It’s hard to
believe, but I’m four months in to my new role and delighted to say things are
much better than early days suggested they could ever be. Really the only bit
I’m still struggling with is the concept of the shift system. We get a rota
weeks in advance, so you know whether you’ll be on earlies (8.00-4.30), mids
(10.00-6.30) or lates (2.00-10.30) in which particular week. Obviously, with
the midweek cricket fixtures already out and the new season peaking over the
hill on the far side of Easter, it’s going to take some judicious planning, not
to mention a large chunk of my annual holidays, to ensure I keep up my
appearances. Knowledge is power, of course, so I’m applying logic to my
predicted work rota. For me, it seems as if I’m on an endless repeat cycle of
two weeks of earlies and two weeks of lates, so at least there’s a degree of
continuity, even if that Monday morning
early shift when you’ve just finished a fortnight of lates the previous Friday,
hurts like hell.
As a rule of
thumb, earlies are steady and quite solemn in tone. Mids are universally
despised, while lates are undoubtedly more fun; you’re busy, but the whole
place is almost relaxed. The main problem with lates is that you can’t do
anything once you’ve clocked off; going to gigs, playing or watching football
and having a pint, other than on Friday nights when most boozers are open late,
are all non-starters. Also, if you’re a night owl like me, you’ll probably stay
up until yon time, farting about on the computer, reading or scrolling through
shite on the telly, and then lie on until noon, so you don’t get much done
before you begin your shift either. With that in mind, I decided to get
creative with my gym attendance. If I’m on earlies, it’s 7.30pm on Tuesday,
Thursday and Friday, allowing me to play 6 a side on Monday and Wednesday. If
I’m on lates, it’s 7.30am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, followed by a swift
return home and a couple of hours supplementary sleep before the toad squats on
my life again.
It’s a 6.15
start on gym days. Up and out the door, only time to brush my teeth and throw
some clothes on before tramping down to the Metro. Tynemouth to Byker isn’t the
busiest of routes that time in the morning, though the station shop is open and
I drop in for a bottle of water. Recently I’ve noticed a youngish bloke,
slumped against the ticket machines, huddled in a frayed sleeping bag, almost
swaddled by an inadequate blanket. There’s always a friendly good morning and an attempt at a smile
from him; no pressure to donate. Estate agents boost prices whenever they talk
about the value of coastal living; here we’re seeing the sad reality of coastal
existing. I don’t know the lad’s back
story, but he’s dossing midway between North Shields and Whitley Bay, where
there are phenomenal numbers of vulnerably housed young people in temporary
hostel and B&B accommodation, formerly owned by North Tyneside Council. If
he can’t get a bed in one of those pillar box red doored semi sanctuaries, then
he’s really at the lowest ebb.
The first
Friday of February was the coldest day of 2019; snow had fallen and frozen
overnight. Not yet 6.45 a.m. and the young bloke is in position, cheery as ever.
I haven’t given him anything in the past, as my Metro charity is generally
dedicated to slipping Johnny Decker a fiver whenever I come across the poor old
bugger, but this morning I have to. I get him a hot chocolate from the vending
machine in the newsagent’s, reasoning that the cocoa powder and sugar will at
least give him some sustenance, before dropping a £2 coin into his hand. It’s
the only change I have on me, but I’ll regret I didn’t give him the £20 note
that stayed snug in my wallet as soon as I get on the train. Normally, there
are about half a dozen punters on the whole of the train at this time of the
morning, which swells to around 30 by the time I get off at Byker. Today
there’s already that many aboard when the doors open.
I can’t
quite believe the scene I’m greeted with; seemingly fast asleep on the 3 person
bench seats in the middle of each carriage are several teenage lads, uniformly
attired in black Northface or
equivalents, hoodies, trackie bottoms and scuffed trainers. The young homeless,
frozen half to death during the night, they ride the Metro from South Shields to St James or the airport to South Hylton
in the petrified semi-darkness before the modest version of a rush hour that
Tyneside boasts, as keeping warm means keeping alive. Killing time until their
daily dose of methadone is dispensed, getting their heads down in the warmth of
a commuter train, while keeping an eye out for the Checkies; Metro’s Mobile
Revenue Compliance Inspectors. Evil fucktards that they are.
If you want
further evidence of how compassion has died, and the world we once knew has
died with it, visit the Metro website which, without irony, boasts how Nexus is
“primarily focused on the safety of our passengers.” To illustrate this, there
is a large photo, prominently displayed, of space hopper sized Checkies,
squeezed into regulation turquoise nylon fleeces, notepads at the ready, backed
up by the institutional muscle of a smattering of coppers in Kevlar vests,
poised to “stamp out anti-social behaviour, including fare dodging.” To back
this up, Checkies are now being fitted with bodycams for the purpose of
collecting evidence, as there has been an increase in verbal and physical
attacks on them of late. My heart coagulates.
Seriously, how
do these people sleep at night? Presumably not on the concrete floors of
station forecourts, counting the seconds until the start of service and the
stolen chance of some warmth on the move. What has happened to our society
whereby it is seen as a sweet and glorious thing for the state and their soft,
fat flunkies to persecute the weak, the desperate and the marginalised? Without
a roof over their heads, the poor bastards who dodge their fares because they
don’t have the money to feed themselves or their habit are on the end of a
system wide “crackdown” on their “illegal activities.” Not in my name they are
not.
This immoral
and unnecessary ramping up of intolerance, contempt and hatred for the
homeless, in the same way that refugees, Muslims and sundry other non-WASP
sectors of society, not to mention petit bourgeois leftist intellectuals such
as myself, have become hate figures among authoritarian populists, or how trans
women are persecuted and demonised by TERFs, by the insidious tactics of the
mainstream media and their functionaries such as the despicable Yaxley-Lennon
et al, is part of the terrible shadow cast across our society by the spectre of
Brexit.
If you ask
me for a solution to the current paralysis afflicting society, then I’d
recommend the immediate cancellation of Article 50 and a firm declaration that
Britain will remain a part of Europe forever. In addition I’d suggest the
immediate independence for Scotland and the reunification of Ireland as a 32
county republic. I have held those beliefs have dear for a considerable length
of time, predating the June 2016 act of collective insanity that was Brexit, by
decades. Sadly, I realise that we’ve a while to go before these things come to
pass. However, I am prepared to predict what will happen on or before 23.00 on
23 March, namely Britain will not leave the European Union then or at any point
in the future without a comprehensive agreement. Despite “the will of the
people” or whatever you want to call it, No Deal will not be allowed to happen
by the ruling classes and here’s why; the EU and the City of London will call
the final shots, not gin-sodden dodderers in the Home Counties or sieg heiling, Carling addicted, unemployed car workers from Grindon and Plains
Farm.
The whole
idea of Project Fear amuses me, because the reality simply does not stack up
when compared with the implied breakdown of society we apparently have in
store. If you’ve ever had cause to contact the cops, even in an emergency, over
the past few years, you’ll know there simply aren’t enough flatties to go
around. They can’t cope with the day to day chew of break-ins, car thefts and radgey
pissheads windmilling each other in Weatherspoon’s,
never mind trying to maintain order in dystopian Derby, riotous Reading and
post-apocalyptic Peterborough while the gutters run with blood and tears this
summer; possibly sweat too, if we get a heatwave like last year.
Even more
hilarious is the none too subtle hint that troops will be utilised to impose
Martial Law if the balloon goes up. Come on; the Provos gave these brave lads
the run around for half a century in the Six Counties and it took this allegedly
finely honed fighting machine 4 months to lay a glove on a rabble of half
starved Argentinian schoolboy conscripts in the Malvinas. That was when there
were 200,000 more Bill Oddies than there are now remember.
Stories of
imminent food shortages, missing medication and other nightmarish visions of a
country in collapse are merely works of speculative fiction with an ideological
edge. The whole purpose of such scaremongering is to frighten the populace into
accepting one of the two deals that will come to pass. Either May’s current
crap proposals will get minimal tweaking and Royal Assent or, the slightly less
terrible option comes to pass, she quits and whichever chinless bastard is left
holding the keys to Number 10 when the music stops, manages to halt Article 50
for an unspecified length of time, which will be long enough to organise a
Norway Plus type deal. This being the case, another referendum offering the
choice between this deal and Remain will be on the agenda. A General Election
seems unlikely at this point, as the full Tory Party fissure that would
undoubtedly coincide with such an eventuality is to be avoided at any cost, in
order to best serve the whims, caprices and selfish desires of venal, rapacious
capitalist bastards.
And what of the
Labour Party? I’ve no brief for the likes of Chuks Umunna or Tom Watson, but
that doesn’t mean to say I’m flag waving for Corbyn either. As ever, he’s shown
himself to be a deeply principled politician, but a fucking terrible leader.
Without question, the disinclination to go any further down the road of Remain
than demanding No Deal “option” disappears, has been a tactical disaster. Of
course the fact Corbyn went on record the day after the referendum saying
Article 50 should be triggered immediately probably has a lot to do with his
reluctance to inquire, much less agitate for, about a suspension of Article 50
and a People’s Vote, as does his lifelong opposition to the Common Market or
whatever you want to call the current and all previous iterations of the vision
encapsulated in the Treaty of Rome.
If we leave
the EU, the future will be unspeakably bleak as any deal is bound to be worse
than our current arrangements. Indeed, even if we stay, there is a cost to be
counted, as we will still be saddled with an enormous bill for all the farcical
events since June 2016. The only possible good that will come from the whole
sordid affair will be a public acknowledgement that an intensely complex
logical problem cannot be solved by a woefully inadequate binary question. Most
importantly, whatever the outcome, those poor young lads looking for warmth on
the Metro, especially the shivering bloke at Tynemouth station, are not having
their needs addressed by our society and that is the biggest outrage of all.
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