Dear Everyone
So, as the dust settles and I turn to face the next five years in this country I call home, here is what I hope for you all...
I hope that you are not old, sick, young or ordinary.
I hope that you don't rely upon any welfare benefits to pay your bills or feed your family, or if you do, that they are not the ones that will be cut in the next round of austerity measures. I hope you do not have to turn to food banks to avoid going hungry. I hope you are not forced to live in one room because you can't afford the fuel bills to heat your home.
I hope that you do not need to rely on the NHS for your health care, or if you do, you are seen and treated by people so dedicated that they manage a wonderful service in the face of long hours, low pay and impossible time targets in a system now run for profit and not the well being of its users. I hope you do not have to work under these pressures.
I hope that you do not rely upon any form of social care for support, or if you do, that the day centre you rely on to not spend your days alone doesn't close for lack of funding; that your carer isn't having to work a 12 hour day to make ends meet on their minimum wage salary and in the 15 minutes allocated to you, they manage to meet all your needs; that your social worker's case load is not so huge that you slip through the net. I hope you do not have to work in these conditions.
I hope that you do not have to work in education, or if you do, that you do not lose your job in another money saving restructure and you can manage the ever changing curriculum and assessment criteria; that you are not forced to work 16 hour days to fulfill your workload and you feel qualified to deal with the social needs of your learners, who cannot access support elsewhere because the provision has been cut.
I hope you are not forced to look for support from a person qualified to teach you, but not qualified to be your social worker. I hope that if you attend an Academy, the person teaching you IS actually qualified to do so. I hope that if you attend an under resourced state school, your teachers are amazingly resiliant and creative in the face of all their mounting challenges.
I hope that you are not the victim of crime, as there is unlikely to be a police officer available to prevent it or deal with it afterward, as in West Yorkshire alone, there are nearly 1000 fewer officers on the beat due to cuts. I hope you are not one of the officers attempting to do the right thing in the face of this huge deficit.
I hope that you are not a lover of the arts and don't want to borrow books from a library, as funding is cut to these 'non essential' areas of our human experience. I hope that you are not one of the creative people who loses their livelihood because of this.
I hope you learn to live with the pot holes in the road, the overflowing bins and the street lights being off, as our local councils attempt to find ways to operate within their cut budgets.
I hope you do not work for, or run a business who will lose a large block of its customers as we are taken out of the EU and if you do, that you do not lose your job, your business.
I hope your pension survives and is enough for you to live on after your years of working hard and contributing your taxes.
I hope that you do not value your human rights too greatly, as The Human Rights Act is scrapped.
I hope they do not frack under your house.
I hope you do not have to watch the hunt hounds rip a fox apart in the name of sport.
I hope that 5 years down the line, more of us realise that an 'I'm alright Jack, screw everyone else' attitude only works for you until the day you're not alright and you look around for help and find none.
I hope that more of us realise that the sign of a civilised society is not how well we protect the privileges of the already privileged, rich and strong, but how well we support those of our fellow human beings who are old, or weak, or vulnerable, or poor and I hope that in realising this, we go out in our millions and make a change.
