DJ Egg's Blog : UK Politics

8th January 2014

Okay, so I'm a firm believer of "people rule" and "true democracy",
which seems very unlikely to ever happen in the UK, or any other country these days...

In the UK, we're now 4 years into the current coalition government's 5 year term.

For those outside the UK who don't know, the coalition government was formed
between the (center right) Conservative (Tory) & (center) Liberal Democrat parties.
For 13 years prior, the (center left) Labour party was in government, led by Tony Blair (who won 3 consecutive general elections).
In 2007, Tony Blair stood down as leader. The popular belief being that he was forced out by then chancellor Gordon Brown,
who subsequently became leader and inherited the position of Prime Minister.

Blair was a fairly popular PM, winning 3 elections, though his stance over the Iraq war
is probably what led to him becoming more unpopular and his eventual downfall.
Gordon Brown was never really that popular.
In the 2008 local elections, Labour lost a heap load of seats.
The people sent a clear message to Gordon Brown that they didn't want him as PM.
Did he listen? Absolutely not.
He continued with imposing his vision of the nanny state, becoming more and more unpopular.
Another one of the reasons why he was unpopular was the way he dropped his jaw at the end of every sentence...
but I digress...
People were calling for Brown to stand down and let the much more popular David Miliband in.
Labour supporters believed DM was the man who could win them the next General Election in 2010, and they were probably right.
Or at the very worst, we could've had a coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems instead.
The last thing the country needed was the Tories back in power, after 13 rightful years in the wilderness.

Then came the credit crunch of 2008 followed by the global economic downturn and recession.
Gordon Brown pumped billions into the economy to bail out the banks and stimulate growth.
The recovery seemed to be working...
We came out of recession, but at a fairly heavy price.
The budget deficit and national debt were at the highest since WW2.
But Brown's belief was that as long as there's growth then the deficit will take care of itself.
Besides, the national debt isn't something new.
We've had such an ever-increasing national debt for a few centuries now... but that's another story...

However, during the 2010 election campaign, the already unpopular Brown suffered a few more setbacks.
For instance, he was caught badmouthing some local woman without realising his mic was still on,
and some government minister left a document or CD on a train which held the private details of thousands of credit card customers.
We all knew he was going to lose the election.
His own stubbornness and refusal to swallow his pride led to his downfall.
The Tories got 36% of the vote (which equates to less than 20% of the population),
and they formed a coalition government with the Lib Dems, who came third.
Brown resigned, and the Labour Party chose Ed Miliband as their new leader, instead of his much more popular brother, David.
A very curious choice indeed.

Now it's always been Tory policy to conserve, save, cut cut cut...
Within months of coming into power, the Tories undid whatever recovery Gordon Brown had achieved,
effectively wasting all the multi-billion pounds from those stimulus packages, and the country fell into a double-dip recession.
The Tories basically used the deficit as an excuse to bring in their austerity policies.

The Tories somehow believe that if they shut down public services and move them into the private sector,
that this will somehow break the unions and weaken support for the Labour Party.
Because yes, that sure worked for them last time, didn't it?!
In their previous tenure (1979-1997), on top of presiding over the Hillsborough, Stephen Lawrence, Jimmy Savile,
Jersey & North Wales children's homes, sleaze gate (and god knows how many other) scandals/cover-ups,
they shut down the coal mines and shipyards, ruined the British Car (Leyland) & Steel industries,
privatised the Water, Gas, Electric, Phone, Bus & Train services (prices which have quadrupled since),
not only did they still manage to add £300BN to the national debt...
they also managed to lose the 1997 election by a considerable margin.

Alas, they will never learn.

Tory policy can be summed up in one sentence:
Make the rich (i.e. us and our friends) richer and everyone else poorer,
then blame the even poorer people for the reason why everyone else is getting poorer.

So now they're introducing their cuts. Cutting billions from welfare, the NHS and other public services.
Punishing the people for a deficit caused by the bankers and their other rich friends.
Who foots the bill? The taxpayer. The people. Not them.
Meanwhile, instead of paying back any of the money from Gordon Brown's bailout packages,
the bankers are still giving themselves massive bonuses, which of course is all our money...
the money deposited into our own personal & business accounts...
You couldn't make it up....

The Tory fascists maintain that everyone receiving benefits are cheats, lazy, worthless idlers who don't deserve being given anything for free.
The truth of the matter being that the vast majority of people receiving benefits are either genuinely disabled,
or genuinely looking for work, but they've either been made redundant due to the recession, or there simply aren't any jobs available.
And a vast bulk of benefit claimants are actually workers who are claiming child or tax credits, because they're on very low wages...
which is probably as a result of the Tories forcing them off sickness benefit or the dole and into cheap labour instead...
Only a very small percentage of benefit claimants are claiming fraudulently.

Besides, it's not like we will be taxed any less even if there's no unemployment...

So... these Tory bully-boys try pass the blame on to the very poorest people.
Divide and rule. Divert attention from the real cause of the problems... themselves!
They will never accept or admit that it's their austerity and other policies to blame for the problems.

And yes, I maintain that these people are fascist bullies.
They are discriminating against pensioners, immigrants, the poor, the disabled, the sick and the unemployed.
That's what fascists and bullies do! The nasty party are well and truly back.
Their attacks are inhumane, criminal, and totally uncalled for! How and why are we letting them get away with it? They need locking up!

The Tories will also continue to maintain that the Labour Party was somehow entirely to blame for the economic problems,
when virtually the whole population (or at least those with half a brain) know that it was a global financial crisis,
caused by bankers and credit companies, which started in the USA and then circulated globally.
If they say it enough times then maybe one or two more numpties will believe them?
These are the type of people running our country....
I guess, if they were in power at the time, the Tories would not have bailed out the banks?
They would have chosen to let thousands of investors/savers lose all their money instead? Right....

They say Brown & Labour should've put something in the pot when times were good, to save for a rainy day.
Well they did! And they used it to bail out the banks and stimulate growth after the global financial crisis.
All of which the Tories undid so they could use it as an excuse to bring in the austerity policies
that they originally came into politics for in the first place.

This coalition government, the bankers, the credit companies and estate agents
got us into this mess and they should be paying it all back, not the people.

Before the Tories got into power, people earning the national average wage
could comfortably get by and still manage to save a little each year.
Since their 4 years in office, the cost of living has almost doubled, but wages have stayed the same.
People are now having to dig into their savings to get by instead.
But the Tories will never admit that there's a cost of living crisis, of their own doing.

Here we have a government making life even harder for everyone. As if life isn't already hard enough!
They're supposed to serve the people, not dictate to them!

In virtually any other country, the people would not stand for such shady government practices.
They would be out on the streets, protesting in their thousands, if not millions.
But not in Britain. It's very unBritish.
People would much rather prefer to stay at home in their ones, twos and threes, moaning and complaining,
but without ever actually getting up off their backsides to do anything about it.
Yes, we have a few demonstrations and small protests/strikes, but nothing really significant enough.
Besides, the Government knows that the weather is mainly so bad here
that people will not be able to organise and execute such a mass protest anyway.

We just can't win. So we tolerate it.
Waiting for the next government to come in and make matters even worse,
to continue with the (now global) neoliberal political system of mass exploitation of the people...

We now live in a country where a person gets sent to prison for 4 years for stealing a pint of milk in the 2011 riots,
but an MP who stole £40,000 in the expenses scandal can simply resign and be back in government 2 years later.

Britain... a land of freedom, democracy, justice, equality and opportunity? Don't believe a word of it!

Apologies for the rant, but these are things that I feel strongly passionate about... corruption, lies, hypocrisy, injustice, bullying...

Thanks for listening.

-Egg