Today started really rather well. I got an email from a lady I work with at school this morning, asking whether I’d be interested in the newly-established Charlton and Woolwich film Festival. That proposal was too delicious to turn down – apart from a part of Antonioni’s ‘Blow Up’ having been filmed in a nearby park, I wasn’t aware of much of a film culture around here – so I replied that of course I’d love to be involved. We’re going to meet next week during half term to discuss a plan of action, and the festival’s website mentions a meeting in a local pub on the twenty-fourth I plan to go to. The opportunity to meet local cinephiles made me really excited.

When Lyn got up, however, she told me something which changed my mood utterly. She had been speaking online to a friend of hers who lives in Liverpool, after I had gone to bed. He has very severe CP, and had told Lyn that he’d received news that his care was going to be cut. I checked his facebook page: the poor man was despairing. He needs round the clock support, but now is in agonizing limbo, having to wait a week for social services to tell him how much care he’ll get.

Words fail me. No doubt this is a result of government cuts. What sort of government, what sort of people, could justify cutting the support people need to live, and function as members of society? Suddenly it hits home: if they are so heartless as to cut this man’s support, they can cut anyone’s. The bastards do not care – how could anyone with a shred of humanity do such a thing. This guy has really severe CP, yet they have him wondering whether he’ll be able to get out of bed, eat, go to the bathroom. How dare they inflict so much anguish on anyone, simply to satisfy their petty, greed-based agenda? And all so that they can build their ‘low tax economy’ where their rich pals hoard their money while those who need help are left isolated, alone and starving.

Something must be done – this barbarity cannot continue. With this man’s permission, lyn and I plan to tell the press, although, being controlled by the very bastards pushing through the cuts, I doubt they would bat an eyelid. As enraged as I feel, as much as I want to march up to milbank and end each and every one of their obscene, selfish lives, I know I cannot. All I can do is sit here shaking with rage at the injustice of it all.