Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
http://gu.com/p/4gh6aWhat a shitshow of cronyism and cynical bribery politics. You can't possibly tell me with a straight face that those are the councils worst affected by the welfare cuts.
Agreed. Makes you sick, doesn't it?
As I said at the Cottage, politicians are dicks by default, nepotism and cynicism is rife. At least in the old days there would have been at least some attempt to dress this up, but now? Shit. Does anyone bat an eyelid at this - or even care beyond the apathy of
The X Factor or some "box set" or other...? If 2 million people on the streets pre-Iraq made not one whit of difference, what chance would getting miffed about "mere" stuff like this have? Yeah, call me a tired, cynical old bastard - and you'd be right - but y'know, "meh" etc. It ain't changing.
For me, the best we can hope for is, notwithstanding shit like this, at least run the economy right - to give the rest of us at least a chance to make good. Back in 2008/9, Cavey inc. very nearly went down the tubes (and would've done were it not for a very lucky, large contract that could not be pulled, which saw us through the worst times). Now, whatever you or anyone else protests to the contrary, in the face of all evidence and third party appraisals from the likes of the IMF etc., the economic weather in the UK at least - in stark contrast to many other places - gives SMEs like us at least *a chance*. That's what we (i.e. business) vote Tory for, notwithstanding there are many, many things that I/we loathe and would do different, and feel like a good scrub after coming out of the voting booth.
With you and your ilk, it truly seems to me that you vote/think the way you do because it "feels right", even though the outcomes - time and again - point otherwise. Consider the alternative to this Tory administration that you loathe so completely and fervently (and the sort of antics like this, which we both deplore). That alternative: Labour.
Tell me, was there ever a more useless, more inept, more cynical administration in the UK? I mean, do I have to spell out, yet again, not only the catastrophic economic and legacy failures and missed opportunities of where we were in 1997 and where we ended up in 2008/10? And please, since we're being really honest with each other, don't give me all that "it was the world wot dunnit guv" bullshit; we all know just how big a chunk "London" (The City) was, and still is, in respect of the total that is this [finance/banking] "world" - and whose job it was to properly regulate and ameliorate risks from this very large chunk of this "world". (Then there are, of course, the countless other billions pissed away on failed projects, public sector pay rises, foreign wars off the back of lies etc., but we've done many of these to death too).
I suppose one acid test was Margaret Thatcher and her recent death. A divisive figure, certainly; the very mention of her name seems to send people like you,
etc. into paroxisms of hatred, however bizarre that is to me, as someone who was there in 1979 and remembers, first hand, how utterly hopeless your average Brit felt at that time as against a backdrop of union shits metaphorically slashing the seats and doing us all down in one final act of mindless and endlessly stupid political and economic vandalism. I have to remember that for many of you guys this is simply unimaginable; I remind myself the same thing when listening to that animated little twerp Owen Jones who looks about 18 and three-quarters. Late 1970s Bankrupt Britain might as well have been on a different planet to today's UK, for all its problems.
When Thatcher died, notwithstanding all the terrible things that people like you say she did to ordinary folk; yet it was these ordinary rank and file Brits, not Lords and Ladies, who lined those streets. Yes there were bonfires in Scotland (I'd expect nothing less; just
look at their so-called 'grievomax' chip-on-shoulder politics
now, makes Greece's political arena look like Finland's), but no-one is ever going to tell me that many people - myself included - did not revere her for what we think and know she did, pulling us back from Labour's/the Union's precipice where no-one else would, nor could.
So then, who will mourn Blair's death when it comes? Hah! Thatcher is/was divisive, but he's surely
universally reviled and utterly loathed. There he is, Labour's "most successful" leader of all time, who never had to make so much as a fraction of one percent of the kind of decisions that Thatcher had to do back in 1979. He had it all: and just look what he did with it, says it ALL. Be careful what you wish for and be mindful of the alternatives, eh; grass greener, much? (As for Brown, well, he might not be hated as much but pretty much everyone agrees he was absolutely hopeless).
So yeah, anyway. Where am I going with this; dunno really, I guess I'm saying shit like this is going to happen either way, so we might as well have economic competency with it, to at least give ordinary schmucks like you and me half a chance? From where I'm standing there is no moral high ground here, because politics/political parties stink.