Saboteur? Moi?

So. Apparently I'm a saboteur now. Quite extraordinary. And yes, if that's how you want to frame it Mrs May, yes I am.
Do you know what else? I never have been one before. I've been through my share of elections and referendums and usually found myself out-voted - I think I've picked the winning side once. And I've never resisted an outcome before. Funnily enough, I DO understand how democracy works. And you know what? This is not it.
Democracy is destroyed if voting is based on lies. If we can't be sure that manifestos and election promises will turn into real policy, or that facts trotted out on the campaign trail are not actually just made-up nonsense, then what, pray, is the purpose of this business of voting?
It's awfully expensive to run an election. It's a huge waste of time. And as we've seen, it is potentially horribly divisive. So, might I suggest that if you don't want to base political decisions on truth, consistency and promises honoured, that we do away with the ballot box altogether and you just flip a coin in Westminster to decide who wins?
And while we're on the subject of cost, I looked it up. To avoid left-wing bias, I checked The Sun, which tells me this totally unecessary election is expected to cost £113 million. I guess that's a drop in the ocean next to the £60 billion that the Brexit divorce might cost. But these are all eye-watering sums. If we have this sort of money lying around down the back of the sofa in the Cabinet Office, why are we continuing this austerity nonsense? I thought the country was too poor to pay nurses and doctors and teachers and police and other public sector workers a decent wage? I thought we couldn't afford books and basic equipment for schools? I thought we had to put up with potholes in the roads because we're broke?
Nothing adds up, Mrs May. Nothing. And in the famous but unattributed quote, "when injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty".
If you'd let me give up the saboteur thing I'd be awfully grateful. I'm way too busy for this rubbish. But you're really not giving me much wiggle room.
ps you do know that "crush the saboteurs" is a Lenin thing don't you? What a lovely aspiration.

 No automatic alt text available.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brexit Apathy

“The death of democracy...will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.” These words of Robert M Hutchins seem rather pertinent to our current situation. Every day I ask myself again whether it's time to “let it go” and accept Brexit. And every time I ask that question, two big issues rise up to block the way. The first is the unbelievably cavalier way in which the individuals most affected by this are being treated – the EU nationals who live in the UK and the UK nationals who live in other EU countries. We have, as the saying goes, thrown them under a bus. And when you consider the stir caused this week by CCTV footage of a London jogger doing exactly that to a woman on the pavement, it brings home what a shocking analogy it is. As long as the politicians insist on playing games of chess with real peoples' lives, there will be millions of us who dig in our heels and say “unacceptable”. The second big stumbling block to accepting the out...
Read more

Windrush - twig or branch?

I can't stop thinking about the so-called Windrush scandal. I say so-called, because I think there's a danger that we have got hold of the wrong end of the stick if this is 'only' about the Windrush generation. Or rather, we have grabbed firmly on to the twig, but if we run with that, it will snap away, leaving the main branch, the bigger point, unmoved. Don't get me wrong - the Windrush scandal is certainly shocking. The way individuals have been treated correlates with my definition of criminal. But these individual cases are but twigs from a thicker branch of systemic hostility to "the other". If we allow ourselves to be focused on individual cases, we allow Theresa May and the Government and, in fact, ourselves, off the hook. If the concern is that person A is deported in error, an apology can be made, decisions reversed and even, potentially, compensation made. And there the story dies, with no hint of "lessons having been lear...
Read more

Brexit - Secret Option Number Three

There's talk of riots if Brexit doesn't go ahead. It's hard to know whether this is a serious possibility – a proposed protest at the Supreme Court in December was hastily cancelled at the last minute when barely a few dozen showed any interest. But let's just for a moment assume it is a real and credible possibility. The prevailing narrative over-simplifies the choice – implement the result of the referendum or don't. Implement it and cause certain impoverishment to our nation. Ignore it, and risk riots and undermining the cause of democracy. But why is our vision so narrow? What if there is a secret option number three? There are five Ws that help us get to the bottom of a story – What? When? Who? Where? And Why? The first four are essentially fact-based and are in themselves often rather dull. They are answered easily enough with regard to the referendum result. The interesting question is the last one – “why”. And over a year later, we are still no clearer...
Read more