THREAD: I’ve something to say about the current sentimentalism around Boris Johnson’s illness. Back in 2013, I had a conversation with someone whose mother had a degenerative disability that prevented her from working. She had tried working part-time on the checkout at Tesco but
the pain of sitting still in one position for any period of time was excruciating for her. Up to that point, she had worked all her adult life. She was called in for a work capability assessment. As part of this, she was asked to try to carry a large sack of potatoes from one end
of the room to the other. When she struggled to even lift the bag an inch off the ground, she fled the assessment in tears and told her daughter she’d rather lose her benefits than be put through that humiliation again. Hers wasn’t an exceptional story. People who had severe,
life-limiting illnesses like muscular dystrophy and people with serious learning difficulties were called in for assessments. There were even people with terminal cancer who were asked to prove they were unable to work. Those of us who choose not to turn our faces away from the
truth watched in horror as the rate of suicide and attempted suicide rocketed, and one person, Mark Wood, starved to death in his home after having his benefits cut by Atos. A UN special rapporteur concluded in a report that “The UK's social safety net has been "deliberately
removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos". Now, some of us marched on several occasions against austerity. We knew that it was cruel and unnecessary. We knew that there were other ways of tackling the financial crisis and that the Tories had CHOSEN austerity for
ideological reasons. Tories cheered this disastrous policy on or supported it with their silent complicity. Boris Johnson was one such person. As a prominent Conservative throughout this period and the mayor of one of the cities where the divide between rich and poor has always
been shockingly high, he said nothing. Fast forward to the current crisis and he sadly finds himself very ill. I wish him a speedy recovery, as I would anyone in his position. But many of those standing on their doorsteps and clapping for him will have also given their implicit
backing to an inhumane, contemptible system that caused the deaths of countless individuals, all of whom were as loved by their families as Johnson is by his. Pointing out these realities doesn’t make us heartless but compassion should be universal. Yes, the Tories have
miraculously located the ‘magic money tree’ they swore didn’t exist but that only proved that it was always there - they just chose to section it off for picking by their friends and associates. So, yes, of course I hope Johnson and all others suffering from this dreadful virus
make a swift and full recovery but if/when I clap, it’ll be for the frontline NHS staff deprived of decent PPE and in support of those for whom “Operation Last Gasp” (to quote Johnson) was too little, too late. End of thread.
