A Blue Print For the Next British Government

Next year the UK will face one of the most important elections for decades. An economic crash, unsustainable resources, increasing environmental threats like climate change and a public that no longer trusts their politicians, are just some of the problems facing the next elected government of the United Kingdom.

The coming election will be a tale of two sides, Labour and the Conservatives. What I am asking you in this article, is do you agree with either? And why do we let ourselves, the Great British public, be pigeon-holed into one of two groups for something as important as dictating the very way we can live our lives.

The End Of New Labour

By the next election, 13 years will have passed since New Labour took government in a landslide victory over the Tories. Tony Blair was young, fresh faced and spoke for the people of our nation. 2 more general election wins, 2 wars, a leadership change and a recession later and New Labour (and arguably politics) is in tatters. The recent economic downturn may have bought Labour an extra 12 months in power, but it has certainly thrown out their chances of winning the next election.

Now politically I don’t know how to define myself. I never learnt about politics, I just read the news – live under the effects of political decisions – and make my own opinion based on what I experience. Personally I, like most people in Britain, am pissed off. Mostly because I have never seen anyone in politics that I believe actually stands up for, or appropriately represents the British people. Yet we all live with the decisions of the few people we call our government.

Oh Gordon, are you really that Bad?

Now you can’t blame Gordon Brown for the Credit Crunch like many have. In some ways he is a victim, having been targeted by newspapers so they can sell more papers. What I mean by that is newspapers have purposely sought out to poison public opinion of him, so that the next election wont be another Labour landslide. A closer fight, or a change of government makes for much more interesting news, which in-turn sells much more newspapers. This began happening as soon as Brown took office and it has certainly worked. He is not responsible for the Global Recession. It was a combination of years of stupidity and ignorance from hundreds – maybe thousands of people which lead to the cluster-fuck that has effected us all in some way.

Now don’t get me wrong, Gordon Brown is not an innocent man. Far from it. Labour might have started out with good intentions, but years of prosperity lead them to greed and ignorance. Gordon Brown’s major flaw, was only listening to bankers. Big bankers. Big bankers that manipulated him to make themselves rich at the expense of the public. Now thanks to Gordon we are all in debt, as the country owes over 100 Billion Pounds to foreign lenders. Mr Brown’s biggest failure, was never listening to the public… ever, even when we were screaming at him. In fact, I honestly think he does not care about our opinion at all. He just seems to have his own agenda and we just get in his way.

Key Point 1:

Newspapers will write headlines that they know will make you buy their papers. Always read them with an open mind. There is no guarantee what they are saying is true. Your opinions should be your own. Make up your own mind.

Labour Pains

What really annoys me about Labour’s term in government is the sheer naivety and downright stupidity of some of their decisions and actions. I’m mostly referring to the way they have spent tax payers money. Now I’m not going to rant on about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (or should I say illegal wars). But the fact is, no disrespect to those who have fought and are continuing to fight for us, war costs money. In fact it costs fuck loads of money. Tax Payers Money. So you would think that spending money on wars that in reality effect us in no way, when you could be spending money improving the lives of our citizens rather than taking lives of others, might ring some alarm bells with those who are supposed to be serving our country (politicians not forces).

Wars are far from the only thing Labour has wasted money on. The real hideous failure of Labour has been complete wasteful spending in almost every sector. Decisions have been made by people budgeting for things they don’t fully understand. £3000 per chair to kit out the Ministry of Defense is just one example of the mind numbing stupidity of some of Labour’s spending. When we have a perfect health-care system, perfect travel services, no crime and a green economy… MAYBE THEN tax payers money can be spared to provide government workers with luxury seats. Spending on the NHS is bigger than ever. But when nurses are still working near minimum wage and the standard of health-care is not increasing, where is all the money going?

Key Point 2:

Every single penny of tax payers money should be spent in the most efficient way possible. Any waste is a failure of politics. Until we are living in a utopia, until our health-care is perfect and every public service runs like it should, there should be no money spent of things that are in no way necessary.

The Bad Old Days Days

Politics in general has hit a new low this year. The expenses scandal revealed that most MP’s were scamming the very people that they were supposedly working for. Us. With conservatives claiming our money to pay for their moats and Labour claiming for porn and toilet seats, both parties were guilty. I think it just proved 2 things.

1: politics is severally outdated and old fashioned in this country. It has not moved with the times. The voice of the people is not being heard at all. The people in charge no longer represent our best interests, merely enslaving themselves to business leaders to help boom (and bust) the economy.

2: politicians don’t give a shit about the public. It would have taken 30 seconds for a general member of the public viewing MP’s expenses to realise that it was completely unethical and dishonorable to the British people. But politicians knew what they were doing and did it for years. These people do not represent the people of this nation, at least I hope they don’t.

I wonder what politics would be like if they only earned the minimum wage? Maybe it would filter out the people who are in it for the wrong reasons…

Political Correctness Gone Mad

Onto social issues now, and Labour’s failure of so called “political correctness”. Now I firmly believe that everyone should be treated equally, and everyone has the same rights as everyone else. Labour may have thought they were helping people with political correctness in their term in office, but the reality is they have just removed more freedom than they have given. They nearly passed a law that essentially prevented free speech! They have let immigration run away with itself too. I am all for letting foreign people move to this county, especially if they are escaping a life of poverty. In fact most of them are nicer than most Brits and are far more grateful for how lucky we are compared to most of the people of this world. But the government has too often, in an attempt to be PC, prioritized those from different beliefs and ways of life over others. The reason racist parties such as the BNP are getting more support from the public, is because people feel like the government are putting immigrants before the British people. We all have to be treated equally. You can’t respect the beliefs of one culture and not another. It’s both, or neither.

ASBO Nation

What do you think is the biggest threat to our nation? Climate change? Overpopulation? Terrorism? Not according to the government. They think we, the people are the biggest threat to safety. They have spent far more time and money trying to make us safer from ourselves than they have trying to combat the huge threat of global warming. Anti-social behavior has thrived under the years of Labour ruling. In my opinion, this is directly because of ‘over-protection’ by the government. They have been introducing things that are supposedly to make people safer. Safer from what? Ourselves? They have done this by completely ignoring what makes us happier. Rather than trying to help the young “anti-social” teens of this country, the government has attacked them. They invented the ASBO to restrict their movement, and more than ever have cracked down on petty crime offenders, rather than the causes of petty crime itself. This has lead to a completely despondent and dysfunctional generation.

Crime prosecutions are up. Is that a good thing? Like fuck it is. Our prisons are packed with people that have no where else to go and nothing else to do. Rather than trying to solve the problems that lead people into crime, they have been cracking down on those who have resorted to it. It probably costs more money to keep them in jail than it does to help them, educate them, and give them the guidance they never got when they needed it. You can’t tell someone to do something, to be a better person. You have to make them ‘want’ to do something, and want to be a better person.

Schools Out

Our schools are failing. Young children are being brought up sheltered from the world. The government is scared that exposing them to any negativity would damage them for life and piss off parents. When they reach their teens the first and only authority they meet is that of the law. They are brought up with no respect for authority, life or other people. They don’t even know right from wrong. The government instantly turns on them when they reach their teens, with crappy new rules like ASBOs, which in reality is their false solution to the public’s concern over the so called ‘anti social behaviour’ of our youth. There is no transition, no learning curve. They leave school, get arrested, fail to get a job, then have nothing better to do than have kids in their teens and end up living off the state and never moving from their sofas. This is the norm now. Why? Because our schools and government are failing. Schools and teachers have no authority any more. There is no discipline and no values taught at all. Yeah they may be learning what 2+6 is but they are not learning how to live their lives. The government has become so anal about what can be taught in schools, afraid of pissing anyone off, that these kids are not being taught anything useful.

What are they learning instead? Crime. They are learning crime because the government is making everything they do illegal. Rather than giving them other things to do, or giving them incentive to do good things, we are criminalising them at a young age, familiarising them with crime more than anything else. The government doesn’t speak for the youth. Until it starts respecting them, and giving them responsibility, they will not respect others or act responsibly. It’s that simple.

Key Point 3:

Crime is not the problem. Those committing crime are not the problem. The causes of crime are the problem. The only way to reduce crime is to fix the social problems that are leading young people to crime.

Everything Bad Is Illegal Now…

Finally a good thing right? No. Everything that the government think is bad is illegal. Like I said the government are so concerned about not pissing people off that they are criminalising anything that anyone doesn’t like. I am mainly referring to drugs here. Now I am not defending drugs. Nor am I defending drug users. But the same rule as above applies here. Drugs are not the problem. People taking drugs are not the problem. In this case the problem is that there is no education on drugs in schools.

Teens are going to take drugs! Whether they are illegal or not, it’s inevitable. The problem is they don’t know what they are doing with drugs. Most of the deaths and harm caused by drugs could be prevented if the government had the balls to let teachers talk to youths maturely about drugs. They need to accept the fact the these people are going to take drugs instead of ignoring it. Lives could be saved by telling them how to safely take drugs.

Criminalising new “legal highs” is also futile, as it forces drug makers to carry on making new, untested and more dangerous concoctions to get past the law. Meanwhile Ecstasy, responsible for maybe 20 deaths per year is a class A drug. Cannabis which has mild sedative effects, is a class B. Ketamine on the other hand, a horse tranquilizer than can paralyze people for hours, is a mere class C. Which do you think is worse?

Free Country?

Think again. Police have new “dispersal powers” to prevent people from gathering in public places. Anti-Social youths are forced to sign “Acceptable behaviour contracts (ABC)“. Here is a quote from the Home Office website: “The ABC consists of a list of anti-social acts that the offender agrees not to continue and outlines the consequences if the contract is breached.” To prevent ‘Terrorism’ they can now detain anyone for up to 42 days without charge. You can get on the spot fines in the street for being drunk. The government has spent billions on plans to force us all to get identity cards, which they claim is “ensure free public services are only used by those entitled to them”. Isn’t that everyone? You may not have noticed these laws being brought in, or you may believe the government claims that they are “making us safer”. These are our rights, and they are slowly being take from us… all of us.

Key Point 4:

Making things illegal does not make them go away. People like to do naughty things, the young especially. If anything making things like drugs illegal, is more likely to make the young find them appealing. The criminalisation of so many things is just turning previously law abiding people into criminals. Meanwhile when politicians commit what is essentially fraud, they get away Scot free…

…and the truth will set you free

It’s no secret that Politicians lie. A lot. In fact they seem to do it more than they actually help people. Why? To hide failure? Maybe. To cover up corruption? Certainly. Why do we accept this? It has become the norm now. Serious questions need to be answered: when we are lead to war over false claims. If its illegal for me to lie in a court of law, then why do government officials get away with it. Why can’t we have complete transparency with government? Give me one reason?

60 Million voices…

If you have made it this far then well done and thank you. All I want is for the people of Britain, and people everywhere in fact, to remember that politicians work for us, to better the lives of all people. They seem to have forgotten that. Make sure you don’t. If you feel that neither the Conservatives, Labour or the Liberal Democrats represent you and your opinions, make your opinions heard. Don’t simply accept other peoples. Sit down and ask yourself what you actually believe is right and wrong. If you have a voice, then you have to power to make yourself heard. Let them hear it.