Politics #1

A political rant against a backdrop of global corporations encouraged to make billions of pounds of PROFIT while human suffering is still out of control. People in charge of us fighting imperialist wars with the human and financial cost involved. High ranking Politicians/political scientists/civil servants who are public school educated unable or unwilling to find diplomatic solution to conflict. Why do we vote our politicians in and out??????? So if a person does not have a deep knowledge of political history including dates, personnel, who did what to whom etc, then can someone hold a political opinion or philosophy?

Well my personal strategy is that I err on the side of compassion and human rights/welfare.

When it comes to present day politics, I pronounced myself a political agnostic some years ago. 

After the general election of 2005, I decided to pay close attention to the politics reported to us and whether the Labour party was still the safest bet to look after the people of the UK.

I took the Independent and Guardian newspapers regularly and watched/listened to as many political programmes as I could bear, including the Today programme, Newsnight etc etc.  After approx 2 years of this I realised that during broadcast debates or press interviews, very little, if any, clear truthful information was supplied by any politician and certainly their personal opinions could not be elicited.

A great Labour politician, criticised by his own party as well as being ridiculed by others for openly disagreeing with party policy said that to be a politician, one has to choose the party that most closely represented your personal politics, and that obviously this wasn't perfect but it was the best we could have
(Tony Benn) This type of honesty in politicians is rare. In a Leaders debate just prior to the 2005 election, Tony Blair, rather brusquely refused to answer an audience members question on whether his family recycled!!!

During live debate, it is possible to accurately predict the arbitary, choreographed points that each politician/Civil servant would make, as well as the fact that they would not agree on anything.

The journalist allows them to not answer anything straightforwardly or honestly, or even anything at all. Even interviewers who are supposedly hard on politicians (Paxman, Humphreys) give the illusion of integrity without actually getting any further than anyone else. Most shockingly, ALL debates I heard/watched/read, consisted of ALL parties stating that what the other had said was untrue.  The bald fact then, that one of them (an elected, highly trusted, powerful political figure) was lying.

How was I to make an informed decision on who to vote for?

Do I rely on my family history of voting left wing?  It feels safest to vote for the party of the Welfare State, Unions, National Health Service etc etc, but what if those humanist ideals are ever subverted by an unethical and dishonest meglomaniac?  Will I just arbitarily vote them/keep them in???

Politics has to change.

I'm sure if I worked within Westminster/Whitehall/The Media, I would have enough of a grasp of political machinery, protocol and the intrinsic lying that underpins all of politics to form a sort of opinion, and then by second guessing, allowing for dishonesty and educated theorising on a roughly interpreted political situation, Imay get somewhere close to a fuzzy idea of what is really going on.

But I don't.

Maybe, the only option open to those that this situation concerns is not voting.  However this would only bring about change if it were done by most people. It's not as if there would be a revolution that would inconvenience too many of us, the world bank demands stability in the great financial countries of the world which in turn gives rise to a heavy handed policing in a 'government army' style of control. I feel sur that 'special measures' are available to be actioned if any electoral anomaly should occur, say...an extremely low 'undemocratic' turnout or the gaining of power by an extremist party. This means then that the country will continue to function and we will all be safe, but that the world's media and watching citizens will be expecting an acknowledgement that the current system does not represent us