Elections: What is it about?

Jeremy Corbyn has the personality of an old tea pot, calm, boring and beige.  I do not think if I am having a house party he will be the first guest to think of. On the other hand, Boris Johnson looks like a great fun, good entertainer and full of anecdotes and quotes that will enlighten any dinner party. We might like someone, but we know they are dull and boring, and really I do not think I want to spend my BBQ party talking about what  Karl  Marx meant by exchange- value and commodity in Capital!

Sadly for many, we will not be voting in next election on the best dinner guests, otherwise the likes of Corbyn or Abbott has no chance. We are also not voting for an autocratic monarch, or a “president for life”, so we have a real choice, we have freedom of choice, and we need to know what is voting about and what is government, then we can make a choice.

This is about more than just an individual, they (media and spin teams) do their best to make it look so, to feel that you are voting for a person, “the person” you like , or believe you do. Which one do I like more? Frankly neither! Who looks more Prime Minister material? My answer is still the same; neither.

 I will not be voting for a person, I am voting for ideas, ideology, party manifesto, plans to deliver these ideas and ideology, not for the way someone eats a ham sandwich.

If I am going away, I would not trust Boris to water my plants. I know he will not remember, he will not care, and I would certainly worry that he would only go to my house with a prostitute. This is the answer I can come up with about trusting the individual, I do not find Jeremy Corbyn entertaining, but I trust him, and I do not have to like someone to trust them. 

People disliked Corbyn when he refused to answer the question about using nuclear weapons to kill millions, they disliked him because he did not fully embrace the remain campaign,  disliked him for many things, but underneath the surface, the man has always been consistent.  As for Boris Jonson, there is no consistency, we really do not know what he thinks of Europe, the NHS, austerity or any of his personal convictions, if he has any.

If you want to make this election about the individual rather than ideology, the question I ask you: do you really trust Boris? Really?

 

 

Ahmad Baker

#VoteLabour #VoteNHS

Vote for your NHS:

First thing first: 19 years in the NHS this month; I deserve a medal ;)

In Nov 2000 I started on East ward, Kent & Canterbury hospital, I loved the place. But I remember vividly the newspaper cut-out hanging in the staff room/ doctors’ office: a Daily Mail article labelling the K&C hospital as a third world hospital. The staff were all upset and demoralised by the concept that they were failing the patients.

Nurses care. That’s not what we do, that’s who we are, we care. And when caring is not satisfactory we feel we are responsible, we feel that we are failing our patients. We know it is the system, funding and politics, but it is not the prime minister who is running between those patients lying on trollies in the corridor, it is us. When things go bad, we feel the pain, the suffering of our patients, the suffering of our colleagues, our suffering. This is how my wonderful friends in K&C hospital felt, they did not need the hate-filled Daily Mail article to tell them patients are suffering, they lived that.

Gradually things have changed. I was a sign of that change, oversees nurses, more staff, more funding, more services, more support. Years passed and what once was the norm: patients in A&E on trollies waiting for beds for days, has since became a taboo.

 2010 brought us David Cameron who said that his priorities can be put in three letters: NHS.

Nine years have passed, the news stories we used to see and hear in 2000 are back on our screens, and for the unlucky ones, in our wards and units, in our lives. The long waits, for appointments, operations, and  A&E visits and admissions, it is all back.

I have been on many nights were  at midnight we had >100 patients in A&E, people lying on the floor, waiting for very long hours. Bad nights, more bad nights and days, and weeks, and you can do nothing, you feel helpless.

This is the dilemma that all NHS face, you want to care, but to do so you need time, resources and support. You do not get these things and you feel that you are failing your patients, those in your care, it becomes personal. All the while those who are high office and responsible of depriving you from time, resources and support are posting how much they care about the NHS, about you and what you do.

I love my job, I am proud of my profession but seeing the misery in our NHS, the future that is being created everyday over the past 9 years, makes me think everyday if I want to remain in this job.

People do not remember, because only those who suffer have the memory, so my advice after 19 years in the NHS:. The Tories do not care about the NHS, never did, never will, and if you do not remember, do not risk it, because you will never forget.

Ahmad Baker

Politics is life

(apology for some of the explicit language used)

I found it strange when people do not vote, or worse when people say “I do not like politics”, “I do not get involved in politics”. I always ask: who controls the air your breathe? Politicians, they set what acceptable pollution levels are, what emissions can be released into the air, what forests (trees give us oxygenJ ) can be cut, expanded or protected. Who controls the water you drink, the food you eat, your mortgage, your wages, your pension, your health and access to health service? It is politicians, and if you do not care about that, then why are you alive!

 

Politics is like an arranged marriage that we all get into without knowing, and we never consent to politicians to fuck us, and they do. Politics is boring, and politicians do their best to make sure it is so. They want you to see it depressing, boring and hard to understand, so you can sign the dotted line without giving it too much thought, because they are happy to do the boring stuff while you can get on with your life, enjoy all the freedoms you have, which they control.

 

 

There is a very good reason why the contract on the App store is six zillion pages long so you do not read it, just sign. This does not mean that Google or Apple will sell your kidneys, but it means you do not fully understand what rights or freedoms you have forfeited. Same with elections, you vote for a candidate, who represents a party, you think you know who you elected, but you have no control or power over what they do in the future. Sounds depressing and most certainly it is, that’s why your interest in politics should not only be restricted to one occasion every 5 years (or thanks to Cameron, May and Jonson every few months). It is an ongoing process, a never finished business, like life, because it affects, no, it controls your life, my life, our lives.

 

The national debt has grown from 1.03 trillion in 2010 to 1.8 trillion in 2019. Your share (and every British citizen) has gone from £16411 in 2010 to  £26599 today. You have incurred 10 thousand pounds in debt (or 50K for a family of five like mine) during the Tory/ coalition government.  Do you feel the benefit of it? Do you feel your life has improved by that sum? If no, then why you allow your debt to increase by that much with no actual benefits? Who benefited if not you, your family or your community? And why are you silent about it? this is an example of many, to prove that no matter how boring you think politics is, its impact on us is massive.

 

Many people say: they are all the same, and to an extent that is right. Illegal wars, tax breaks to banks and billionaires, cosy relationship with the media on one hand and underfunding of our infrastructure, housing and education on the other. But still there is a difference, and if I may be explicit here, but it is like being sodomised or fucked, neither are good, but one is less worse than the other.

 

So, vote, if not because of conviction then out of duty. If not fully in love with the manifesto and the party, then tactically. Speak to your MP, write to them, do everything you can to be a headache to them, a pain in the back, so every time they vote for a legislation that affects you, and most things do, they know that they have to answer to you, they have to justify to you why they voted the way they did, and hopefully then we will have MPs who actually and truly work for us.


Ahmad Baker 24.11.2019