I must admit that I have been a little bit addicted last week and this. The goings on in Parliament and also in Europe have been interesting or maybe that’s me being masochistic?
Answers on a postcard to that one please.
It does seem, that for whatever reason, our Prime Minister is unable to not only make a decision but is certainly unable to carry any of her party or the public with her. That said even with the voting last night (27/3) even our elected officials seem to be as confused as ever. I thought it was funny last week when some of the EU negotiators were commenting on her lack of empathy and reluctance to come up with a desired outcome – in the face of a no deal, they were thinking it was just her, when if fact it was the entire UK political system in meltdown.
It is also interesting to see the level of abuse that is being thrown at several MPs some of which are complaining loudly. Personally I don’t think it is acceptable for anybody to be getting any abuse. But, this is what you get when politicians don’t listen.
See, people believe that MP’s are voted for, and the winning party then executes it’s plan – everyone is a happy bunny – political parties get re-elected and consumers and workers continue as normal. Now, for the first time in many years it doesn’t feel like that is the case – forget reality people ‘don’t feel it’. The execution of a series of manifesto promises is all we ask.
Abuse of Politicians
The problem with the abuse of politicians – it comes from a tiny minority of people and big sections of the population of course agree with these views just not necessarily the abuse. Most of us reasonable British people think we should sit down and discuss our differences over a cuppa or even a pint. Going to Twitter and threatening to rape and murder and MP is something we are just not used to happening, nor is it right.
There is a problem. I’ve said it before and will repeat again – I think that this whole Brexit thing is a smokescreen. It was conceived by a handful of politicians in order to distract the general public from the real issues. Since the brexit vote we have seen a continuing surge in stock markets and none of the operation fear promises have come to pass. Austerity is still ravaging many lives of the working class along with the sick and poor not getting the support they deserve.
Many businesses are paying record dividends to their shareholders and then filing for bankruptcy when the pension liabilities topple them. A sign of the times, has capitalism finally reached it’s peak?
And then if we look at the bigger issues of how Governments get their power and how that works for us. The reality is they are elected in order to do exactly what they want. We have opposition parties that only want to have a conversation about them becoming elected and not about getting the things done, you know the things that they stand for, or so they say. All of these shenanigans are going under reported or indeed missed – because of the focus on Brexit.
Be warned, this whole political situation is going to get worse before it gets better. You have to ask – is May better than Gove, Hunt better than Johnson. What about Corbyn? Is he electable? Didn’t do well the last time the public had a choice – hence our hung Parliament and the Northern Island religious lobby gets a say. Be careful what you wish for folks.
Freedom Of Speech
If we just stop to think for a few minutes and take a look at the bigger picture surrounding us you’ll start to notice a lot of things, but you have to look – once of things you may notice that we are now policing the internet with a view to finding people that are making awkward or nasty comments and we are treating this as a criminal activity.
You can’t allow freedom of speech and then say that because A.N Other is offended by it the person making the comment or passing an opinion is suddenly a criminal. The whole thing about freedom of speech is that we all have the right to say exactly what we want. Indeed freedom of speech is actually quite important because we don’t know what these people think until they say it. The far right and far left all have an agenda. Freedom of speech allows us to find out exactly what that agenda is.
And policing freedom of speech won’t work. Even the awkward opinions are valuable because I need to know what these people think and so should you. If you silence the voices of the nasty arseholes no one knows what they are saying, however like some kind of Stalinist regime from way back in time – current Government policy seems to think that shutting up the awkward squad – imprisoning the alternative opinion will somehow work – only wrapped up with them are the people who may cause offense by saying the wrong thing – if people are offended then they are the one with the problem – sticks and stones and all that. Not everything can be construed as wrong – and certainly not because someone takes offence. Sure, the out and out offensive comments directed at a specific race or creed has always been wrong and should be policed, but the rest. Erm, I’m not so sure.
For every police officer monitoring social media, there is one less to help with knife crime, battered women or Members of Parliament fiddling expenses – yeah another one of them this week. It can’t be right that real crime is not prosecuted because of lack of resources but – sending two police officers and a vehicle to attend a house in order to warn a sixteen year old that someone in her ‘friendship group’ found her post offensive – does seem trivial.
But Government isn’t interested. It’s hiding behind the Brexit smokescreen.
Don’t Forget The Environment Stupid
Despite very serious problems in relation to air quality in our large cities the only solution seems to be increases in taxation. Let’s charge a fee for entering the city. Just like it was in mediaeval times. This seems to be the only thing politics does.
Air quality in our cities will not be managed because there is no will to manage it. Just a desire to increase taxes. On the point of tax, in the UK we now pay more in tax than we have ever done before. Government is receiving more and more money and seemingly doing less and less with it.
Air quality, water quality, waste and carbon dioxide production are all things that will end up consuming us unless we act soon. The income from taxation disappears behind a smokescreen.
There is a massive number of offshore firms that are fulfilling Government contracts and paying no Corporation Tax in the UK. Nobody is asking the questions about these things because there is this massive distraction going on, it’s called Brexit and this stupid two party politics.
Drugs and Knife Crime.
It does seem that the police are losing control of the streets. And despite the fact the government is drawing in more income than it ever has, we don’t have sufficient money for policing, no cash for providing the local services needed in order to manage the problem. And yet local Council Taxes are increasing exponentially. I don’t pretend for one minute that these are simple problems to solve. But they are solvable, still where is the money going?
Social Housing
Let’s consider carefully the issue of housing, every Labour council along with every Conservative council around the country has the power to effectively build as many houses as it wants. And very few if any are doing that.
They also have the power to be able to deal with local environmental issues and few are doing that.
The only measure of things changing is the salaries paid to local council chief executives, and that has been increasing substantially. If you want to see change then you can’t rely on government policy or local government plans in order to drive that change. They don’t care. In fact all of the powers that be, will do their utmost to distract you from the real issues.
These real issues include young children being stabbed on a streets the level of drug supply increasing exponentially, changes to the benefits system being forced through despite the fact that they cause massive hardship, the lack of housing, government being completely ignorant about exactly what your views are. The fact of the matter is with a smaller British economy one that is outside of a larger trading bloc will mean that less damage is done to our environment which has to be a good thing.
You and I along with Government need to be a lot more mindful about how our money is used with the final objective to reducing overall levels of taxation. Or increasing taxation on those that don’t currently pay it – think offshore companies, if everyone paid their fair share we’d have more than enough to spend on the changes required. It is simply not acceptable for tax payer pounds being spent on things like Government projects or services to the NHS and then profits be directed offshore without paying tax.
It shouldn’t be the case that Local Business Rates are uncollectible because the business is based offshore.
Change
Putting your faith into a political system or a Government of any colour will mean there there is no change. Just look at the evidence we’ve had over 1000 years of parliamentary politics in this country. And we are in the state we are in. As capitalism eats resources our system of politics no longer works, it’s eating itself and instead of having debate about things we only get disagreement with the opposing sides, no conversation or sharing of ideas.
Capitalism is not working as it should, there is no evidence the ‘tried and tested’ forms of socialism haven’t worked and we need a middle game – something else to test.
Just look at the history and then tell me it’s working. It isn’t it won’t ever because politicians are as selfish as the rest of the population. What they want us to status-quo they want things to stay the same.
Only you and I both know nothing stays the same. In fact of late it has been getting worse. And that is unlikely to change until we face the facts, the current systems aren’t working, but you need to be rethought and adjusted.
If you can’t drink the water or breathe the air because of pollution or swim in the sea because of the level of plastics – then we have for bigger issues as a species. Whether we are in Europe or out these problems are not going away.
The real problem is the one of of politicians not doing just talking and then taking action.
We need some alternatives we need some action and we need people to start looking at what’s really going on here and focus on the things we can change and leave alone the ones we can’t. With a tiny amount of simple focus there is a lot we can do, which is good because there is a lot to be done. Or we have to sit back and assume that whatever happens, nothing will change and fuck it all – give up and never vote again. If you don’t vote for them, you have no skin in their game. Something I’m sure politicians would be grateful for – they’ll make up their own game and seize power that way.
We have big issues people, we have a lot to sort out. The current system and the processes ain’t working. The sooner we get working on something new, the sooner we can start to heal this planet and ourselves.