Fun with status

Here are three people, each believing that they are very very important:

• One believes she is very, very important, because her mother did not inform her that she is not. Her only achievement in life was getting married and driving her husband into making a lot of money.  She now believes that every word she says is automatically true and that everything she does is correct because her bank balance and spending capacity tells her so.
• Two believes that he is very, very important because he managed to land a job paying twice as much as his last job, despite both of these jobs consisting of doing nothing apart from wearing a suit and signing documents as if he knows what he is doing.
• Three does not believe she is very important, but does what the other two tell her to do and spreads malicious gossip on their instruction to gain approval from them.

They are, I am told, members of my family, who decided when I was working in England for ten years that I was born to serve them and that they need not participate in their parents’ care because I would do what I was told.

They have apparently not noticed that their refusal to pick up a paintbrush, be even basically polite or assist at all with the work that is necessary to keep my mother’s house and gardens going means that they have declined to have any status when it comes to the care of their mother or this house.

In the last twenty years, I have cleaned, maintained, cared for both of their elderly parents whilst working up to five jobs at a time.  I only gave up working round about the time of the first referendum because the Scottish Government stopped funding research for a period around that time, and my job ground to a halt.  It was expedient to do so because my mother was requiring more in the way of care at that time.

It is interesting that they associate status with money – number one made a false statement to the police because she believed that I had escaped from the house at one point (I kid you not) and gave a statement indicating that the slave had escaped and was to be returned to the house forthwith so that she could dump her sick mother there.

None of them are either capable or emotionally equipped to have dealt with any of the problems associated with their parents becoming ill, and they attempted to deprive my mother of her money entirely seven years ago on the basis that I had gone out for an afternoon.  They apparently still believe that this is justifiable behaviour.

Fortunately I got them out of the prosecution that would have followed this activity by putting my foot down, however I am now feeling considerably less sympathetic as they are currently attempting to interfere with my mother’s medical care at the hospital. The last few years have consisted of them running to the nearest authority figure at every opportunity to have me punished for refusing to acknowledge their imaginary superiority.

Frighteningly, everyone I have spoken to in the caring profession says that behaviour such as this from absent, lazy and toxic relatives is actually normal.  No help is available for carers in terms of protecting them from their own family, and if you accept help from social services for any other reason, such as care or respite, anything such people say is used as grounds for action against your sick loved one, in the form of removing them to a Conservative Care home and making you homeless.

So, if your family owns anything, you are left with little option to protect it than trying to avoid being in the care system at all, effectively putting you in a situation of modern slavery, just as my deranged sister described in her false missing person’s report.  I was fortunate, the police officers involved knew me and simply ascertained whether I was being held against my will or not.  Other people may not be so lucky.

It has horrified me that my parents early life apparently led them to instruct their first three children to be grasping lower middle class scum that I would not want to be associated with under any circumstances.  I am guessing that these are the ‘ordinary working families’ that Theresa May is so fond of referring to.

I am not sure what kind of mentality you would require to sit and gloat over your paycheque and begrudge every penny in tax, since prior to taking care of my parents, I used to work up to 20 hours a day as a normal routine.  Even when I was studying, I was working three or four part time jobs.  At no point did I have time to even look at my paycheque, never mind consider that my tax and national insurance was something to be grudgingly given.  I just loved working.

So then, are we to believe that the majority of voters are small-minded, lazy, grasping scum that would rob their own mother given half a chance, and who begrudge the less fortunate a means of eating or heating their house?  If this is the definition of an ordinary working family, I would suggest a cultural change is in order.

Taxes paid are just that, they are paid.  What is left over is yours.  It is then up to you to budget around that.

Status is earned, and it is up to you how you choose to earn it.  If you choose to earn it via piles of cash, then naturally you should seek validation from other people who believe the same thing.  If you choose to earn it via malicious gossip, then you should partner yourself with people who are idle and stupid enough to listen to you.

If however, you choose to earn it via actual work, you will swiftly realise that other people, such as the above, are essentially worthless and should really be the first ones to go in the event of mass extermination, since all they seem to be capable of doing is hurting other people and consuming goods which would be better to be sent to people who are actually worthwhile.

I noticed when I was interviewing a cross section of the population that worthwhile people are often the least valued, and who are repeatedly told that they are not entitled to status on the grounds that they are poor.  It got to the point that I asked my dear brother why people earning 50k or more so often know considerably less about the world around them than people scraping a living.  Are they stupid or just cheats, I asked?

“Thoughtless” he said.

Nice to see some self-awareness.