pure dead mental

One of the reasons that I admire Nick Cohen is for his ability to acknowledge good - whoever it is done by. He is also capable of changing his mind – as he did in the matter of Tony Blair's involvement in Iraq. While I may disagree with his conclusions, his flexibility, combined with a determined belief in freedom of speech, and generosity are rare qualities in contemporary writing.

When he praised the Liberal Democrat minister, Norman Lamb, for putting mental health issues into the agenda for the election, he suggested that this matter was long overdue some attention. Unfortunately, his glowing portrait of Lamb is soured by the revelation that the minister has been the 'victim' of 'trolling' by activists, who regard his commitment as hypocritical. The Lib-Dems, who are currently trying to distance themselves from the government that they have spent five years supporting, have made mental health an issue because they have a clear manifesto statement of intent on the matter. The activists suggest that, actually, Lamb was part of the government that has cut back the services that he now claims to defend.

Despite Cohen's endorsement, the inclusion of mental health in the political debate is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, there is clearly a problem with the current thinking on the issue. Many of the benefit cuts of the Conservatives have fallen on the mentally ill – they are vulnerable to bullying or difficult questioning in a particular way. And, as Cohen points out, it is possible that the language around mental health has encouraged a soft approach to addressing its consequences.

Yet anything that gets included on the political agenda will rapidly become a political football. Education seems to be getting a pass this year – austerity, taxation and national independence, with a side order of mild environmentalism are the hot topics. The abject failure of Labour to take the fight to the Tories (which plays into SNP and Green claims that the two parties lack any real differences in policy), has left open the debate, with side issues (note: the SNP will not be running the country in 2016, so the detail of their policy does not need a slamming, Mr Murphy) hiding the political panic that is really at the heart of party politics.

(This panic goes like this: the economic system has been exposed as a failure, in so far as the boom has turned to a bust, and no fucker managed to stop it. Trickle down economics, which is a crock, doesn't work, but we have no idea what to replace it with. So, the parties are shitting themselves, and their call for austerity is the desperate croaking of a man stuck in the bog looking for toilet paper after he has broken the flushing mechanism).

Mental health has long been a lazy plot device in theatre: not so much Chekhov's gun as Chekhov's anti-depressants. If it becomes part of political banter, it's likely to be caricatured even more than it already is, with the mentally unhealthy ending up as either the poor victims of illness who need to be cared for (as long as they accept the magical charity of the state), or a bunch of shiftless bastards sponging off the welfare state.One of the reasons that I admire Nick Cohen is for his ability to acknowledge good whoever it is done by. He is also capable of changing his mind – as he did in the matter of Tony Blair's involvement in Iraq. While I may disagree with his conclusions, his flexibility, combined with a determined belief in freedom of speech, and generosity are rare qualities in contemporary writing.

When he praised the Liberal Democrat minister, Lamb, for putting mental health issues into the agenda for the election, he suggested that this matter was long overdue some attention. Unfortunately, his glowing portrait of Lamb is soured by the revelation that he has been the 'victim' of 'trolling' by activists, who regard his commitment as hypocritical. The Lib-Dems, who are currently trying to distance themselves from the government that they have spent five years supporting, have made mental health an issue because they have a clear manifesto statement of intent on the matter. The activists suggest that, actually, lamb was part of the government that has cut back the services that they now claim to defend.

Despite Cohen's endorsement, the inclusion of mental health in the political debate is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, there is clearly a problem with the current thinking on the issue. Many of the benefit cuts of the Conservatives have fallen on the mentally ill – they are vulnerable to bullying or difficult questioning in a particular way. And, as Cohen points out, it is possible that the language around mental health has encouraged a soft approach to addressing its consequences.

Yet anything that gets included on the political agenda will rapidly become a political football. Education seems to be getting a pass this year – austerity, taxation and national independence, with a side order of mild environmentalism are the hot topics. The abject failure of Labour to take the fight to the Tories (which plays into SNP and Green claims that the two parties lack any real differences in policy), has left open the debate, with side issues (note: the SNP will not be running the country in 2016, so the detail of their policy does not need a slamming, Mr Murphy) hiding the political panic that is really at the heart of party politics.

(This panic goes like this: the economic system has been exposed as a failure, in so far as the boom has turned to a bust, and no fucker managed to stop it. Trickle down economics, which is a crock, doesn't work, but we have no idea what to replace it with. So, the parties are shitting themselves, and their call for austerity is the desperate croaking of a man stuck in the bog looking for toilet paper after he has broken the flushing mechanism).

Mental health has long been a lazy plot device in theatre: not so much Chekhov's gun as Chekhov's anti-depressants. If it becomes part of political banter, it's likely to be caricatured even more than it already is, with the mentally unhealthy ending up as either the poor victims of illness who need to be cared for (as long as they accept the magical charity of the state), or a bunch of shiftless bastards sponging off the welfare state.