In light of the pre-budget report being released yesterday I thought I’d have a political rant. A vaguely informed, rambling rant at that. Read on and be entertained at my lack of informed opinion. Hurrah!
Y’know I stopped expecting any sanity from our esteemed government about ten minutes after I played my part in voting that grinning sociopath fuck Tony Blair and his band of Tory Mark II scumfucks (okay, I’m sure they’re not all fuckers in the current incarnation of the Labour Party, but the majority of the cabinet probably couldn’t be trusted to look after a baby without smothering it) into power. Yes, after almost twenty years of continuous Tory rule, most of it under the crushing madness of Margaret Thatcher and the stripping away of public services to private firms I thought, this Blair bloke can’t be that bad.
Oh, the naïveté. I was young and desperate for some kind of hope for my future and my well-being. Cynical hindsight now tells me that I should have smelled something rotten from the moment that the rebranded New (yes, it would be too awful if it was old Labour, fuck having even a shadow of principle there) Labour used that abomination of a song 'Things Can Only Get Better’ and stormed into government in 1997. They crushed the Tories that year.
And crushing things has become the motif of their time in power. First thing to get crushed was the possibility that your average worker would get a fair shake: we got a minimum wage that was multi-tiered. As ever those under twenty-one were entitled to less than those over that age. I can see those under eighteen getting less, because, in general they have less responsibilities than an eighteen year old. As soon as you’re eighteen you are an adult and should be paid as such, instead this wage band is given the insultingly patronising monicker ‘youth rate’. Not that the over twenty-one minimum wage was any great shake. It still isn’t being just under six pounds an hour, a third of which is taken away in tax right away and then you have all your bills and such. Working at this rate you’re lucky if you have anything left.
Yes, I know that people in other countries have it much worse, but I get the feeling that if any UK government could bring our wages down to those rates they’d do it in a heartbeat.
Let’s be honest, the minimum wage was influenced by all those nice, faceless, monolithic businesses that New Labour wanted to stay friends with. Not that it worked. As soon as most of these corporations hear the words ‘human rights’ they up sticks and find a nice third world dictatorship that they can leech from and give those who run them – each already wealthier than all of the working class in Britain combined – those million pound/dollar/euro bonuses that they so require. Really, really, they’ll be in the poor house if they are brought down to their last million.
Before I go too far into the world of the conspiracy theorist there, let’s mention the mess New Labour have made of the NHS. Or rather let’s talk about how they’ve gone about continuing what the Tories had done all through their reign to undermine and damage something that was once the envy of the world. Those efficiencies that New Labour are so fond of has left large areas without local hospitals and those that are left so disease-ridden (thanks to the fantastic idea of having private cleaning firms take over, always a good idea that) that people are afraid to go in because they perceive that there’s every chance they’ll never come out again.
I mean, there’s a lot more, but those are the most prominent things that I can think of right now.
And we come twelve years later, New Labour is limping along after being caught in many lies and a switch to a Prime Minister with all the charisma of a landed monk fish. We also come to the end of a cycle that was also started by the Tories and allowed to continue unabated by our rosy red saviours: The Markets. I hope it’s the end of a cycle.
The banks and The Markets. One should have been monitoring the other, y’know, instead one cloned the other. As we all know this didn’t turn out for the better, as the banks took on the no-hold-barred money-making ethos of The Markets. The wild, testosterone-fuelled grabbing for wealth and growth was adopted by the bank and things didn’t work out well. Especially, as I’ve already said, the banks were supposed to be watching over the fucking Markets!
Y’see the markets, and capitalism in general, seems to work, as far as I can tell, on the principle that growth can go infinitely, that there are resources in the world to be plundered forever. Which is strange as they seem to only hold one ‘resource’ dear: money. Something artificially created by banks to be infinite, but based on real things. Once upon a time anyway. Now it appears to all the world that money’s based on, well, more money. Which is more than a wee bit weird.
This came to an understated head last year (2008, for those people in the future) when a bunch of investments that were never going to pay back started a bit of a domino effect. This started a ‘banking crisis’. Then a ‘credit crunch’ before the governments of the world held up their hands and said, “We might be in a bit of a recession…”
“…That’s the worst since 1929. And half of you are going to lose your jobs. Maybe we shouldn’t have stripped away all those regulations that were designed to stop this happening again. Oopsie. We’ll fix this. Honest.”
They said a lot, oh yeah. Course they would. Standing, pounding on podiums saying, as people had said almost eighty years before (someone hear an echo?), that this can’t be allowed to happen again. And proceeded to wrist-slap their way through these multinationals and banks, who, in public whined about the restrictions placed on them, when they really had to be laughing their arses off that they’d gotten away with (thanks to those pesky governments, har har).
Cos if the banks were so scared of government reprisals why are they still giving their high-ups ridiculous bonuses? When there are people reduced to poverty and either no longer in their home or afraid that it’s going to be repossessed. They didn’t even learn any lessons from the financial institutions that sank because of their own greed.
And this brings me, finally, to the pre-budget report. In which there is another tiny tap to the wrists of the bankers and then it’s time to look at punishing the public. Oh yes, we had the temerity to have no idea of what the bankers and our governments were doing (while they hid it) so now the whip of budget cuts and tax increases are now on the horizon. Supposedly to tax those of higher incomes, but will only hammer the same people living on the breadline who always take the brunt of these things.
The prevailing theory is this is to win them votes for the general election, by people who intone this as though it should be accepted. We mere mortals couldn’t do better. Perhaps, but at least the politicians could at least be a bit more subtle about it instead of pulling down our collective pants and ordering us to bend over. Or even soften the blow to the people they supposedly represent.
But then British politicians don’t have any loyalty to the people of the country, their first loyalty is to the party.
And all this has prompted their brethren on the right to start screaming, “We’re the only ones who can save you!”
Excuse me:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!
Okay. This is going to happen. I have no illusions about this. The electorate are so blinded to any other parties that they believe that the Tories are the only ones to replace Labour. It’s like forgetting what a bear looks like after it spent a nice long while mauling you. The Tories set this all in motion during the eighties! You’d have to be mad to think that they weren’t going to come in and slink all this back in.
A party that referred, I’m told, to the lower employees in the public sector as ‘minions’. Tells you everything you need to know about their mindset, really.
There are other parties in the UK, but most of them don’t get much of a chance, thanks to the media in the country. Aren’t they nice for showing us all the options? So people think they’re left with just Labour and Conservative; and often start giggling if you mention the Liberal Democrats. Here in Scotland we also have the SNP, Wales has Plaid Cymru and Northern Ireland has a bunch of parties. But the central government is still in Westminster.
After another stinging slap in the face by our government, I’m left wondering what can be done. I mean the only way to become an MP now is to have gone to university and studied politics, so we now have a bunch of dead-eyed, indoctrinated creatures whose whole life is politics and they’ve never really done anything else. Doesn’t seem right does it? A nice locked system for those privileged few who know the right people. I know it’s always had that aspect but with this new wrinkle it’s harder for anyone outside of the loop to get in.
I think I’ll just sit and wait for Christmas and New Year, hoping that it will all be much better once the first of January rolls around.
Will
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