Day 294

The problem with not having written substantively for just about two weeks is that I start to disbelieve the power and meaning of my words, and that I doubt them.

The problem with illness is that it draws us inside of ourselves instead of looking outwards. I realised this when I started the radio show this morning and announced that it was Day 240 of the illegal war in Ukraine. I have spent two weeks of worrying only about myself rather than the rest of the world. And that, to an extent, lessens the impact of my words on myself.

You get the drift.

Of course, what’s been happening in the UK over the last few days, weeks (actually 12 years, in truth) just shows how morally corrupt the Tories are. For the party’s members and MPs to actually be thinking of bringing back the one whose name I don’t even want to mention, the one who’s a convicted criminal (much like Sunak, actually), demonstrates this moral corruption, this desire for power not for the good of the country but for the good of the party. It’s beyond the pale. It puts the lie to those who still insist we live in a democracy – we don’t. I may be able to say what I want here and now, on this page, but that is an illusory freedom. Ex home secretaries dreaming of legal asylum seekers being deported to Rwanda, a party that votes by a large majority to limit workers’ rights, that plans to outlaw the right of workers in the transport sector to strike, that essentially makes gatherings illegal if the state thinks they’re too loud or inflammatory (even if it’s just one bloke with a megaphone and some speakers, or one woman with a lone banner standing outside Parliament) – all these are signs of totalitarianism. And, to an extent, the whole Truss meltdown has been a dead cat distraction from the damage this government has been inflicting on democracy, the abuse it has been levelling at the people of this country. Perhaps Truss was just intended to be a place holder the whole time, a place holder who would usefully be the idiot who made the masses even poorer and thereby reduced their will and ability to fight and stand up for themselves even further.

It’s certainly an interesting time. I wonder where we will be this time next week.

I can’t believe it’s actually fifteen days since I last wrote an Aggie chapter.