letter to an extremist

Dear David Cameron,

I neither voted for you, nor do any of your policies or positions represent my interests. Your enormous majority means that I have no representative under this so-called democracy - and am not likely to have one for as long as I live in this constituency. But I would like at least to be added as a statistic: someone who finds your policies abhorrent, dangerous, and imbued with the most distasteful ideology which both fails to understand the difficulties normal people face and which threatens to kill off the structures and social values which have been built up over centuries.

You will kill off people too: this is happening already. If you look at the suicide rates of people with mental health, forced to undergo humiliating, unsympathetic and narrow 'work assessments' you will see that these have increased just in the time you have been in power. If you look at the closure of care homes and removal of care for the elderly and mentally ill, you will see that you are already condemning these people to an even more miserable existence, through no fault of their own. If you look at the record of commissioned out (privatised) health and social care services, you will see that they are both more expensive and of lower quality than those provided by the NHS.

You are reducing legal aid for those who need it most to deal with the consequences of your social experiment. You are emasculating the Equality and Human Rights Commission which has at least provided some form of relatively independent advice for people in this country. You are intent on reducing our protections under the Human Rights Act because you do not see protection for the most vulnerable as anything more than a 'privilege', to be gained through good behaviour or hard work. You continue to pander to big business and the banking community whose behaviour led to the economic crisis that ordinary people are now paying for. And you expect the rest of the population to pick up the pieces on a voluntary basis in the name of your 'Big Society'.

You justify this by saying we have no money. We have no money because the banks have pocketed it and continue to be rewarded. We are one of the richest countries in the world but unlike poorer nations we believe the people are expendable in the name of profit for companies run by your friends and colleagues - many of them in the cabinet. We have no money but we can afford to start another war. A war whose stated aim was to protect civilians but which is being conducted in order to effect regime change - illegal under international law.

My only hope is that your policies are so radical, so distasteful and so dangerous that the people will rise up. I know I am not alone in thinking that. Then, no doubt, you will add us to your list of blacklisted 'extreme' organisations. Let me make it easier for you: I do not share any of your 'British values'.

I expect to receive a brief note from your assistant saying that you have read this - which I shall not believe. Please add me to your statistics - and please believe that if I am 'extreme' then so are the many organisations and groups I work with. Perhaps it is you who are extreme.

Yours sincerely,

[ant]