Everybody Hurts

Unless you are living as a hermit there is no chance whatsoever that you have not heard the name Jason Arday these past few weeks.  I do not wish to pick apart that poor man’s life anymore than it already has been.  Suffice it to say that whatever has or hadn’t happened to him, what he did or didn’t do, said or didn’t say – all entirely irrelevant now – he reached a point when he thought that the only reasonable or sensible solution was for him not to be alive anymore.  Anyone who thinks this is anything less than a tragedy needs to give their head a wobble.

I consider myself pretty fortunate because I have not had a lot of nastiness from people as a Councillor.  One notable exception was when one resident shouted at me for no discernible reason when I first stood in 2023. Well, that is to say that they started shouting at Nigel, and as their eyes moved over to me, they saw my face and decided to stop shouting.  The overwhelming majority of residents have been polite and kind.  This has heartened me because media and more specifically, social media, would have us believe that everyone is at each other’s throats.  That has not been my lived experience and it makes me very happy to type that. 

However, I was not prepared for the vitriol from a small minority.  A very small minority.  But an effective one. And in spite of trying to deal with it with support from colleagues and officers, it has been, and continues to be, difficult.  And it will continue to be difficult until the government legislates with their promised and more onerous legislation.

To give you a few examples, one person behaved absolutely appallingly at a public meeting when I was first elected.  Whilst they seemed very pleased with themselves at the time for bawling out the new Councillor, ostensibly because I refused to press a planning officer to change their professional view, but essentially because they were furious that I had been elected.  Around two years later l learned that news of this incident had travelled around the village.  And it seemed that those who had heard about it, regardless of their personal political views, were less than thrilled with the behaviour as well.  That’s what I mean about the overwhelming majority of residents.

Someone else casts around on social media for people to troll.  It doesn’t matter what it is or what the subject matter posted on, a diatribe follows.  I responded to an erroneous post of theirs once as I thought that some facts ought to be injected into their misinformation.  I knew what I was doing when I did it.  I did it anyway and braced myself.  My goodness me, the bile.  I have never understood why some people think that their right to free speech overrides someone else’s right to feel safe and well.  

Such has been the online aggression at times that I arranged for a colleague to meet me outside before an in-person meeting so I didn’t have to walk in on my own.  For those of you who know me know that I am not easily intimidated.  As it transpired, my partner saw my anxiety before I left the house and came with me on the basis that if someone was going to be aggressive in person then they could start with another man.   As it happens, they did start with another man.  Just not that one.  Afterwards.  And not in person.  Funny that.

Recently I bumped into someone who has led the vanguard of some what I would consider to be remarks which have crossed the line from political into personal and defamatory.  They seemed entirely bemused that I did not wish to exchange pleasantries, not even about the weather.  I just can’t pretend to have time for someone who talks about behaving decently on the one hand and then does the diametric opposite in front of a different audience.

Everyday there is someone in the news who has taken their own life because they cannot see a way out of their own mind.  None of us ever know what someone is struggling through and whilst politics can be robust and fraught because people feel things so strongly, to go as far as all of these examples did actually upsets me to relive them.  That is not to say that we don’t try to do something about it, but the truth is there is very little that we can do at the moment, other than look out for each other.

As that person looked confused at me, wondering why I so obviously did not want to engage that day, I remember a line from ‘Jurassic Park’.  This was about science and the wisdom of bringing dinosaurs back from extinction but I think it applies here.  “We were so obsessed with thinking about whether we could, we didn’t stop to think about whether we should.”  Some people don’t like my politics. Or even me.  I get it.  That’s fine.  It would be boring if we were all the same.  So say your piece by all means.  But to post about caring for people on World Suicide Prevention Day and then behave entirely at odds with that in your treatment of others genuinely baffles me.  Cognitive dissonance?  Much? To defame people so blatantly and openly when I have seen them agonise over their choices offends me deeply.  I don’t think it makes me the weird person to not want to pretend that that is okay.   

Jason Arday is dead.  It should not matter what his perceived misdemeanours were or weren’t.  He decided that death was the best option.  Probably the only option. And he was given a massive shove towards it.  Then when the news broke, the hand-wringing began. We didn’t know his heart.  Or his mind.  He’s dead.  No amount of saying sorry is going to change that now.  None of us should need to know someone’s heart to stay our hand.    I send my deepest condolences to his family, friends and everyone who loved him.