Yes, you read that correctly. The gentleman doesn't believe Jeremy Corbyn will make the decisions necessary if told a terrorist target is at a known location and we can launch a drone strike but only within a limited time frame. He thinks he'll want too much information. He also thinks Mr Corbyn will refuse to enter necessary battles while he attempts to talk to those who do not want to listen.
There's a problem with that logic, though. The gentleman in question completely ignored that Corbyn wants is a correctly funded military, with enough resources, who can do what needs to be done more efficiently, without causing the vacuum we created in the Middle East, and without wasting unnecessary lives. Corbyn's stance isn't that we never have to fight, but that fighting should only take place after all peaceful avenues have been exhausted. That is a good thing. Being averse to causing death while protecting life is a good thing.
Those who vote Conservative because Corbyn is reluctant to drop bomb are just like the evil caricatures of Middle Eastern demons they so fear. They are choosing to sign death warrants of innocent people because they refuse to listen to reality. The sick and disabled are pleading for a peace treaty, but Conservative voters do not what to hear what is being said. Instead they follow the rhetoric of those who are as callous as any bomber. The Manchester bomber killed 22 innocent people. Nearly 600 suicides may be attributed to the governments fit for work assessments between 2010 and 2013 alone.
600 deaths. Because of a Tory led government.
And that was before they completed their plans for the NHS.
Yesterday (29th May), Jeremy Corbyn said that a good leader uses their ears more than their lips. He said he wants to get to know people, even those he disagrees with. He's right, a good leader must get to know people, even people they disagree with, in order to make sense of the world and navigate through it. I wish more people would do the same, but instead they cast scorn and blame and refuse to hear what is being said. But I need to be heard, because my voice is small. Smaller again are the voices of my children, who I can't give a better life to. So I'm asking you to close your mouth a moment. Don't judge, just read. Just take a moment to see who I am, and who so many others are.
Who I am today is a very different person to who I was seven years ago. Seven years ago I was a professional with a job I loved and a first class honours degree. My recorded work goals were to achieve a senior position within two years, still in my twenties, and I had lead roles on school building and hospital projects. Even after the crash, and after my husband was made redundant, I was Ok. Thankfully my husband got a new job within a few months and more good news came when we discovered I was pregnant for the first time, despite being sub-fertile and having spent two years seeing a stream of doctors, nursess, ultrasound technicians, and other health professionals, as well as other medical professionals, about my problems. Life was good. Hopeful.
Back then I still believed that my children would have better childhoods than I had. Not that my childhood was awful, it wasn't. I loved trips to the beach and the caravan holidays mam and dad struggled to save for every couple of years. However, my dad had been a striking miner in 1984 before I was born in 1985. Living in a Thatcher era pit village, we didn't have a lot.
There wasn't much money. The cars were always bangers which, by the time dad had wrung every mile out of them, were only fit for scrap. Our trainers were bought cheap from market stalls, which caused some teasing at school, but we knew branded clothing wasted precious pennies. We were grateful if we received 50p pocket money, and ecstatic when the tooth fairy left 20p. Somehow it didn't matter that other kids got a pound, and I can only rarely remember feeling jealous of others having things I could only dream of. We still received presents at Christmas and birthdays, we still went on day trips, and we still made happy memories.
But that's the thing. I can't offer my children the same small joys.
I know that buying my daughter a birthday present, even something from the "Poundland", will send me further into debt. We don't have sky. We wear our shoes into holes and then wear them six months longer, even if it means wet feet. We rely on our parents to clothe our children, something both me and my husband are ashamed of, but it's that or let them go without clothes.
Why are we struggling?
Lot's of reasons, but it didn't help that in 2010 the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition. That coalition made David Cameron Prime Minister, Theresa May Home Secretary, George Osborne Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt Secretary of State for Health and Michael Gove Secretary of State for Education, and that was when problems really started.
On Christmas Eve, my husband was made redundant for a second time. The first time had been from a social housing provider, the second from a small development and renewable energy company. Alongside that, Gove and Hunt saw to cutting funding to new build school and hospital projects, and so work for my employers dried up too. By the time I went on maternity leave, we knew redundancies we coming. I suspected I'd among those 'let go' as, since becoming pregnant, I'd been horrifically sick (I lost over a stone in the course of my pregnancy) and my work goals had been down-graded by my line manager from 'achieve a senior position' to 'return from maternity leave.'
Work didn't give me the chance to return.
In fact, they posted my redundancy notice the day I gave birth to my daughter.
That was hard. Not only did work wrongly stop my maternity pay, but because they only restarted it after terminating my contract my pay was placed on an emergency tax code and I was severely over taxed. While Revenue and Customs assured me the money would be refunded at the end of the tax year, that didn't help me pay the bills. Also, work had 'advised' me to take all of my annual leave before my maternity leave, to avoid it being carried into the next year. I did so, but it meant - when they made me redundant - I'd taken a full year's holiday in half a year. They deducted half a year's holiday pay from my redundancy money, which further exacerbated our financial difficulties. Our mortgage went into arrears and the job market was non-existent. It was only through setting up my own business that we managed to save our house. Not because I turned a profit that first year, but because it entitled us to tax credits.
That first year was hard. I worked 60 hours weeks for no pay, often with a baby on my knee, to set up that business while my husband knocked doors peddling cavity wall insulation to scrap by. He worked dawn til dusk five or six days a week for about £75 a week. It was hard.
I'd had mental health issues from childhood, but they got much worse then. The combination of post-natal depression and financial stress caused the low level mental illness I'd had since childhood to worsen, and I ended up seeing a therapist although I refused medication. Shortly after my therapy started I discovered I was pregnant again anyway, so medication was a no-go. Unfortunately only 6-12 sessions of therapy are given per referral; as if you can put a time limit on sorting through multiple deeply ingrained issues. The sessions came to an end and I wasn't better, but I was still alive and so I carried on, trying to ignore the hopelessness.
I worked. My husband went back to college. We fought a lot because times were tough, but we kept plodding on. That year, 2012, my new business won a customer service award and I began to think that maybe, just maybe, things would get better through time. We made a loss that first year, but that's normal. We were surviving all the same and had even managed to take our daughter on holiday. OK, it was five nights on a £4 a night campsite, but it was a holiday.
Then, in December, our son was born.
That time around I had no maternity rights at all. No pay, no allowance, no leave. I gave myself a week off because Christmas was within days of my son's birth, but I was back at it by New Year 2013. I didn't get to spend time with my son the way I had with my daughter and I worked and worked, desperate to grow the business.
I was a finalist in two or three customer service awards that year, despite being hospitalised several times because I developed gall stones, probably during pregnancy, and they caused excruciating attacks. The pain was worse than labour and on several occasions I ended up on morphine. I would rather spend 12 hours in labour pushing something the size of a small melon out that have another gall bladder attack, that's how mad they were. Between attacks, I answered client emails and worked on orders from my hospital bed.
Yup. I worked from my hospital bed, because I had no sickness rights.
My gall bladder was eventually removed, and following the operation, I once again returned to work far sooner than I should've done. Me and hubby continued to fight, money was still tight, and my mental health continued deteriorating. I didn't have space to work at home, especially with two kids, and our situation was frustrating. All the same, business was picking up, and as I had some regular clients I decided to rent a studio.
Having a studio ensured I stuck to sensible working hours while allowing me to separate work from home. But while having a studio and consultation space helped me grow the business, it ate into the funds of my first profitable year. Money remained very tight for a family of four with a mortgage, and my depression grew ever more controlling. I also suffered a great deal of back pain, left over from pregnancy, and even walking the length of our street had me crying in agony. I gained weight because pain limited my capacity for exercise. Kayaking hurt less, but thanks to our low income it wasn't something we could afford to do the was we had before the crash. Even getting to a nice spot costs petrol money.
By the end of 2014 I knew I'd make a slight profit but when a job became available, I jumped at the interview. It wasn't in the role I'd trained for, but it was back in construction and had an regular wage. I got the job, and started employment again in January 2015. The depression lingered, although being financially secure provided some respite as well as opportunity to gain some independence. I didn't enjoy the job as much as my previous one, but I loved the people I worked with so I was fairly content. Unfortunately my back pain didn't ease and my wrists began to suffer too, leaving me in near constant discomfort.
That year, my dad was diagnosed with cancer.
NHS waiting times were so long he went private for a diagnosis but couldn't afford private treatment, so he started chemotherapy on the NHS. He was given four years to live, but he died eleven months diagnosis. That was one month after I relented and started taking anti-depressants, and one month before I attempted suicide.
At that point I'd been signed off work and I'd stopped leaving the house. People triggered anxiety attacks and depression told me to give up. I wanted to see my children grow up while at the same time feeling they'd be better off without me. I'd failed them. I wanted the constant gnawing worry and self-hatred to end.
Following my suicide attempt, I was told I'd been referred to the community mental health team, but four months on I'd still heard nothing. My GP had to refer me again before I was finally assessed and put on another waiting list for a community psychiatric nurse. I still don't have one of those assigned to me.
In September 2016, I applied for PIP. In October 2016, at 2am the day of my PIP assessment, the anxiety and stress of the process sent me into crisis. As a suicide risk and self-harmer, I was taken onto the crisis team case load. I was diagnosed with several different conditions and needed to put measures in place to keep me safe. It was a stressful day on its own, but then my PIP assessor didn't bother tuning up to my appointment. That increased my anxiety levels again as we were desperately short of money.
The attitude of the assessor, a supposed health care professional, on the phone was so dismissive and antagonistic that its left a last impression. That impression prevents me from applying for ESA because I'm so scared that another assessor will push me towards the same ledge the PIP assessor did, a ledge which could kill me.
The result of feeling unable to apply for ESA?
This month I had £13 to cover the bills and mortgage, and look after the kids. Not feasible, but I can't change it. The nature of my illness makes interacting with strangers difficult, often impossible. Interacting with ones I know are out to deny me vital funds becomes totally impossible and totally unfeasible. It's not logical, but it is part of mental illness and part of how the Conservatives are killing off sections of the disabled public. People tell me 'just do it, just set you mind to it', but that's the problem. My mind won't let me do it. My mind is the main problem.
Thankfully PIP was granted, although at the lowest level. The backdated payments got us through November and December, but also in November, I lost my job. I lost it because I couldn't given my employers timescales for my return. I was still on waiting lists, thanks to Conservative cuts causing a decrease in mental health staff and services, with no clue when I'd be seen, never mind when I'd be better. I'd been employed for 19 month when I was 'let go', just short of the two year mark which requires notice, etc. In December I was also discharged from the Crisis Team caseload to the Step Up Team's caseload.
In January 2017, I finally got an appointment with the community mental health teams psychiatrist. He added another medication to the mix to help with depression and insomnia, but his concern over my self ham, suicidal thoughts, and mood meant he left me under step up care while also referring me to more intensive therapy and asking to see me again in three months.
Within a matter of weeks, Step Up decided to stop seeing me because I couldn't do the graded exposure asked of me. I was still on the waiting list for the therapy I needed and rather than supporting me, the staff developed a one track mind. It would've been sensible to have the therapy and then do graded exposure, but underfunding meant therapy could take months to get and the Step Up team gave up, lying to do so, which resulted in my sending a six page letter to the psychiatrist i saw. To this date, my letter hasn't been acknowledged. It hasn't been answered and I need to resend it because my psychiatrist has since left the trust, without giving me my three month review.
Now the community nurses phone every four weeks to ask if I still want to be on the waiting list, but I think it's more than four weeks since I last heard from them. I haven't had a review, even though it's been asked for again. I don't know when I'll be seen or when I'll get treatment. My self harm and insomnia are getting worse again. I'm constantly on the edge of Crisis and it's more luck than anything that I haven't taken another overdose. I don't know if I'm going to survive because the funding just isn't there for mental health services to meet growing need, and so those cared for in the community are much more likely to die by suicide than those in hospital. On top of that, several of my conditions increase the likelihood of further suicide attempts.
I'm also in severe pain. My back still causes misery, and my wrists show signs of onset osteoarthritis, which feels like it's affecting my fingers and legs too. I also have a diagnosis of suspected fibromyalgia. The paid doesn't help my mood either, as it makes it harder for me to complete tasks I used to enjoy. It's hell. I don't leave the house. I don't see friends. I'm in mental and physical pain and the money has run out, so despite not having Sky TV or luxuries, I'm still heading into debt.
[I paused here for the night. I nearly deleted this post, but then another two people told me they weren't voting or intended to spoil their votes, and I realised this needs to be said.]
People get upset when I get angry at them for not voting/spoiling ballots/voting Conservative, but what they fail to realise is that this election isn't about a bit of hardship for me, it's about life and death. If the Conservatives get back in, I will die. My children will lose their mother, my husband will lose his wife, my children will by at risk of their own mental illnesses. That is the simple truth. I know this, because the Conservatives will continue to punish the sick and the poor by cutting back on Welfare and destroying the NHS.
I know this as a fact. I know the ill will suffer because Theresa May stated clearly that she is basing her transformation of the NHS on the Naylor Report, a document detailing how to sell off the NHS, including through 2 for 1 offers. Under the Conservatives, the NHS WILL be privatised. When children are injured, hospital treatment WILL bankrupt their parents. Like in America, hospital treatment WILL bankrupt thousands every year and ordinary people will lose their homes without ever reaching dementia tax age.
Even on the minute chance we manage to stop the selling off of our health service, nursing staff are still being cut, trainee numbers are in decline, we still won't have the medical staff to treat people. I have been on waiting lists for over a year now, waiting for treatment for a condition which could kill me. I have no idea when or even if I'll be seen, which exacerbates my condition which in turn makes a return to employment unlikely, adding to the financial pressure more and more each month.
I have a friend with EDS, a rare but severe condition. She needs many operations to improve her quality of life and she's often in so much pain she can't function. She has to miss her kid's school plays and family days out and requires a carer on the days her husband works. She needs welfare and she needs the NHS. She needs surgeons to carry out procedures. She needs and NHS to treat her so her boys don't lose their mum. She needs the NHS because her boys inherited her condition and they will need medical help one day.
Disabled people in Britain are going without treatment due to waiting lists. They're going without money to pay for food, clothes, and shelter. ESA claimants continue to face benefit cuts under the Conservatives while the private companies they've hired to carry out flawed assessments earn millions in taxpayer money, a cost which could be eliminated by listening to patients GPs rather than paying £44,000 per health care professional to hire and train them as assessors, then to go through all the appeals from those wrongly denied financial support. Our disabled people are being assessed twice for PIP and ESA to evaluate condition their own doctors have spent months evaluating. We are spending vast sums on appeals. The system itself costs more to run than it saves in benefits. It would be cheaper for the treasury to create a universal basic income than it is for them to assess, means test, and have appeals processes for all the various benefits and tax credit. More importantly, though, hundreds of innocent people will continue to kill themselves rather than face abject poverty. That is reality.
Over a million people in Britain already use food banks. That number went up more between 2015-16 and 2016-2017 than it did at the height of the economic crash. In 2009 a little over 40k families accessed food banks, that is figure is now now over 1.18 million! And food banks don't just hand out free food. You have to prove it's an emergency to get three days supply.
Yearly food bank use.
Child poverty is rising dramatically. Homelessness is rising dramatically. Our current youngsters will be poorer and have a lower life expectancy than their parents and grandparents. Millennials and younger, as well as the disabled and sick, are being left to rot and die. On top of that, teachers are being forced to give food parcels to hungry children. So yes, I get angry when people say they won't vote or intend to vote Conservative. I get angry because it's not weathering the storm for me. It's not getting through tough times to create a better better. It's life or death. If the Conservatives get back in, then I have no future.
My children are 6 (almost) and 4. I might not see them grow up because there aren't enough NHS staff to treat me, the system works against me financially, and no one seems to give a damn. My children may go without birthday presents because we have so little coming in. And, do you know what? There are people worse off than us.
In a way I'm lucky. My dad left his house in trust to my children, and I can now live rent and mortgage free there (although there's still council tax, water rates, insurance, electricity - which i imagine will get cut off in the near future), so we're in the process of moving. Dad' house is only a two bedroom house though, and with a boy and a girl we need to convert the loft to make it three bed. My dad left me some money, a few thousand, which barely covered the floor and staircase costs. We can't afford skylights or insulation or the plasterboard to make the loft into a bedroom, and because the job's partially done, the second bedroom is a building site, meaning my whole family are living out of one bedroom with no money to finish make either of the other two rooms habitable.
Imagine that for a second. We're living like families in the 50s with the whole family in one bedroom. Put it this way, there's absolutely no chance if me having any more children!
And at present, we're still paying the mortgage on our original house. It's lost value, so we can't sell it because we don't have the money to pay off the mortgage (which we got back when we both had jobs) so our only option is to live in dad's house and rent out ours. The problem is, the rent will only just cover the mortgage and landlord insurance. It's not adding anything to our income and because of the area we can't charge more. What the Conservatives have created is an area of deprivation and we're trapped in it. We can't win. So we survive with four of us in one bedroom, with me in pain and struggling, not sure that it will ever get better, and we survive of JSA and PIP because my hubby can't find a job and needs to care for me and the kids, and i can't face going through another assessment for ESA when the previous assessment nearly killed me.
I have a first class degree, I'm not stupid or lazy.
I worked 60hrs a week for 20p an hour to save my house. I'm not work shy.
I want to get better and I want to work.
I want treatment for my mental illnesses.
I want relief from the pain of my back, wrists, and fingers which stop me doing the things I love.
I adore my children and I want to see them grow up.
But people are saying they won't vote for Labour because Corbyn is reluctant to drop bombs. They are saying they won't vote at all because Corbyn didn't do enough to stop Brexit. People are saying they are happy to watch their lose everything and die, killed off by Tory pledges, because of conflicts that happened 30 years ago. They say it out of apathy, or out of a lack of empathy, but it kills people all the same.
I didn't ask for this. I didn't cause the cuts that cost my career and my husbands. I didn't ask for the trauma and then poverty that influenced my mental health. I didn't as to be in pain every day. I did well at school, college, and university and worked hard because I wanted to give my children the best lives possible. But they have it worse than I did under Thatcher. They haven't realised how poor we are yet, but it's coming.
How do I tell my kids that they can't have things others take for granted?
How do I make myself keep going when all I can see is pain, bills, debt, and eventually losing everything but the four walls dad put into trust? That we have those for walls gives us something many others don't have, but we still have food to buy and bills to pay. What happens when my overdraft runs out and I can't pay the electricity and water rates? Just thinking about it pushes me closes to the edge and the worry is constant. Every day. Every breath. Even in my dreams. It never stops. And I want the fear to end. I want the mental torture and the physical pain to end. I want it ALL to end.
Voting the right person in, even if you don't agree with everything the say, can save lives. I don't agree with everything Corbyn says. I like the monarchy and I think he should resist Brexit, but I also know we need him because only through him can we begin closing the gap between rich and poor again. Only through him can we save the NHS which any of us may need, at any time, and for any reason; from disability, to car accidents, to cancer, and to terrorist attacks. The NHS and our people matter. So vote to help them. Vote to save lives. An apathy and inaction, or even acts of rebellion, can cost lives. Between 2010-2013 such practises cost more than 600 lives through disabled people dying at their own hands, without including those bombed in Libya and Syria, or those who die waiting for hospital beds, surgery, or even to get to the top of a waiting list for routine treatment. Don't condemn thousands more.
Please. Don't condemn me. Don't condemn my friend with EDS, or her sons. Don't make my diabetic mam go without treatment or my best friend who has had cancer previously and so is high risk. Don't condemn my other friend who suffers severe mental illness, or my kids, should they ever get sick. Don't make buying food impossible for another million families.
In this election we can save people, but to do that, you have to vote for Labour, and if you don't have a Labour candidate, for someone other than the Conservatives.
If you don't vote, or if you vote Conservative, you may be complicit in the deaths of hundreds of people.
So I sit here crying, and I don't think I'll see my children grow up. This is my reality.
Carmine Raven
OSTEOARTHRITIS, FIBROMYALGIA, ASTHMA, PCOS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, SOCIAL PHOBIA, AGORAPHOBIA, AVOIDANT TRAITS, BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER, POSSIBLE C-PTSD.
Don't be a strawberry. Vote Labour.
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