RuskinBlog

There are a few simple truths at the heart of our disillusion with politics & politicians

• No political party has dared to tell us that we can’t afford to pay for all our pensions, the NHS, social care and all those public services that we now demand “as of right”.
• The welfare state has weakened the government’s ability to break even? It was never envisaged, back in 1947, that is was to become such a huge part of the economy. Discuss.
• Our government has only broken even seven times in the last 110 years. (Ed: Not a lot a people know that.)
• The depressing figures for the last 10 years are here on the government’s own statistics web site (ONS).
• The party political system is flawed too, because it does not allow politicians to plan for long term solutions.
• All political parties are demonstrably rubbish at financial planning.
• It can also be argued that is our fault and that we are “in this mess” because so few of us vote.
  • (Ed: Except in the EU IN/OUT referendum!)  😉
• The clincher for me is the simple fact that we were asked to decide the EU issue.
  • We were promised by our government that our answer would be honoured.
  • Our answer however was the wrong answer and David Cameraman ran off to hide in his posh new caravan.
  • Following on from the EU’s own answer to answers they don’t like, our politicians’ answer is to lie, ignore democracy, try to ask the same question again and talk bollocks for nigh on three years.

Are we bothered enough to do something about it?

We, the people, can’t be really be bothered to be bothered any more?

It seems we are not bothered enough because:-

• Those who are well off want to keep the status quo.
• Those who are “just about managing” haven’t got the time to shout about it.
• Those who really are poor have no voice and no party to speak for them.

Great Britain, and most the the West, has developed a strange form of democracy wherein the views of the majority of people can now be completely and safely ignored.

Change UK (Ed: Who they?*1) has yet to realise that their name should actually be “No Change UK” or perhaps “Love EU“. I predict a huge election failure looming for these deluded, myopic, self interested twerps, because we will be bothered to vote in the next EU election and it will be for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party that we will vote.

Hurrah for Annunziata Rees Mogg & Ann Widdecombe and the new Brexit party.

Those who govern us don’t really need to be bothered to be competent either! Why not?

Over the last 25 years, government ministers have been quietly transferring their own valid responsibilities to Quangos (Quasi non-governmental organisations).

This avoids ministers having to give difficult answers to awkward questions when things go wrong. “It wazzn me guv, you need ask the regulator”.

Quite sickening, in my opinion, but quite accepted, normal and largely unchallenged. Because we can’t be bothered?

We the people have been frustrated, bored and ignored into submission …

… by those who love their government jobs and their desire for power more than anything else.

The reason for this is our flawed voting system and Tory & Labour parties fear of introducing proportional representation (PR).

For example, if we had PR, Nigel Farage’s UKIP would have had 46 seats in parliament in 2015!

This all started when we began to notice that whoever was in power couldn’t think in terms longer than 3 years and didn’t do much for our benefit.

So the upshot of all this is that most of us now feel that we have nobody worth voting for.

They simply refused to listen to us when we gave the wrong answer on the Brexit decision.

How did this all happen?

This  was not such an issue when there were two very distinct parties fighting for clearly different visions of government. That situation died in the 1980’s.

First we had Thatchers mad years of selling off anything the British people owned by right (our water supply, means of electricity distribution, etc. & etc.).

Her banking and financial deregulation policies lead to a debt driven growth causing the 2007 financial crisis from which we may never recover.

Those who bankrupted us were never called to account and we the people have been paying the bill ever since.

In the good old days, the Tories ruled for a few years until we spotted that they were nasty sex mad corrupt capitalists (John Major’s hypocritical years).

So we gave the Labour party a go until we spotted that they were driven by union bosses more interested in themselves than rights for the workers. (Callaghan’s useless government).

Then we had the Blair years where a religious despot so full of himself that he destroyed the Labour party by creating the second Tory party.

Then we had a few Brown years where he nailed New Labour’s coffin firmly shut.

Then we had a coalition which privatised the NHS, our forests and a few other things we didn’t notice.

Then Nick Clegg destroyed the Liberal Democrats by lying to two generations of students and by believing that the EU was better for the United Kingdom of Great Britain than was our own government.

Then for a few years more we still couldn’t bother to be bothered until we were asked, by David Cameron (Ed: Who he?), to vote either IN or OUT of the EU.

Then parliament decided that their voice should heard because they not like our answer to the question they asked us to rule on.

Well, what are you going to do about it?

Nigel Farage then came along and spoke in words that we understood and spoke about things that we actually cared about! We might not like him very much but his words connected!

It was he who forced David Cameron into giving us a referendum on membership of the EU.

We the people suddenly woke up and voted in numbers not seen for decades, but…

Then, for the last 3 years, we have been professionally ignored all over again and we have all lost the will to live.

Another truth is that most of the power now lies outside of the political process and is held by corporate entities who are bigger than most small to medium countries.

So, now it really does really matter that we can’t be bothered, because nobody we can vote for can do much about it. They aren’t really bothered either.

So there is nobody left for we the people to vote for.

Unless somebody else wakes up and err, does something about it.

Is that you?

Nah, you can’t be bothered and neither can I 😉

We get the leaders we deserve and since we can’t be bothered …

*1 Chukka Umuna, Anna Subrey & several other twerps.