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They only tell us what they want us to know.....An Anti Austerity Demo gathered outside the BBC headquarters in London the other weekend, ...


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MAKE SENSE OF THE SENSELESS ! / QUESTION THE QUESTIONABLE ! / SHOUT ABOVE THE NOISE !

Sunday, 4 October 2009

More ramblings and rantings about the same old shit.


So it’s been the political party conference season. The 3 major parties faithful gather and listen to their leaders con them and us. We’ve had the Liberal and Labour ones and as I type this the biggest con merchants the CONservatives are holding court in Manchester. The Liberals talked of taxes on £1 million pound homes, Labour talked of taking away benefits from households earning £43,000 or above. Expect something similar from the Tories. Labour talked of getting tough on Hoodie Hoodlum Britain, err yes but weren’t they talking getting Tough on crime and the causes of crime 10 years ago? And what’s happened….things appear to have got worse if you believe what you read in the press.
The conservatives are gonna be trying to win back the middle England voters, so they’re gonna have to be careful about taxation, but one thing they aint gonna worry about and that’s about getting tough with Welfare Benefits, Anti-social behaviour, etc. There’s gonna be no more right to work or not, it’s gonna be you will work.
Labour talk about state sponsored nurseries and Hostels for single mothers, err yes but we had homes for single mothers but Labour shut them all down when the buzz word was ‘Empowerment’ and it was felt that it would be better if certain sections of society we able to look after themselves with a little support. Care in the community! When the community didn’t care and neither did the government, despite funding these programs.
Care in the Community, were bad behaviour got rewarded, and why not when Bankers and Bosses receive payouts for failure and Politicians have been on the take for years. Lead by example, if things have got worse under Labour that’s because Labour have become worse and so far removed from their grass routes they don’t know what working class is because everyone has become middle class. Thatcher said there was no such thing as society, and Brown and Blair have made sure of that.
The IMF have now got involved in Britain’s recession, by telling the Labour Government have got to reform Health care and Pensions, in order to ease global financial crisis. What happened the last time the IMF became involved in Britain’s economy? It opened the door to Thatcher’s Neo Conservative policies after another Labour Government fucked it all up. Under Thatcher it wasn't long befor workers sold out and became middle class.
Some sections of society have got rich quick while society has got poorer. There are gonna be tough times a head for those of us trying to stay free.
The electoral system is rigged so that any parties other than Labour and Conservatives stand no chance of gaining power. Hey I thought New Labour were gonna be reforming the system. No! Just another lie and broken promise.
They’re all a bunch of con artists. Lessers of the same evil. The Sun has now turned away from the New Labour Project, all Rupert Murdoch ever won was more readers with stories about the mugged and the murdered.
Targets kill. A cash strapped NHS has paid out £807million pounds in negligence claims last year. Chasing targets means patient care is compromised.
Unless both houses of parliament are engulfed in flames before the next election, or there’s some serious subversion and civil disobedience We will see the political wheel turn again pushed by the will of the people , because the public gets what the public wants. X marks the spot. The thing is the public doesn’t know what it wants so they’d vote for anyone who offers a solution to things they’ve read or heard in the media. What the public needs is a rocket up its collective arse to see that politicians and parties don’t provide solutions to problems, they just create the problems, with a little help from the people themselves, who just behave in the ways they’ve been programmed to behave in and believe everything they hear and see second hand through the filter of the media. See through the lies. The only truth we need to know is our own, and what we see with our own eyes.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cameron is going for the populist vote all right. Constant sound bites directed at Middle England (But still no manifesto or hard policy detail). Back of a fag packet ideas, like eight and a half grand lump sum to pay the Tories when I’m sixty five just to get nursing home care. Whether I need or not it.

Brown’s idea of means testing child benefit is a good one. Why should someone coining over fifty grand get my taxes just to bring up their sprog? Some woman on the radio was saying ‘But you don’t understand, this is an ‘Income’ for us parents’. Right, so my taxes become your income? Despite the fact that your on fifty grand, and probably a lot more, a year. There’s your real benefit cheats. They should look at means testing winter fuel allowances as well.

To be honest, I’m still with Brown. The only alternative is that brogue scuffing slow child from the plutocratic class, Cameron. Not fit enough for the Army. Not bright enough for a career in Law. What else was left but politics? I tell you people, it will be the eighties all over again. We will all be fucked if they get in.

Chris Ripple said...

I agree that Cameron is going for the populist vote (as far as the media is concerned) but let's wait and see what he says first, eh ?

As for the last para' of the previous post...
In 1997 a lot of blinkered people voted Labour because 'they've always been working class...' or because 'We've got to get the Tory bastards out'.
Well you got what you wanted didn't you ?
Now you don't like it 'cos B'liar, Brown & co were 10 times worse...
Tough shit Sherlock ! You picked the wrong horse and having to read even more 'class war' bollox before the bloke has got in does my head in.
I'm prepared to give him four years.
Face it, we've given the last shower of shite eleven and where the fuck has that got us ?
The town that I live in got rid of a bloody good constituency M.P to elect a B'liar Babe who has just repaid over thirty two grand of expenses...
I know who I'd rather have had.

Highlander said...

Do you think if enough of us just get together and ignore them, they will all go away? Hope springs eternal.

Colin Todhunter said...

This establishment politics just provides the illusion of choice. But to those who say give Cameron a chance - simmering beneath the surface is the same hard line Thatcherite Tory party of the 80s. I can still vividly recall the multi-millionaires Heseltine, Archer and the like spewing out their populist platitudes and tirades against lone parents, the unemployed, powerless working people, etc, etc. OK, New Labour has been a continuation of Thatcherism and also nightmare, but I know what the slightly lesser of two evils is.

Chris Ripple said...

Funny !
Didn't I hear Gordon Brown at the Labour conference 'spewing out populist platitudes and tirades against lone parents, the unemployed and powerless working people' ?

Bearing in mind that I'm a working bloke who earns less than twenty grand a year as a council minion and who got fucked up the arse by Gordon's wonderful taxation system I reserve the right not to follow the sound of the bell on the lead sheep because I always end up paying for it.

Why am I paying for this fucking dole culture ?
Why am I paying for pregnant schoolkids and helping them jump the housing queue because they've been irresponsible in their sex lives ?
Why am I paying for any and all immigrants from Eastern Europe to come here and scrounge money when they find there ain't no work, and then finding that I'm paying for them to jump the housing queue just because they're immigrants and they've got a sprog ?
Why am I paying for a bunch of lazy cunts who sit on their arses all day doing their twelve cans of lager ??????

Answer: Cos a lot of so called politicians allowed this situation to occur and why ?
Cos a lot of blinkered people propogate their class war bollox.
I'm working class and always have been but just once I'd like to keep some of the money that I earn and put it to better use than these
so called politicians put it to.

I have no problem giving it to the needy, but I have a serious problem about giving it to 'professional beggars'.

Colin Todhunter said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Colin Todhunter said...

Not that funny really. The Tories are past masters at that type of thing. They made the template and I recall the devastation they caused in the 80s. We are still paying the price for that today. I'm a working class bloke too, and also get frustrated by some of the things you mention, but I have my own view on why things are like that and for me it's not the result of people propagating 'class war bollox'. And I have my own views as to how things could be better for ordinary people, and it doesn't involve Cameron, Brown or anyone else from the current political elite. I've already said New Labour has been a nightmare and they have pursued a Thatcherite agenda. So, it's no surprise they have presided over and fuelled the situation you mention.

Chris Ripple said...

Colin, you're right about most of it and I agree with you on most of it, but the Tories made the template ?
That's just not true.
That war had been going on long before you and I were born.

I old enough to remember the Winter of Discontent...
I can remember some Trades Unions holding the whole country to ransom
by witholding fuel supplies and one of my friends mum's best friends dying of hypothermia in her two up, two down and an outside loo 'cause she couldn't take in her washing job cos she couldn't heat the water, let alone the house...
Oh yes mate, I remember...
And I agree with you about the
80's...
A lot of my friends got hurt.
I was lucky, I managed to get through them just with a divorce...
But can't we move on ?

Surely the idea is to have a 'just type of society' and whoever comes up with that scenario for all of us should be applauded ?
I assume that you are slightly left of centre in your political leanings by the tone of your post and I admit I'm slightly to the right, but IF somebody left of centre comes up with a good idea then I'll cross that centre line in a flash to shake their hand...
I truly would.
If the position was reversed Colin, would you ?
See, thats why I can't get along with that old 'Tories are always this that or the other' crap.
Times change.
Different people come forward all the time on all differing factions from Tories through to The Muslim Council, whatever ?
Different people all the time and that one different person will always change things from the way it's been before.
Good, bad, who's to know ?
But You and I, we'll know because we can think !
Which is why when you blame everything that is happening now in 2009 on the 80's Tories it grates somewhat.
Who's to know what Cameron'll do if he gets elected ?
I don't because it hasn't occurred yet.
because some

Anonymous said...

Funny how times have changed. In some parts of the country you can’t get a ‘Two up two down’, still with an outside privy intact, for less than £230,000. In fact they’re considered quite desirable, and no longer described in pejorative terms.

Colin Todhunter said...

Yes Chris, the antagonisms have been going on for a long time. I also remember winter 78/79, and not all unions and their leaders were 'right and decent', as you point out through your story about your mate's mum. Some of them were complete shits. But union bashing went way too far in my opinion and now many workers in the private sector have limited protection. The Tories may not have invented conflict and propaganda, but I think they took propaganda to a new level to stigmatise many sections of society, with the help of the tabloids, and that's why I talk about setting a template.

In your previous post, when you talk of paying for a dole culture, pregnant kids, irresponsible people, etc – you have a point, as I said. They are very visible targets. But I kind of look upwards and see a society where the rich avoid/evade taxes, where private companies are subsidised by taxpayers and often hold workers to ransom by threatening to shift production, where taxes are fed into unpopular/unjust military exploits to benefit vested interests and were politicians cow tow to profiteers and big business who run the country by proxy for their own ends, which results in democracy being a sham. And the consequences I talk about – the mass of ordinary people losing out in terms of poorer health, poorer housing, run down areas, shit public transport, low paid jobs, less life expectancy, poverty, etc. And it gets to the point where ordinary folks focus their attention on blaming one another for their predicament and not looking elsewhere for the causes.

According to a study by York University in 2006, British children were among the unhappiest and unhealthiest in Europe. A UNICEF report came to similar conclusions: children growing up in the UK suffer greater deprivation, worse relationships with their parents and are exposed to more risks from alcohol, drugs and unsafe sex than those in any other wealthy country in the world. Now, to me, that's not the result of dole culture, immigrants, feckless parenting, etc, which just happened for some reason. That's the result of a system that legitimates and propagates gross inequalities and of a country that has had values of communality and co-operation eroded by a me-first/profit-first individualism, where the market became king and all kinds of state help was extended to the privileged via financial incentives, tax breaks, legal statutes, handing over key economic assets under the guise of 'privatisation' and the current massive bail out plan for the banking industry, which by the way Thatcher and her backers were so keen to deregulate.

Yes, I would shake someone's hand, whatever their political allegiance, if they came up with a good idea. Of course I would. I'm also after a just society and don't see the point of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And I'm not one of those blindfolded people who follow the leader of sheep with a bell on its neck. And individuals can sometimes make a difference. But I think circumstances have to be right in order for them to come out of the pile. I just don't see Cameron as that person. He is constrained by his party and he is constrained by the interests of the powerful who are often his backers. Maybe he comes across as a million times more charismatic than Brown (not so hard to do) and perhaps he can tinker around at the edges and manage things better than Labour. But politicians, the cabinet and government of the day must answer to a higher power – the ones who really control the country. And I don't mean 'god' or the voters.

Maybe banging on about what the Tories did in the 80s grates (I don't blame them for everything – but they very much helped to shape modern Britain and have a massive impact on the thinking of the Labour Party, Blair, Brown, etc). But what they did still grates here in Liverpool and many other places that never recovered from that time. The consequences reverberate down the years. To me, Cameron may say certain things and look like a decent guy, but I think I'll give him a miss.

Colin Todhunter said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Colin Todhunter said...

Had to delete my previous comment as I had trouble posting. Anyway, my take on it:

The long version -
http://colintodhunter.blogspot.com/2009/
03/death-of-nation-rising-nepal-3309_13.html

The shorter, slightly different version -
http://colintodhunter.blogspot.com/2008/
10/big-credit-crunch-bail-out-in-this.html