I've Worked it Out

OK – I think I have finally worked out why I really hate things these days, it’s actually quite simple, everything has become ‘tat’.
Take a look around, once we had lives that we lived because it was a quite happy thing to do. Now we simply exist to feed an insidious treadmill of financial institutions, the legal industry, and power and control hungry governments of all levels and their inquisition ‘The Taxation Department’ .
As youth we went into shops and spoke to the people working there because we probably either knew them, or it was simply the polite thing to do. Now shops have gone and been replaced with mega this and mega that, churning out endless inventory supported by over loud and over coloured advertising geared to dull your brain and rot your senses until you comply. They weren’t open 24 hours a day 7 days a week, why, because there was no reason for it.
Now, so that we can all own all the pretty trash that’s on offer, both parents work and the family tries to get by on reduced caring and, again, overpriced, underloving child care centres.
As a youth in my village/town I could look down any street and see nothing but the shop fronts and perhaps a zebra crossing. Now the eye is gouged by countless signs, don’t do this, don’t do that. Cross here, don’t cross here, double yellow lines, double red lines, slow down, speed up, it’s an offence to …., don’t loiter, please don’t die here there is a bin supplied round the back, on and on and on.
Once we got a wage in cash which could be stuffed into your pocket. Then we got cheques which we could either bank or get cashed and the company’s bank. Now it has to be paid into a bank account and that’s where the rot sets in. First you are forced to open a bank account, which means you are going to lose a lot of your hard earned money in bank fees, dozens of fees that serve no purpose except to steal your money and make it theirs.
Reserve Banks that only the gods understand keep forcing up interest rates, hundreds of thousands are losing their homes because the repayments keep going up and up – the politician will express regret on camera and then go and have a few whiskies in the pollies bar before hopping into their Rolls Royce and returning to their 3 million dollar home … understand one important thing ‘Nobody Cares’.
Company CEOs run trillion dollar companies into the ground, ruin thousands of small investors and get paid off with 25/30 million dollars to go away. ‘Nobody Cares’.
We have to fill out forms to do anything, a constant stream appear in your letterbox, god knows who thought them up but when you study them they are all geared for one simple purpose ‘To Have you like an open book in big brother’s computers. They have you by the short and curlies and there is no escape … apart from death and even then somebody has to fill out forms for you to prove you have curled up your toes.
Justice is served only to the wealthy, whether they deserve it or not - no money and you don’t stand a chance. And, as for getting sick, forget it, if you don’t have insurance you will never get the proper treatment; you either get better or die … ‘Nobody Cares’.
What it comes down to is that we are no longer a person or individual people, we are now nothing more that tags and numbers in countless computers that sit there ticking over waiting for us to either do something wrong or depart the mortal coil – and guess what? – Nobody Cares’.

I guess this is why, in my recent writing, I like to wander back to a long forgotten time. I don’t like it here, I want to be there, with all its faults, you see – ‘People Cared’.

A very tired
Harry Drake