Email #40

Dear Harriet

Missing Sundays is becoming a habit for me.  You will forgive me though as I was hit by a wave of depression and grief yesterday that hit me like a ten ton truck.  Saturday night someone from my social circle who I had lost touch with when I moved took his own life.

Depression is now the number 1 killer of men under the age of 50 with 90% of suicides linked to depression.  Its alarming that this is the case.  Well it is to me anyway.

Im finding it hard to write to you in the way I had begun, with hope that I could make a change as one voice because you had promised to listen.  Im not sure who you are listening to right now but its not me, its not 3 of our leadership candidates and its certainly not the Labour party members, the students, the disabled or the mentally ill, or anyone with more than 2 children.

You have turned your back on us all, and at the time that we need you most.  I wanted to hurl a dictionary at my own television when you spoke after the budget was announced because you seem to have misplaced yours.  When you find it you might care to look up the word opposition.  I feel you have forgotten what the word means.  How you can stand there and say you will not vote against the cuts that will cripple our nation is beyond me.  You are out of tune with the thinking of the party and that is more alarming to me than anything else.

It is depressing enough knowing that the country is setting out to destroy itself from the inside out without you casually stepping aside to let Osbourne achieve what he is setting out to do.

I am seriously questioning my membership.  Our only hope is Jeremy Corbyn because unlike you he hasnt turned his back on us.  We are never to get out of the poverty that traps so many of us with a budget that is set to increase childhood poverty.  We expect that from conservatives who are ideologically opposed to any form of state support.  But Labour is supposed to be the opposite of that; its supposed to be compassionate, its supposed to be rooted in the idea that those who need support can have that support, so that no one lives in destitution.  And yet that is what you resign a nation to with your staggering indifference.

I despair at humanity sometimes, I really do.

Constituent, Labour Party member, Union member, sleep deprived carer, concerned citizen, self employed mother, mother of a teenager with ASD, socialist, environmentalist, Disabled Rights supporter, Jeremy Corbyn supporter, mother feeding her children with nectar points, defender of the vulnerable, advocate, logistics savant, concerned niece, grassroots activist, anti austerity campaigner, RNLI supporter, unashamed welfare state service user & social housing tenant, protester, fire brigade supporter, carers allowance claimant, less than perfect parent, socialist agitator, worrier, mental health service user, football mum, social justice campaigner, immigrant, proletarian, CND supporter, #endausteritynow campaigner, someone with nothing better to do than wait for a plumber, cost cutting football medic, Catholic, one voice speaking up, someone seriously questioning their membership, angry social commentator, frustrated activist, grieving friend