Thursday Rant

To be honest this may not make much sense, I just seem to be raging about things more and more lately and lately when I am writing things just keep bouncing around in my head and I am suffering a touch of writers block (again) so for therapeutic reasons, I am just going to spew it all out in literary form and see what comes from it. If this is not you cup of tea, leave now.

The Government of the UK has become nothing more than a form of control and frustration over our lives. It has become a malaise on the progress and liberty of the people that live here. It is not unique to the UK, Governments across Europe and the globe are inching more and more towards systems that would have shocked Churchill, Lincoln and Pitt and delighted Marx, Stalin and even Mao. I am getting sick of seeing people suffer and being rail-roaded as a result of our political system – we need to reverse the direction of ‘progressive’ government, yet now that they have the controls it seems impossible.

When progressive government offers movement and change, it is in one direction.  And when the tools of the past that ensured our freedom are now used against us what is a person to do? The direction is not rooted in the desires of the people it represents, it emanates from somewhere else. Progressive government is one which is principally anti-democratic, as it serves the motives of those who work for it, not those who it claims to help and protect. This strikes me as not all together unique in the history of Britain, the land owners and the aristocracy for a long time did the same.

The poverty of man has become a product of our existence; we are all poorer for the world we live in. Multinational organisations, not all of whom are “corporations” grow more and more in terms of power and wealth – they have a direct line to the front. People are reacting; they have turned their backs on politics because it does not serve them, and because they do not have the luxury of comfort or time in which to be proactively engaged. In a society where most people do not vote, we have a clear signal that politics and politicians are not serving people, they are serving group interests. The link between individual and political representative is dying, it is on life support.

When a politician can garner a political donation for £10,000 for speaking to one group, why would he knock on 1,000 doors to seek a similar collection from across his constituents?

This country needs political revolution and it needs to happen from the bottom up. Politicians must be reminded that they are not elected to be the mouth piece of organisations; they are there to work for us. We should insist that donations can only be made by private individuals and end the notion that groups, charities, corporations and unions can donate, because politics is big business – and as long as it remains so, the less we are being served. Oh, and private individual contributions should also be capped so that politics is about people again. We need to take the power from the political parties and put it back in the hands of people.

As we approach the election and the end of this Labour Government I am grabbed by a mixture of emotion and sentiment. Thank god Labour will be out of power soon; but my delight is tempered in the knowledge that all will not be right just because they are gone. They are the front man, the sales team for a corrupt world. I know already I will tire and frustrate easily of the next government, because they are only offering to change the window dressing, not the shop.

My point is, if the system cannot be changed by us now, and if those who are profiting continually become mesmerised into adopting a veil of ignorance the moment they attain power, then we have to turn things up a notch. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but things will keep getting worse and worse if we don’t.

If there was a revolution tomorrow, we could (if people en mass wanted it):

• Exit the EU. Immediately.
• Exit the CAP and reclaim our fishing waters. Once outside the CAP we can look to buy from farms in Africa and Asia who cannot sell to us because of the CAPs price distortions.
• Reform Parliament; it needs a new form and purpose.
• Abolish regional assemblies in England, and reform local government structures.
• Re-establish democratic control and oversight in Parliament.
• Have a referendum on whether to remain as the United Kingdom or whether to continue as separate self-governing nations.
• Cut Taxes.
• Cut Welfare so that a working wage is always more attractive than claiming welfare.
• Cut government jobs where they serve only to bloat the bureaucracy and size of government.
• Establish an annual referendum and tools for direct democracy, so that people are in control of the direction of national and local government. If it was not in the manifesto, and it is a big issue, call a General Election for a new mandate or get one direct!
• Establish a system for locally elected sheriffs/chief constables.
• Take the necessary steps to cut Government debt and spending so as to aid recovery.
• Launch an investigation into how the banks ended up being supported by public funds, and how £850bn was committed without any Parliamentary vote. Prosecute if the law has been broken.
• Implement an actual immigration policy… or at least talk about immigration openly so that people’s opinions could be noted and taken account of when making a decision.
• Implement a new treason act
• Privatise or abolish the BBC
• Make Judges appointments subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, including appointment by vote.
• Put people in prison when they break the law including the long forgotten notion of assault on a person and damage to capital.
• Bring back matrons
• Bring back dedicated local policing
• Shrink the national curriculum to 50% of school content, and invite parental groups and teachers to write the rest individually for each school.
• Ensure that political parties can only accept donations from individuals and limited to £2,000 per year.
• Begin to publish ALL public expenditure online. Every single penny of it… including the name of who approved expenditure when above a certain limit.
• Abolish all QUANGO’s. If it get’s tax payers funds and is a part of the government it gets a Minister in Parliament to account for its actions and budget; and the opportunity for oppositions questions.

That is just the first year.

None of this will happen through our current system not just because there isn’t the will from the people in Westminster, but because they can’t… the EU won’t let them. How long are we going to stand for this? Politicians will not change until the can see and feel the voracity of our seriousness, when participation in this continued charade we know as politics results in consequences for serious breaches of public trust and for offences against basic democratic principle.

Venting over.