I watched this video of the demonstrators outside the English parliament building tonight with mixed feelings.
I deplore (I really mean that) violence of any kind and I’ve spent my life trying to avoid it and discourage other people from it, but I guess sometimes you have to ask yourself, what else is there to do?
We live in a dem
ocracy, people say, so what you do is you wait till the next elections and you vote for the other lot. (Of course the other lot is just as useless and have almost identical policies so that’s a bit of a non starter.)
But what if you have a situation where one of the parties voted into government said that they would not do ‘something’. In fact they said that to do even half of that ‘something’ would be a disaster, never mind the whole thing. They even went so far as to sign a pledges not to do this “something”. They achieved a deal of publicity about swearing and promising that they would not do this ‘something’.
Then, lo and behold, and quite unexpectedly, they found themselves in government, with flashy cars, and massive offices; with staff bowing and scraping; with people calling them “Minister”, or “Secretary”, or, in one case, “Deputy Prime Minister” and every principle they ever ha
d went flying out of the big posh office windows.
And what of this pledge that they had trotted around every university town in England? What of the photographs in the local press the length and breadth of the country? Well, at the first sniff of the Ministers’ Dining Room Wine List, they scrunched it up and dropped it into the ministerial waste paper bin to be emptied by the ministerial lackey.
So... what’s the option? Wait till the next election? Vote for the person who signs a pledge to repeal the law? Take the word of the prospective MP?
Huh?
What happens if he too drops his pledge into the ministerial waste paper bin as soon as he is comfortably ensconced in his ministerial armchair?
Peaceful protest is fine, indeed it’s right, except that this far from an election no one pays an
y attention to it.
The only time that the people in England have managed a change in the government’s policy was when they turned London upside down over Thatcher’s Poll Tax. The government listened then, just like the French government does.
Do you see where we are going with this? It’s not a pleasant picture, is it? But what is the alternative?
Tonight there will be arrests, but the real criminals will ride out of the building with their fat, self satisfied, lying bottoms on the rich upholstery of a ministerial car paid for by us, safe in the knowledge that they had their university education for free. Paid for by us!
Fair? Thought not.
Pics: (1) Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Ex-Saint Vince laughing it off, after all he got his car and his office...and his doctorate; (2) Fires near the Westminster parliament. It will soon be the only way many of us can keep warm; (3) His magnificence Charlie and Mrs Parker Whatist’s car was hit by missiles and daubed with pain as they tried to get to the theatre. I can just hear his “ghastly people”. Don’t worry Chic, the feeling is mutual. Nice car by the way. Who paid for it? (4) Nick the Dick doing an advertisement for furniture polish. It’s clearly the only kind of pledge he knows.
I deplore (I really mean that) violence of any kind and I’ve spent my life trying to avoid it and discourage other people from it, but I guess sometimes you have to ask yourself, what else is there to do?
We live in a dem
ocracy, people say, so what you do is you wait till the next elections and you vote for the other lot. (Of course the other lot is just as useless and have almost identical policies so that’s a bit of a non starter.)But what if you have a situation where one of the parties voted into government said that they would not do ‘something’. In fact they said that to do even half of that ‘something’ would be a disaster, never mind the whole thing. They even went so far as to sign a pledges not to do this “something”. They achieved a deal of publicity about swearing and promising that they would not do this ‘something’.
Then, lo and behold, and quite unexpectedly, they found themselves in government, with flashy cars, and massive offices; with staff bowing and scraping; with people calling them “Minister”, or “Secretary”, or, in one case, “Deputy Prime Minister” and every principle they ever ha
d went flying out of the big posh office windows.And what of this pledge that they had trotted around every university town in England? What of the photographs in the local press the length and breadth of the country? Well, at the first sniff of the Ministers’ Dining Room Wine List, they scrunched it up and dropped it into the ministerial waste paper bin to be emptied by the ministerial lackey.
So... what’s the option? Wait till the next election? Vote for the person who signs a pledge to repeal the law? Take the word of the prospective MP?
Huh?
What happens if he too drops his pledge into the ministerial waste paper bin as soon as he is comfortably ensconced in his ministerial armchair?
Peaceful protest is fine, indeed it’s right, except that this far from an election no one pays an
y attention to it.The only time that the people in England have managed a change in the government’s policy was when they turned London upside down over Thatcher’s Poll Tax. The government listened then, just like the French government does.
Do you see where we are going with this? It’s not a pleasant picture, is it? But what is the alternative?
Tonight there will be arrests, but the real criminals will ride out of the building with their fat, self satisfied, lying bottoms on the rich upholstery of a ministerial car paid for by us, safe in the knowledge that they had their university education for free. Paid for by us!
Fair? Thought not.
Pics: (1) Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Ex-Saint Vince laughing it off, after all he got his car and his office...and his doctorate; (2) Fires near the Westminster parliament. It will soon be the only way many of us can keep warm; (3) His magnificence Charlie and Mrs Parker Whatist’s car was hit by missiles and daubed with pain as they tried to get to the theatre. I can just hear his “ghastly people”. Don’t worry Chic, the feeling is mutual. Nice car by the way. Who paid for it? (4) Nick the Dick doing an advertisement for furniture polish. It’s clearly the only kind of pledge he knows.
