Don’t Get Fooled Again- Britain In Decline?
July 5, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Don’t Get Fooled Again
A book blog by Richard Wilson
Britain in decline? Panel discussion at the Oxford Literary Festival
I’m just back from a fun afternoon at the Oxford Literary Festival, where I had come in as a late substitution at a panel discussion chaired by the legendaryMartin Bell, on the theme of “Britain in decline”. Also on the panel was the Booker-shortlisted novelist Andrew O’ Hagan, my fellow Icon-author Kieron O’ Hara, whose book on “Trust” was one of the many influences for “Don’t Get Fooled Again”, and the excellent Paul Kingsnorth, with whom I spoke at last year’s Radical Bookfair in Edinburgh.
I’m not convinced that there’s a generalised, across-the-board decline in the UK, and I also think there’s a natural human tendency to believe that things were so much better in the “good old days” even when they weren’t.
But within certain specific areas there are worrying signs of a change for the worse – perhaps most acutely within our political system. Few now doubt that lies were told by the UK government in 2002 and 2003, at the highest level, about the evidence of Iraqi “Weapons of Mass Destruction” . These lies formed the pretext for launching a war which killed hundreds of British soldiers, and thousands of Iraqi civilians – yet there appears to be no mechanism for holding those who misled the country (and its Parliament) personally to account. Worse, the lies have continued – on rendition, on Jack Straw’s complicity in torture in Uzbekistan, and – repeatedly – on official government statistics.
When, earlier this year, Justice Minister Jack Straw announced that he was using his powers to block the release of minutes of the UK cabinet meetings in the run-up to the Iraq war (meetings in which he, as the then-Foreign Secretary, would have featured prominently) – ostensibly on the basis that future cabinet ministers might feel unable to speak openly if they thought that their words might eventually be read by the people who voted for them and paid their salaries – one almost got the sense that he himself didn’t think that anyone would really believe that this was the genuine reason. He was in a position to use his powers to block the release of information that would certainly have embarrassed (and possibly incriminated) him – so naturally he was going to use those powers to cover his back. Once he’d made that the decision, the accompanying lie was perhaps the easiest part – after all he’d had plenty of practice.
While there’s clearly nothing new about politicians behaving dishonestly, back in 2003, many people went along with what the government was saying about Iraq precisely because they just couldn’t believe that our politicians would lie about something quite so big and important as the circumstances that could lead to a war. Many people I spoke to at the time had the sense that, in our democracy, there were some lines that the political class just wouldn’t cross. What’s worrying is that this feeling now seems to have been replaced with a grudging acceptance that our politicians will routinely lie to us whenever it suits them, and that there’s nothing much we can do about it.
Coupled with this, there seems to be a growing tendency for the government to cite “trump card” excuses, such as “national security” to evade scrutiny of key government decisions or to justify controversial government policies – such as the Attorney General’s decision to halt a criminal investigation into one of Britain’s major arms manufacturers – and a company with links to the Labour party – BAE.
Lastly, and perhaps most worryingly of all, there have been ever-increasing demands by the government for “sweeping powers” – ostensibly to fight terrorism – to lock people up without charge, ban demonstrations, and monitor and record all our email, phone call, and web browsing activities. These demands are almost always made with the assurance that the powers will only be used in rare and exceptional circumstances – but once passed into law they quickly become routine.
This is a problem because the more we chip away at our ability to scrutinise what the government’s up to, and the more arbitrary powers we allow them to wield, the more we create opportunities for corruption and abuse.
At the moment it seems that, too often within our political system, the benefits of lying outweigh the costs, and until that equation changes it seems unlikely that the situation will significantly improve. I made a similar
Kieron O’ Hara talked about the sense of disillusionment over the hopes that were raised when the current Labour government was first elected in 1997, and about the rise of the “database state”, while Paul Kingsnorth discussed the decline of local community institutions and the “blandification” of town centres, although Andrew O’ Hagan also warned against over-generalising beyond specifics, and discussed the pessimistic atmosphere of what he called “declinism” that he’d experienced growing up in Scotland during the 1970s.
On the major points, there was relatively little disagreement voiced between the panel members – though I suspect that this may also have stemmed from a reluctance to disrupt a good-natured discussion. The audience was more challenging – with one questioner arguing that society’s problems had more to do with a general decline in personal responsibility than the venality of politicians, which is after all nothing new. Another challenged us to say what, specifically, we proposed could be done about the problems that we had outlined. Andrew O’ Hagan gave a very clear answer, which I felt was among the best of the discussion, arguing that the level of dishonesty and silence-in-the-face-of-dishonesty that we had seen in recent years among government ministers was a significant change from the behaviour of previous regimes, and that one thing we could all do was vow never again to vote for any of the individuals – whose names are well known – who have behaved so disreputably.
Written by Richard Wilson
April 4, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Posted in Don’t Get Fooled Again
Tagged with Don’t Get Fooled Again, oxford literary festival
RICHARD WILSONS BOOK- DON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN.
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Two More British Soldiers Killed In The Afghan Fabian Illegal War!! SHAME ON BRITAIN!!
July 5, 2009 · 1 Comment
Our nation is founded on the principle of rule with the consent of the governed. Because We The People do not consent to be lied to, a government that lies rules without the consent of the governed, and ruling without the consent of the governed is slavery.
The Fabian Government skimp on our troops equipment in every possible way- countries like Holland and Canada spend far more on their troops equipment- CAN’T AFFORD THE WAR- THEN BRING OUR TROOPS HOME- THE BLOOD SOAKED HANDS OF THIS FABIAN GOVERNMENTS ILLEGAL WAR. 173-ENOUGH YET?
Two More Repatriated in COFFINS!!
TWO MORE KILLED BY A BOMB- THE MOD HAS INFORMED THE FAMILY-4 THIS WEEK!!
SHAME ON THE GOVERNMENT SENDING OUR SOLDIERS TO THEIR WAR WITHOUT THE PROPER EQUIPMENT- EVEN WHEN HOME THEY LIVE IN WHAT ARE SLUMS!!
RECALL THE BILLIONS HANDED OVER TO ALREADY FILTHY RICH FABIAN BANKERS-ANOTHER LIE WE WERE FED?
50 ARMOURED PATROL VEHICLES READY-BUT STUCK HERE IN BRITAIN- WOULD HAVE DEFO SAVED THE LAST TWO SOLDIERS- AND I ASSUME THESE TWO SOULS.
REST IN PEACE SOLDIERS!
That Act is to this day illegal, but the words used to destroy the Lords were the same words used to get rid of the Queen’s authority,” she said.
“Our Constitution is clear:
We the people hold the power (we are a democracy but we are also a Constitutional Monarchy) but for the power of Government and giving assent to Bills, we give the power known as the Royal Prerogative, to the Queen to govern. She governs in our name and according to the laws that we brought in to prevent her or the people in Parliament, from taking over power.
Unfortunately this has been done both in the 1911 Parliament Act and in the Reform of the Constitution Act of 2005 when Blair and Lord Falconer took over the power we had given to the Queen for her lifetime. They then gave to Parliament the right to decide on whether or not to go to war instead of putting the power under our laws that say we cannot go to war unless someone is attacking us.”TREASON
CORRUPT WE KNOW- TREACHERY WE KNOW- ADD TO THAT TREASON- WHY ARE THE BRITISH ALLOWING THIS TO CONTINUE?
WESTMINSTER DOES NOT BELONG TO THE MAFIA THAT ARE NOW THERE- WE THE PEOPLE ARE SOVEREIGN- TIME WE REMINDED THE RABBLE OF SALESMEN THAT WE ARE THEIR BOSSES NOT THEY OURS!
BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW!!!
FABIANS HAVE ALWAYS HATED THE MILITARY- AND AS FAR AS I CAN SEE THERE ARE TOO MANY FABIANS IN WESTMINSTER!!
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