Saturday, April 24, 2010

The crazy UK election campaign


When it comes to the UK general election campaign we are now truly in 'Alice in Wonderland' territory.

As a brief summary of some of the lunacy:

Over the last week the polls have been completely turned around by the first (ever) televised 'debate' between the three party leaders. Only the debate was so sterile and stilted not only by its agreed rules of engagement, but by the fact that the leaders are all so scared to say what they really believe because they fear scaring away the politically corrected media and the dumbed-down electorate. The election campaign has turned into something akin to Pop Idol. Why not let Simon Cowell host the next one?

The unpopular incumbent Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is clearly saying anything to reassure the swollen numbers of public sector workers and welfare payment recipients who are his core constituency. Whilst he won't explicitly state it, in his mind we are a socialist society, and he is the grand controller of the 'economy'. For instance, his party recently faced opposition from businesses to their plan to place extra taxes on employing people. He then attacked this opposition on the grounds that if they don't raise these extra taxes, it would represent taking billions out of the economy. Just think about that for a moment. He wants to take billions in extra taxes out of all the businesses in the country, and if you don't let him then that means you are taking billions out of the economy. This lunatic statement only makes sense when you realise that when he uses the word 'economy' he actually means the public sector (under his control) not the thousands of businesses that are the actual producers of wealth on which the public sector depends. Truly scary stuff.

Then we have the newly popular leader of the Liberal democrat party, Nick Clegg, whose party now have a shot at power purely thanks to the 'Pop Idol' TV debates (in which he drew on all his acting skills to play the role of Mr-Reasonable-and-Squeaky-clean). What makes this so terrifying is that the millions of impressionable young people and housewives who are thinking of voting for him almost certainly can't name, let alone critically think about even one of his party's policies. Clegg's most hypocritical stance is that he keeps lecturing us about democracy yet at the same time he is fully behind selling out whatever self-governing powers Britain has left to the hugely unaccountable and undemocratic European Union. Watching him smugly seduce the gullible public feels like watching a paedophile groom your child whilst being powerless to stop it happening. Every time his smug face pops up on the TV now I almost throw up in my mouth.

Finally the conservative leader David Cameron. Cameron has basically blown his chance at forming a strong conservative government for the country by basing his strategy around appealing to the politically corrected liberal media and dim-wits who are seduced by this kind of touchy-feely, something-for-nothing thinking. If he doesn't win office this time around, at least there is the chance (as Peter Hitchens wants) of the current conservative party imploding and a TRUE conservative party emerging in the coming years.

Finally, the country is all but bankrupt, borrowing billions a week from foreign countries just in order to fund its unsustainable lifestyle, running the biggest deficit since the second world war, despite the fact that we haven't just had five years of fighting the Nazis, but ten years of solid economic growth. Yet no-one, neither the political leaders, or the infantilised public seem willing to stand up and look this fact in the face.

Sorry to be so depressing this week, but I truly despair at this lunacy.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes all rather depressing. I have to admit that I think it very optimistic to hope that any politician, and particular a party leader,will speak outside the prevailing social norms and media expectations. It kind of like wanting water not to be wet. If they thought and acted outside what is media acceptable and none challenging social clichés then they would not be party leaders in the first place.

I think you might be wanting something which just can not exist.

Darren said...

My point is that it used to exist to a FAR greater degree than it does now. The media didn't used to be as politically correct, and prior to these televised election debates there was less emphasis in this country on the 'image' elements of the leaders. I think these sterile debates are a bad thing.

Anonymous said...

You could be correct. Things never stay the same so all the bad things of the past will be even worse now. I was born in 1950 and I can not say that things have been that good. But it is probably true that the media did not have the all pervasive hold it has today. Also politics and government where less central in people lives. That is my recollection. But I would still say that politic was pretty rotten throughout my life. My feeling is that politician are intrinsically contemptible and getting worse.