So, another thing I meant to write about sooner. I'm pretty sure most of you must have seen Russell Brand's interview with Jeremy Paxman but just in case you haven't, here it is,
Truth be told, I'm really not sure what to think about this. I agree with a lot of what Russell's saying but I've always thought that the whole "we shouldn't vote, none of them deserve it" always sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me. Trust me, I'm as fed up of the current political situation as anyone but sitting on the fence isn't gonna get us out of the hole that our leaders have been digging for the last 35 odd years. Being up north to visit my family this weekend has really reinforced what a mess this country's in at the moment regardless of David Cameron and George Osborne's feeble attempts to persuade us that the worst is over and the country's recovering. Might I suggest that they pay a visit to Middlesbrough or Hartlepool where about 80% of the shops seem to be boarded up. Or Bradford where half the city centre was demolished back in 2006 to make way for a Westfield shopping centre only for the money to run out before a single brick had been laid. Seven years on and all that's left is an empty building site where shops should be and even then the shops that are left are hardly fighting each other for space given the number of closed ones around town. However you look at it, that doesn't seem much like a recovery to me.
Russell's right about one thing - politicians these days are horrifically out of touch with the man in the street. They aren't the ones faced with soaring energy bills and, for those of us who have to commute to work, public transport prices that are going up faster than our wages are. They aren't the ones with friends on the dole who would actually quite like to have a job rather than having to sit at home bored out of their skulls all day but there aren't any jobs available and all the government seems to want to do is demonise them as workshy shirkers who are leeching benefits out of the system. Meanwhile, these corporate crooks in the financial industry continue to brazenly swindle the country out of millions and we're told it's no big deal by the people at the Daily Mail and the Sun while they continue their dodgy ethical practices and whine on about how the place is turning into Communist Russia as soon as anyone mentions press regulations to maybe make sure that people stop getting hurt by their irresponsibility and general lack of morals.
But sitting on the fence waiting around for a revolution isn't gonna change that. I'm sorry but somehow I can't see David Cameron really giving a toss about a few hundred people gathering in parliament square wearing "V For Vendetta" masks. To me, the demo before the second Gulf War started proved that that method of protest is dead in the water. Thousands of people went on that, a public opinion poll showed that 91% of people were against the war and what did Tony Blair do? Went to war anyway. Politicians aren't scared of people marching anymore - they can just look at Blair's example and think "well, if he can get away with that and stay in power for another six years then why can't I get away with this?"
If you want to change the political system then you have to infiltrate it - protesting just doesn't work I'm afraid. Start up a movement, get some like-minded souls together and get a party of your own started. The three-party model in the UK is already starting to look shaky and my thoughts are that coalition governments are going to become the norm from hereon in. To use a musical analogy, it's not a million miles away from how punk rock started in Britain in the '70s - people were sick of the twin evils of ten-minute prog operas from Yes and Genesis and extended guitar solos and blues jams from the likes of Led Zeppelin and wanted something different so they went out and made it happen. Admittedly, it's a lot more difficult to change politics than it is to change music but it can be done and there've been a couple of attempts in recent years such as the original version of the Respect coalition before it got swamped by the nutcase wing of Islam (ie the sort of people who are really no better than the BNP or EDL). And it's also, lest we forget, how the original version of the Labour party started about 100 years ago - the voice of the working classes who felt completely ignored and betrayed by the politicians. Ring any bells?
Which brings me neatly on to Robert Webb's rather bizarre response to Brand a few days later where he stated the best way out was to join the Labour party as they were the only ones saying anything different. Again, Webb is right about one thing, if you do vote you can at least say that you tried to make your voice count in changing things. But, and it saddens me to say this as someone who grew up in a fiercely partisan Labour family, I really don't see that things would be any different under Ed Miliband. He strikes me as a nice guy who would like to be doing more than he is to put some clear water between himself and the ConDems but is hamstrung by trying to please the middle class vote. Which is clearly rubbish because if Ed would try and come up with some policies that would make things more fair to the ordinary people in this country, there is a huge swathe of disaffected voters who would probably be happy to give him a chance especially given how odious the alternative is. For example - renationalising the utility companies and railways so that prices can be fixed centrally and if people are upset then they can always kick the government in the ballots at the next election. Re-opening some of those Sure Start centres and libraries that the Tories have closed en masse. Reintroducing the controls on the financial sector that (spit!) Thatcher abolished in the '80s so that a bunch of spivs in Canary Wharf never have the opportunity to sink this country's economy again. Ensuring that the Leveson Report controls are forced on Fleet Street editors whether they like it or not so that maybe we'll have a press that has to grow up and act responsibly in this country. Kicking private enterprise out of the NHS where it doesn't belong - seriously, what's more important, making a few quick bucks or making sure that we have a healthy population in this country? Ditto the education sector.
I could go on and on until the cows come home but it's safe to say that until Labour starts to try and act vaguely like a socialist party again, I won't be voting for 'em. So where does that leave me? The Greens I s'pose. As a friend recently said to me, you know things have got bad when the hippies are making the most sense. But nevertheless, I will be voting for them at the next election because that's what democracy is about. Use it or lose it.
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