Scary Politics
There's some scary things afoot in US and UK politics right now. I'm glad they've reached a deal of sorts which apparently won't touch Planned Parenthood, but the implications of this budget agreement are tremendous and scary. The Tea Party is like the Republican's darling kid, who turned out just as they planned - and eventually turns around and stabs its proud parent, just as they start to realize they've raised a monster.
It's funny to be over here completely depressed about the cuts in federal funding, and then look at England who need a far less bureaucratic, money-wasting public sector but lack the right kind of direction to achieve that. It makes me so mad that the US, this wonderful country I've called home for six years - is so fucked up politically and socially, and that England have the essentials exactly right: great holidays (six weeks a year), unemployment and other benefits, decent standard of schools, and of course, the amazing NHS - but don't know how to maintain it.
Brits seem to take all this wonderful stuff for granted - because otherwise why would they have supported massively over-expanded higher education which has led to useless degrees and given the Tories the perfect excuse to raise fees on universities? (And who started charging for Higher education? The Labour party in 1997 - fucking hypocrites).
Why would the left be up in arms about the NHS being used for non-essentials: cosmetic surgery, multiple IVF treatments for, until very recently, women over the age of forty, even - and shoot me down and call me a Republican - gender reassignment surgery? Excuse me?
I'm a Liberal who thinks everyone should have free health care but if you want a nose job, a boob reduction, a sex change, and yes, even a baby and life has sadly deemed you one of the unfortunate few who can't bear children naturally - suck it up, pay for it yourself, and feel grateful that the doctors and nurses who cure your cancer and provide you with pre and post-natal care for nothing (min. of ten grand in the US, even with insurance) are well rested, well paid and have no gripes.
Until you've lived in a country like the US without health insurance, where the uninsured buy antibiotics on the black market and live in fear of even minor ailments, you are incapable of realizing how important it is to preserve the integrity of an institution like the NHS. To do that, you need to pay its staff well and make sure it's used for the good of the nation's health.
Ironically, I found out you can't receive sessions with a shrink or a chiropractor on the NHS - I don't see anyone complaining about this, but for someone like me, both are pretty damn essential to my mental and physical health as a nutter with scoliosis. Guess I'll have to suck it up and find the money. So will the couple who need IVF, the man who wants to be a woman, the girl with the big nose. Fortunately, the dad of three with Prostate Cancer will be OK, as will the woman with Cystic Fibrosis, the kid with Leukemia, and the old lady with severe Bronchitis. The point being - calm down Britain. I hate the Tories but they're not getting rid of your NHS. No one's stupid enough to get rid of your NHS, I guarantee it. Even Thatcher wouldn't have done it. So shut your whining, and until they cut doctors, nurses, GP's and cancer wards, I'd concentrate on the terrible truth that corporations are not being taxed enough and the mega-rich continue to receive tax breaks. That there is absolutely mindbogglingly shit. It's awful. It makes me want to cry. And Britain - be grateful your government doesn't come to a standstill over federal funding for Planned Parenthood - an institution which doesn't actually use federal funding to 'fund' abortion, as the right wing claim, but provides uninsured and insured women and men with essential health care and contraceptive advice for as much or as little as you can afford.
I wish America was more like Britain and its welfare state. I wish America had six weeks holiday a year, health care for all, cheaper-if-not-free higher education, more jobs, better schools and I wish they taxed corporations and the mega-rich, the same way they tax regular people. And I wish Britain would learn that they have the foundation in place, but it's getting tired and old. If the last thirty years of government had cared for it a bit better, instead of coming up with stupid expensive ideas which cost money and don't create jobs or nourish the NHS or education, they wouldn't have given the goddamn ConDems exactly the excuse they were waiting for to sweep in with their machete to cut off a vital limb.
It's appalling that higher education now costs so much money. This, undoubtedly, will lead to universities becoming more and more elite. But I think it's a good thing that kids no longer receive the EMA. I mean - fuck off! I had to work in bloody Tesco's through Sixth Form! Are we really disillusioned enough to think that everyone claiming that money would otherwise be condemned to dropping out of school, a life of low paid menial work ahead of them, their wings cruelly clipped just as they spread them, ready to fly away from the council estate and its undereducated vagrants? For fuck's sake. If you want it bad, you'll find a way - like working in a restaurant or bar, like I did, and millions of others did.
Life is hard, and the struggle to get what you want is just as much the point as the getting. If you want something, you work for it, regardless of background or parental income. This is not Victorian England, where children are taken out of school to earn a living for alcoholic, slovenly jobless parents. Doubtless these few evil people do exist - and they'll be claiming a huge amount of benefits already, according to The Daily Mail, an argument I'd like to refute but Simon Longo has turned me into a hater on that matter - but not to the extent that Britain would have us believe. Wouldn't it have been better to have spent EMA money on training nurses, or on teachers and primary schools, on maybe ensuring universities don't have to charge fees to students? If Britain now turns into America, with its overpriced college system, it will be an absolute fucking travesty.
It seems so ridiculously obvious to state that America and Britain should be taxing the big companies and the mega-rich. I hesitate to say merely 'the rich' as we seem to think of posh people who inherited Daddy's money as the problem, and they're not. Difference and disparity and unfairness exist, Liberals. It sucks that you and I have no savings and will never own a Chanel bag and will spend thirty years paying off a mortgage on a shit property. But hating those who own outright their three storey townhouse and have a walk-in closet full of Birkins and party at Mahiki's and vacation in Mustique - this isn't the issue. They may have a nicer life than us. Let it go. Be happy for them. We need them on our side. Believe me, the rich - the millionaires - are small fry compared to the mega rich - the billionaires. It's the mega rich and the big corporations paying minimal or zero tax while federal funding is cut in the US, and libraries are shut in the UK, which makes me so damn sad.
BTW, just as a side note - let's remember who deregulated the banks and paved the way for the last few painful years. The Democrats in the US and the Labour party in the UK. You guys suck. You're inept, untogether, fiscally irresponsible, weak and directly responsible for the world financial mess, the Tea Party in the US and the ConDems in the UK.
Get it together you fucking weaklings.
I'm going to watch Godzilla now.
It's funny to be over here completely depressed about the cuts in federal funding, and then look at England who need a far less bureaucratic, money-wasting public sector but lack the right kind of direction to achieve that. It makes me so mad that the US, this wonderful country I've called home for six years - is so fucked up politically and socially, and that England have the essentials exactly right: great holidays (six weeks a year), unemployment and other benefits, decent standard of schools, and of course, the amazing NHS - but don't know how to maintain it.
Brits seem to take all this wonderful stuff for granted - because otherwise why would they have supported massively over-expanded higher education which has led to useless degrees and given the Tories the perfect excuse to raise fees on universities? (And who started charging for Higher education? The Labour party in 1997 - fucking hypocrites).
Why would the left be up in arms about the NHS being used for non-essentials: cosmetic surgery, multiple IVF treatments for, until very recently, women over the age of forty, even - and shoot me down and call me a Republican - gender reassignment surgery? Excuse me?
I'm a Liberal who thinks everyone should have free health care but if you want a nose job, a boob reduction, a sex change, and yes, even a baby and life has sadly deemed you one of the unfortunate few who can't bear children naturally - suck it up, pay for it yourself, and feel grateful that the doctors and nurses who cure your cancer and provide you with pre and post-natal care for nothing (min. of ten grand in the US, even with insurance) are well rested, well paid and have no gripes.
Until you've lived in a country like the US without health insurance, where the uninsured buy antibiotics on the black market and live in fear of even minor ailments, you are incapable of realizing how important it is to preserve the integrity of an institution like the NHS. To do that, you need to pay its staff well and make sure it's used for the good of the nation's health.
Ironically, I found out you can't receive sessions with a shrink or a chiropractor on the NHS - I don't see anyone complaining about this, but for someone like me, both are pretty damn essential to my mental and physical health as a nutter with scoliosis. Guess I'll have to suck it up and find the money. So will the couple who need IVF, the man who wants to be a woman, the girl with the big nose. Fortunately, the dad of three with Prostate Cancer will be OK, as will the woman with Cystic Fibrosis, the kid with Leukemia, and the old lady with severe Bronchitis. The point being - calm down Britain. I hate the Tories but they're not getting rid of your NHS. No one's stupid enough to get rid of your NHS, I guarantee it. Even Thatcher wouldn't have done it. So shut your whining, and until they cut doctors, nurses, GP's and cancer wards, I'd concentrate on the terrible truth that corporations are not being taxed enough and the mega-rich continue to receive tax breaks. That there is absolutely mindbogglingly shit. It's awful. It makes me want to cry. And Britain - be grateful your government doesn't come to a standstill over federal funding for Planned Parenthood - an institution which doesn't actually use federal funding to 'fund' abortion, as the right wing claim, but provides uninsured and insured women and men with essential health care and contraceptive advice for as much or as little as you can afford.
I wish America was more like Britain and its welfare state. I wish America had six weeks holiday a year, health care for all, cheaper-if-not-free higher education, more jobs, better schools and I wish they taxed corporations and the mega-rich, the same way they tax regular people. And I wish Britain would learn that they have the foundation in place, but it's getting tired and old. If the last thirty years of government had cared for it a bit better, instead of coming up with stupid expensive ideas which cost money and don't create jobs or nourish the NHS or education, they wouldn't have given the goddamn ConDems exactly the excuse they were waiting for to sweep in with their machete to cut off a vital limb.
It's appalling that higher education now costs so much money. This, undoubtedly, will lead to universities becoming more and more elite. But I think it's a good thing that kids no longer receive the EMA. I mean - fuck off! I had to work in bloody Tesco's through Sixth Form! Are we really disillusioned enough to think that everyone claiming that money would otherwise be condemned to dropping out of school, a life of low paid menial work ahead of them, their wings cruelly clipped just as they spread them, ready to fly away from the council estate and its undereducated vagrants? For fuck's sake. If you want it bad, you'll find a way - like working in a restaurant or bar, like I did, and millions of others did.
Life is hard, and the struggle to get what you want is just as much the point as the getting. If you want something, you work for it, regardless of background or parental income. This is not Victorian England, where children are taken out of school to earn a living for alcoholic, slovenly jobless parents. Doubtless these few evil people do exist - and they'll be claiming a huge amount of benefits already, according to The Daily Mail, an argument I'd like to refute but Simon Longo has turned me into a hater on that matter - but not to the extent that Britain would have us believe. Wouldn't it have been better to have spent EMA money on training nurses, or on teachers and primary schools, on maybe ensuring universities don't have to charge fees to students? If Britain now turns into America, with its overpriced college system, it will be an absolute fucking travesty.
It seems so ridiculously obvious to state that America and Britain should be taxing the big companies and the mega-rich. I hesitate to say merely 'the rich' as we seem to think of posh people who inherited Daddy's money as the problem, and they're not. Difference and disparity and unfairness exist, Liberals. It sucks that you and I have no savings and will never own a Chanel bag and will spend thirty years paying off a mortgage on a shit property. But hating those who own outright their three storey townhouse and have a walk-in closet full of Birkins and party at Mahiki's and vacation in Mustique - this isn't the issue. They may have a nicer life than us. Let it go. Be happy for them. We need them on our side. Believe me, the rich - the millionaires - are small fry compared to the mega rich - the billionaires. It's the mega rich and the big corporations paying minimal or zero tax while federal funding is cut in the US, and libraries are shut in the UK, which makes me so damn sad.
BTW, just as a side note - let's remember who deregulated the banks and paved the way for the last few painful years. The Democrats in the US and the Labour party in the UK. You guys suck. You're inept, untogether, fiscally irresponsible, weak and directly responsible for the world financial mess, the Tea Party in the US and the ConDems in the UK.
Get it together you fucking weaklings.
I'm going to watch Godzilla now.
MIMI IN NY | 11:56 PM |
