bygjohn's blog

Having just heard Any Questions, whereon Vince Cable started spouting about legislation to outlaw the right to strike in what he called "key public services", that's put the final nail in the coffin regarding the possibility of me voting LibDem as I have for the last decade. Largely on the basis of them being the least worst option, admittedly: I've been increasingly turned off them anyway by their seemingly uncritical swallowing of the global warming Kool-Aid, as the Left-Pondians would say.

Having ruled Labour out since that party political broadcast with the bulldog in 1997 (AKA: "we'll do/say anything to get into power and keep it once we have it: principles, we've heard of them…"), and that having been reinforced by their appalling control-freakery and Big Brother attacks on our liberties (using any handy excuse to push them through: terrorism, paedophiles behind every bush yada yada) and their systematic determination to do nothing about repairing the damage of the Thatcher years, and having been reminded of why the Tories aren't an option by Cameron's recent foaming-at-the-mouth knee-jerk anti-people spewings re the BA strike, that leaves me with none of the major parties for whom I could stomach voting.

People died to get me the right to vote, and I've always taken that really seriously and voted whenever I've had the opportunity. But this time round I really have no idea how to vote.

What I could really do with is a party that actually puts people first. That means (in no particular order, and it's by no means a comprehensive list):

• Supporting workers rather than employers if the latter are being abusive/intransigent/bullying/greedy.
• Ensuring that all employers either provide a proper final salary pension scheme or pay contributions into an equivalent state earnings-related scheme.
• Ensuring that all employers who have taken any contribution holidays from their pension schemes in the last 20 years have all trading in their shares stopped and all shareholder dividends sequestered until those contributions have been repaid in full with interest. Shareholders were happy enough to take the money and run during the good times: now they can share the pain during straightened times. Similar arrangements should apply to public sector employers with respect to repaying those contributions. Suddenly most pension schemes would become a whole lot healthier…
• Incorporating European legislation that benefits workers, eg shorter working week, employment protection etc, making our workers as hard to dump as workers in other countries.
• Preventing hostile takeovers, especially by foreign companies, and even more so by non-European companies. Kraft, for example…
• Ensuring that companies are run so that shareholders get dividends only after the interests of customers, workers and investment have been given priority, instead of being run into the ground, workers sacked and customers ripped off in the name of "shareholder value".
• Supporting consumers rather than big business eg over copyright issues and the antics of the media companies.
• Respecting people's privacy by limiting the state's and big business's ability to monitor communications, keep dossiers on us, track our movements etc without a warrant from an independent judge, and ensuring any collected data (eg ANPR) is deleted within a very short time.
• Making law enforcement get a warrant for DNA samples, and forbid the keeping of DNA profiles of innocent people.
• Preventing businesses from ripping off our private data so they can peddle crap at us/exploit us etc.
• An education system that produces well-rounded independent-thinking intelligent people rather than corporate drones for big business.
• Ensuring that businesses do their own training instead of expecting the education system to do it for them at taxpayers' expense. Remember college (and other) apprenticeships etc? "Employability" and expecting school, college and university leavers to be job-ready is a recent fabrication by companies which have been hijacked by bean-counting chisellers. The sort who get rid of research departments because they aren't "profitable", so the company goes tits up later on as it has no new products to sell.
• Bringing back into public ownership the utility companies (thereby getting rid of the fake "competition" with which people are suckered into wasting their time comparing complex tariffs, when in fact they are all selling the same stuff so over time the costs even out anyway) and the public transport system (so it can be properly co-ordinated and cross-subsidised to ensure everyone gets a good enough service to make using it more of a practical proposition).
• Ensuring the right to free speech, freedom of expression and freedom from censorship, with legislation ensuring that the tabloid press and religious/moral interfering busybodies can't dictate what the rest of us can see/read/watch/do as long as it doesn't involve abuse. With a very tight definition of abuse and a recognition that if it's consensual between adults it per se can't be abusive. If you choose to live your life by a restrictive code due to your religion or whatever, that's fine by me. Just don't think you have the right to make anyone else live by your chosen restrictions. And that includes your family if they choose to think differently to you and exercise their freedom to think for themselves.
• Ensuring businesses pay for their own mistakes, instead of making taxpayers pay more, public sector workers earn less and everyone work till they die before they can retire.
• Ensuring that where science disagrees with ideology/tabloid hysteria, science wins, eg drug classification.

Knock on my door with a manifesto similar to that, or at least one that explicitly takes as its basis that people come before business and the state, with nothing nasty hidden in the small print, and I might have less trouble at the ballot box.