - people who've actually worked in the NHS in Health, for example, people who actually have opinions and experiences and beliefs. Crazy I know, but it just might work.

It seems more and more that this country is held together by poor people frantically working, doing the essential jobs and holding things together with spit and sawdust, whilst the powers that be swan around on comfortable salaries for comparatively little work (hello Ed and Yvette - In March 2008, Balls sparked controversy by appearing to reply to David Cameron's assertion in parliament that the government had presided over the greatest increase in overall taxation of all time with the phrase "So what?") concerned only about opinion polls and how they come across on the TV.

Anybody see those 'Secret Millionaire' programmes? One group stuck in my head - they were a Stroke Rehabilitation group. They were entirely run by extremely dedicated volunteers because there was no money to keep them going - they stopped stroke patients from descending into a life of despair and immobility once they'd been kicked out of hospital; organising physical therapy, holding social events - but they were run on a shoestring. They needed a mini-van to get them to the local leisure centre but they had no money to buy one. (There's no money to be made out of sick people, they're just a drain on the economy, like old people, so what's the point in giving them anything? It's money down the toilet.)

Lucky for them a benevolent passing millionaire bought one for them. They weren't expecting anything, the people who ran this group, they did it out of care, on no money. They were just invisibly making the wheels of society go round, and apart from this programme would have remained unthanked and invisible and unpaid. They're a metaphor for the state we're in.

Lyrics Born knows what I'm talking about. Take it away, Lyrics Born.