We all know that Britain is a bit short this year, like the rest of the world it’s had a bad run. There’s been the expensive outlay on essential items like bringing democracy and a significant reduction in population to Iraq, which we are now attempting to do in Afghanistan; spending more on police to keep the criminals from taking over, I mean we wouldn’t want a bunch of money grabbing fraudsters, liars, cheats and hypocritical shysters running loose now would we?
Unfortunately the country sized equivalent of getting a red letter has been received; the Guardian reports that:
Britain could lose its cherished top-tier credit rating that provides access to cheap borrowing on international markets after a downgrade of its economic outlook by Standard & Poor’s. The ratings agency expressed alarm about the country’s ballooning budget deficit and switched its outlook from “stable” to “negative,” prompting the Conservatives to issue further calls for an immediate general election.
The job losses that have ensued as a result of the recession aren’t affecting bankers and politicians they’re affecting the bottom of the ladder, the poor and the young.
Figures out today showed Britain ran a record deficit in April of £8.5bn and consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers warned that balancing the public finances will cost every British family £5,000 a year by 2018.
And what have we done to the people behind this catastrophic collapse? Absolutely nothing. If you entrusted your future, your savings, your children to someone or to a group and they totally screwed it up you would fire them, immediately, and possibly bring charges against them including criminal negligence and fraud.
I arrive at a point of rational departure when I look at Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling, the smug harbingers of doom continue to lie, squirm and refuse to do the right thing and allow the public to speak with its strongest voice and most powerful weapon; the vote.
The voting system needs an overhaul for people to trust in it and for it to deliver the results we, as a people, as a country, need. It should be fair and accessible to all and shouldn’t rely on candidates delivered through a corrupt mediation system, parties committed to selling their own grandmother to secure a vote (and then claim the loss on their expenses) and a First Past the Post system which rewards the powerful and greedy and punishes the under-represented.
A good leader should be, according to Sun Tzu, “enlightened, heedful, and full of caution”. I don’t believe Brown has shown any of those qualities and if he has they have been overshadowed by his continuing, gross, escalating and pitiful ineptitude.
I don’t know what would replace labent Labour but surely it couldn’t be worse than these political cowboys.
We need an election, we need a leader we can trust, we need Brown gone. Now.
Anna is the landlady of the Raccoon Arms. She lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France and still takes a keen interest in British politics.
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Agree entirely
let’s go get……now!!!
We are all in agreement but who is going to organise action? And if it were organised, who would actually stir themselves to do anything? The British are full of complaints amongst each other but never in the right quarters.
Say what you like about the French but at least they act on their grievances in a place where it counts and often end up getting a result.
It’s all very well to call for an election immediately but under the circumstances all it would achieve would be more chaos. All the main parties are involved in financial scamming, none of them voted wholeheartedly for reform until now and if there were an election it would be full of spin and unachievable promises.
Far better to give the incumbents time to get their act cleaned up – they will all work much harder at it if they think their jobs depend on immediate reform instead of allowing them to feel smug because they have been re-elected despite their despicable behaviour.
I take it ‘janes’ is a Labour supporter, seeing as she or he’s simply parroting Brown’s desperate anti-democratic horse manure.
This commenter is also from the future, it seems. Posted at 12.22am on May 24th, when it’s only 12.07am on said new day?
Curious. Or a faulty clock on this blog. I guess I’m about to find out.
The post was still manure, though.
Yeah. Clock.
Morning Denverthen!
No idea of janes politics, but I can answer your query re: the clock.
Its not faulty, its set to suit me, moi! Appropriate really, being my blog and all that!
See, I’m based in Europe, and we are an hour ahead of you. Exactly an hour, so if your clock was telling you that it was a fifteen minute difference – time to check Big Ben.
Don’t worry Denverythen and Anna Raccoon, we will all be on european time soon enough and european currency and european law, I suppose fitting as we all occupy the same tectonic plate. I don’t see any problem with this if it was executed correctly maintaining each member states’s unique culture and identity, which, to date, it has not.
Who is going to organise this action? Well it is a difficult question to answer; act too soon and risk arrest and detention (without trial) not to mention all the other means available to the government like discreditation or assassination or wait until there is so much support for the removal of these Westminster Wackos that you can’t fail. Point me in the direction of an honourable politician dedicated to returning power to the people and removing inequality wherever possible and I will follow that politician to the flying pig farm where he or she lives.
The fact that an election called now may result in chaos indicates we need one more than ever. The fact that the Westminster 6-4-6 are running around like suicide prone headless chickens should not prevent democracy from being done.
I am no anarchist, I believe in the rule of Law just not the Law in this country. Our legal system attacks the poor and stupid and leaves gaping loopholes for those with the cash to exploit them. Police and MPs insist they adhere to the same laws that govern the rest of us and yet their actions continually prove them to be hypocrites and liars.
The MPs that are resigning daily are just proving that they didn’t give a flying Brown (shit) about the people they were supposed to represent, they just cared about protecting their cushy lifestyle which is funded entirely by the tax payer. They truly are scum, not some hooded youth that holds you up and steals your wallet, but sitting in a leather chair doing you over from a distance. They are worse than common criminals because they stole from us while in a position of trust. Damn them all.
Zak might I point you in the direction of the Libertarian party which is gasping for funds and people to help it out?
Denverthen: I take it
HNL: I have recently been granted the gift of time and will use some of it investigating the Libertarians in the coming days.
Ed Balls’ appearance on ‘Any Questions’ sums up the issue neatly. Incomprehensibly. But a good summary.
When asked ‘When will the General Election Be?’
Balls, in summary, said there are 3 things that we need to do, amidst audience laughter, we need to get the current mess sorted out, we need to sort out the economy and we need to prepare for battle. Various audience members shouted out “election now” but Balls completely ignored them and bullied his way through to an answer to A question , but not the one asked. He ignored the audience, Dimbleby didn’t even try to stop him and charged his way through to a responsebut without answering the question.
This to me is the epitomy of New Stassi response to everything. Do as we say. Obviously not as we do (that would be illegal!). He ignored the audience and continued on some rant despite, and only then on Dimbleby’s intervention. They have no sense of the public being involve or being relevant. I was hoping for someone to shout Balls down, to say he is OUR servant, not the other way round. We pay him, we can sack him. But nobody did. I did as I shouted at the radio.
The problem with New Stassi is they have everything ‘the other way round’. Government, the economy, the police, education, the law, our freedoms – evrything is the wrong way and is unacceptable. We need an election NOW to get rid of this corrupt and venal administration and its venal ways.