A letter a day to number 10. No 1,137
Saturday 04 July 2015.
Dear Mr Cameron,
We are being stolen from every day, our rights to life, sustenance and shelter, liberty, self determination, the presumption of innocence, habeas corpus, freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from unwarranted, unnecessary and intrusive state intervention, access to justice, real wages and meaningful employment, access to care and support, creativity, critical thinking, the meaning and value of life.
We are in a time of unprecedented change forced upon us by rapacious greed supported and protected by oppressive, socially deceitful and manipulative governments, a global agenda of market driven neoliberalism and the eradication of the state and the privatisation of state assets.
The human cost of this is regarded and treated as irrelevant by government and calls for accountability are treated as vexatious and even an opposition MPs questioning of the human cost of government policy was branded ‘disgraceful’ by one of its chief architects, Iain Duncan Smith.
There has never been a time of greater need for the artfully rebellious, the seers and the keepers of our oral traditions, creative artists, informal speakers and straight talkers, the subversives and the pregnant cultural underground full of colour and light and rich in expression.
The mainstream, media driven, narratives must be challenged and held to account. The spin and deceit of the powerful must have their bubbles of lies and deception burst at every opportunity.
We are better than this! It is we who must, as Kate Tempest said to a spell bound crowd, at Glastonbury, with one woman, at least, moved to tears, ‘Hold your own!’ The young who you so callously dismiss, deny support to and treat with such contempt are the keepers of rebelliousness, it is their natural ground. They are the inheritors of tomorrow and it is to them we must and will surrender the world, but it is our duty to hand them a world worth having, holding, husbanding and keeping. Money grubbing MPs have failed us, greedy corporations steal the food from the mouths of children for a fast buck. What you have stolen we are duty bound to take back. You have reduced life to a commodity and we must take it back because it is the most precious thing on Earth, indeed it is what makes the Earth and each one of us unique in the known universe. Our lives do not belong to you! So to every ordinary person reading this letter, I say, with grateful thanks to Kate Tempest, ‘Hold your own and let it be… Catching!’
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of-the-neoliberals
Desperate DWP’s last minute appeal against revealing benefit-related deaths
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02v3jmq/glastonbury-2015-kate-tempest
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 