{"id":1138,"date":"2015-05-06T20:40:22","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T20:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2015-05-06T20:40:22","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T20:40:22","slug":"on-eve-of-general-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/on-eve-of-general-election\/","title":{"rendered":"On the eve of the General Election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><lj-cut>I&nbsp;have a sense of dread about tomorrow&#8217;s election.  I&nbsp;can&#8217;t imagine a plausible outcome where I&#8217;m feeling anything like the optimistic hope <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/oppression-and-places-to-stand-with-it\/#a-new-dawn\" title=\"A reminiscence from me about the election in 1997, as part of a longer article about me and state oppression.\">I&nbsp;remember<\/a> from 1997.\n\t\t<\/p>\n<div class=\"itemizedlist\">\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t<strong>Tories<\/strong>:  About 70%-80% of my dread is a fear that Cameron et al will get back in.  Their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/politics\/2015\/03\/nation-states-arent-households-debating-their-economies-if-they-are-stupid\" title=\"Article &#34;Nation-states aren't households: debating their economies as if they are is stupid&#34; by Eliane Glaser at New Statesman.\">unnecessary<\/a>, callous austerity measures mean that if they continue in power, more people will die and suffer.  More people will become homeless.  More disabled people will be confined within four walls for lack of a bit of assistance to get around.  More people will be stuck in abusive situations because they&#8217;re economically\/practically dependent on their abusers.  More women will turn to sex work, when they don&#8217;t want to but it&#8217;s better than losing their home or seeing their children cold or hungry.  More already-rich people will get richer at everyone else&#8217;s expense.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t<strong>Labour<\/strong>:  less bad than the Tories.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tDon&#8217;t get me wrong:  if the <strong>only two choices<\/strong> are Labour or Tory, I&#8217;d pick Labour.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tAnd yet&#8230;\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<div class=\"itemizedlist\">\n<ul type=\"circle\">\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tLabour, Tory and Lib Dem manifestos all support <a href=\"http:\/\/www.waronwant.org\/campaigns\/trade-justice\/more\/inform\/18078-what-is-ttip\" title=\"Explanation of TTIP, from War On Want.\">TTIP, the &#8220;Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership&#8221;<\/a>.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tTo my mind, society took a wrong turning with the invention of companies as legal entities with no conscience.  There&#8217;s vital ingredients missing from them;  shareholders&#8217; profit is inadequate as an organising principle for our lives.  In particular, with its limited incentives for long-term thinking, company structure is a poor framework for treasuring the living world around us.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tTTIP is about giving <em>more<\/em> power to corporations, and less to elected bodies and ordinary people.  How is <em>that<\/em> going to turn out well?  It&#8217;s not, is it?\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tThere are many other areas where Labour and the Tories agree, and do basically the same things.  Most MPs in both parties are white blokes who will get well-paid jobs afterwards from the businesses they helped while in power.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tI don&#8217;t feel I can trust <em>either<\/em> lot&#8217;s relationship with on-the-ground reality.  That is the other 20%-30% or so of my dread.  Maybe I&#8217;m setting the bar too high, but I would like people in government to care whether they are being told accurate facts, and whether they are repeating accurate facts.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tI saw the legislative process up close with Labour&#8217;s badly-researched, trample-footed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/to-trust-or-not-to-trust\/\" title=\"Article by me, on the implications of routine monitoring of home ed families.\">plans<\/a> for regulating non-school education (likely to rise again if they get back in).  I&#8217;ve not forgotten.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>How about the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tdpf.org.uk\/resources\/war-drugs\" title=\"War On Drugs briefing page from Transform\">war on drugs<\/a>&#8220;?  Or the weight loss industry and its tenuous relationship with the relevant <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nutritionj.com\/content\/10\/1\/9\" title=\"&#34;Most epidemiological studies find that people who are overweight or moderately obese live at least as long as normal weight people, and often longer&#34;, etc.\">evidence<\/a> base?  Can we trust our government&#8217;s competence on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-politics-24130684\" title=\"&#34;... one of the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector&#34;.\">anything involving technology<\/a>? :-\/\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tNo I&nbsp;have <em>not<\/em> forgiven Labour for the war in Iraq, either.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n\t\t\tAt least we have Lilian Greenwood as our local MP, and I am a fan of her on the whole.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t<strong>Greens<\/strong>:  If we had single transferable vote, I&#8217;d likely vote Green first every time.  They <em>don&#8217;t<\/em> support TTIP.  They ask themselves questions about <strong>sustainability<\/strong>.  My natural tendency is to think long-term, and, of the current choices, I&nbsp;feel the Greens are closest to &#8220;my natural party&#8221;, even if I don&#8217;t agree with every detail of their plans.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tI&nbsp;think there are a lot of other people who would vote Green more often if the voting system were fairer.  The parties still upholding &#8220;first past the post&#8221; are warping the system for the sake of their own chances at power.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<strong>Lib Dem<\/strong>:  I&nbsp;did vote for them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/2010\/05\/election-day\/\" title=\"What I wrote on election day in 2010.\">last time<\/a>, even being pretty sure they wouldn&#8217;t get in locally&#8230;  and look how <em>that<\/em> turned out!  I&nbsp;wanted them to do something good with that little bit of influence that was my vote.  Instead they became austerity-cut colluders.\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t<strong>A party I will not even name here<\/strong>.  I&nbsp;am angry at the BBC and other media for repeatedly elevating this lot into prominence.  Creating familiarity is a form of granting power.  They could have done that for the Greens, who have a comparable claim to attention, and instead they did it for this lot of fearmongers.  Shame on everyone who took the choice to foreground them for the sake of &#8220;a good story&#8221;.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"http:\/\/labourlist.org\/2014\/03\/10-of-the-best-tony-benn-quotes\/\" title=\"&#34;Ten of the best Tony Benn quotes&#34;.\">Tony Benn&#8217;s famous thing about democracy<\/a> included &#8220;How can we get rid of you?&#8221;\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tBut <em>what if we want to get rid of more than one of them<\/em>?  The democracy such as we have in reality right now doesn&#8217;t give us that, does it?  It just lets us switch from one main predictable lot to the other.\n\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\tI&#8217;m not saying there&#8217;s no difference between Labour and the Tories.  No indeed.  There <em>is<\/em> a difference, and such as it is, it&#8217;s important.  But it isn&#8217;t as big a difference as I would like, by a long way.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My thoughts on the main political parties in England.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,38,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-long-term-thinking","category-practicalities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1143,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/1143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncharted-worlds.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}