Clegg: a different galaxy

Nick Clegg must by now be wishing that he hadn't joined the political club who's motto must surely be: "I so wish I hadn't said that." From the Daily Telegraph and an article in which it is reported that Clegg is demanding a 'typhoon tax':

".......It makes people so incredibly angry when you are getting up early in the morning, working really hard to try and do the right thing for your family and for your community, you are paying your taxes and then you see people literally in a different galaxy who are paying extraordinarily low rates of tax."

And which galaxy would that be, one can but wonder. The one in Brussels whereby one can enjoy a short working week, low taxation, free schooling for your children, generous pensions and allowances; or the one in Westminster that provides cheap food and drink, that pays what is a ridiculously high salary for little, if any, productivity and where honour and principle have been left at the door?


Damian Thompson, in his normal Daily Telegraph Saturday comment piece, reckons that the 'middle middle' are lost to the Tories. Condemning Cameron and Osborne as 'toffs' and whether they will be smirking at us 'underlings', Thompson ends:

"Come election day, an awful lot of retired men in blazers will be enjoying a leisurely game of golf rather than ferrying old ladies to the polling station. When they reach the 19th hole, they’ll pour themselves a G and T and say: “Looks like Labour will get back in, doesn’t it?” And then they’ll shrug their shoulders and go back to talking about cruise holidays or some other subject that our one-term Prime Minister finds amusingly common."

 Raedwald has an amusing post on the subject of the Guardian article - which in turn refers to the paper published by Goodwin and Evans, which I mentioned in a previous post - about what he terms "equating UKIP, the EDL and the BNP as part of a shared 'armed rising' fantasy". Referring to Ukip supporters, Raedwald ends:

"He's not an Enemy of the State, a dangerous radical, a subversive, or any of the filthy things the Guardian may want to term him in its nasty little campaign of vilification. To dun Chesterton's words, smile at him, pay him, pass him but do not quite forget England's full of such good men who haven't spoken yet."

Unlike Damian Thompson, who mentions he has to yet meet Cameron, I have on a number of occasions and I have to admit that it would be difficult to meet a more pleasant and well-mannered individual. However I would readily agree that beneath the veneer of pleasantness there appears to lurk another characteristic, one that can best be summed up with the word 'patronising'. In the use of that word lies a certain amount of truth when the deficits in our democracy are raised. Observe any politician and the 'presence' that they bring with them, one which immediately conveys an impression of not being one of us, of being 'special'. Did not Eric Joyce intimate he could not be touched because he was an MP? Of course Clegg believes he is special as he appears able to see into other galaxies - yet he is not that special in that he is unable to see what is happening less than two hundred miles distant.


That in 2015, or maybe earlier, through the apathy of the electorate he who Thompson refers to as a one-time prime minister may be kicked out only to let back in another bunch of self-serving 'specials' - and the same ones who created the present mess we find ourselves - speaks not a great deal for our system of democracy, a system that allows them to act as an elective dictatorship. Neither does it say much for the electorate who, spending most of their time complaining about the status quo, bother not to ask themselves if an alternative, better, system exists ie, is there a better way?


There are those who will maintain that we can rid ourselves of the Lib/Lab/Con parasites, at the ballot box, by favouring Ukip, a party that has leanings towards direct democracy with their promise of the introduction of referendums. It would perhaps help were we able to be certain that this is the case - unfortunately their latest manifesto is far from clear on that point. Ukip also seem typically vague on their recall mechanism too. When the choice of where to cast your vote is concerned, one can but recall  the words of Nigel Farage: "You can't get a cigarette paper between them".