The B-side Record Again

So the political parties appear tae be moving up a gear fur the next council election and candidates are being approved.  We’re noo starting tae see the candidates making their appearances on social media. I’ve spent a week trying tae listen tae as many as I can; early I know, but I’m like that.  I learned fae I was wee no tae leave ma homework tae 10 tae 9 in the morning it wis due.

I cannae say I’m in the least effin amused.  Folk who want tae be councillors appear tae think being a councillor involves pretending the entire population has a wean in the hoose.  Or, alternatively a poor person that lacks things like training and education.  We’ve had 40 years of charlatans brainwashing folk into believing if you are trained tae hoover a carpet by some middle class grubber on a nice salary, that you too will suddenly find a nice job where you can use your fantastic skill hoovering carpets.   Or perhaps being trained tae wipe a table will lift you from poverty into a high tax rate paying table wiping job?   If you really think pretending that grown adults find wiping a table beyond them and that training them tae wipe these tables is the same as providing them with a decent job, then all I can say about you is you’ve spent the last forty long hellish years Scotland’s working class has endured sitting in the school classroom, back turned tae the class, head bowed, wearing the huge Dunces Cap.   And it’s oh so showing.   Please get it into your heads, sending folk on bullshit training is nothing more than Bullshit Job Employment for the mediocre middle classes where they spend their careers dehumanizing the poor and working class.   Ask your teacher what dehumanizing means if you are struggling.

GIVE ME STRENGTH!  ENOUGH!  JIST ENOUGH!

All the bullshit job training in the world will not alter the political economy of Scotland.  Are you insane?  No?  So what are you doing? It will keep you all gabbing the biggest load of mince, abusing the poor in exchange for tin morality medals while the elites continue tae make oot like bandits.  If you don’t understand that…ye need tae be knuckling doon tae dae your homework and stey there until you dae understand it, no run for election.  What’s that phrase?  Repeating the same thing o’er and o’er again, expecting a different outcome is the sign on insanity….  That.

As for the pretence that Scotland is a country with half a dozen weans stuffed under every kitchen sink….Or have they looked under their own kitchen sink, found wee Jimmy eating a toffee and just assumed their their childless sister, and their childless mate and their mum, and their Uncle Bertie, him wi the dementia all have a wee Jimmy eating toffee under their sink tae?  Because it bloody well sounds like it and has sounded like it for the last forty years. 

Campaigning as if the there is a wee Jimmy under every kitchen sink, at best makes ye look like a clown.   Tae a helluva lot of folk you will be letting them know you don’t give a damn aboot how poor they are unless that wee Jimmy is under their sink greetin fur a sweetie.  At worst, you will wander up tae some woman who is in crisis because she’s beginning tae realise the baby she wanted is never going tae show up. And then there are the women who will want tae SCREAM in your face “WEANS?  Me? Have weans?  HOW!  How the fuck am I supposed tae dae that?  Shag some rando doon this street right noo?  I cannae even afford tae feed masel never mind go oot and meet anybody ya bloody idiot!”  Been there.  Done it.  Ladies, childless ladies, I give you full permission tae let them have it.  Let rip at the canvassers who dare tae look at you, see the tits and assume you are jist like the stereotypical middle class mother wi 3.4 children, dog, car and white picket fence.   Do it.  They never do it tae the men.  

Candidates, this is not 1800s.  We’re no married off young and soon producing a football team.  It’s the 2020s. Helpful hint for the unobservant would-be election candidates: Times hiv changed.  The ONS figures show almost half of 30 year old women don’t hiv any weans. Trust me.  99% of those women are no keeping the wee swimmers away from the eggs until you get elected and sort some childcare. Dae ye really think the birth rate fell in the 1920s & 1930s cos of the lack of childcare?  You pretending that childcare will solve poverty is a nonsense. Childcare is not the economy.  The economy is not childcare. Try decent wages so women can go out, meet men who are earning decent wages, mibbes afford a home of their own or together….. there’s a whole load of ducks tae be lined up before anybody thinks about having a baby.  The wean chanters don’t give a monkeys about those ducks… they only care about the folk wi the ducks lined up and the baby already.   

Guess what decent wages, unlike effin childcare, also does?  It sorts out the poverty being experienced by those who did have kids… a very very long time ago, and those who didn’t have kids and never will, getting on a bit and that, like masel.   What?  You thought the only folk in poverty were folk wi wee Jimmys under the sink?  Aye, I know ye did.  I noticed, aye. Yer all sounding exactly like the same auld political party machine generated drones I’ve heard come and go for decades.  Broken doon record….. and and it’s the B-side on the spinner. That radiogram needs dumped doon the back midden.

Let’s walk through the homework very very slowly, shall we?  Glasgow can be the example.  If you go tae Glasgow Council’s website, you’ll find a whole lot of datasheets full of all sorts of useful demographic information.  That thing about every hoose having a wee Jimmy under the sink chewing a toffee?  In the Anderston ward, the percentage of family households is a whopping 8.6%.    The ward with the highest percentage of households with weans is Greater Pollok at 34.8%.  On average, wards have families living in 23% of the households.

Think everybody else is a pensioner? Or mibbes ye think everybody else is a daffodil so disnae get a vote? Let’s look at the Southside Central ward.74% of the population of this ward are between 17 and 64 years of age. In 62% of Southside Central households, there are no children. In Govan, it’s 65%.  In Springburn, 29% of households have children, 52% do not. None.  Nada.  Naen!   What do you think the candidates gaun roon the doors waggling their gums about WEANS!  FAMILIES! tae those folk sound like? “Democracy is no aboot you… no unless you have a wean…. I will not work for you… I don’t care about you, I care about WEANS!  You are of no importance to me.  You Do Not Matter.  But will ye vote for me?”  

And let’s not forget the pensioners.  Poverty afflicts people of all ages, of all education levels, of just about all and any and all employment/training experience.   Candidates who sing about poverty If you are going tae talk about sorting out poverty, you have a lot of learning tae do before you go near a door if you are tae win votes instead of insulting voters.

The working class do not vote, as we are told, because we are apathetic.  We don’t vote because we understand that voting is what employers do and we won’t employ the cruel, the nasty nor the insultingly ignorant; there are none of them any use tae us, thank you very much.

So who wants tae know what a possible A-hit would be?  Want my vote?  Want the vote from women like me? Listen to women like me and learn from us. Now.