Exposing One's Truths - UKGov Consultation on Ending Vaccine Mandates

I'm not one to keep quiet about my political or indeed apolitical leanings in 'real-life' but for some undefined reason I don't regularly post politically minded pieces on here (or at least not for a while). Perhaps it's in part because politics was the fiery spark and continued flame throughout my previous blog - ecomonkey.blogspot.com - which I wrote for around 10 years and got a little burnt out by towards the end. This journal was a deliberate move away from that kind of discussion - from politics to poetry!

In these 'pandemic' days of fear and confusion however, it seems that almost every conversation, every nervous or determined silence, every thought, idea, deliberate or unconscious action or non-action, every poem even is political in one way or another. 

To reveal one's political thoughts, aspirations or allegiances puts one in a very vulnerable position. Yet to keep them hidden seems to me even more detrimental to one's health, mental state and indeed the nature of the culture in which one finds oneself. And if one's purpose is to better the culture and society one lives in, then exposing one's own truths seems like the only viable option..

So, today I completed the UKGOV Health & Social Care Sector consultation around ending mandates - Revoking vaccination as a condition of deployment across all health & social care. I stated why I am opposed to Vaccine Mandates and why I think there should be no discrimination based on choice. You can have your say too by filling in the short form here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/revoking-vaccination-as-a-condition-of-deployment-across-all-health-and-social-care

The consultation ends on 16th February 2022 so please do voice your opinion as soon as you can.

The last two questions of the consultation are the meat of the piece and I took some time to lay down my thoughts before sending. I've copied my answers below in case it might help you to express your own opinion. Some of the details and figures come from the Together Declaration who informed me of the consultation. The rest are my thoughts and opinions based on months, sometimes years of research.

Of course you may disagree with my reasoning, perhaps agree just a little.. whatever you feel about this issue, I think it is important for us to take opportunities like this to voice our thoughts, if for no other reason than to cathartically release pent up anger, fear, confusion or apathy that can stagnate if kept quiet inside..

Q. Which particular groups might be positively affected and why?

Every group will be positively affected by the permanent eradication of mandatory vaccination procedures - whether upfront or covert - for the following reasons:

• Mandatory vaccination procedures will result in the loss of 120,000 members of staff, in addition to the 60,000 workers in care-homes and other ancillary posts.
• The NHS is already in need of 95,000 staff so such sickening losses will be devastating to the nation’s health.
• Added to the current 2 year multi-million NHS waiting list, mandatory vaccination procedures will be a monumental disaster, ensuring myriad damage and fatalities across the population including those who are vulnerable and protected.
• It is well known that Omicron is mild, VACCINES DO NOT STOP TRANSMISSION, and that natural immunity from having had Covid is higher (see the Israeli and other studies). Thus it is clear vaccination is to protect the person having it. Not anyone else. 

Perhaps it wasn't the 'proper' place to do so but having no section offered for additional comments, I also added a caveat of sorts about the lies and disturbing choice of phrases used in the consultation wording itself, and this I added to the above question.

Please desist the deceitful blurring of facts and fabrication of the truth about Covid:

• Omicron presents no more of a threat to public health than the winter flu. It does not require mass vaccination.
• Those who do seem to catch and suffer from all variants particularly Omicron, are those who are vaccinated not those who have chosen to abstain or wait until vaccine testing is complete to decide.
• It is clear that the government intentionally ignores the latest clinical and scientific advice and uses only that which fits with its agenda purposely fabricating ‘science’, ‘the numbers’ and deliberately confusing the public.
• If it was the government’s aim to achieve public health and safety as it claims, restrictions would have taken place far sooner than they did and would have only been necessary for a short period of time without generating undue stress, fear and mental health issues on the public as well as denying care to those with genuine needs.
• Constant repetition of the lie “vaccination is our very best line of defence against COVID-19” will not make it true.
• NHS and care-home staff have a professional duty to protect their patients/clients by being there to provide the best health care possible in accordance with their training and the patients/clients wishes, not to adhere to government whims and fancies.

Q. What actions can the government and health and social care sector take to protect the groups identified if vax not a condition of deployment?

To protect all the groups identified the government and health and social care sector must take the following action:

• Government can ensure that the NHS is well funded and staff well paid (not just adequately) so that vacancies are filled and staff are able to fulfil their roles - to care for patients and clients - efficiently and in the necessary compassionate, unhurried manner.
• Government can admit to fabrication of truths about Covid and the false, confusing tactics used to confuse the public and generate fear. It can put measures in place to ensure that such abuses of power do not take place in the future.
• Government can listen to the science (not their own convenient and convoluted ‘science’) and act in accordance - issuing advice rather than mandates about how to manage and live with Covid and other viruses that may be forthcoming.
• Government can put an end to stealth privatisation of the NHS, embedding private interests, fragmenting our national institution, entrenching political posts & private providers and instead provide the funds and support needed for the NHS to survive and then thrive in its public capacity. E.g. eliminate systemic bias when awarding contracts, end the use of public money to build unnecessary private hospitals, rescind the abhorrent processes of private US companies buying our GP services which will inevitably result in loss of care for all and so on..
• Health and Social Care sectors can continue to provide the best services possible focusing on lifestyle and health as well as pathology.

Well, that's my piece said, for now. Maybe I'll find some peaceful poetry to post next, ha! Much love.. x

Anyone But Me

Joy Crookes presents Anyone But Me.. - Episode #2 With Kate Nash | Part 1 

This conversation is very pertinent, highly intelligent, super real and oh, so moving. As well as discussing the potential dangers of our technological addictions and how global lockdown has affected creativity, Joy + Kate articulate beautifully what it is to be female in 21^st century ‘Western civilisation’ and how in a male-run world it can be so incredibly difficult to be true to ourselves, to express ourselves without being derided or damaged in some way, or to even come to the realisation that the self we are forced to project is not who we really are.

Despite huge obstacles both women have courageously risen to the challenge and here they share their experiences of overcoming trauma, getting back to themselves and the things in life that really matter as well as finding ways to live in a way that feels more genuine and meaningful.

An intelligent, inspiring and highly recommended listen for young women, older women, men who have daughters, men who have mothers / aunts / nieces / female friends in their lives – yes, that’s everyone.. 

Part 2 coming soon x

Prepare to roar, weep and feel the love in Part 2 here.

The Room, Part 1

I felt haunted by the maddening fever of Charlotte Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper from the moment I was handed the paperback book in sixth form English class. I can still remember the dusky faded lemon cover that seemed to emit dust and sorrow from every papery pore. The smell of sadness, hopeless entrapment, filled my school-girl nostrils and nothing ever felt or smelt quite the same after that moment. Perhaps, not so deep down, a part of me knew that one day I’d find myself in a room of my own – not expansive and freeing like the space advocated for so earnestly by Virginia Woolf, but restrictive and binding, as slowly suffocating as Gilman’s lonesome character’s room.

I am not trapped here by any supercilious, arrogant, self-righteous, ignorant or fearful man, or indeed by a patriarchal society that wishes me to remain silent and insignificant as all good women should do. Patriarchal suppression may be highly analogous of my situation, but it is not that, at least not directly that, which keeps me here.

On the screen-that-is-often-nearby, I watch Ben Whishaw play Ben Coulter, the unfortunate boy incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, or at least, we and he are fairly certain he did not do the murderous deed, but perhaps he simply cannot or will not remember what actually took place.

I find myself in similar situ, imprisoned for some deed or thought that I do not recall, and am most probably quite innocent of, and would remain so if it were not for the infernal, distinctly chiding voice that crows louder with each new dawn.

‘It’s all your fault

You are to blame

So, suck up your punishment

Accept your shame’

If there is always a cause for each effect as the tech-heads in Alex Garland’s DEVS proclaim, then perhaps somewhere along the pitiful line of my younger life something I did or failed to do, something I said or did not say, even perhaps a thought that entered my mind may have led to this particular set of circumstances. Perhaps a series of actions and inaction, or conversations had and silences kept, or thought processes that did or didn’t take place, allowed a portal between two (or more) multiverses to open up and one feed into another enabling this sorry state to begin to manifest itself, slowly but surely, painfully creating this extraordinary mess I find myself in.

Perhaps it was always meant to be this way, was decreed by the gods, ordained by the stars that I would one day find myself here. Perhaps it was always going to be thus, regardless of anything I said or did or didn’t say or didn’t do. Perhaps my wilful, desperate, pleading, bleeding thoughts had nothing to do with it – with this chaos. Perhaps I have no control whatsoever over this reality. 

The idea of a kind of fate or destiny offers a morsel of relief and acceptance at times of depletion. Mostly, however, I find it difficult to accept this as a valid, pre-ordained fate – a particular set of circumstances chosen by the universe or multiverse or by a divine being or even by my own pre-human-self to live through. And endure. If it didn’t kill me first.

I’ve always loathed the story of Job – his endless suffering on top of suffering seems so futile and wasteful. What is or was the point of all that pain? The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual breaking of a human life? To what end? And for what purpose?

I feel the weight of sorrows – not all my own, lying heavily upon these bony shoulders. A weight far heavier than one human, one woman ought to bear. But we do, don’t we? Women have bourne the world’s weight on our shoulders, heads, and broken backs for time immemorial just as surely as we have born the next generation and the next and the next within our cruelly despised, scorned, and suppressed bodies.

Is it any wonder I found myself on the 5 mile trudge to school at the tumultuous and torturous age of 15 or 16, crawling along the pavement, dragging grazed knees after each all consuming push forward of an elbow, first one, then the other and hope that the legs will follow along behind..

I recall reading with shock and fascination about Clara from the Heidi stories who cried so much her tears eventually dried up. Or was it Helen Keller? I’m not sure now. But I do remember the tears. The flooded years of almost constant crying. Wretched, unbidden flows. Sorrow's salty sting covering my face, falling into my lap, saturating sleeves, exercise books, pillows and endless nights. The acres and acres of heart-breaking grief. The pull and pull of gut-wrenching emotions – confused, liberally churned out, more liberally stuffed and packed deeply inside – layer upon layer of sadnesses forming an unpalatable sky-high dessert of melancholy or an impossibly tall pile of mattresses all trying unsuccessfully to protect me from the pain of that one solitary, bright-green pea. The lentil sprouting in the darkness, taking root and multiplying itself like bacterium, sending spores out through the sleeping strata. As quickly as I discovered or imagined a new layer of duplicitousness to protect me from my self, the pea spores would pick their way through each make-believe layer, each over-thought barrier designed to cushion the blow but failing badly every time, consequently trapping me with their wily wicked ways. I was stuck, like Sandra Bullock, in the web. A matrix of numbers, indecipherable digits and figures closing in on my wild nature, suppressing any semblance of free-will, tearing down any illusions of freedom and choice.

Was it always this way? Have I always been nothing more than a single digit in an endless equation? A piece of code that I will never be able to fathom? I cannot believe that, not wholeheartedly anyway. And yet, here I am. A single being, maybe only a half-being, flashing away in analogue mode, thinking that I must be making a difference, effecting some form of positive change, when all the while, the truth is that I mean nothing more than a single grain of desert sand, one miniscule drop in an ocean more vast than I could ever imagine…

Edge Of The World

I sit at the edge of the world

waiting for the end

will it come fast or slow?

if she's here, will she know

what to do if I drop

and won't wake up?

I sit at the edge

wait for the end (of the world)

this bed provides comfort

but it's not my friend.

outside grows greyer

I screen it away

blindness protects

from the harshness of day..

I sit at the edge of the world

wait for the end

will I choke on the blood

or the vomit or bile?

will it be instantaneous

or go on for a while?

will it hurt or feel dreamy?

will my last cries be heard?

I sit at the edge

wait for the end of the word

I had it here somewhere

the perfect reprise

a shimmering spirit

who giddies the skies..

I sit at the end

and wait for the courage (to take me..)

I suppose I ought to add a little something about this pieces's provenance just in case anyone is concerned: 

Dealing with chronic pain and more than one defined ongoing illness can often, for me at least, bring up a sense of something that could be insensitively described as a vivid dose of hypochondria or, more sympathetically, as an acute awareness of death's ever reaching fingers drawing close - making it's presence felt through an increased intensity of usual symptoms with additional new strains of discomfort - a seemingly random pulsing vein here, an occasional eye twitch there and/or some unusual stomach spasms for example. Perhaps at night there is also a feverish heat emanating from the neck rising to the lower skull..

All these happenings can easily conspire to make one think about the inevitability of leaving this life and act as a reminder that the departure board can change it's details of time, destination, even mode of transport, any time it pleases. There are no guarantees and (as was made abundantly clear in the small print) any deposits made are unlikely to be refunded.

Whilst it is seldom enjoyable to ponder these things for any extended period of time, I feel sure that acknowledging the existence and inevitability of death is a healthier way to live than denial and pretence.. Perhaps.. 

Maybe this is all subjective. Besides, my intention was to explain that Edge Of The World is a poem that comes from this kind of pondering rather than any desire to deliberately accelerate the process or indeed charter one's own private train to Elsewhere. I hear cancellations and delays are forecast anyway..

Until next time, may your days be filled with love & kindnesses :) xx