by Mat Capper
In Liverpool today I noticed a BIG sign on a bus that said 'SCUM, people who dump trash'. Now, I hate seeing litter dropped or thrown from car windows; in fact, I’ve ended up in trouble many times for pointing bins out to people. But I also think it’s not the crime of the century in the grand scheme of things. It got me thinking about why there aren’t similar campaigns against the major corporations who dump toxic waste into our rivers or release dangerous gases into the air. Imagine buses carrying the slogans 'Sh**L Oil Scum; they killed all the fish in the river Dee'.
Now that would be a sign I could get behind.
Society always encourages us to find a section of people to look down on, to judge, in order to feel better about ourselves. Normally it’s the drug addicts who are presented as scumbags, mugging old ladies or burgling houses. I work in the treatment of drug addiction and live near hundreds of addicts and this just isn’t true. The crime most associated with funding drug habits is shoplifting. What you would call a victimless crime. Yet if I was to believe what I read, I wouldn’t ever leave my flat empty or go out without being armed to the teeth. The main problem in the area I live is the pub on the corner which every weekend keeps me and the family up all night listening to fights, vomiting, and endless scores of people singing Dean Martin tracks badly. The NHS in Scotland released figures for 2004 which recorded all drug related deaths (excluding alcohol) at 358 (59 through Heroin overdose). Alcohol for the same period contributed to 250,000 deaths in the UK. Personally I don’t agree with intoxicants of any type, or maybe it’s my body that doesn’t agree. But give me a city full of pot smokers any day.
Over the last couple of years there have been huge campaigns to 'blow up' benefit or welfare cheats. Normally adverts describe how these people are stealing from us all. Newspaper articles are continually appearing talking smugly about how the government is clamping down on these cheats. A friend of mine is looking at an eighteen-month prison sentence for playing in a band while claiming incapacity benefit. No one seems to have any sympathy for him. But I want to know why aren't there the same public campaigns against corporations or individuals who commit tax fraud or are involved in ‘tax avoidance’ or offshore banking schemes? Imagine the headlines ‘Rolling Stones arrested over 5% tax contribution’, or ‘Jagger and Richards forced to cough up 90 million quid’. Surely such crimes account for at least ten times more in lost revenue to any government.
Stories about benefit fraud seem to be one way our newspapers can be filled up with rubbish so that we are distracted from the truth. I often wonder what happened to the bird flu and SARS epidemics which I thought were going to kill most of the human race. The only people being killed en masse are those who happen to stand between our governments and oil production. Or people trying to say “it’s my land, not yours,” when some rich guy or corporation or government has different ideas.
Distractions keep people scared, and if they’re scared, they’ll keep buying. I mean buying into ideologies and myths. Look: we’re told what to wear, how to look, where to hang out, what to watch etc. If we don't do all these things then we are somehow less than others. Only such a society could pay Tiger Woods $1 million dollars to wear a piece of clothing and 6 cents to the person who made it. Capitalism and collective self-centeredness are responsible for the collapse of the world’s value systems and the extreme division in wealth (although not responsible for any of its citizens’ clarity and perspective on life).
Personally I’ve never voted, so I do not support the UK or any government. The Labour party were elected this time round with about 40% of the vote. 40% of the electorate actually voted, which means it represents less than 20% of the people (the only prime minister with less support was Margaret Thatcher).
Modern governments don't act for the will of the people either locally or nationally any more than they act for monetary gain, whether it is murdering tens of thousands of innocent people for oil, or no longer building houses for people to live in, but building flats to sell to the rich.
I have to be careful to try and avoid these distractions on every level and make sure I never look down or up to any person or thing. I have to stay away from the culture of fear which is trying to be created and do what I can to make changes within my own community, which can and may then impact nationally — and who knows even globally.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s that we have to pay for the things we do, for the acts we carry out. If we don’t address the wrongs we commit, then we are in trouble. This is perhaps why people have mid life crises, or are tortured later in life by guilt and remorse. If this is true then our current leaders are in trouble. No amends could address what has already been carried out. I can only hope that it stops and we manage to take charge of our futures and unite for global peace.
In the meantime sometimes I have to take time out and think about things that make me smile. Otherwise it would be too easy to become absorbed into misery and powerlessness. It’s during these times that I think about the faces of my children and wife, the poem ‘somewhere I have never travelled gladly beyond’, Woody Allen’s ‘Crimes and Misdemeanours’, Chumbawumba’s song ‘enough is enough’, Lenny Bruce, Duncan Ferguson scoring against West Brom in his last game for Everton, the first movement of the Elgar’s Cello concerto, the films of Takashi kitano, Lennon’s song ‘love’, Groucho Marx, watching Derek Jacobi act, the Verve song ‘grey skies’, the film ‘twelve angry men’ or hundreds of other pieces of art or faces of people who have warmed me. It is these things that keep me sane, that keep me alive, that allow me to remember that I do have a chance, and if I know I have a chance then I know we all do.