In life and in everything we do, we seem to lose our way a little. Maintaining a high level of competence and consistency in our work place, day in, day out or at home is a very arduous task. We drink coffee and drink energy juice to get us over the line at the last hurdle of paperwork or go home after a very tough day knowing that the next day will be the same and wondering if we have energy in the tank for it. It’s normal. It’s ok to feel this way. When I was younger my Mum and Dad would go to work everyday. Sometimes not even see each other. All to provide for their kids. My Dad was a security guard in the towns mall. My Mum worked in Asda. They never asked for anything extravagant nor did they treat themselves. It was all about their kids. My big sister and me.
I loved it in the summer as all the kids in my street would be out and all the adults too. Barbecues and water fights. It had a real community vibe. Everyone looked out for each other. Everyone helped each other. You fell? That’s ok, Jessie across the road had a first aid kit, she’ll patch you back up. A kid in your street went missing for longer than normal. There would be a search party out there looking for you until they found you. These were all principles I noticed while growing up. You don’t think of them as principles at the time. You just think of it as normal. Its in our DNA to help each other. It’s what we do. As I said this was all normal for me. My Mum would tell me to be nice to my elders and to help people when they’re in need of help. I remember I was 11 and I saw an elderly lady walking home from the shop carrying 4 or 5 heavy bags. I never even thought about it. I went straight up to her and asked if she would like help walking home. I could take a couple of bags for her to lighten the load. She gracefully accepted and off we went. Chatting to each other along the way. I felt good. I had helped someone. That lady felt good too. That there was good in the world and not everything had to be like on the news and have to be bad.
Everything boils down to basics. When I was at football training once a week and then play on a Sunday as a kid, I would try my hardest to be the best and do the best I can. Sometimes it would pay off, other times it wouldn’t. It was difficult to maintain the consistency I needed to be the best I could. There are levels to which we set ourselves everyday. Some with high levels. Some with medium and some with low levels of expectation. Whether you work in an office, work as a lorry driver, work in a factory or work as an airline pilot. We set ourselves targets and we thrive for competency and consistency. Do we get the same level of this everyday? No. We have good days and we have bad days. With politics it can be pretty much the same. Although with politics, you can’t have that dipping decline for too long. People start to notice and it starts to raise concerns. You’ll get some politicians that are just in it for a luxurious career. You’ll get others that are genuinely in it to change things and to help people. We all hope it’s the latter but it sadly is not always the case. Politics can be very complicated at times. All these figures and stats. She said, he said. A room full of MP’s laughing their heads off at prime ministers questions when in the middle of a welfare reform. A welfare reform that is going to change people’s lives. Make disabled people go to a privately run assessment and then get told that they’re fit for work. Then go back to work and collapse and sometimes die. No empathy, no shame, not a care in the world. “We’re reducing the deficit”. They will say. “We will reduce it by 2015”. Never happened. “We will be in a surplus by 2020”. Not going to happen. It really gets to me emotionally when I sit there and watch my television to see MP’s sitting there in their suits and business attire, laughing and muttering in the middle of such important matters. But unlike everywhere else, they don’t get the chance to be complacent or the chance to set themselves low expectations. They must maintain the highest standard or people will die. We have elections every 5 years to ensure this is the case. But sometimes I ask myself “where did it all go wrong?” Where did this process of systems and laws and statistics and figures all go wrong? Nobody seems to care anymore. I see Theresa May stand up and say that in her Government she has brought down unemployment. I see Jeremy Corbyn stand up on the opposition bench and say ‘no you haven’t’. It’s like children having an argument on the school playground. Meanwhile there are young, elderly, disabled and low earning families all sitting at home wondering what is the point. Our lives are in these people’s hands.
Politics has got out of hand. I see the BBC project a one party propaganda outlook. I see people of parties putting leaflets through doors then another party put theirs through and take the other one out because it was hanging just inside the letterbox. Is this what it’s came to? Tit for tat. Us vs them. Whoever has the biggest voice wins. The party with the most money and the most leaflets wins. What about the poor people relying solely on the Government and oppositions to do the right thing. Surely the basics of politics when all the rubbish is stripped bare is to help people in their time of need. To look after our elderly when they need care and protect their pensions that they have worked all their lives for. To support our youth when they leave school to give them something to hope for. To say to our high earners that you have succeeded well in life and we’re eternally grateful for your contributions but if you pay that little bit extra it will help the people less advantaged to you. We need our politicians to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. To ensure that they go back to the basics. To ensure that we help or neighbours, our families, our friends. We leave no man, woman or child behind. We make eradicating foodbanks a priority. That we take the step to scrap trident and for the Tory Government to confess that they only renew trident because they want to be at the big table when the UN meet for discussions. To look and feel powerful when in actual fact we can never use nuclear deterrent because it would violate UN laws and could wipe out the face of humanity. That we take a brass neck and lose the vanity project to protect and flourish our NHS and stop people being homeless, to stop people going without food and for our society to become a fair and equal place to live and work for all. If we go back to the basics, to the principles we had as a child and admit that we have lost our way. Because they all might be at the top of their game just now, flying high and not needing help from anyone but one day they will. One day they will be one of those statistics. One of those figures on a spreadsheet then what do they do? They look for help from others that can make it happen.
My father once told me ‘if you ever make it big, you better be nice to people on the way up the ladder because you’ll have to face them at some point on the way back down’. He’s right. We have politicians and high earners that are fine just now and being the best they can be. But that won’t last forever. Nothing does. We need to help others, empathise with others. Look out for one another. We need a Government that will do the same. Forget the salaries. Forget the job description. Go back to the basics and look at the bigger picture. Our Government have the power, the money and everything else to go back to the basics and change all of our lives for the better. Instead they’re opportunists, careerists, selfish, obsessed, self absorbed people. When we do get those MP’s that want to make real change. They get outnumbered and voted against. It’s an institution, a pantomime. They think of themselves before others. That’s why they are where they are today. If everyone everywhere just went back to basics and did the right thing. We all know right from wrong. If we all did the right thing we can reverse this mess and look forward to a hopeful, brighter future. Going back to the basics is not failing. Its courageous. It’s strong. It’s the right thing to do. When you’re lying on your death bed with minutes left. You don’t think of the money or the power you had in your life. You look at the people around that bed and see who is there in your time of need. For comfort, for assurance that you’re loved. Because at the end of the day. We all live and we all die. We are all the same. That’s why we should treat each other the same no matter of race, where we were born, sexual orientation, age or gender. We all need to go back to the basics and do the right thing.
Scotland's Time 