Democracy? Hypocrisy?
Well, after a fairly sleepless night of about 4 hours due to my little baby girl crying all night, I decided to get up and take the dog for a long walk. During my walk I was being invaded yet again by passionate anger. Despite respecting the beautiful countryside and the fresh breeze that was blowing around me as the sun was newly rising, I couldnt help getting frustrated. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
With the general election getting closer, I felt is was only right to skip the planned topics I had for discussion and get my two pennies worth on this subject.
Firstly, We claim that we live in a Democracy. A democracy is defined by being, "...a form of government under which the power to govern the laws and stuctures of government lies, ultimately, with the citizenry." This is what democracy should be, however, my problem lies with the fact that we the citizens do not have ultimate power or control, only perceived power or control. We all know that there are really only 3 supposedly differing parties that have any chance of gaining leadership. The Lib Dems are coming about as close as they ever have done, but that is still not enough. The reality is we have only two choices; left and right wing. Well, that was how it used to be anyway. A party these days avoids any kind of radicalism or potentially revolutionary behaviour. Every statement made by their politicians is highly screened, censored, cleaned up and diluted, until there is nothing left in their statements anymore other than the most inoffensive drivel you are ever likely to read, or hear. The statements I have read leading up to the coming election this year read more like an astrology chart than anything else. Everyone can read into them whatever they want to, because nobody is actually saying anything for fear of what the opinion polls might say.
Now, opinion polls, in theory should reflect just that, opinions of the citizenry. That remember is exactly what democracy is supposed to be about isnt it? What opinion polls actually show is the result of carefully manipulated false information titrated to the public through the various forms of media throughout the last year. It doesn't matter whether you read the Independent, the Financial Times, the tory Daily Mail, or the epsilon papers like The Sun and The Mirror, they all have varying degrees of propoganda directed at them. The only difference is the government spin doctors and their smear nurses ensure the propoganda is specifically directed at the intellectual capabilities of the reader of each paper. That combined with the raw information being filtered by the various reporters and column writers ensures a well hidden ( even to them) , and effective land mine of political manipulation. Thus, it appears that the government are in fact working for us, the taxpaying voter, when in fact, we believe only what they want us to believe. If we only have two or three potential variations of change within our country, then the average person looks only at those options. If there were 6-8 alternatives, then we could realistically say we lived in a democratic society. This would also allow room for less scrutiny, and more radical approaches to political change. Instead with have now got the situation of apathetic voters, to which the tories are encouraging, as it may well help them win this election.
Such safe politics would be fine if the education system, the health service, the emergency services, mortgage rates, tax in general were reasonable, but they're not, in fact they're far from acceptable. The situation is one of citizen apathy at politics in general because people feel they're in nothing they can do about it, so it doesn't really make any difference who wins the election, and that is how I feel. There may be subtle differences but at the end of the day, I am looking for another party to take this country forward, and not the motley crew we currently have.
One particular incident that highlighted 'safe politics' happened recently when the Houses of Parliament had their chance to radically alter the current education system by exploring the downfalls of the A levels and GCSE's. As most top level teachers will tell you they are outdated and in deseperate need of being amended. The government chose the luke warm approach yet again, and amended the odd word on the bill of education and stayed well away from any action which could be interpreted as being potentially risky.
The same occurred with the laws on Cannabis usage. Cannabis is one of the most heavily researched plants and herbs in existence today. A 5 year trial has just been completed by a Dr Geoffrey Guy who critically studied the herbs potential medicinal properties. The trial found that Cannabis is indeed a unique pain reliever which comes as no surprise to many foundations such as THC4MS who have been, illegally for a number of years, supplying carefully assessed patients 'donated' Cannabis in the form of cakes to ease their physical pains. A recent court case involving one of the so-called 'suppliers' of these cakes resulted in a harrowing trial where the Judge warned her she could be locked up for 14 years. 14 years!!! Just for helping our fellow man ease their suffering because an outdated, non-radical government wasn't prepared to pull their finger out and open their eyes to the realities of life today. They are afraid of actually 'leading' this country for fear of offending anyone, lest a reduction in votes. The current law on paedophilia only allows someone to get put away for 12 years, despite the severity of their crimes!!! I could go on about their half-arsed attempts at lowering the Misuse of Drugs Act class, then systematically increasing the sentences for Class B drugs. Talk about moving the goalposts. I shall debate this topic in a later post, and give it the space I feel it needs.
It is strange how a government ( and by that I am not only referring to Labour) can be so radically opposed to being radical, yet when it comes to acts of war, and instilling unfounded fears regarding terrorism, they are highly outspoken, or were before the election was getting closer. For how many years did we have a genuine reason to be afraid with the IRA bombing our country literally left, right and centre? Does anyone remember one of the most recent bombing of the Arndale Shopping Centre in Manchester? Did the government say anything about it?...NO! Did they tell us we should all be extra vigilant and be genuinely terrified? NO! Did we stop going to Ireland on holiday, or begin fearing the Irish as a whole? NO!
The point of this is that the 'real' terrorists here are the military powers of America and Britain. The fear that they continuously instill into the public is causing the real terror. We are led to believe that we are 'lucky' that we have not had a similar atrocity to the 9/11 disaster, and all thanks to the extra vigilant National Security preventing 'regular' attempts by Islamic Fundamentalists to do so. Much of this is 'misdirection' on the governments part; that, and the obvious racist nature of Christianity versus Muslims. The Quran frequently warns of the threat of Western culture that could potentially impact on America's plans for Global domination, which is a very REAL threat, and not a paranoid delusion as they would make you believe. In my opinion, the instilling of fear into the mass population is a pre-requisite that allows the government to siphon money directly from our annual budget to pay for all the unecessary National Security. Once the money is ring fenced for National Security, it no longer has to be declared and no one can ask for an itemised bill because that would jeopardise our liberty, independance, and national safety. This seems to me to be the easiest way of treating the public as mindless slaves so we can work harder to earn more taxes for things we are 'told' we NEED in order to maintain the status quo, when in reality there is only a minor threat of any one of us being at the forefront of an Al Qaeda attack.
Let us not forget at the end of the day what a government really is. It is nothing more than a huge, global profit-making organisation and the Politicians are the salesmen, and the Ministers are the Managing Directors and Chairmans. The government, whether under the guise of Labour, Conservatives, or the Liberal Democrats, have one sole interest.....making money.
They have no real desire for environmental issues unless they are profit making, take the lack of interest in promoting non-petroleum based vehicles on our roads, and America's obstinance regarding signing the Kyoto agreement. As a country we are already well behind meeting the targets of cutting CO2 emissions by 20% by 2010, in fact there was a rise in 2003 by almost 2%!!!
The governments have no real interest in Humanitarian needs of a society, as previously discussed above unless there is a cash payout at the end of it. They certainly have no interest in the health of the nation because otherwise they would address the serious concerns of binge drinking and excessive alcohol consumption sweeping through the country. In fact, they contradicted themselves lately when giving a reason for not legalising Cannabis they said that by making it more available research has proved it would increase consumption of the drug, then on the other hand they say that by increasing the licensing hours to drinking establishments to 24 hourly, they would somehow reduce consumption of alcohol. The word, Bullshit, springs to mind. Again, I will discuss in a later post how the government uses all of the physically dependant narcotics to control the populous, and requires the vast consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and prescription medications to budget the whole country, regardless of the cost to the psychological and physical health of its citizenry. The move to abolish cigarettes has arrived, not through caring for the 'Health of the Nation', as they call it, by increasing the cost of cigarettes. They increased the cost to make up for the shortfall in revenue because people were already beginning to quit due to health risks. The disadvantage to the government was that because they were still having to fork out for the physical health damage of smoking like emphysema and lung cancer, and given the fact that most people were now buying their cigarettes duty free from 'some bloke in the pub'.
The government realised they couldn't maintain the increase in the cost of a packet of fags, I mean who is going to pay £10 a packet?? So, lo and behold, they make the 'caring' decision to abolish those deadly cigarettes, and suddenly after many decades of campaigning by anti-smoking groups they finally appear to have listened, and now take a complete U-turn and want to ban it in all pubs and restaurants and anywhere that people are. Different story when they were making a profit on them, wasn't it? How stupid do they think we are???
Again, this is just one of thousands of situations where the government is less concerned with the 'Health of the Nation' and more concerned with the 'Health of their Bank Balance'.
The reason for this post is simple.
With the election just around the corner, do the right thing, and when you are comparing and contrasting the parties various manifesto's, take the time to read between the lines, and look for the potential 'pot of gold' behind each 'hidden' agenda.
With the general election getting closer, I felt is was only right to skip the planned topics I had for discussion and get my two pennies worth on this subject.
Firstly, We claim that we live in a Democracy. A democracy is defined by being, "...a form of government under which the power to govern the laws and stuctures of government lies, ultimately, with the citizenry." This is what democracy should be, however, my problem lies with the fact that we the citizens do not have ultimate power or control, only perceived power or control. We all know that there are really only 3 supposedly differing parties that have any chance of gaining leadership. The Lib Dems are coming about as close as they ever have done, but that is still not enough. The reality is we have only two choices; left and right wing. Well, that was how it used to be anyway. A party these days avoids any kind of radicalism or potentially revolutionary behaviour. Every statement made by their politicians is highly screened, censored, cleaned up and diluted, until there is nothing left in their statements anymore other than the most inoffensive drivel you are ever likely to read, or hear. The statements I have read leading up to the coming election this year read more like an astrology chart than anything else. Everyone can read into them whatever they want to, because nobody is actually saying anything for fear of what the opinion polls might say.
Now, opinion polls, in theory should reflect just that, opinions of the citizenry. That remember is exactly what democracy is supposed to be about isnt it? What opinion polls actually show is the result of carefully manipulated false information titrated to the public through the various forms of media throughout the last year. It doesn't matter whether you read the Independent, the Financial Times, the tory Daily Mail, or the epsilon papers like The Sun and The Mirror, they all have varying degrees of propoganda directed at them. The only difference is the government spin doctors and their smear nurses ensure the propoganda is specifically directed at the intellectual capabilities of the reader of each paper. That combined with the raw information being filtered by the various reporters and column writers ensures a well hidden ( even to them) , and effective land mine of political manipulation. Thus, it appears that the government are in fact working for us, the taxpaying voter, when in fact, we believe only what they want us to believe. If we only have two or three potential variations of change within our country, then the average person looks only at those options. If there were 6-8 alternatives, then we could realistically say we lived in a democratic society. This would also allow room for less scrutiny, and more radical approaches to political change. Instead with have now got the situation of apathetic voters, to which the tories are encouraging, as it may well help them win this election.
Such safe politics would be fine if the education system, the health service, the emergency services, mortgage rates, tax in general were reasonable, but they're not, in fact they're far from acceptable. The situation is one of citizen apathy at politics in general because people feel they're in nothing they can do about it, so it doesn't really make any difference who wins the election, and that is how I feel. There may be subtle differences but at the end of the day, I am looking for another party to take this country forward, and not the motley crew we currently have.
One particular incident that highlighted 'safe politics' happened recently when the Houses of Parliament had their chance to radically alter the current education system by exploring the downfalls of the A levels and GCSE's. As most top level teachers will tell you they are outdated and in deseperate need of being amended. The government chose the luke warm approach yet again, and amended the odd word on the bill of education and stayed well away from any action which could be interpreted as being potentially risky.
The same occurred with the laws on Cannabis usage. Cannabis is one of the most heavily researched plants and herbs in existence today. A 5 year trial has just been completed by a Dr Geoffrey Guy who critically studied the herbs potential medicinal properties. The trial found that Cannabis is indeed a unique pain reliever which comes as no surprise to many foundations such as THC4MS who have been, illegally for a number of years, supplying carefully assessed patients 'donated' Cannabis in the form of cakes to ease their physical pains. A recent court case involving one of the so-called 'suppliers' of these cakes resulted in a harrowing trial where the Judge warned her she could be locked up for 14 years. 14 years!!! Just for helping our fellow man ease their suffering because an outdated, non-radical government wasn't prepared to pull their finger out and open their eyes to the realities of life today. They are afraid of actually 'leading' this country for fear of offending anyone, lest a reduction in votes. The current law on paedophilia only allows someone to get put away for 12 years, despite the severity of their crimes!!! I could go on about their half-arsed attempts at lowering the Misuse of Drugs Act class, then systematically increasing the sentences for Class B drugs. Talk about moving the goalposts. I shall debate this topic in a later post, and give it the space I feel it needs.
It is strange how a government ( and by that I am not only referring to Labour) can be so radically opposed to being radical, yet when it comes to acts of war, and instilling unfounded fears regarding terrorism, they are highly outspoken, or were before the election was getting closer. For how many years did we have a genuine reason to be afraid with the IRA bombing our country literally left, right and centre? Does anyone remember one of the most recent bombing of the Arndale Shopping Centre in Manchester? Did the government say anything about it?...NO! Did they tell us we should all be extra vigilant and be genuinely terrified? NO! Did we stop going to Ireland on holiday, or begin fearing the Irish as a whole? NO!
The point of this is that the 'real' terrorists here are the military powers of America and Britain. The fear that they continuously instill into the public is causing the real terror. We are led to believe that we are 'lucky' that we have not had a similar atrocity to the 9/11 disaster, and all thanks to the extra vigilant National Security preventing 'regular' attempts by Islamic Fundamentalists to do so. Much of this is 'misdirection' on the governments part; that, and the obvious racist nature of Christianity versus Muslims. The Quran frequently warns of the threat of Western culture that could potentially impact on America's plans for Global domination, which is a very REAL threat, and not a paranoid delusion as they would make you believe. In my opinion, the instilling of fear into the mass population is a pre-requisite that allows the government to siphon money directly from our annual budget to pay for all the unecessary National Security. Once the money is ring fenced for National Security, it no longer has to be declared and no one can ask for an itemised bill because that would jeopardise our liberty, independance, and national safety. This seems to me to be the easiest way of treating the public as mindless slaves so we can work harder to earn more taxes for things we are 'told' we NEED in order to maintain the status quo, when in reality there is only a minor threat of any one of us being at the forefront of an Al Qaeda attack.
Let us not forget at the end of the day what a government really is. It is nothing more than a huge, global profit-making organisation and the Politicians are the salesmen, and the Ministers are the Managing Directors and Chairmans. The government, whether under the guise of Labour, Conservatives, or the Liberal Democrats, have one sole interest.....making money.
They have no real desire for environmental issues unless they are profit making, take the lack of interest in promoting non-petroleum based vehicles on our roads, and America's obstinance regarding signing the Kyoto agreement. As a country we are already well behind meeting the targets of cutting CO2 emissions by 20% by 2010, in fact there was a rise in 2003 by almost 2%!!!
The governments have no real interest in Humanitarian needs of a society, as previously discussed above unless there is a cash payout at the end of it. They certainly have no interest in the health of the nation because otherwise they would address the serious concerns of binge drinking and excessive alcohol consumption sweeping through the country. In fact, they contradicted themselves lately when giving a reason for not legalising Cannabis they said that by making it more available research has proved it would increase consumption of the drug, then on the other hand they say that by increasing the licensing hours to drinking establishments to 24 hourly, they would somehow reduce consumption of alcohol. The word, Bullshit, springs to mind. Again, I will discuss in a later post how the government uses all of the physically dependant narcotics to control the populous, and requires the vast consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and prescription medications to budget the whole country, regardless of the cost to the psychological and physical health of its citizenry. The move to abolish cigarettes has arrived, not through caring for the 'Health of the Nation', as they call it, by increasing the cost of cigarettes. They increased the cost to make up for the shortfall in revenue because people were already beginning to quit due to health risks. The disadvantage to the government was that because they were still having to fork out for the physical health damage of smoking like emphysema and lung cancer, and given the fact that most people were now buying their cigarettes duty free from 'some bloke in the pub'.
The government realised they couldn't maintain the increase in the cost of a packet of fags, I mean who is going to pay £10 a packet?? So, lo and behold, they make the 'caring' decision to abolish those deadly cigarettes, and suddenly after many decades of campaigning by anti-smoking groups they finally appear to have listened, and now take a complete U-turn and want to ban it in all pubs and restaurants and anywhere that people are. Different story when they were making a profit on them, wasn't it? How stupid do they think we are???
Again, this is just one of thousands of situations where the government is less concerned with the 'Health of the Nation' and more concerned with the 'Health of their Bank Balance'.
The reason for this post is simple.
With the election just around the corner, do the right thing, and when you are comparing and contrasting the parties various manifesto's, take the time to read between the lines, and look for the potential 'pot of gold' behind each 'hidden' agenda.
posted by Unknown @ 10:21 am
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