Lynda Bowyer Photography Blog Freedom? What Freedom?

©Lynda Bowyer Photography I never thought I'd find myself writing this blog entry as I like to try and keep things a little lighthearted on here, but I guess there comes a time when I need to get things off my chest. The issue which is really getting 'on my wick' at the moment is 'freedom', or rather, the lack of it.So we have Jezza Corbyn voted in as the new Labour leader. Great. Well, sort of if you voted for him (I admit, I was secretly hoping Andy Burnham would seal the deal), but I digress. During the Labour leadership campaigning, the press were all over Jeremy like a cheap suit. They applauded his maverick ways and his ability to pack out rally venues to the rafters and spill out into the streets below. People liked him. Nay, people loved him.The ink is barely dry on Corbyn's newly printed Labour business cards and we have certain sections of the media baying out for Corbyn's blood as if he were a dishevelled fox avoiding the hounds on a Boxing Day Hunt. Article leaders along the lines of "Corbyn 'snubs' The Andrew Marr Show!", "Corbyn has his top button undone on his shirt!" and "Corbyn refuses to sing the National Anthem!" scream out from every newspaper front page and every digital newsfeed stream. Oh purleeeease...!Even though Jeremy Corbyn's brand of far-left politics isn't necessarily my cuppa tea, I sincerely wish the fella well. As Andy Burnham said many a time during his leadership campaigning, "irrespective of the result, what the [Labour] party needs is unity." He's right. We seem to have Corbyn book-ended into a political sandwich that doesn't seem to be of his own orchestration. Whatever the fella does lately, he does wrong according to his fiercest critics. So he chooses to attend a local mental health charity fun day instead of sucking up to "Aunty Beeb" during an early Sunday morning chat show. Good on him. So he chooses to have the top button on his shirt undone? Good on him. So he chooses [being the republican he is] not to sing the National Anthem at a commemoration event at St. Paul's Cathedral? Again, good on him.Good? Why?Because the last time I checked, here in the UK we have quite a few basic liberties left. The freedom of speech, the freedom of non-conformism and, if that's what floats your boat, the freedom to be of a republican slant should you so choose....and therein lies the issue. We think we have basic liberties by the bucketload here in the UK. How wrong we are. It reminds me of the lyrics to that once anthemic 1990 track "Loaded" by Primal Scream. If I remember, the lyrics went along the lines of "We wanna be free; we wanna be free to do what we wanna do..." The reality, however, is so different. We're free to do what we want, so long as what we do fits in with a check-box of societal conformism. The grim reality is that we have officiousness wherever we tread; jobsworths stopping us from doing our work, the eradication of working rights dictating our entitlement (or not as is now the case) to decent working conditions and pay, austerity dictating what we can now do as opposed to what we used to be able to do, and surveillance gathering and intelligence on members of the press without rhyme or reason.Have a long, hard think about what freedom you think you have - and then have a long hard look at what freedom you actually have. You'll be surprised to note the huge difference between the two...