I've never liked November because it's as pitiless and hard-hearted as spending 30 days in a cement prison cell doing solidarity confinement.
The light in the sky is a spendthrift. It's incapable of putting up a struggle with the approach of winter grey. It's all downhill until April.
This month felt harsher than others in the past because it was. The cost of living crisis is a dog that chased me for a long while but now it caught up to me. The rabid mutt has begun to sink its teeth into my flesh. It's not a pack of dogs yet. But I am bleeding, and wild dogs can smell the blood of the wounded from far away.
I've taken a daily Statin along with some other drugs since my heart attack at 42, almost 20 years ago. During breakfast, I decided refilling the statin should be postponed until my rent is settled. Who knows by January I might decide eating breakfast is no longer pragmatic for my financial health.
I've no illusions about what lies in store for me and most of ordinary humanity in 2025. It won't be pleasant. The cost of living crisis has already eroded kindness and common sense. It's only a matter of time until refugees and the homeless are either put in concentration camps to die off stage or killed right before our eyes. Fascism is now entrenched in our society.
The rich, however, can be more optimistic about their future. Fascism, or neoliberalism, is all the same to them because they get to keep their money. As for their principles, the higher you are on the wage scale- they become like the appendix- an organ that had some use when you were less evolved.
It's just the dregs of democracy left for the rest of us. There aren't enough swigs remaining in the bottle to quench anyone's thirst despite our being parched for a taste of decency and fairness.
Politicians who just months ago crowed before the television cameras that they would never appease fascism now eagerly queue to kiss Donald Trump's arse. Canadian politicians appear the most energetic in wanting to turn their country into a Vichy outpost for Trump's autocratic chicanery.
2024 is a dystopia of tent cities across Britain, Europe, America, Canada, Australia and everywhere else. Our public healthcare systems are up for sale to hedge funds, generally American, because the USA knows best how to have their citizens pay through the nose for their enslavement to capitalism.
Britain today, like Canada 10 years ago, embraced euthanasia and passed a bill in parliament that will legalise the "happy death" for the terminally ill. Of course it is a lie few deaths even by euthanasia are happy or peaceful. The end of our lives is a violent surrendering of our consciousness from our body, our desires, our loves and our connection to humanity. Putting assisted suicide into the hands of governments who justify benefit cuts, privatisation of health care and grotesque military expenditures is giving a green light for them or future governments to euthanise the terminally skint who might also have disabilities. We are all just ledger items in the 1%'s book of profits and loss.
No one in authority wants to protect us or fight earnestly to keep the lights of decency burning.
Maybe it always was so but the calibre of antifascism being generated by big names in the news media, popular culture, or film is performative. It's a means to build a political brand that creates personal income but little else. If you are making 100s of thousands or millions of dollars as an antifascist, you aren't George Orwell fighting in the trenches of Spain's 1937 Civil War. You're a Vegas Entertainer belting out a cover of Bella Ciao for punters.
Maybe the writers will save us from fascism or maybe; they will be like Margaret Atwood who sees not evil in genocide to speak out about it.
I really like posting on Substack and having you all as followers. There is only thing I detest about all of this and that is when I must blast out an SOS because my rent is due and I am short. I really wish there as some other way but there isn’t.
Your subscriptions and tips are so important to my personal survival. With 211 paid subscribers it is a key component to paying my rent. There is a current shortfall of $300 Canadian which is around £2 or USD 240, in my rent. Some of this should correct itself by the 30th through incoming subscriptions but sometimes that doesn't happen.
Like many me remaining housed is a precarious daily undertaking. Yearly subscriptions will cover much of next month’s rent because- all I need is 8 to make December’s payment. But this is important, the ask is only for those who can afford it because nobody should go without. The tips you have provided have been so very helpful as well. I believe the content being produced here has the worth you have invested in it with your time and financial support.
Take Care, John
Hello John. Stop taking your statins. They are another big pharma ploy. Since my brother stopped them, he sleeps better, doesn't get up in the night for the toilet as often and the pains in his legs have stopped. His health has actually improved with no harm to his heart. Thanks for this article. We have a far right wing coalition govt which is pricing everything to see how much they can privatize and sell off. By the time the next election swings around, there will be nothing left except more homelessness, hunger, poverty and less hope.
Statins are bastardized red rice yeast . Which although cheaper and the original drug . Are not needed . I reversed my heart disease 12 years ago . Serrapeptase 120 IU &. EDTA chelation. 90 capsules taken every day til gone . The 1st one dissolved the clots and the 2nd removes the calcium buildup from arteries. Doctors know but , no money in cures .