Pancake Politics

THIS is how methadone makes me feel: flat as a pancake. I woke at 4am cold and hot at the same time. Nikki Bedi's kindly voice was soothing, but not as soothing as the methadone I drank to take the fever away.

I've just been in Sainsbury's and blown £20 on two bags of shopping. Most of it was pasta. I thought pasta was meant to be cheap...? Poverty food and all that.

Our useless government has successfully swept media attention this morning away from tax loopholes for the rich (there was a massive hoo-har last week about comedian Jimmy Carr paying taxes of 1% on £3 million plus earnings (good for him!))

Now they're threatening to cut off Housing Benefit from the under 25s. meaning, in the worst cases, that the young sick and unemployed who happen not to live in the same town as their parents (if their parents will even take them in ~ I don't think my mother would) will end up homeless on the streets. Just like I did.

My biggest fear as a sick twentysomething not on drugs living miles from my family was homelessness. And when I was on drugs and still sick that fear became truth. It didn't bother me as much as you might think, as I figured homelessness was all I deserved.

I only have a place to live now by hook and by crook. I don't feel I deserve it at all. I have long known the government's agenda was to put me homelss and destitute back on the streets. You can take that to be paranoia: think what you like. And before any of you assume this is just a left-wing sour grapes manifesto: consider this ~ if I were tied down and forced to vote (which I never would do voluntarily) I would vote Conservative over Labour any day. The reason? Low taxes for the rich. Apart from multicoloured streetlights, world-beating skyscrapers and fast trains, the death penalty and automatic heroin prescription for the addicted, that is the only political view I hold!

So now I'm off back home with a suitcase full of fresh and dry pasta, baked beans, bread and lemonade. I hope the electricity (which I now pay) doesn't give out before I do...