I heard quite a bit about little government during the US election, and now during the UK's annual party shindigs I'm hearing a lot more. Everyone, we're led to believe, wants small government.
No they don't.
Certainly everyone thinks they want small government. They don't want these people interfering in their lives, and small government will obviously cost less so our taxes can come down (Yeah, right). In reality 'The government should do/have done something' is one of the most frequent phrases seen on news and documentary programmes. It seems that we all want small government until it affects us, then we think it should be slightly bigger so it could have "Done something."
I have, just lately, noticed a variation in this. None labourites are now inclined to say "George Brown should have done something". This is because polls show that Brown is less popular than his party, so they are aiming all their allegations of mismanagement at the man himself. Come the revolution all spin-doctors will be put up against the wall if I have any say in it...
Meanwhile, I kid you not, there has been a tragic, and surely preventable, loss of life in Scotland where two young girls have committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the river below. Someone from vox-pop has just said on the radio "Someone should have done something. What are the government doing?"
So Gordon Brown has just made his make or break speech and early opinions are, well... Not very invigorating to be honest.
They basically ran the gamut from "That's what he always says" to "That's what they all say." I'm guessing you can guess the political slant of the responders by which reply they go for.
The reason for this dearth of constructive critique is that the newspapers haven't come out yet. Tomorrow nearly everyone will have an opinion, and for a frighteningly high percentage of them it will be based upon what their choice of 'paper has to say. And Britain's favourite daily is The Sun.
In other words Rupert Murdoch will be dictating how people will eventually vote in the next election.
That's not my opinion, by the way, it's the opinion of The Sun itself, and of the politicians who woo the Murdoch clan at every available opportunity. Which I find a little frightening. The thing is, all newspapers are registered as such, it gives them certain privileges. To me, any 'paper which publishes opinions as news should lose that registration, opinions should be kept to the opinion columns.
Meanwhile I can but exhort the Sun's 10 million readers to think for themselves whilst they're admiring page three with one hand. Don't let Rupert Murdoch tell you what to think.
If anyone noticed my several week's absence and wondered why, I just thought I'd mention. I downloaded Opera 10 for Mandriva Linux, and it doesn't work. It doesn't even load. Hence I am writing this on a pretty pink laptop running XP, and I don't like it.
XP that is, not the pretty pink computer, which I shall continue to worship for at least as long as it takes for this to get published...
The original title of this blog was 'Jolly nazis on parade', which I really liked, but I decided that only Randy Newman fans would understand it, so here's a little treat for you so as you'll understand next time. Now while you're enjoying that, dwell upon this little irony.
On the anniversary of D-day, the day the allies launched their final assault on the nazis, the people of Britain are voting for nazis. Indeed, on the results so far it seems a bit like all Europe has been voting for the far right. I suppose we should take some comfort from this. It proves that the ballot box is mightier than the sword, which is probably why certain nations of the world resist it, but it also scares me that there are people out there who obviously think Hitler wasn't entirely wrong.
The prime minister made a pronouncement on Youtube. He gave a brief speech about what he would like done about MP's expenses claims, and in particular the 2nd home claims made by some MPs who fiercely believe that they need a 2nd home closer to the Houses of Parliament even if they only live a few miles away anyhow. The 2nd homes row has reached farcial proportions with multi-houseowner MPs simply claiming the one that's closest to parliament as a second home used for the purpose of parliamentary attendance. Mr. Brown's suggestion was that they do away with the 2nd home subsidy and instead pay all MPs an attendance allowance.
You'd think there's been rioting in the streets. The broadcast media were horrified that the anouncement hadn't been made via them but via an internet website that people actually access sometimes. The print media were even more up in arms, not of course because this means that anyone can access exactly what the PM said simply by logging on, no, it was... er... to be honest they didn't seem to know why they were against it, or as they reported it, the whole of Britain was against it.
Of course the fact that the item was freely available rather than being run through the mouthpieces of Rupert Murdoch or the Barclay Brothers and their ilk first may have no small bearing upon the matter.
But what of the proposal? One of the PM's comments was "It's time that MPs realised that they are here to serve the people, not to serve themselves." It would seem that the majority of MPs didn't see things that way. To hear them protest you imagine that they were being besieged by their constituents, insisting that they continue to look after their own needs first. And the very idea of being paid for turning up to work! The people would be in open rebellion if that one was to go through, apparently. "No, no, no!" they almost chorused as they searched through their mail for someone, anyone, who didn't think that it was a good idea to pay them for turning up for work.
The reason for their reluctance to pass this measure was revealed as the news cameras pulled back at the close of the days business.
I guess there was always an assumed special relationship between the US and the UK although the first time my attention was drawn to it was by the reports of a certain 'sexual tension' between Thatcher and Reagan, it kinda faded during Bush the firsts 4 years but Clinton seemed to get on OK with us, in fact he was of serious help in solving the 'Irish problem'.
Strangely, when Clinton was replaced by Bush II the special relationship seemed even stronger. Where you would have expected them to be like two magnets of reverse polarity Bush and Blair actually became almost as one. It was special relationship at first sight.
Now great store is being placed upon the fact that Brown was the first European leader to be 'phoned by Obama, and, get this, he was also the first leader to be contacted by Obama for something other than necessity! Oh good grief... Today (Technically yesterday I guess, it's getting late), just to be on the safe side, Miliband and Clinton got together to reaffirm the special relationship, live and in living colour on TV in your gaff.
Oh yes, and the US government has told a British court that if certain details concerning a Brit currently residing in a detentionary hotel situated in Guantanamo Bay Cuba are revealed during the course of proceedings, they will break off all sharing of intelligence with Britain, which would probably hurt us a lot more than them, since they seem to ignore us except when we're offering them a load of bilge that they need as an excuse to invade Iraq.
I wonder if Miliband and Clinton chatted about it before going public with their celebration of the special relationship.
Me, I can see the possibility that there may be a similarity in the ambitions of the 1st and 4th wealthiest nations in the world, but I have another theory for the special relationship.
A member of parliament got arrested and questioned for 9 hours. He was suspected of being involved in a breach of the official secrets act, but as he was a member of the opposition, the leader of the opposition felt it necessary to go on TV this morning complaining that it wasn't fair to arrest one of his guys, the last time his party was in power people were leaking information about his party to the opposition he said.
He's apparently forgotten that people weren't only arrested for that, someone got sent to jail for it...
Back in the days of the Thatcher (I used to call her a madwoman, but now she has dementia it's not PC to call her that any more. There's ironic for you. And I was right all along... ) unemployment quadrupled and the Labour Party urged the Conservatives to spend the money that they were wasting on unemployment benefit on buying jobs so that the people could earn the money and produce product, the Conservatives resisted this, they felt that that way socialism lay, and that it would be better to give more money to the rich so that they could either set up new businesses and employ people or at the very least spend it. Instead they simply trousered it.
So bearing that in mind the Conservatives are now urging the New Labour Party to spend the money that they're wasting on unemployment benefit upon buying jobs so that the people can earn the money and produce product. New Labour are, however, resisting their exhortations, believing that that way Old Labour lies. Instead they feel that it would be better to cut taxes to put money in the hands of the people which they may then go out and spend. Of course tax cuts always favour the rich, and as they have already demonstrated, whatever they do do with it, they won't spend it...
Meanwhile, for years now the Conservatives have been claiming that the only reason New Labour's monetory policy was so successfull was that they were simply continuing with the Tory's monetory policy, conveniently forgetting that while they were in power the country was simply going through a seemingly endless session of depression - slump - depression - slump. Now that the New Labour miracle has expired and we are heading back into depression again, instead of saying "See? We knew this would happen if you kept on following our monetory policies", the Conservatives are saying they would have done things differently.
The only thing I know for sure is that whoever is in, the money's going to be shovelled at the rich and it's going to be the ordinary working stiff who's expected to pay for it.
I just heard on the news that we're now in the worst slump we've been in since 1987. So there I was, all prepared for the usual accusions from one lot of politicians and the excuses from the other lot.
Nothing. Silence. Just comment from people in the city and the resident news dept. talking heads.
It took me a little while to work it out but now I think I've got it.
In 1987 this lot were the other lot (If you catch my drift...).
Things are more like they are today than they have ever been before.
I don't understand it, although it may go some way towards explaining Robert Mugabwe's instability. He's called us Zimbabwe's number one enemy.
Why pick on us? the rest of the world all pick on the USA. They're everyone's number one enemy, we just lag around in their wake.
Inspired by this placing, George Brown leapt into action and told the world - well, the bits of it who were listening in preference to calling the USA their number one enemy again - that they should... erm... do something.
Mugabwe quaked, but this may have had more to do with the fact that South Africa had intercepted a shipment of arms bound for Zimbabwe from China where, upon their arrival, they would almost certainly have been used to show anyone who hadn't voted for Mugabwe the error of their ways.
Mugabwe once stated that it was not the British who brought democracy and one man - one vote to Zimbabwe, it was he and his party. It would seem that he and his party have now, despite this democracy, lost the recent election.
) unemployment quadrupled and the Labour Party urged the Conservatives to spend the money that they were wasting on unemployment benefit on buying jobs so that the people could earn the money and produce product, the Conservatives resisted this, they felt that that way socialism lay, and that it would be better to give more money to the rich so that they could either set up new businesses and employ people or at the very least spend it. Instead they simply trousered it.
WIDGETIZE