Goddam Labour

Earlier tonight, I watched a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords back in 1999. Goddam Labour. Anyway, the documentary brought up some interesting points, and, knowing that people who are bored enough to be looking at my website will see this and skip over it, I decided that if I were to rant while paraphrasing and embroidering the aforementioned points, it wouldn't matter at all. So that's what I'm going to do.

For those of you who are still reading and have no idea of the ways of our government, the House of Commons is elected. Until recently, the House of Lords basically consisted of life peers (people who have been made peers by a Prime Minister) and hereditary peers (consisting of Dukes, Earls, Countesses and Barons) - you can find out more here. Anyway, the idea is that the House of Commons proposes bills, they pass it to the House of Lords, who either pass it (to the Queen, I believe), or throw it back to the Commons.

The way the people think is "Oh, the House of Lords consists of old men, out of touch with the world, who sit around drinking too much port after dinner and going 'bah' a lot". Thing is, the hereditary peers were more in touch with the world than people might think, and in fact, with most other politicians; lots of them were not in politics for the power, they had jobs, knowledge and wisdom, which they took into the House of Lords and used to protect the people from many rediculous bills.

To quote Douglas Adams, it is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

The PM and government are after power, they don't want another body above them to keep them in check, they are simply after an elected dictatorship. Hell, a dictatorship - maybe that's why Tony and George are so jealous of Saddam. Our government consists of career politicians; our political system is designed for amateurs, people with day jobs. But now, they come out of university and into politics, and use that as a stepping stone to move into a job in the city - the system has been turned on its head. People are in politics for the wrong reason; they are in it for the power. And the Prime Minister is now one step closer to being President. Thing is, with the Commons agreeing to most things to tow the party line, he already has more power the the US president.

And they push these things through by playing on the view of the people. "We represent the people, the Lords are stopping us from doing things, what do they know", they say. They point at the label of old English traditions as something holding us back, use our fears to try to do things to change the image, telling us to look to the future. Thing is, the future of your country depends upon the present, and that depends upon what happened in the past. And, more importantly, they still haven't presented solution to what will come to replace the House of Lords, they just said 'Well, let's get rid of them and then worry about it'. Probably because they dont want a replacement. And this, of course, means that if the government gets a silly idea (such as giving people like the Post Office unrestricted access to ISP records), nobody can stop them.

Goddam Labour.

They get rid of assisted places, would close Grammar schools if they could, implement top-up fees for universities, kick out the hereditary peers, screw over the services, get in bed with America and promise to fight in their crusade against terrorism (despite the years of supporting them supporting the IRA), and produce daft bills, riding on hysteria, which should never, and, if we had a decent political system, would never be passed.

And yet, people vote for them. Why? "Because they're better than the others!"

And this is how you use your vote that millions have fought and died for? You vote for someone because "What did the other guy ever do for us?", or "Ooh, doesn't Tony have a lovely squeaky clean new party promising Cool Brittania and a hip new theme song! I'll vote for him!". Shame on you. And it was by D:Ream FFS... couldn't you tell you were in for an ass raping?

But then like I implied a while back, it's not just Labour. It's the whole political system. Democracy, or at least what it has become. The art of asking everyone what they want to do, doing what nobody wants and persuading them it's what they asked for in the first place. Of persuading them the other party is worse and winning elections based on the fact that the majority of those voting are either too lazy or too gullible to look at the past, present and future.

So the conclusion that this innocent-looking documentary has led me to is that parliament sucks, democracy is doomed to failure, there isn't a solution, and we're all going to die in a chemical/biological/nuclear war between a power-crazed dictator who has the people of his country blinded by his propaganda machine, and Saddam Hussein.

Right, that's it. I'm moving to Alaska.

Oh yes, and the party last night was great :)

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