Unsympathetic.

A woman of ninety-six died. I don’t need to tell you she was old. In another life she’d have made a decent teacher of French and English, who sometimes rapped your knuckles. But we acted in concert as if it was a surprise, with the odd bum notes. My worry was that football would be cancelled and I’d miss Rangers getting stuffed for the third time in a just over a week. As a destitute person—of the no dogs, no coloured and no Irish—I’m aware rich, white people are easily spooked by the indigent.

We poor whites ate much the same food as long as carbohydrates came in potato form and tea was called dinner. And watched the same television programmes like needy patients studying an eye chart. There was nothing more dangerous than the rich telling the underprivileged what they should be seeing.  

I was not even a ghostly presence when the would-be French teacher street stopped traffic at the bottom of Mountblow Road. Everything was first class and whitewashed but the pauperised and penniless waving flags. Traffic lights were all set to green. That was a given, as all the roads ahead were empty of traffic.

Most rich people thought the truly needy lived in other countries. They should be just like them and have rich children. Unhappiness was a sign of moral failure. It could be cured by Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and conjuring up a decent Victorian meal of gruel for down-and-outs. Foodbanks as last resort for dirt-poor children. They knew the truly needy better than we knew ourselves and were sure to let us know what we were thinking.

The beggarly had to bow their heads and knuckle under, self-checking and wondering if a form has been filled in correctly. An unforced intimacy that left the moneyless without money, and doubting ourselves and wondering how the moneyed people would offer an appointment to discuss our lack of progress. We were not eligible for secret societies or funny handshakes. Better still to keep our distance. Hitler Youth modernist programmes were once in vogue, but fascism went out of fashion, only to reappear as a breach in etiquette, with the rise of the moron’s moron in the United States. The French and English teacher’s ancestors, such as Uncle Edward, were mostly grateful for concentration camps as long as the trains ran on time. Lest we forget, their family tree was amended during the first outbreak of world war, because they sounded too German, because it was German. Windsor has a decidedly church-bell-English ring to heads of the Anglican Church. Statues and portraits of land grabbers, war mongers and mass murderers grow like elder under and surround the building of modern states  

The rich want to have a free run and run things for themselves. The stone broke didn’t break any banks or cause bankruptcy. The deceased’s unelected son has the God-given right to meet with other narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths and other elected officials voted in by a happy-clappy minority. Even America baulked at electing Sarah Palin. We don’t trust in Liz Truss. The in-want are told their wants are unrealistic. We’re all in it together inside a Disneyland ideology of heroes (the rich) and the low caste. The rich have looked at the think-tank evidence that wherever there is a problem, they can add to that problem by subtraction. The contagion of poorness has a proactive cure, locking up the strapped, immediately, for their own good. The flat broke will fall into the party line or become deluded enough to think they have a solution and need spied on and locking up.

Collaboration and flag waving, the arsenal of impecunious democracy. The suffering, the pauperised the precariat, the music of Julie Andrews, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Sex Pistols, the fashion that became unfashionable as Bob Dylan’s electric guitar. The old generation, the next generation of radical thinkers that think they can change the world. A bending of the knee to the rich and privileged. They owned the land and the suffering people on the land. And they still do, but in different ways, dressed as we’ve never had it so good. A harmless old woman, you may say. The empty-handed are still empty handed.  As Mahatma Gandhi says the greatness of humanity comes simply from being more humane. Royalty isn’t a call for inclusion, but exclusion and maintenance of the Union of privilege and status quo.

If you’re black send them back.

No Irish.

No dogs.  

Brexit.

No Refugees.

God Save the Queen.  

God Save the King.   

   

Comments

yes

I an't dis'n no 1's mum, nor, hed of state, tradition's or tak'n sides here...

but.......

I'm totaly wit ya Celt.....

1onc upon a time I stripped a uniform off & burned it... Did the duty, all gd ther, but I an't no 1's subject &/or subject to be protect'n some1 elses left over dirty work legacy empires & divides whilst me own is count'n how many tatoes they got t'll the end of the week wrk'n 2 jbs, farm'n, fish'n & suprt'n kid's & eldrs ....

I relate...........

(K)

 

 

cheers Kris. Most of us aren't, I guess, overwhelmed with grief, but bored with all the rigmarole and pageneatry that speaks of a past I didn't inhabit. 

 

That's the way I see it, Jack.

However despite all the privilege and traditional BS they are the only thing stopping the country for getting a corrupt president such as Boris the Spider or someone like your friend the moron's moron.

Sadly the rich and powerful cannot be trusted, they never could be and they never will. Better the Devil with his wings clipped than one who can fly. 

It is what it is I'm afraid (IMO of course)

cheers

 

I guess we see things much the same way, Ed.