Friday, April 10, 2009
Capturing the mood
You could pick any number of issues. Take, for instance, the latest terrorist threat, the effects of unrestrained immigration from the EU, or perhaps the insanity of votes for prisoners, driven by the European court of human rights.
You could get worked up about the coming energy crisis, a waste policy that is not only barking mad but ruinously expensive, the terrifying winter energy bills or Brown's Green budget which is beyond parody in its cretinous vacuity.
You could easily get incensed about police thuggery, police stupidity, MPs' expenses or their idleness and/or greedy bankers.
In fact, the list of issues about which we could get really angry is virtually endless, but you would have to go a long, long way to find anyone who thought that the politicians – of any party – had a grip or were doing anything other than making things worse, while lining their pockets.
A little while ago, I wrote about the electorate being in a "funny" mood. Randall has written about anger and I countered with "festering resentment" as a better description of the public mood.
Whatever it is, with a range of slogans and images, the BNP is capturing it. The political claque is going to have a very hard job countering its messages, and the more it remains in denial, the harder it is going to get for them.
COMMENT THREAD
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Party system
I was going to put up this comment on the forum, then decided to open it up (for what it's worth) to the readership of the blog. I have already writtenabout Jury Team and their ideas on how to improve politics in this country and shall do so again when I checked out their candidates and whether any of them have actually understood how the EU is structured and how it functions. (Hint: I hold out no great hopes.)
I am fully in agreement with the boss: the main purpose of Jury Team is most probably to draw support away from the BNP, the existing anti-party party. The Tories have finally realized that it is not only from Labour that the party of national as opposed to international socialism will be drawing votes.
But what of the party system? Well, this is what I was going to put up on the forum. Here it is, instead.
We have had a party system since the early eighteenth century if not from the days of the Restoration. How is it a current canker? Either it was always that or it is not that now. If you want to see what a political system is like without paties but with all the other appertunances of democracy, take a good look at Russia.
In what way is it an improvement to have people who are so arrogant that they think their views and opinions expressed in a pub or round a dinner table make them eligible for a political position in Parliament or the European Parliament when they cannot be bothered to find out the first thing about the institutions they want to participate in?
There we are. Enjoy Maundy Thursday.
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