A Christmas Carol

In case no one had noticed, this winter has been shaping up into something of a Dickensian, or even Medieval, season of ill-will to all - or pretty much all - men [caveat: unintentional genderism, just trying to get the appropriate literary tone here; apologies]. Even the shine of the thinnest veneer of remaining advertising cant has failed to distract a mostly betrayed population from the immediacy of their impoverishment at the hands of our pathetic excuse for a government. The Tories have even actively sought to avoid active discussion on the daily 'live' media, simply because: a) they have no policies, b) they have no excuses, and c) they have no scruples.

They, in a word, are afraid of their electorate - us - their employers; to whom they should be both subservient and answerable in law. The way things are going, it's going to take Marley's Ghost a double-shift at half-pay with no seasonal adjustments for unsociable working hours, to make anything like an impression on the Ebenezer Scrooges of this bunch before Christmas 2050, let alone this year. Anyone - and I've said this before, but I'll repeat it again - who criticizes those on strike this Christmas, within my earshot, will get a knuckle sandwich from me [and I'm not a violent man].

All that we are, collectively, just about putting up with at the moment, is not our fault: remember that simple fact. This procession of Tory governments have had twelve, long and painful years to put the economy right: again, also remember that the problems they 'inherited' came wholly from the global economic crisis precipitated by the sub-prime mortgage market and over-leveraged banks via dodgy financial 'products'. The state bailed them out then, and subsequently re-privatised them to their 'investors' when the dust had settled. What's needed now is for that same 'magic money tree' philosophy to be made available to the rest of us, in the form of the re-nationalisation of all the centralized supply and infrastructure sectors, and the returning of health and social care - all of it - into public ownership and state control.

In short, this is the only reformed-Scrooge goose that will cut it: there are hundreds of thousands of Tiny Tims out there, whose parents and carers are stretched beyond breaking point, while the likes of Sunak and the rest simply order their servants to throw another peasant on the fire to keep out the cold. This is the deepest of deep midwinters for a very large number of our population. It is within - I won't say the gift, but the moral and legal obligation - of our administration, to deal with it, before it gets beyond the control of law - and it will - and a genuinely deserv-ed insurrection breaks out. You would hope that common decency would prevail before that, but common decency presupposes some shred of personal decency and morality on behalf of our self-styled 'betters', characteristics sorely lacking in most of the Tory party and this government. Merry Christmas to one and all...