Claustrophobia and the real benefit scroungers.

I am so fucking angry, felt really sleepy as I dragged my sorry carcass downstairs for some breakfast before my first date with Varian, dozily flipped through the sports pages, read a piece about dodgy doings at a school (will return to later), read the letters and then read Aditya Chakrabortty’s article: “The story of the millionaire Tory MP and the tenants facing homelessness” (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/10/millionaire-tory-mp-tenants-estate-flats-richard-benyon) and it sums up for me why I am the way I am and why I hate the Tories: the rentiers, the capitalists, the absolute hypocrites; it sums up why I believe that the Tories are evil, it is a story that should be told to everyone in the country and maybe others would get as angry and want to rid ourselves of the spivs like this fucker Richard Benyon.

Basically Benyon, a Tory MP who lives on a 3,500 acre estate called Englefield, has a family company who have recently acquired New Era estate in London. It is an estate which allows workers to live at an affordable rent, rent has recently increased and when contracts run out rents are expected to rise by about 300%, there is no way current residents can afford this. Benyon is a benefit scrounger; he gets millions a year from various sources. We don’t hear or read about the rich benefit scroungers do we? This is the sort of story people need to be told, not the biased shit from the likes of the Mail.

Off to get ready to meet Varian now.

Back from my first date and I’m still recovering. I was fine waiting, then called into large room with the large Varian, a big x-ray machine. Take my jumper and shirt off, lie on hard bed, positioned carefully, ‘mask’ put over my upper body and then panic. I suffer from claustrophobia and immediately want to tear the thing off me. I realise my unease of late has partly been me not thinking about or repressing thoughts and feelings about my claustrophobia. Nurse is brilliant, just offering to take it off allows me brief respite, breathe, it won’t be for long, think of other things, try to relax – it’s hard, panic again; how many more times have I got this? Somehow I remain still, stuff is done, the machine finally starts and fires it’s concentrated beam of x-rays at the crabby one, can’t feel anything but I imagine the cancer cells being zapped, trying not to think of the collateral damage. Suddenly I’m released, blessed relief, speak to nurse, has been the most difficult bit yet. I’ve 32 more, had 3% – shit.

Tell Kate, feel very weird, still do although I’m beginning to calm.

Go to Majestic to buy wine for Mike’s birthday bash, want to get a good bottle as Kate and I will only have a glass each (Kate hasn’t seen the size of my glass!). Nothing really grabs me. Instead go for some Waitrose therapy, buy a bottle of 2004 Barolo (Italy’s ‘finest wine’, although not my most favourite, that’s Brunello). Check my bible and it’s a good vintage and brewers get 1-4 stars so should be eminently quaffable.  That’s me, a red wine socialist.

So, dodgy doings at a school in Birmingham. So the head has a meeting with parents about doing something called Chips – Challenging Homophobia in Primary Schools. Next thing the head’s being subjected to abuse by a group of parents primed by a group called ‘Safe at School’, a campaign run by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. He is led away for his own safety.  They are an anti abortion group who are also against assisted dying, I’m planning on going to their next local meeting, anyone want to come with me?

Manifesto 14:

• introduction of a Benyon Law that no one is allowed to own directly or indirectly more than 1 property which is their home. All their other holdings to be given over to the state to be divied up so that we have no homeless, families living in overcrowded and unhygienic dwellings, rectifying all those suffering from the ‘bedroom tax’ (which Benyon surprisingly voted for) and any others in unsatisfactory housing. No private profit from private housing, it is a basic human right.

Keep on keeping on, love Duncan.