Barcode Britain

  

Barcoded at birth, you don't see it in the mirror 'obviously Mrs Patterson' but once you've left school perhaps University if you're lucky you realise that your worth to #TeamGB is about how productive you are. How much money and profit you generate for your employer and how much tax you pay to your Government. Your intrinsic value as a unique human being is not being recognised. You are an economic migrant within your own borders and sovereignty. If you can't get work in your own area then you are expected to get on your bike chwedl Norman Tebbit even if that bike has flat tires. The system is 100% guaranteed to create resentment amongst the other bar codes because like Pavlov's Dogs they have been trained to compete for every scrap and their vocabulary now contain the words scroungers, wasters and work shy. I'm sure we didn't go around calling each other that as children. Divide and Conquer is a highly effective strategy. Behind the cloak of mixed ability you have still been streamed at school into the divis and the brainboxes. You can choose your mode of train travel and the way you pay for your stamps. First or Second Class. The Pavlovian Dog that you are, when you are older and have made your pile you can send your very own divi or brain box to Public School thus perpetuating the inequality of bar code Britain. When your heart or nerves start showing signs of wear and tear you can pay to go privately, to be treated by the same doctors and surgeons employed by the NHS, but who are now moonlighting in the local Spire hospital for a bit of extra cash for Christmas. 

You know all this so why am I telling you? To underline a point, to show how bitter and twisted that I really am. Did I really miss the boat or did I choose to miss it on a point of principle just to spite the system? Why are people not rewarded for being kind rather than competitive? In the face of all austerity and adversity she remained kind, not with a fixed smile on her face but with a warmth in her heart. 

An aerial shot of any town or city centre at this time of year will show us being herded like sheep into shops. I was going to call them retail establishments but why be poncy just for the sake of it. If we are sheep, then where is the shepherd? 

Who is the entity who has us on remote control? Not God or the infant Jesus but Argos & John Lewis. I am not going to change things by writing about them but every year I wage war against the commercialism of Christmas and every year it feels like its getting worse because we've been encouraged to think about it since September. With so much conflict and suffering in the world, Christmas divides and conquers us again by turning families inwards towards the turkey and the tinsel and towards the gifts under the tree, and there flickering her message of hope or 'anus horribilis' is our very wealthy un-elected monarch, the Queen of Barcode Britain on flat screen TV. We are being controlled, we know it and we are going along with it. Stockholm Syndrome at its at perfect pitch. Hark I hear another carol........