FINALLY, THE ANTITHESIS (HOPE) IS IN SIGHT

How the heck do you get across the message that Jeremy Corbyn is a genuine, decent, kind and compassionate man who has devoted his life to fighting injustice and inequality.  How on earth does the mainstream media convince those who need Jeremy Corbyn's compassionate policies the most, that wealthy old Etonians are their best bet for the future.  

The tories did not suffer under austerity, the working classes did.  And it began with a systematic negative, propaganda campaign against the disabled and the unemployed waged by the right wing press who can take a bow for all their 'benefits' programmes and the highlighting of the undeserving poor.  Oh and the tories.  The word 'scrounger' came back, claimants were assumed to be pulling a fast one, unless they could prove otherwise. 'Make them work for their benefits' cried the hang 'em and flog 'em brigade, we can get them do all the menial stuff we now have to pay £10 an hour for.  And we don't have to call them people anymore, they are now units.

They took away EMA, the £30 a week students got for attending classes, a lifeline for students from poor families, and an incentive for them to get an education.  They slashed SureStart, a vital service for young families offering friendship and advice, having been a lone single mum, I know how vital such a helpline can be.  

The Nasty Party slashed benefits and put every claimant on trial, building on the negative energy they created.  They made the poorest in our society pay for the financial crash they caused, and by they there, I mean the bankers.  Yet somehow, they convinced the majority, that our economy was being drained by benefit cheats and the unemployed.  They created a climate where it became acceptable, normal even, to send desperate families to food banks, rather than give them the cash they need to feed themselves.  Less than 0.5% of benefit claimants are actually cheating the system, and the amount lost is miniscule in comparison to tax that should be paid in the UK, but isn't.  And it is sad, but true, that it is easy to persuade the average taxpayer that they would have more in their take home pay, if a certain demographic had less.  It is not a very altruistic way of looking at your payslip, but we all do it.  We have a little moan, then accept it as the price we pay to live in a civilised society.  A society where our children are educated, our rubbish is collected, our fires are put out, our illnesses are treated.  We do not fear being bankrupted by medical bills.

If I were asked to sum up what socialism is, I would say it is about raising the standards for everyone.  Whilst I get that there are those who would like a two or three tier system, they should be able to use their hard earned cash to 'get to the top' - wouldn't life be less stressful if there were no difference between the top and the bottom? Just putting that out there.  

After years of 'austerity', more accurately punishing the poor and dismantling all the public services put in place by previous Labour governments, Boris Johnson et al are now pretending (some aren't) that they care about the NHS, the Police, and the Fire Brigade who they are currently trying to blame for Grenfell.  Don't forget the tenants of Grenfell were warning the tory Council that the cladding was a tinderbox, long before the tragedy occurred.  

The tories have lied to us again and again.  Just like their predecessors they have us fighting among ourselves instead of fighting them.  They now have the working classes and the middle classes exactly where they want them.  Those in work, and further up the class scale, are now hostage to their employers.  Zero hours contracts are the norm, zero protection of workers rights, means that those who live paycheque to paycheque (most people) have no job security or means to secure a loan or a mortgage.  It's an employers' market.  Do as you are told, or you can easily be replaced.  The UK is already violating human rights with benefit sanctions, once the European Courts are gone, employers can do exactly what they want.  

In decades and centuries to come, students will look back on these times and wonder at the mentality of the first generations to be blessed with enlightenment.  Access to all the information we could ever want or need.  History repeats itself, we have seen what happens when a population blames a designated group for all that is bad.  It becomes dictatorial and cruel and it never ends well.  We are now at the thesis stage of the dialectic, finally (after 9 fffing years), the antithesis is in clear sight.  Forgive me for comparing 9 years of tory austerity to the war years, but these tories have run Great Britain into the ground.  The antithesis is long overdue, a rebellion against the the heartless policies of the Eton front bench. Cameron, May and Johnson have zero shame that other world leaders see the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets of London.  Thatcher wanted to take us back to Victorian Times - her spawn have achieved it.

By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn wants to end homelessness, food banks and the degrading ATOS assessments.  He understand economics, he and John McDonnell, have spent a lifetime studying.  The New Deal worked for Roosevelt, and JC and JM have worked out in detail how it will work here.  They will do the opposite of the conservatives.  That is, they will plough money back into the economy by investing in infrastructure (we really need a lick of paint), public services, education, the sciences, the arts, all those industries that will boost the public's spending power which will in turn create new jobs.  Britain at the end of World War II needed a boost to revive the country's morale.  Winston Churchill, the hero of WWII, was still a tory, and the UK were crying out for change.

We are crying out for change now, just as much as we were at the end of the War.  Our country is dragging behind our more progressive European counterparts.  With tories at the helm, we are on the outside, Brexit or no Brexit, old imperialists who cannot accept the world has evolved.  Of course, JC and JM are not spring chickens, but they are woke and listening to the movers and shakers of the future.  They want to bring in the kind of major changes that their predecessors brought in in the 1940s, changes that made England swing like a penudulum doo, in the 1960s.  My generation grew up with dozens of jobs to choose from and homes that were affordable.  Something the present generation have never known, or will ever know under the tories. 

The world has changed.  The kinds of jobs available to me, are not available now.  That is, 9 to 5 in an office, shop or factory.  Instead of punishing people for not working in jobs that do not exist, a government should be creating jobs.  I don't mean out of thin air - but out of the growing need for more care/health workers, we have an aging population,  investment in education, science, technology and yes, leisure.  We really need to get past the mentality that breaking rocks or scrubbing your doorstep is more morally sound that bingewatching the Walking Dead.  We all have leisure time now, even the undeserving poor.   

Jeremy Corbyn has devoted his entire life to improving the lives of others.  He is not looking to enrich himself from leading the country, he has no businesses to prop up or gold toilets to upgrade.  His lifestyle and tastes are modest, cyclying, an allottment and homemade jam.  No playing tennis with the wives of Russian Oligarchs for £250,000.  No allocating of public funds to attractive female pole dancers.  He doesn't even fiddle his parliamentary expenses, unlike most of his colleagues, nor does he appear in Parliament coked up to the gills, yet still the British public think he is untrustworthy.

For those future generations, it is our duty to show that as the first enlightened population, we choose a government that is progressive and forward planning.  A government that will genuinely represent the majority and who will genuinely act in the majority's interests.  A government that will put climate change, poverty and homelessness at the top of the agenda. And a government that ensures every citizen, employed, unemployed or disabled is treated with dignity and respect.  It doesn't have to be this way.