Politics is not about how geeky Ed Milliband is, how arrogant and smarmy Osbourne and Cameron are, how obsequious Clegg or how nutty Farage is. It’s not about how many lies Johnson has told or how corrupt and sleazy Tories are.
Politics is about rights, freedoms, justice, fairness and the law and ethos of the land.
People died so that we all have a vote.
We have a vote so that the tyrants, despots and paranoid sociopaths who seek power can no longer tyrannise us as they have done in the past and are doing in other areas of the world.
In order for democracy to work you need the free and accurate dissemination of information through the media. You need to know what the government is doing in our name. You need to have a say. You need to have an education system that teaches you to think. You have to have religion nowhere near politics. You have to think globally. You have to prevent big business, bankers and multi-nationals controlling politicians and holding the country to ransom. You have to have politicians who have ideals and vision, passion and integrity and who cannot be bought off or controlled.
The judge of how good a system is could be whether it delivers on these things. If there is too much secrecy, fanaticism, disinformation, corruption, coercion, suppression or control then the system is fascist.
Fascism is an abomination that has been responsible for genocides all over the world from 2nd World War Germany, Rwanda to Cambodia.
Fascism comes from the Right, Left or Centre. It is when a powerful leader controls a system with black and white policies, intolerance, and oppression of minorities or opposition groups for the benefit of like-minded people. They control the media, suppress any criticism and use militaristic force to put down dissent.
Woody Guthrie had a sign on his guitar saying ‘This machine kills fascism’.
You kill fascism and fanaticism through education. Fascists are ignorant, arrogant and stupid because they do not understand the stupidity and selfish callousness of their philosophy.
Capitalism fails because of greed and selfishness.
I believe in fairness and justice. I do not think that is unreasonable. I believe that a person should be rewarded a fair amount of pay for a day’s work.
I do not think everyone should be paid the same or there should be uniform standards of living though I do believe in equality.
There are some things that seem so iniquitous that they shriek at me:
Seemingly just 85 people awn assets equivalent to the poorest half of the world. That means that 85 people, who could easily fit into a single small bar, a tube train or bus, own as much of the world as three and a half billion people! That is the equivalent number of people as the whole populations of India, China, Britain, the USA, Indonesia, Germany, Russia, France and Turkey put together!
In Britain it is not quite so bad: 71% of the country is owned by 10% of the people; or put another way 90% of the people get to live off 29% of the country’s land.
What is worrying is the way these super-rich people have accumulated their trillions. Nobody can ‘earn’ that amount of money. The idea is absurd. How could anybody work hard enough or be good enough to earn a million an hour?
Most of these people earn their money by exploiting poor people, getting them to work for a pittance and creaming off the profits. They work globally in order to reduce labour costs and avoid tax. They operate tax scams and manipulate global markets to create more profit. They strip assets from other companies, destroy the environment to get resources out as cheaply as possible, and create poverty. Poverty is necessary to have a work-force to exploit. The third world is destabilised in order to maintain markets. The only criteria is how much money can be made.
There is a whole global ball-game going on at a level beyond the ordinary person’s understanding. We only get a glimpse of the chicanery that goes on behind closed doors as politicians are bought and sold, corruption and baksheesh are everyday tools, threats, war and destabilisation are weapons to be deployed, the media is controlled by the rich with their vested interests and lobby groups control the voting. The money markets are manipulated and ordinary people are pawns in the game.
What happened at Grangemouth recently sums it up. The Billionaire Jim Ratcliffe played brinkmanship with thousands of working people’s livelihoods. He threatened to close the petrochemical works Ineos and take it abroad (where he could exploit poorer people more and scam off more profit) laying off thousands of workers.
Under this callous threat of closure Jim Ratcliffe then pulled in millions of pounds from the government (of our money) and reduced the wages of the workforce, docked their pensions and worsened their working conditions.
Having screwed everyone he promptly bought a new £130 million luxury yacht with crew that reputed costs £10,000 an hour just to sit idle, and bought himself a £5 million mansion in Hampshire, well pleased with his work.
The workers went back to work longer for less and Jim headed out to cruise round the Mediterranean.
This is not jealousy. I do not envy the lifestyle of these people. I am just appalled by the unfairness and the debris of poverty, misery and destruction they leave in their wake.
My only solution, following disillusionment with alternative political systems, such as communism, which prove equally as bad, is to suggest that we move to a more global system where universal laws and systems might prevent this blackmail, create fairness and put an end to inequality and poverty.
Surely we cannot survive much longer if we are ruled by the selfish, greedy super-rich who run the world for their own gain and do not care about people or global consequences?
This system stinks! Anyone got a better one?
We are being controlled!
It is quite apparent that we are all controlled. But we are not necessarily controlled by the institutions we think control us.
Government does not control us – the government is controlled.
The media manipulates us but the media is also manipulated.
Religion controls us and religion is used by powerful forces for their own purposes.
Behind the visible game is another much more odious and evil. The real power lies with the tiny elite who buy off the politicians, lobby to prevent or permit, manipulate our thoughts, feelings and perceptions through the media and utilise the power of religion to manipulate the population.
Our world is so controlled and we are so manipulated that it bec0omes difficult to know what to believe. We are given just enough to stop us rebelling. Every freedom and rise in our living standards had to be fought for and wrested away from the megalomaniacs who run things and want it all. Every freedom has been grudgingly given on the backs of a series of martyrs. Nothing has been achieved without a battle.
The society we live in is maintained in soporific oblivion through soap operas, game shows, sport, alcohol, drugs, Pop music and films – anything to stop us from thinking. Britain has talent – Britain has porn. Britain has the X Factor. Britain hates the French, Germans and immigrants. But I don’t hate anybody. I hate the systems that have been devised to keep us in check. I hate the cultural indoctrination that enables this shoddy, unjust system to be perpetuated. It is cruel, vicious, destructive, violent and unfair.
All I want is love, peace, respect and justice for everybody. I believe in a new positive zeitgeist. Perhaps we can find it at Opher’s World?