Tuesday 19 July 2011

Just what are our politicians thinking about?

With the tunnel vision that is being practised by our political elite on the question of their relationship with the media and our police force, a 'madfest' being aided and abetted by that self-same media, consider:

From Big Brother Watch we learn:
"The country remains gripped by the story of a newspaper caught hacking into people’s mobile phones. But there is another group of institutions which are spying on us while exciting hardly any comment at all: our local councils. They are snooping on our telephones, accessing our email systems, using covert surveillance and maintaining databases on everything from our sexual orientation to whether we were once rude on the phone to a council officer."
Setting to one side the 'Dowler aspect', which needless to say is disgusting, the difference between the NoTW hacking phones and a council hacking phones is?

From Nigel Farage we learn:
"Despite 136 people being interviewed by Yates and his team, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would bring no charges. It is my belief that given the clear failure to conduct a full and proper investigation, there should be a re-opening of the cash for honours investigation. Since those people benefiting from a peerage and those involved in the process either hold legislative positions, or previously did, it is too important to our democratic process to leave in doubt."
The difference between journalists 'buying' information and the political elite 'buying' honours is?

While our politicians navel-gaze, worrying about their pension contributions, trying to change the expenses system yet again, hacking of their phones, on their doorstep yet outside their peripheral vision Armageddon awaits with a second bail-out for Greece and Bank of America set to declare bankruptcy, with the country from whence that bank gets its name likely to follow.

How has our nation sunk to such a rotten state of affairs? It is perhaps due to the current political system in which the Lib/Lab/Con seem not to have any idea of governance other than Yah! Boo! Sucks!, coupled with a mafia like control of the parties by their leaders, a whipping system that would put any dominatrix to shame and MPs who put party above country.

It would perhaps benefit all members of the politcal world to remember:
"What is more important: my principles or my party? And if you can't honestly say that it's your principles, then you need to know that one of the gravest, most insidious heaps of rotten decay in the body politic looks at you in the mirror each day."

8 comments:

kenomeat said...

Principles or party? I'm in the middle of reading "The Lives of Enoch Powell" by Patrick Cosgrave and if any politician can be held up as an example of putting principles before party, indeed of putting his constituents before party, then it is J Enoch Powell. I admired him as a young voter in the 1970s and I still revere his memory. Apologies for the hero-worship but a truly brilliant man who should have been prime minister.

PeterCharles said...

"How has our nation sunk to such a rotten state of affairs?

Quite simply Great Britain 'died' after WW2. As did nearly all of Europe we adopted the social democratic model of government; regulation of industry and capital and expanding welfarism, a policy all the main political parties and the Establishment embraced with enthusiasm. Even the USA has become social democratic although few of them actually realise it yet.

Although many blame the EU, in reality it is a construct of the overarching social democratic ethos that pervades the European Establishments, a result not a cause, of sd and our Establishment elites embrace it because it fits so well within their prejudice.

Britain's ills are a consequence of the sd system. Tax is too high because sd is very costly and exclusively uses public money (taxes) to fund it; violence and immigration are endemic in our society (I am not saying they necessarily go hand in hand although there are obvious connections) because sd concentrates on rights and ignores responsibilities and so encourages dysfunctional families and society; high unemployment is a consequence because sd has welfarism as its central plank which also encourages a dysfunctional society and makes living on benefits a viable choice (which is why more than 8 million Britons of working age don't); all the regulatory and PC crap acerbates non-competitiveness; there is too much law and regulation because the welfare and the social engineering aspects of sd can only function if it is highly bureaucratic, highly regulatory and imposes tight control and has big government to run it all. Finally inflation and high prices are also partly created by almost everything sd requires, regulation, tax, big government and so on.

That said, the sd model can work, in the short term at least, look at Germany, but she is the exception and even she is starting to show cracks. France and the Nordic countries are often held up as other good examples but they really aren't.

The biggest fault in sd, and the one we suffer from particularly, is that governmental incompetence does far greater damage than in probably any other political system outside of communism simply because it has its fingers in every imaginable national and societal pie. Sadly only Margaret Thatcher's government showed any degree of competence and that was patchy at best and probably more by accident than design.

TomTom said...

the sd model can work, in the short term at least, look at Germany,

Which Germany ? Since the collapse of the GDR the most successful German Republic (1949-1990) has been fraught with huge debt and falling living standards.......in the 1970s Helmut Schmidt noted that Germany had ceased to pay down Debt but was rapidly spending its way to bankruptcy........Social Democrats did not form a Government in Germany until 1969 after 3 years in Coalition 1966-69

TomTom said...

Bank of America shareholders were shafted by Paulson and took on Merrill Lynch wiping out share capital....there are similarities with Lloyds/HBOS

WitteringsfromWitney said...

k: You should read that by Simon Heffer which is consider the be the definitive version.

PC: Well said, athough I would defer to TT's greater knowledge of matters of German history, a subject I have not followed in any depth

TomTom said...

Social Democracy isn't all bad. Germany's RICHEST political party is the SPD.....take a look at their cruise liner (used for conferences)

Princess Daphne


The FDP only have castles in Spain.......taxpayer funding is wonderful

WitteringsfromWitney said...

TT: Dont understand German language, but I think I get the messsage!

TomTom said...

2012 the SPD will start marketing their Cruise Ship and develop a business arm providing Cruises.....they are already one of the largest publishing groups in Germany