Behind Blue Eyes

A while back I wrote (rather unkindly) about my upstairs neighbour, Annie. During this latest flood debacle I have had the pleasure of seeing her in a different light. She has been putting notes through the door apologising for the situation and keeping me updated on progress. The tone of her notes has made me like her rather more than I did before. I have not yet actually met her. Whenever I knocked on her door to point out that the water was still coming through her partner opened it. I don’t like him at all.

He couldn’t give a monkey’s about the water pouring through my ceiling. “I’ve phoned the council” he said, as if that was the limit of his ability to do something about it. “They didn’t come when they said they would” he said, relinquishing himself of any blame for the continued deluge which was destroying my plaster, electrics and recently updated paintwork. The thing which really annoyed me was not so much his personal inability to stem the flow but the fact that he did not offer any kind of sympathy or apology. He was basically smirking at me the whole time. His body language basically screamed “tell someone who cares”.

Annie and her man have a very stormy relationship. They are at loggerheads pretty frequently. I know this because they share this with me through my ceiling. It must be a pretty unpleasant living environment: they have several kids meaning four or five people squeeze into a flat which is a comfortable size for two. They are a couple straight off the pages of Inspector Gadget.

I sometimes wish there was something I could do to help. But actually my help is exactly what they don’t need. It is our collective help that has pushed them into the current bad situation. The welfare and housing systems might appear to give them a comfortable material living standard but it is actually ruining their lives. The social revolution which was supposed to free women from the tyranny of bad husbands and the stigma of lone parenthood doesn’t seem to have helped Annie much.

If you have read the police blogs you will know how utterly pointless state intervention in failed relationships is. Time after time in the police stories, unsuited partners return to their violent and unhappy relationships without learning any lessons from past crises. The good intentions of the welfare system and social liberation seem to have produced a set of people who believe that their problems are not self-inflicted and therefore that they are incapable of resolving them. But the simple fact is that the only person who can sort out Annie’s situation is Annie herself. If her partner is making her life a misery then there is nothing anyone can do to help her while he still lives there. The state cannot kick him out. There is no point in him being arrested for being a bad partner if Annie will welcome him back with open arms when he is released a few hours later.

As much as I want the state to provide what help it can to the weakest in society and to those who have had hardship thrust upon them, I wonder whether at least some of the state’s assistance makes things worse by enabling some people to avoid confronting the obvious truth. By providing a comfort blanket does the state prevent people from making the tough decisions which might lead to a healthier existence? Does state “love” need to be rather tougher?