Punching Boris
12/12/19 I want to get the hell out of this country. I want to set off to a less distopian land. I daydream of punching Boris, Gove and Mogg all in a line.
In court I get asked why I did that.
‘When you have personally seen the rise in the homeless population on your journey to work each morning, the dismantling of the benefits system. When your Dad voted Tory when he has had to wait over a year to get a monitor fitted and still not had an operation to fix the skin in the lining of his mouth. As you see people angry in pubs on social media and don’t have a conversations with people at work, between friends and family because it is not the done thing. you see yourself implicated in it. You go to marches, sign petitions, set up fundraisers and don’t continue the conversation. In your job and personally you see the inadequate provision fro mental health services. You hear stories of how people don’t feel comfortanle in their communities anymore because of verbal, physical or media comment inflicted on their ethnicity, religion, sexuality... There is a crisis in journalism where clickbait and algorithms lead to divergent echoing discourses, funelled through the lenses of Brexit, a Tory Party internal debate no less and accountancy.’
impatient the judge asks again ‘But do you condone violence?’
‘No I don’t. But when you feel trapped, when you feel hopeless and scared. When you have lost your dignity and their is seemingly nothing you can do. When you see an opportunity to claw something back however little, to find some kind of retribution, a little punch goes a long way‘
