Thursday 15 September 2011

Fuckwit of the week, 15 September 2001


OK, realistically, this is fuckwit of the… (mumble) time since I last wrote a blog post.

Yeah, sorry about that.

On the other hand, the novel is very nearly finished, and every time I do another edit and change things, I’m getting closer and closer to an end product that I really like, so grateful thanks to all my readers so far!  The plan at the moment is to enter it into a competition with a closing date of 30th September. When it’s rejected from that, I’ll start sending it out to publishers, but probably only commit to doing this until June next year. After that, I’ll publish as an e-book online. As and when that happens, I’ll let you know.

Right, back to fuckwits.

I have quite a list of contenders today.

First up is me.

For those of you who follow my Twitter stream, you’ll probably have noticed a string of self-pitying whines from yesterday. Sorry about that.

So, yesterday I had the worst flair up of Depression than I’ve had for… well, easily six months now. Possibly even longer as I can’t remember being too bad when I had pneumonia and I was expecting it then!

Anyhow, one of the many, many symptoms is that I feel compelled to write self-pitying rants and fling them up on the internet. In part, this is because I crave sympathy, but mostly it’s because I can’t not do it. The part of me that doesn’t post self-pity whines stops working.  Yesterday I deleted more than I published, so that’s good. The whole thing only lasted two or three hours, and it didn’t spiral into a second and a third patch of self-loathing, so that’s a positive too.

The biggest positive is that I don’t recall when I was last having a ‘blip’ like that. That used to be my status quo, and I’d have probably three or four periods a week of fairly horrendous thoughts and just fighting the urge to just, well, check out.

So let’s celebrate the fact that I’m currently stable enough that yesterday was a surprise!

Though, and this is the reason I’m a fuckwit, it also wasn’t a surprise. I’ve been working long hours between work and book, there have been a series of stressful events over the past two weeks or so, and several at the early part of this week.

I manage my Depression well. I know that Stress + overwork + poor diet + lack of sleep = breakdown.

So why I thought I should just plough through it all is a bit beyond me.

Anyhow, the good news is that I’m now taking things a bit easier. I am at work, but I’m happy to take time off if I start feeling any wobbles, no matter how slight, and I’m going to rework the diet and exercise, and all that stuff.

I have some brilliant and wonderful friends who saw what was happening and a) gave a shit and b) gently joked with me and kept an eye on me until I came out of it.

Right, so enough about me and let’s look at the other fuckwits of the world. Who might be on my list?

Nadine Dorries.

Yeah, she had to be, didn’t she?

Now, I respect that there are many, many people in the world who find abortion distasteful, or who believe it should not happen full stop. I respect their opinions about it. However, I think that wrapping that argument up in anything other than ‘I don’t like abortions, I think it should stop!’ or even 'I care more about the unborn child than I do about its mother' is pretty darned silly.

For Nadine Dorries to get up and pretend that this is a woman’s rights issue is just odd. To imply that she’s protecting a woman from a big, monstrous decisions that she frankly doesn’t understand, is frankly insulting.

You know what? At no point during any of my pregnancies was I offered counselling to make sure I understood the mental and physical damage that would be done to my body during pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood. Let’s be realistic, there are many cases where these things are quite shocking and terrifying. If someone had sat down with me to discuss these things, I would have chosen to have my children anyway.

BECAUSE I KNOW MY OWN MIND!

But that isn’t the problem, Dorries is happy that I’ve made the right decision, no matter how damaging it might be to me, because it fits with her preferences so that’s all OK.

The thing is, there were a lot of words in that amendment that I agreed with. My personal feeling is this.

Any pregnant woman of any age, who feels she needs support when making the decision to keep or abort her pregnancy, should have that support. It should be free, easily accessible, it should be professional, and in these circumstances, it should be delivered by people who are experts in pregnancy, childbirth and abortion, people who are unbiased, which means that they should not be pressured by their own religion to force a woman in one direction or the other.

Oh wait a cotton-pickin’ minute! That already happens!

The suggestion that counsellors are pushing women into having abortions that they don’t want is abhorrent. These are non-profit organisations. Marie Stokes in particular is committed to extending education on sexual health matters on a global level, and aims to provide advice and contraception in areas where no such service exists at the moment.

Are the government doing as well to provide efficient and well-balanced information about sex to our nation’s children? No they’re not, so on this they should shut up and sit down.

Right, next on my list? Well, it’s the delightful duo of Cameron and Clegg.

But what for?

OK, well privatising yet more sections of the NHS is at the top of my list.

I’ve harped on about this before, but this really, really matters. When you’re ill, it’s really, really important that you’re not also weighed down by the stress of ‘can I afford this treatment?’

Look at me. I am able to function on a day-to-day basis because I am on medication, and received some excellent talking-therapy when I needed it. And I’m one of the lucky ones because there are still many, many people who are frozen out of mental health care because waiting lists are too long. These are not people who could simply choose to go private. Hell, I was offered a private service during the year that my name was slowly rising to the top of the waiting list, but I couldn’t afford it. It isn’t a choice between NHS and private care. For many people, it’s the choice between NHS or nothing.

Let’s look at Claudia for a second.

Between mid-November 2008 and mid March 2009 I was taking her to the doctor at the rate of once a week. She’d been several times before then too, but that was the period at which her health was at it’s most critical. Looking at our nearest neighbour, Ireland, it costs €60 for each doctor’s trip (£52). So if I’d have had to pay for each visit at that time, it would have cost round about £624, just for the trips to my local GP.

Did I have a spare £624 at the time? Did I fuck. The choice would have been between that and food.

In addition, there was the time that I had to take her to the out of hours doctor, which was fortunately in the hospital to which she was immediately admitted. This was the occasion when there were two, one-hour periods when doctors were refusing to leave her side, even when there was another emergency call, because she was still considered to be the most sick child in the building. They couldn’t leave her for those two hours ‘just in case’.

My God, the guilt and pain I still feel remembering those two hours! If at any point I’d have had to think ‘how will we pay for this care that she so clearly needs’, it probably would have killed me. If there had been any part of me that had doubted that she needed to be in hospital, and if I’d have been pressed by those doubts, she would have died.

I don’t know how much that time would have cost, and I’m slightly frightened to look it up.

Oh, yes, and then there was the final week of that illness, during which she saw our local doctor three times, she was admitted to hospital where she underwent an emergency operation and then had four days of hospital led recovery and frankly shed-loads of antibiotics.

Do I think I’d have been able to afford insurance that would have covered that little lot, a time of confusing diagnosis because the presentation of the illness was so odd? No. There’s no way.

So the NHS is important, and having it privatised it by stealth is something that I am extremely wary about.

So yeah. They’re on my fuckwit’s list.

Oh yes, and hearing yesterday that they want to reduce summer holidays as a way of winning back women voters.

While I like the idea, it drives me to distraction that the coalition seem to think the word ‘woman’ is synonymous with the word ‘mother’, and indeed that they are progressing the fallacy that childcare is the responsibility of the ‘mother’ and not of the ‘parents’.

Fuckwits.

Who else have we got?

OK, I recall being incensed by Michael Gove for one day of the last month, but I can’t remember what for.

Probably just being Michael Gove.

As he’s yet to open his mouth to say something sensible and well researched, let’s assume he’s a fuckwit for being Michael Gove while talking.

And then there was also this story that’s been winding its way around the Internet, and apologies that this isn’t well researched, it’s because I’m still knackered following yesterday’s afternoon of fun.

Here is one article on it

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/genreville/?p=1519

A publisher of Young Adult fiction in America has asked a writer to change the sexual orientation of one of the characters in her book. The four other relationships, all straight, are fine. The fifth is no more explicit than the heterosexual ones but apparently boys kissing each other is wrong.

Well, clearly they’ve got a point! Surely, if we stop writing about gay teens, they’ll all suddenly stop existing!

And what might happen should a teen read about a gay couple in a book, and perhaps tentatively kiss someone who’s the same sex as them? Oh no! They might like it! They might suddenly find that they’re in a world where they’re able to love the person of their choice free from prejudice and hatred!

How horrible that would be!!!

Fucking fuckwits.

So who gets my special award this morning?

Actually, it would be the person who was cycling with no lights, no helmet, no reflectors, the wrong way down a one-way street who scared the bejeezus out of me at the break of dawn this morning.

I’d really like to exit this world without having killed anyone. Could you please make it a touch easier for me to do that?

Ta muchly,

Pip xxx