Things that keep me awake at night (4). Depression/the 2015 General Election

I've never been one to stay up for the results of a General Election. But last night made the mistake of looking at the exit polls before going to bed. Only to wake up in the early hours depressed and unable to get back to sleep and compelled to go down to see if the results were as bad as the polls suggested. They were worse.

Just to be up front, I haven't voted in a General Election since 1974. To do so would be to comply with an institution I find abhorrent. (The nation state's a good idea?! You're having a laugh.)

But that doesn't mean I don't care who is running the country in which I find myself living.

I was hoping for a change of some sort. But sadly it seems most of the voters don't give a shit about the NHS, supporting the vulnerable and disadvantaged, public services in general, economic inequality, the need to leave a vaguely habitable planet for the families of our children's children...

Either that or, as my younger son pithily pointed out - they are never going to vote in a prime minister who looks like (Gromit's master) Wallace. Or they bought the big lie that "the deficit" is the only important issue'.

We've had 5 years of steady reduction of services provided by central and local government, of tax benefits for the wealthy, of weakened rights for employees, of reduced benefits for those in need, of increasing exploitative practises by employers. Here come another 5.

The housing associations are already under assault. (Having sold off all the public assets they can, they are now selling other people's.) I expect the mutual building societies will be next. The public library service may be finished by 2020 and the NHS will be unrecognisable with more and more naked profit-making from illness and misfortune. The UK will probably not be an EU member. We may not even have a Human Rights Act. And will have wasted billions on a useless weapon just so our 'leaders' can play with the big boys at the UN Security Council.

I usually finish these rants with something positive, but today I really can't think of anything.