Crunching child benefit numbers

200,000 people are alleged to have voluntarily opted out of child benefit just recently.

To me that speaks of a great deal.

It says to me that people are public spirited enough to recognise that they may not need to claim it in a difficult financial climate.

I would suggest that it also hints at the fact that the families in this country are getting more financially secure, definitely no bad thing.

Being mean

But it also suggests to me that means testing is not necessary.

There is the hint that all you need to do is make people aware of the strain that the benefit causes and persuade them to forgo it if they do not need it.

Sure, perhaps I have my head in the clouds.

But I know the government is trying to cut the fiscal debt and strangely putting a load of people to work means testing a benefit means more money ploughed in, which instead could be used to raise the benefit to strengthen the situation of those who do need it.

Years of Kilroy

We have had are head ploughed so full of Jeremy Kyle and Kilroy Silk that we no longer have respect and compassion when talking about benefits anymore.


We're so busy talking about "broken Britain" that we have no time for talking about beautiful Britain.

Our obsession with "messed up families" has made us blind to embracing diverse and post-modern living arrangements.

"There's nowt so queer as folk" and that's actually quite wonderful.

So quit with the cuts, repeal them, it will only break not build.

They've won a little bit

I get angry.

Sometimes I get really, really, really devastatingly angry.

And it's not because I'm a bad person, or because I don't have the capacity to love, or, and I'm going to write this in bold letters, BECAUSE I WAS BORN WITH SIN.

(Also, it's interesting that sin means without in spanish, so I just want to be really clear that I'm not being exotic here)

But because sometimes the world really blimin winds me up!

I try

I spend a LONG time sometimes trying to be super, super, super nice and polite even when I think that systems, and I want to be clear about this, systems that I am confronted with are MORONIC.

Problem with that is, eventually, I completely bloody crack and use every expletive known to man and woman and get a bit god damn aggressive.

And self righteous, and self absorbed and all the things that I can not stand in human beings.

When all I really want to be saying is:

Put me in the right situation and I am the most demure creature known to man, but believe me you can't be demure all the time.

Someone to love

At this point I would like to say thank you.

To Josie Long, for making me smile at the end of a day of utter, utter rage and frustration.

I still had one of the best nights ever when I saw you live, although I was a little taken aback at you asking me to stop hitting you as a humanitarian act, I just couldn't stand you beating yourself up.

You are exceptional at staying upbeat.

Struggling

I don't know how you do it, I err distinctly on the depressive side.

(And if anyone offers me happy pills one more time I will definitely scream in their face)


I feel dispondent at the moment too.

And I also feel heart broken.

If I was an idiot I could probably rationally describe heart break, but I am a thinking, feeling, breathing human being and as such I hope to be understood when I say "heart broken".

Heart break is not just about romance, but believe me both the romantic and world loving sides of my heart are torn apart.

I have been trying to fix both sides.

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/heartbroken-quotes

I hear you

This:

http://youtu.be/agUmwtxPdhY

Is chiming with how I'm feeling at the moment.

Physical things have gone missing from my own space at the moment and it's making me see all kinds of red.

Lady in video, if you wish for more credit then please get in touch.

Happy to add your name.

I do not steal material intentionally, if you feel I have tell me.

And I do not take people's things.

The letter of the law

(An adaptation of a comment into a half fiction)

A child is missing.

I am many steps removed from her family, so I am going to say something quite difficult.

They shouldn't be releasing pictures of the man that is accused for her disappearance.

Fine, if they find him guilty, then show his picture.

But he is still only accused at this point.

 I may not want him on the streets, but I do not want to see his face.

Any crime involving children sends people into a hysterical frenzy, in a way, somewhat understandably.

However, in succumbing to hysteria innocent people get hurt.

It has been proved time and again.

 Name check: Diplock courts, The 2006 terrorism act and detention without trial.

When are we going to learn from history?

La la la la I'm not listening anymore

I feel broken inside.

Every time it seems that I try to do something positive it turns to shit.

So, shall I just stop trying?

There's this saying that my Dad taught me, that roughly goes "You can please some of the people, some of the time and most of the people, all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."

It currently feels like no one can be pleased.

And you know who one of the bravest and strongest person I know is, my old house mate.

She has a baby now and I really bloody miss her.

But she does have a beautiful baby girl.

 She's not the only strong person that I know.

And when I say strong I do not mean that she can bench press 150 whoever cares.

I mean that she gives me strength and hope and enthusiasm.

Another kind of rememberance

I didn't post this on remembrance Sunday because it was one of those days, but looking at it, it seems appropriate. A blank space. Silence.

In praise of thought

I was reading University challenge by Jonathan Derbyshire.

It brought me back to a question that had long exercised me in the past (he makes some very eloquent points).

How do we look at the value of a University education?

 It is often couched in monetary terms.

And increasingly when I look at how long it has taken me to pay back my loan, and I'm still not quite there yet, I find it hard not to look at it in these terms also.

 The promised 'graduate' pay packet hasn't exactly materialised, or at least my expectation of what this would give me in material terms is quite negligible and fleeting.

Epiphany

But over this last year I have realised something else.

Despite time spent protesting I have never thrown any rocks, though the rage building up inside is significant.

 I have not burnt any books or magazines, despite inwardly and occasionally outwardly crying at some of their content (and I do mean that).

I have not plundered shops.

I do not feel that I am a paragon of Ghandi like peace either, or much of a saint.

I feel sometimes less educated now than I was before I started.  

Do you want what I've got?

But somewhere along the way, at school, at university I built up a value system and the capacity for reasoned and independent thought.

And by and large that independent thought has led me in some positive directions, not always, but often.

I try to, though I don't always succeed, measure my opinions of a person more slowly.

And I feel that prejudice will always be with us and in some ways I'm not entirely sure that is a bad thing.

If people didn't keep calling me English, when I identify as British (my family stretch around the British isles) it wouldn't have given me a pride in the elements of my culture that derive from welsh lilts and Scottish poetry.

If I wasn't assured that girls couldn't do this, that or the other I wouldn't have been so keen to prove them wrong.

Hell if I hadn't been overlooked and marked as stupid so many times...

Would I have ever tried this damn hard to impress you all?  

Hidden blood

Admittedly then I might have let up a bit and not worked myself into exhaustion time and time over.

But all those pieces of paper with high marks and those precious two degrees with a 2.1 and a merit.

I earned those and hopefully I earned something so much more than money along the way.

I earned respect.

I may have lost some too, it happens.

But I've finally got enough self respect to say.

P*** off if you don't value me.

I value me.

I'm not killing my soul anymore unless you give me a DAMN GOOD REASON.  

Unfortunately, my opinion

By the way, this blog earns me no profit, I'm not using the ad sense thing.

Hence why I reckon it's pants, I'm not getting paid diddly squat for it.

And that there readers is an unedited rant.

Something you'll be getting a lot more of if you don't pay for content.

I'm tired, I should have gone to bed ages ago, so I guess there's that blood again.

Do you want to value me or just put me to sleep again?

THE LAW CANNOT CHANGE MENS HEARTS IT CAN ONLY RESTRAIN THE HEARTLESS.

I know who said that, therefore, he still lives.

Isn't that precious?

Oh well.

LOVE BOOKS.

2012 bibliography in order of preference (aside from papers, magazines, job adverts(!) etc):

Persepolis so tender, so true

The Help inspirational, beautifully woven and elucidating

The Princess Bride there are so many reasons why this book is lovely

Small Island (near the end, not there yet)

Some Sartre, surprisingly like Husserl hence it being lower and me not reading all of it

The Alchemist so sweet, but too sweet

Just started Pure looks like it's going to upset me, so I'm only three chapters in

One about life in New York, honestly it was upsetting me so much I've misplaced it and forgotten the title.

(I'll get back to it, I'm stubborn like that)