Life without point

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Waking each day from the hopes of a night’s dreams, the scars of eight hours of terror, a dark period of dark thoughts, or just with nothing, no memories, no emotions and no motivation.

This kinda sums up a stay upon this earth. This third rock at this brief point in its rotations around whatever this star is actually called by those truly in the know. 

Lethargy guides the ability to prioritise, that and brain fog, the forgetting not just what to do but the how to do too.

There is no sparkle of excitement of any future one can envision. The entire meaning of being here beces so much more elusive each day

 I personally tire of hate, of cruelty but mostly of apathy. I crave the ability to change this corruption dying civilisation. If you can call the human members of it civilised. 

The struggle now is to find any excuse to remain, to function, to integrate. A battle physically holding the prospective tools of any planned demise, each time weighing the pro’s of being here against the balancing saving of this worlds resources by being gone.

Every day I really do feel so frustrated that up to now I have chosen to remain, promising myself tomorrow I may become more ruthless with my reckoning.

Let’s be clear, I am still here, it’s not a cry for help, it is simply my explaining how I see myself right now. 

There may be new hope tomorrow, a signpost down a new path. There may not be…..

The huge grey clouds that hide all but the magnolia walls of this, my gaol along with the stark black rusting iron shackles that bind me to the breathing of what counts for air, may yet part, actually showing me streams of light sent to guide me to the promised pasture guaranteed to our children as we hold them for the first time. 

The layers of dust that fill my cell like sand settling after a desert storm, undisturbed by any metaphorical movement within my dulled mind, already devoid of ant true expectation of change. 

Do I feel a tear escape my painful eyes, blurring the view and in its own way giving brief distraction from the guilt held by the adult persona who betrayed the child within so many eons ago.

Do I live in hope? Does hope exist beyond the irony of the Peak village who’s name gives lie to the word?

How will tomorrow be? Will I be forced to wake once more into the landscape of some demons waiting room? To be once more tortured with thought of what may once have been but can no longer be? Or will my courage wear thin, and I use my chosen weapons to end this daily drudgery that is my meagre existence.

 

Foot note

This does not reflect my life all the time, it is a description of how my anxieties, my triggers, my pain, my depression manifests in my being. There are even now days even weeks that this becomes my routine, but I do escape too, and it’s those days of hope that reinforce my right to be here, to be part of this world.

The hope I have to draw upon is through the support of those closest to me, those who understand and see me.

There are no words to describe the darkest of days, this is only a prose touching upon the mixture of angst and nothingness so at odds with each other.

The brighter days this note would seem to have no bearing upon my life, but the thing about any hidden illness is we become skilled at hiding it.

All of us have our perspectives upon things like pain, upset, low mood to suicidal tendency.

Some folk may threaten to take their own lives for effect, but often even if you believe that to be the case you may not realise the turmoil that person lives with  what we believe to be attention  seeking behaviours are more often than not an indicator some war is being waged within that person and we may be completely oblivious to the factors they are trying to cope with. 

I do at times sit with a hand clutching my insulin pens and a bottle of morphine, but each time I find a reason to bat on.  Not yet ready to concede.

This is however not just my story, it is the story of tens of thousands of people in the UK living with chronic health, with grief, with poverty, with so many other triggers of that urge not to be here.

So please don’t be as quick to judge someone, stop with the collusion of press , government and TV producers who will give lie to the struggle people really do face each day. 

It’s hard in a word of cruelty to give kindness and offer support. We are all guilty of ignoring people in need, but maybe the next day you ignore them will be the last. 

Jonesy

@trikerpoet

#depression #grief #loss #anxiety #suicide #chronicillness #chronicpain #disability #TheChildWithin #kindness #cruelty

PRINCE ANDREW

Andrew

The abuse of power?

9th January 2021

facts

In the State of Florida the age of sexual consent is 18yrs old

In New York State it is 17yrs old

In the UK it is 16yrs old

Allegations

Virginia Giuffre has alleged that Ghislaine Maxwell – daughter of the late Robert Maxwell, media mogul, met her in 2000 whilst working in a club  in Florida. She claims she was “recruited” by Maxwell then Flown all over the world cajoled through  threats by her and Harvey Epstien.

She alleges she was forced to have non-consensual sex with people during this time, one of whom was Epstien himself, but another being HRH Prince Andrew Windsor, The Duke of York.

She alleges not only was there non-consensual sexual intercourse between her and The Prince, but also battery/violence, and that she was 17 at the time.

Evidence

The evidence in the public domain in regard to the Prince is that logs from flights aboard Epstein’s private jet confirm Andrew as being aboard numerous times. Epstein and Maxwell were guests at Andrews home for social gatherings and parties, as he was at theirs.

Andrew hosted a birthday party for Maxwell at Sandringham.

Epstein was charged with procuring a minor for sex and despite this Andrew invited him to Andrew’s Daughter’s 18th Birthday Party.

There are pictures of Andrew holding Virginia.

Prince Andrew Windsor & Virginia Giuffre


Ms Giuffre alleges un-consensual sex and battery took place with the Prince in New York, and the UK.

Misconceptions

Currently upon Social media in particular there are people defending Prince Andrew stating that because Ms Giuffre was 17 he is not a paedophile, and yes given the information available to us at this time the evidence would not support he is such.

It does however allege he is a rapist, an abuser and complicit in human trafficking of young women.

If someone is named as an abuser it is not a definition solely based upon naming a person as a paedophile, abuse is about power, it’s about theft of choice, about threats, violence, cajoling, using position, wealth, influence, physical assault or the threat of, of manipulation, of stealing confidence, of destroying innocence, of taking away choice

Abuse may be physical, neglectful, sexual and always causes emotional harm.

Rape and physical abuse as with all abuse is not about sexual attraction, not about love, respect or any level of care, it is about power. It’s about someone using or rather misusing their power against another.

Summary

The case against Andrew was in the civil Court arena. It was not a criminal case, we can all question why, we may suspect his position as a high level member of the British Royal Family, a member of the social elite, the 1% of the World Establishment gave him protection from any police force investigating him, a view easily supported by recent events whereby the Prime Minister of Great Britain, another member of this elitist club where Royalty and the super rich pull all society’s strings, clearly broke the law upon several occasions, and despite this the police refused to investigate the crime, (and no I will not used the word alleged).

The Prince Andrew allegations being a civil case would only ever result in financial damages to Ms Giuffre, even in the event of a guilty verdict Andrew would not be at any risk of jail.

So it seems Ms Giuffre was offered a huge amount of money to settle out of court and by doing this Prince Andrew hopes to prevent his reputation being stripped apart in the courts, as well as ensuring nothing else which may be damaging to those around him, friends or family coming to light.

Why would Ms Giuffre accept it? Well I believe for a few reasons, less stress of a long court case, no risk of losing, and given just how powerful the accused and his acquaintances are no further risk to her safety.  Wouldn’t you?

As I say we only can go with the allegations and information in the public domain, and this now will likely be forever limited, but I know what I believe, and I truly see it as an ongoing indictment of the entire establishment/elite and Royalty caste. A reason we all should question this and all the actions of those who by position and wealth continue to be untouchable, even in the 21st Century.

Jonesy Jones

#thejonesy.com

 

 

 

 

New Party new values

Seriously folks, time to set up a new Labour Movement and forget ‘The Labour Party’, which to honest caring folk is now dead. We need a party without corruption, no careerist politicians, no second jobs, no knighthoods, no company directors or their family members, a party where Eton is not a quick path to promotion, where Bullingdon Club members are not welcomed at all.
We need people who want change only for the good of all, people who do not see the vulnerable, the ill, the poor as the enemy, and want to support not victimise these members of our society.
We need a party of sensible inclusion, where using your own dialect and voicing local values is a starting point for discussion not condemnation.
We need folk who will not strive to promote their own interests above those of others.
We need a party where socialism is our key value, and equality is not a dirty word. A party where hate has no place, but neither do witch hunts!
We need a party that commits to decentralisation and ending privatisation, where making profit for the wealthy is not seen as a job for government. A party that finally will remove the power of staid civil servants and make those working for the country’s infrastructure realise they are public employees, not masters.
We need a party where everyone is listened to, and little secret organisations within it are not accepted, never mind given control, where everything is open and corruption and greed are no longer given a home.
These requirements are the bare minimum. And nothing else is acceptable.
A party where we all have a voice, one without power and decisions only being left to those who believe they are in control.
Until we agree on this nothing will change for the better and each government will be a total clone of the one before, just crueller!
Now has to be our time, if not now we do not just betray ourselves, but our children grandchildren and all the generations to come!

Incompetence or murder

So Boris is stating he didn’t act too late in regard to Omicron, he was waiting to see how dangerous it was and how many deaths it causes.
Firstly that in itself shows the contempt he has for our lives, that to him his greed is more important that you , your family, and the country.
Second, Omicron’s lethality is not the main issue, it’s about how it is transmitted, how it is not stopped by the vaccine, in short how it has mutated.
Viruses mutate as they grow, one mutation leads to another. For a virus to be critical, it needs to be able to transfer from one person to another, that’s why some viruses, though deadly, rarely kill, because they are hard to get. Others that are a lot less lethal kill millions.
Omicron is scary because it spreads a lot quicker than the original covid19 and that is only this current variant.
So it’s now about what happens next. Omicron itself may or may not kill, it does however make people very ill, the vaccine so far does not completely protect.
This is not scaremongering, it’s how sadly viruses develop. It’s also not an anti vax post. Anything that prevents the other variants spreading and killing us is at least some protection.
The point of this to me is about realising the Primate Minister has either no understanding of virus control, of the risks he continues to put us all under, or he does know, in which case he proves he does not care one iota. You decide.

Child deaths and safeguarding

The death of any child is heartbreaking and tragic, but when it’s a death that was likely preventable and was due to abuse and seeming failures in safeguarding, it is beyond comprehension.

Death of any vulnerable person hits hard upon anyone with compassion and a degree of humanity.

The recent child death has again raised issues that I have no doubt will be investigated, spoke of in Parliament and will result in a further lip service change in legislation or practice, that will impact further upon the social work profession by adding consequences without any additional provision, support or resource.

So let’s first put this in perspective, one of the major issues in the recent case was that a grandparent raised concerns but these concerns were not acknowledged, properly assessed nor investigated.

Now I, a qualified, experienced and registered child protection social worker, who has worked all over the UK for social care departments in a safeguarding child protection investigating role, as a social worker, senior practioner and team manager, on duty & assessment teams, emergency duty teams and various other longer term teams, have sadly on more than one occasion had the need both morally and professionally to make referral in regard to a close family member.

I even professionally knew the people who took the referral, including the manager of the of the first point of contact team, yet despite all of this my information was only assessed by an unqualified worker and not acted upon. I made further complaint of this, again raising the concerns and evidencing them, only to be told by the said team manager that he trusted his workers.

So why is this the case?

Well when we go back to the days when I first got involved as a member of staff in a dedicated child protection role, I was a “support worker”. This identified that I was not a qualified worker, and meant any decision I thought to make had to be agreed by my qualified line manager, and discussed with another qualified social worker.

What this meant was three separate people had oversite at point of contact. Prior to my taking it to my manager I had to check our records (originally paper ones) and then contact all the other agencies around the child, such as health – GP, hospital, mental health, midwives, health visitors, school, nursery, child minders, school nurses, in fact anyone with a professional or supporting role within the family.

If the initial checks and the information in the referral gave any concern then a qualified duty social worker or the child’s named social worker would see the child. Often this would be with the knowledge of the parents, but at times under Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 a decision may be within a strategy discussion made to visit a child in school and at times if they are implicated in the referral, without the child’s parent, or parents being informed. Quite often a police officer from the police child protection unit would accompany the social worker. This was due to the fact that in child protection there are often two investigations. One is the social care one, identifying risk and ensuring the safety of the child/children, the other to evidence the abuse in such a way that any criminal offenses may be prosecuted.

In the event a child is deemed at immediate risk of harm the social worker, manager and authority can draw upon legislation to ensure the child is protected.

The powers open to social care are to attend court, usually by giving 24hrs notice to the parent (due to Re X verdict ) but not exclusively, and seeking an Emergency Protection Order or an Interim Care Order. There are other options at this stage too, including “no order”.

The police have police powers to remove a child into the care of a local authority for a limited time.

The local authority also can if appropriate and assessed as safe ask the parent to agree to the child staying with family or friends during the investigation, or if a Section 20 (CA1989) is agreed with the parent, the child/children may be placed in foster care or accomodation by the local authority.

Now all of these procedures still apply in some way or other, but now people generally have to ring a call centre where staff initially have a tick box list to decide whether a referral is actionable. It can take hours to even get through to the call centre. It may take days for a qualified social worker to have any oversite of the case if in some cases at all.

So why?

Well the Children Act 1989 (the primary piece of legislation in UK law) is clear that lack of resources cannot be used as an excuse for the child’s identified needs not being met.

Sadly though at this point the phrase concerning not being able to “get blood from a stone” comes to mind.

So what’s caused this view of mine? Well in the period of the Conservative government things have changed significantly. Austerity was brought in as a response to bailing out the banks, and with that huge services, resources and support was completely cut from social care.

Local authority budgets suffered not only from cuts but due to the Benefits (entitlement) agency cutting out crisis loans, the social care departments under Section 17 still have a duty of care to ensure if a family is within economic need they meet that need. So money that was in a national budget now is taken from the social care budget. More cost less cash.

The cutting of resources I believe is very calculated, because suddenly local authorities were having to use private firms where agencies like Sure Start offering amazing levels of not just support but monitoring were closed down overnight. The synic in me does suspect that many of the new private providers have Conservative party donors in their lists of shareholders and owners, but at this point it’s my opinion as I have no time to evidence it as yet.

Every time we have a widely reported child death (more so than any other, yet sadly far more common failings within safeguarding that have life changing, life limiting and life defining impacts upon children) there are investigations, inquests, public inquiries, lip service changes in law, policy and procedures, with more consequences upon social workers and other safeguarding leads, but no recognition of the need for additional resources, support, and statutory provision.

If you need to take a child into care, it’s always essential you consider family and friends first as is often in the best interest of the child and has mostly the least impact upon them with stability, emotional well being and meeting their needs, however there are times a foster placement or a children’s home are the only options, and rarely a secure placement. Now, this is the correct order, and if you were placing a child with family or friends, you should do background checks of all residents within the home and be as confident as possible that the placement is safe. But if you have to go to panel for a residential or foster placement, you may not find (unlikely to find) any local; in fact you may not find any place available at all. Especially on a Friday evening.

As a social worker you then will often be expected to place the child personally, driving to anywhere in the UK at whatever time of day it is, after ensuring you have filled in all the correct paperwork on usually an antiquidated unfit for purpose computer system, and waiting until the child is settled in. Checking their room and environment. Trying to ensure all their needs are being met from diet, to medication, to social and cultural needs.

It may be 2 or 3am or later, when you get home and even then you must ensure that everything is up to date and recorded on the system.

In the meantime, you are likely to have anything between 30 and 50 other cases all requiring your attention.

Sadly now too many inexperienced and newly qualified SW’s are undertaking really tough Duty team roles. Managing too many and too complex cases with sadly all too often inexperienced and very young team managers. Service managers and heads of service only interested in tick boxes that the government insist on whilst ignoring their own gut instinct and experience. Since baby P, the only real changes have been to introduce even more lavish reams of paperwork and reducing all the support networks.


We live in a blame culture, and the true issues for social workers are ensuring that if something goes wrong they have dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on the system, not that they have done the essential role of safeguarding.


Child deaths are thankfully very rare, but that’s more luck than good management these days. You cannot cut services in the name of austerity and expect to safeguard children and families.


Most of us more experienced workers have left either by choice or as in my case due to chronic ill health exasperated by ridiculously long hours, unmanageable case loads, poor senior management support, lack of supervision, and the biggest killer of all frontline workers….stress.

Now this covers a few of the issues this truly sad and vile death of this wonderful and innocent child has to me highlighted.

There will I have no doubt be other failings identified, possibly mistakes and poor practice uncovered, and even given all of this none of the responsibility should be focused away from the truly wicked vile and evil behaviour of this child’s father and so called step mother. They above all caused this to happen.

Time will hopefully acknowledge the failings around how this case was managed throughout.

I remain sceptical that this government, no matter what inquest and inquiry evidence, will act appropriately by relooking at budgets, funding, real training, support for children and workers, legislation that addresses the areas currently no statutory law covers, and ending their practice of privatising all protective and support provision by closing down and failing to invest in those either voluntary or publicly owned.

The workers in this case may have failed due to ineptitude, lazy case work, lack of communication and commitment, all sorts of reasons, and if so they need to held accountable, but my professional understanding is that it’s also all too likely that inexperience, poor managent, too high a caseload, and again lack of support and direction are the main underlying causes, and if this is the case we all need to hold the government, the ministers, the civil servants, law makers and the Prime Minister accountable.

No more cover-ups. Time for real effective change.

Dear Labour

Dear The New New Labour Party of traitors and saboteurs, I would like to point out that any reshuffle of neoliberal betrayers will not make me or any other socialist remotely consider trusting, nevermind voting for you. Too much blood under the bridge!
The moment you allowed the discrediting of members and the back stabbing and witch hunts of all that voiced support of Jeremy Corbyn and his caring, honest and yes realistic policies, you hammered the final nail in Labour’s coffin.
You betrayed the party, its members, its history and our nation.
We will not forgive. We wil not forget. We will strive to ensure you all are held to formal account one day soon.

Jonesy
Dog of Socialism.

Crisis

I am not suggesting we do not vaccinate, people I am sure have their own ideas, but saw this point made by a friend on here. 
Their post stated “we can vaccinate the world but not feed the starving” and its true.
It’s the biggest show of self interest and greed ever.
Firstly people have been starving to death all over the globe through famine, poverty and war since the dawn of time, yet for at least the last hundred years maybe more it could have been ended, and no that’s not communism that’s humanitarianism.
Yes maybe the rich may not still have been ultra rich and be able to taxi each other into space, though likely they still would, but whatever the cost these excuses for people would still have more money that we the masses will ever see, and more than we could spend in several lifetimes.
We have been and continue to be conned on a global scale.
Let’s consider the pandemic, we know the big pharmaceutical companies were arguing on how much profit they would make, we also know they ensured legal get out clauses were in place before they agreed to any level of cooperation. Even then poorer nations struggled, despite the empty promises of world leaders to get any vaccine to them,  once we were receiving it here, in the so called “Western world” for a time they got none.
We also know in the UK alone several politicians, families and friends of cabinet members not only tried but succeeded in profiteering on essential PPE, which was supposed to save lives of not only the nurses, doctors, ambulance, police, fire, care workers, service personnel,  elderly, disabled, vulnerable. Children, families, bus drivers, taxi drivers, shop workers, warehouse staff, …well everyone including you by reducing risk. The PPE sourced by these corrupt individuals to replace PPE stocks that were beyond their use by dates by several years, due to inept oversight of organisations with too many upper and middle managers, was either also beyond its use by dates or not fit for purpose.
Luckily here in Britain we the public have a basic instinct to pull together in times of crisis, unlike the establishments view to pull in cash. Thousands of voluntary cottage industries set up, with no money changing hands to make, supply and distribute PPE, that was of a far higher standard than anything our government was sourcing.
I know a lot about this as I was the founder of a voluntary group of bikers and soon other folk who sourced and distributed PPE in conjunction with these kind souls who were themselves getting in debt to ensure people and their families were being kept as safe as possible.
The masks we were distributing were of a quality recognised by the World Health Organisation and we were registered with the government as distributors.
The scrubs were sourced all over the UK and we worked with the biggest and smallest Volunteer manufactures.
We had 3D printed face shields with the people printing them spending thousands of pounds of their own money to buy printers, materials and even patterns.
Our Voluteer Riders we believe managed to distribute over 10,000 000, yes ten million pieces of PPE at no cost whatsoever to the recipients, whether hospitals, care homes, midwives, schools or individuals. In fact we were and remain totally cashless.
The miles travelled would take you to the sun and back several times, using, motorbikes, cars, vans, wagons and even a plane. The cost all out of the volunteers own pockets. There was and is no profiteering here. These people continue to bolster my faith in humanity.
Remember at the start of the pandemic, the financial issues were put before the human issues, profit before people, by not just the inept fool we have as a prime minister but all his cabinet and sadly several of the laughingly called “official opposition”.
Currently there are several crisis’ in the UK today, from the bizarre rescue of Bulb Energy, which some will say is because they use renewable energy but in my humble opinion is more likely about protecting shareholders, to the human beings, which the media will continue to dehumanize by calling migrants, not people or even refugees who drowned in the English Channel. If the government had their way with their immoral and illegal orders to the Navy and RNLI (Royal National Life Boat Institution) there would be far more of these vile “accidents”.
We need now to put a stop to this greed. Life success should not be measured by wealth but morality. The true hero’s should not be those seeking fame or fortune, they should be those giving to us all each day through effort, risk, pain, and sacrifice.
No one in the world should starve, in particular there should be no such thing as poverty, no need for food banks or homeless shelters in a country with such wealth as is held within the UK establishment.
We bailed out the banks several years ago, that  gave the Conservatives an excuse for austerity, cuts to the most vulnerable within our society, austerity remains, yet the bankers once more get huge bonuses, and their shareholders massive payouts. When will these corrupt institutions be forced to bail us out?
Enough really has to be enough.
We need to now truly come together, friends, families, communities, villages, towns, counties, countries, the United Kingdom needs to unite against greed, corruption, cruelty and yes murder. Until we do things will only ever get worse. Not a world I want my kids to live within.
Jonesy

#immigration

Sorry but Grace Darling will be not just turning but spinning in her grave at so many folk right now. The disrespect I am seeing for the RNLI and yes the Navy for refusing to obey inhuman orders to allow people to drown in the sea is beyond shameful.
Whether you are racist or not surely a human life is paramount.
People are blaming these two amazing organisations for doing exactly what we should be proud of them for.  We now have a government trying to order the lifeboats and navy to leave people to drown. Kinda puts it in perspective, if not maybe have a little jaunt in a unseaworthy  boat off the east coast and see how it feels for you.
People wanted Brexit to close our borders off, you know the ones we open wide when we are in economic need of migrants. Well folks it didn’t work, all that did was remove the cooperation of other countries to assist in the processing and return of those not assessed as genuine political or humanitarian refugees.
I know the media keep showing you pics of what they say are “muslim” youths with suits and mobile phones. But maybe think who the media are owned by and represent, definitely not you or me.

There are issues with immigrants in the UK, I admit, as there likely would be if we migrated abroad, but look why those issues exist, ghettoising people, people having to sneak in with no money, no belongings and no way of legally obtaining money or support.
Scared and battle scarred people. Broken communities, broken families and broken individuals.

I personally now have to live with PTSD after holding my brother minutes after he died in resus. Yet many of these folk from Syria, Afghanistan,  Iraq and all the other places our government have been involved in attacking have seen their families, friends, children, parents and siblings killed and maimed by our bombs or munitions such as mines, fragmentation bombs, phosphorus,  blast and incendiary weapons supplied by us, some even gassed using recipes devised at Porton Down. They don’t just relive one moment but entire lives every time they trigger- as do so many our troops who have seen it first hand, and also receive no support of those in our establishment who truly are responsible.

So in short if the #UKBORDERFORCE and immigration teams can identify those economic migrants that quite wrongly are as naive as Dick Whittington and believe our streets are lined with gold and not food banks, a destroyed NHS, cruel benefit (entitlement) system, and the most corrupt elitist government in the entire world (which given the USA, Italy, Russia,  China and even North Korea is kinda horrific) then process them and return them to point of origin. If they cannot be returned due to risk to safety and life work with other countries (like the EU was set up to do) to make agreements and realistic quotas. But DO NOT allow anyone to die due to our insecurities, hate and fear.