These days I try and avoid the political. Or at least I kind of do. It’s just sooo depressing! Butt, for some reason I can never quite shake an interest in how and by whom we are ‘governed’.
One thing that I really hate to hear, is the über lazy cop out of ‘it makes no difference who’s in power/office’. I do appreciate that politicians of all types can be wearisome, and may at times seem to share many regrettable qualities. But I strongly disagree with the idea they’re all exactly the same.
Labour gave us the NHS, the Tories (or at least large powerful sections thereof, sections that are also usually in power at the time) have always wanted rid of it, and have acted – albeit slowly and surreptitiously (aware that is a much loved national institution) – to undermine it, as a prelude to dismemberment and privatisation.
One of the greatest ironies in all of this is how the Tories, and their sickening allies in the billionaire non-dom owned press, continue to stoke fears of Socialist Bogeymen taxing us all to oblivion.* When in fact the Tories are both taxing everyone more than ever (oh, except for the wealthiest pensioners), and borrowing on a totally unsustainable scale.
Aye-aye!
* Some of the insanely bizarre crap I’ve heard working class Tories say beggars (buggers is much more apt) belief. Such folk are so obviously parroting propaganda they’re fed, day in day out, by a press in cahoots with the country’s ruling Tory elite.
The greatest irony of all is that actually the Tories – supposedly (ie according to their own much trumpeted hype) good with money – are actually totally fiscally incompetent. Should that come as any surprise? They are the (a)morally if not fiscally bankrupt heirs to the traditions of Serfdom, and Royalty, ie they remain the ‘robber barons’.
They got rich, just as they continue to get rich, not because of skill or intelligence, but thanks, mostly, to inheriting wealth and power, and/or ‘insider trading’, corruption, bullying, and plain old-fashioned theft.
The Covid pandemic, during which our government ought to have been looking after the most vulnerable, was used as an excuse for an orgy of state-organised larceny. And the right wing capitalist ideologues ‘masterminding’ this short-term grab for the greedy even openly talked of the benefits of Covid ‘culling elderly dependents’. Nye Bevan, founder of the NHS, was absolutely correct: Tories are lower than vermin.
Dr Satan’s Robots, apparently. Staffing call centres world (or galaxy?) wide.
Psychological torture in the everyday, an NHS experience (or three!).
Several times in recent weeks I’ve been in GP Practices, or Hospitals. Although the two recent GP visits are the later experiences, I’ll start with them.
For me, our GP waiting room is a kind of ante-chamber to Hell. The radio station they have playing in the background – coupled with the Covid-19 related spacing of chairs, and the concurrent demise of communal reading matter (something long associated with visits to the doc’s; Woman’s World, Hello!, issues of Giles!?) – is so oppressively and moronically mainstream, and inanely conformist.
It feels like being in a dictatorship of the mind. The Tories have annexed the Sudetenland of independent critical thought, by fostering a plebeian culture of bland mindless consumerism. A singularly soulless state. When I see or hear lockstep unison dance routines in trash online and TV culture, it makes me think of modern ‘Brits’ as a breed of goose-stepping turkeys, marching to their own holocaust.
And several of the elderly folk in the room are tapping their toes!? As if it were some form of harmless music. A nice sound!? Or even more outlandishly, an art, or craft, designed, perhaps, to uplift and expand, or at least beautify the immediate surroundings. But wait, this is in fact the sonic wallpaper to billions of cellular prisons, made with computers, to formulae dictated by returns on investment, designed to control, crush and enslave, not to enlighten or liberate.
The Godawful radio station polluting the GP’s airwaves.
Airheaded five-minutes-of-fame intoxicated wannabes queue for mile after mile, desperately hoping to be the kind of fantasy cyphers everybody is constantly told they want to be. All whilst drowning in endless rounds of addictive self-soothing endorphin hits, counted in ‘likes’ and ‘tweets’.
And what an ugly and tawdry world this muzak creates and adorns. A world of institutionalised blandness, built with mass-produced tat, always aiming about as low as you can go.
Not long before the two recent doctor appointments, where my ears and my soul were tortured by the crassness of modern popular culture, I visited Peterborough Hospital. The whole visit lasted six and a half hours (plus near enough 30 mins – or more [due to roadworks!] – either way, getting there and back).
Peterborough Hospital, not so much a ‘noble edifice’ as an essay in the dismal ugliness of modern social architecture.
I was seen by a ‘CRISIS’ team psychiatrist. And a fairly lengthy interview was conducted. l left the hospital in the firm belief that I was being referred for further help from the crisis team. It’s only been later on that I’ve learned that – prob’ as a result of this meeting (or poss a follow up meeting, at ours a few days later, with a guy whose name escapes me now?) – I am NOT being referred to the Crisis team for further support. This in itself is shocking.
Then, on this most recent call, today, this John Skeels character, who I don’t warm to at all (in fact he winds me up something chronic!), not only reiterates the point about the removal from Crisis support or intervention, but goes further. Blandly telling me I won’t be getting CBT either!!!
I thought I’d understood that Dr Joyce and the lady I saw in A&E were both assuring me I would get some immediate ‘talk therapy’ style support. So far, far from that, I’ve had to endure Groundhog Day style repetitions of cross-questioning, or ‘profiling’, from an alphabet soup of seemingly related yet also not related mental health bodies!
Raking over all this shit continually, without ever actually addressing it constructively, rather surprisingly – NOT! – actually worsens things!
Skeels started out seeming to suggest an initial assessment was due to happen on the call/day. But later on he instead offered a telephone appointment assessment – I’m losing count of how many times I’ve been in this situation: four, five, or more? – with a lady (Hannah Jones?), on 6th April!
My angry protestations about how awful this has all been – passed from pillar to post, continually repeating myself, whilst getting no actual support or help – finally persuaded him to bring the date of the assessment forward a bit: it’s now due 27th April. A week away, instead of over two.
Turn that shit down!
So I’m now back to square one, ringing my GP and FRS (the First Response Service, aka 111, option 2), and queuing for aeons listening to Muzak and so-called A-I bots, telling me my call is oh so important (hence the interminable wait…*) and my queue position is ‘over a barrel’.
* Maybe they’re building suspense, to further heighten the appalling crash that comes when you eventually end hours of calling and realise, more often than not, you’ve achieved exactly fuck all. Except, perhaps, ramping up stress levels a bit more. The exact opposite of what’s needed!
Pretty piano music plays – on a short repetitive loop (isn’t this a black-ops torture technique?) – and I’m told ‘your queue position is, three’; we approach fifteen minutes, for the entirety of which time my queue position has remained three!!!
WOW… at about 15:02 in to the call, I’ve gone from position three to two! I hope I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for… oh, I’m #1 now! 15 mins for one place, then just one for the next!?
Once I’m connected, will I get anywhere? Dr Joyce told me to contact the surgery if need be. And I feel need is very much be! As feck all is happening via CRISIS or LADS or whomever… ah, finally, a human being.
INTERLUDE
So, twenty minutes waiting, two minutes talking, and in the end only verbal assurance that I’ll get call from Dr Joyce on Thursday coming. Hopefully that will happen.
The corporations and us.
After that tortuous call to my GP (is there any other type these days?), it’s time to join the FRS ‘virtual (aka very real) queue’. This time it’s a more ambient synth and percussion loop.
A little later… So far it’s just (just, JUST!?) been a little over five minutes queuing. And what will this call achieve? I’ll basically be telling them nothing’s happened, and they’ll want to go over everything again, for the umpteenth time. Leading to? Well, thus far, absolutely feck all, in terms of actual support or help!
Gaaarrgh! Gnashing of teeth, wailing, and tearing asunder of a sack-cloth and ashes!
Some more time later… It’s sixteen minutes and counting, on the FRS mental health crisis line. Wonder if folk have topped themselves whilst queuing? It seems the kind of purgatorial – or plain Hell-ish – way to make a depressed person feel even worse.
There’s nowt for making you feel the worlds’ sense of your true value than being made to wait aeons by a robot, before being allowed to interface with an understaffed, under financed and ridiculously complex (due to being dismembered in pursuit of private profit) system.
Nye Bevan would be apoplectic with rage, at seeing what Tories (and even New Labia) have done to his beloved and ought-to-be-cherished institution. It would just confirm for him the truth of his assertion that Tories are, indeed, lower than vermin.
Twenty-two minutes and counting… Jeezuzzz on a fucking pogo-stick!!! I’ll have lost the will to live by the time… oh, no, hang on, that was why I was calling in the first place!
Some time much, much, MUCH later… Well, it was over thirty minutes wait in the end. But when I got through the guy on the call – which lasted about an hour – was good.
I’ve subsequently also had a call from The Sanctuary, an offshoot of the mental health charity MIND. Spoke to a guy named Simon, which turned out to be quite helpful. That call was about 65 minutes! So much time on’t phone!
FOOTNOTE
One of the worst things about this hellish modern way of going about things is that it makes me so angry and querulous that by the time I speak to someone, I’m in a towering rage. A la Saxondale, perhaps?
Tintin & co marvel at giant butterfly and wineglass.
Capt. Haddock, disgusted, refuses to look at cut-glass that doesn’t contain whisky!
I’m now whoring myself out on every front.
The only significant think I did today, other than sleep loads, was this flyer/postcard design. If I get enough pupils, across the several areas: drums, guitar, art, English, etc. Who knows, I might still be able to make a living?
Tasty!
I’m not in the least religious. But ne’ertheless, I say Gawd Bless, my Mrs! She’s cooked a triffick dinner, again.
Hokusai’s Wave is a beautiful piece of art. I’m choosing it for today’s post because it represents the tidal wave of sh!t I’m currently facing.
The politics of this obscure it’s personal resonance!
My tip-top favourite political satirist, Steve Bell, has done this great scatalogical reimagining of Hokusai’s masterpiece. The specific topical political baggage with this image – King (Tony) Cnut trying to face down a literal (Gordon) Brown tsunami – somewhat obscures my more generalised reading of it.
My only defence!
And how am I to stave off this towering wall, this fast-flowing fecal apocalypse? Naturally enough, with naught but a sticking-plaster. A Band-Aid. Well, it does say it’s ‘water-proof’!
We love this guy! Check out Jason, The Cloud Gardener, here. We discovered him via the BBC’s Gardener’s World.
Vid
His story is inspiring. I love the bit in his BBC slot where he talks about nurturing a ‘broken’ plant, and how that helps him with his own mental health.
We need to really green our domestic spaces. It’s a challenge, as ours are very dark gloomy indoor spaces, which tend to kill plants!
Oh how I love this album! It captures Tom in a uniquely youthful and innocent mood, less gravelly, a bit more country, and utterly wonderful.
The closing title track would, on its own, make this album essential. But there are plenty of other great tunes; from the cosy bar-room sentimentality of I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You, via the Tin Pan Alley balladry of Grapefruit Moon, to the ol’ timey vibes of Ol’ 55 and Rosie.
It’s an astonishingly mature and assured debut recording. And the musical team that made it help evoke a timeless beauty drawing on a whole smorgasbord of American popular music, to craft a classic recording that’s both gently obscure and disarmingly immediate and charming.
A contemporary advert for Waits’ debut.
An essential album, reissued for über fans (like me!), in a couple of deluxe twin disc vinyl formats. I can’t justify the extravagance (although it’s not actually out for a bit!), but I’m very sorely tempted.
Overall I prefer the Tom of the ‘first phase’, ie the boho-beatnik barfly romantic and philosopher, of Closing Time through to Swordfishtrombones (and maybe even Frank’s Wild Years?) to the art house carnival freak he evolved into after that.
On Closing Time, whose moody cover art is be Zappa’s buddy Cal Schenkel, we have a sweeter, softer and smoother sounding Tom. He’s already the folksy troubadour, with a big dose of jazz and blues in the pockets of his rumpled yet earnest thrift store suit.
Waits, circa ‘72.
This album is unique in that after this awaits would produce a run of amazing recordings working with Bones Howe, a former jazz drummer turned producer, who helped craft the classic early Tom sound-world I so adore, by surrounding Waits with stellar jazz sidemen (like Jacky Sheldon, Jim Hughart and the incomparable Shelly Manne).
On Closing Time Jerry Yester produced, and the band – who are brilliantly sympathetic to awaits’ material – are less familiar names, gathered together from Yester’s musical orbit. Yester also did some superb string arrangements for Tom, on this and a few of his subsequent albums.
Yet more snooker therapy. And boy-oh-boy, does Ronnie deliver!? He’s pulled out some classic 147s, from his first awesome five minute jobbie (below), back in 1997, to this!
‘Absolutely sensational’ enthuses the affably avuncular John ‘JV‘ Virgo. And one cannot disagree!
I’m pretty sure all, or at least nearly all of us, have experienced the grim horror that is queuing on a call to a large organisation.
Currently I’m severely depressed, and I’m often required to call the NHS. I love and treasure the NHS. But under Tory and New Labour misrule, it’s being turned into an impersonal impenetrable block of granite.
I’ve just received a letter summarising a meeting I recently had with an NHS functionary. In this letter are numerous factual errors. Some trivial, some less so. They need correcting.
I’ve emailed about these concerns, and hope to hear back. But I’m not holding my breath.
What I would far prefer, and I’m sure I’m far from alone in this respect, is a brief conversation with an appropriate person, in a position to remedy the situation. What I most definitely DO NOT want is to waste precious time, energy, and – no doubt – money, listening to robots and Muzak. Only to get absolutely nowhere. Oh, except a little closer to my grave!
