The Year of the Badgers Quotes

“The job of the politician is to speak for all people; not just for parties with vested interests, or organisations with the biggest wallets. The first people a politician should protect are those that cannot protect themselves: Those weakest and most vulnerable among us. This is, to most of us, something that seems to be an obvious statement of fact, and that may be so, but it’s also a forgotten fact. Now, today, the opposite is true. It should shame us all. It shames me. The very fact that the most poor and the most vulnerable in our society are those that are victimised and stamped upon, whereas the most wealthy and the most influential are making more profits and acquiring more assets and wealth than ever before in history, is a damning indictment of what our society has become”
― Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers

“He picked up the paper and read the article; it was just one of many he had read lately that portrayed the poor in an awful light. The badge had now become the symbol of the unemployed, the sick, the disabled, and the most vulnerable. Badger had noticed that the media, just like that newspaper, swirled around anybody who they deemed too lazy or too stupid to work, and it seemed, people believed what they read.”
― Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers

“Badger had been waiting with ever increasing certainty for that brown, government stamped envelope, to hit the floor with the impact of several atomic bombs; the shockwaves hitting him before the sound could penetrate his ears.”
― Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers

“Hope, a word that can kill as well as save. A double-sided knife onto whose handle we all cling. If hope is our dreams, it takes courage to strive for those dreams; to not abandon hope as one of folly. A person lost can have hope of being found, but false hope, a hope that can torture a soul with promises never delivered, that is a hope we can all live without.”
― Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers

“Too right things could be better, that’s my whole point. My going to work for the badge will not change that, will it?” Joanna said, “And Pride? There is absolutely no pride in being used and cast aside every twelve-weeks for someone equally replaceable. Do you see pride on the faces of people on Workplace? I don’t. I see worry, I see weariness, I see downcast men and women, shuffling to and from work, ridiculed at the shops when their badge has ran out, shouted down in the streets with insults like ‘badger’ and ‘scum’ for simply doing all they can to survive. Pride, I don’t see that, and you know what else I never see? Any fucking hope.”
― Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers

“They had intended for the day at London to be a march of awareness. It was to be a place to get their points across, to get some word to the masses, but they didn’t need to do any of that; the masses were already there. The masses already knew the message, all they needed was a way to vent, a voice, and this was it. The time had come and the masses were pissed.”
― Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers

“Here stands Badger, a feckless, lazy, uninterested waste of human matter. The universe may have been evolving, collapsing into tiny pieces, creating, destroying and recreating for billions of years but yet here he is; the most useless person that has ever been. A complete and utter waste of atoms, even dark matter cannot pass through Badger. Today though, that will change. All will change with the will of The People.”
― Paul Howsley, The Year of the Badgers