The sound of cogs and spindles

Well our government voted to begin the process of leaving the EU, which I suppose that we knew they would in spite of all the hopes one might have that there was something that could be done to prevent it. I was angry with them all over again. Angry with our main opposition party for not doing their job and opposing anything whatsoever angry with the government for the disaster they have created.

Since the referendum and perhaps doubly in the last few weeks, I have been angry and sad about the state of politics the whole time. It's easier to be sad about it, because that just sits there like a rainy day, while the anger roils and tumbles inside me and makes me want to create terrible furious music or become a politician just so I could kick their laughable parties to pieces and turn our pallid faux-democracy into something that could actually benefit the public. Imagine being in a country where people felt their voice counted enough that they didn't have to tear their own economy to pieces in the vague hope of someone somewhere noticing they existed?

There is a lot that would need to be changed, and although I have thought about politics for a long time I am also not a big fan of working in London or meetings or any of the other things that seem to go with the field. That assumes that I could get myself elected, which would be a little implausible in itself although I think the speeches and talking with people parts would probably be easier than the parts that needed me to be organised or fill in forms. Those would be rubbish.

So yesterday I was feeling sour and resentful and angry but for some reason I listened to this old song and it made me feel better. They are just clueless really, just stupid people making terrible decisions because it's the only way to further their craven self-interest. Most of us didn't vote for them anyway, just a few people who were lucky enough to be in the right constituencies, so if they're massive dolts it is an entire national system that enables them.

It's not a political song, but maybe anything can be political when you're in the right mood.

Here is a point to ponder with regard to the fairness agenda our Condem masters are pushing forward.

Supposing we went out among the great British public and totally at random selected someone and asked if they were a millionaire. The odds of them being one would be 0.005% approximately.

Now let us imagine you went to Westminster, visited the Cabinet and totally at random selected someone and asked if they were a millionaire. The odds of them being one would be slightly over 79%.

I'm not saying there is anything right or wrong about this- you can't get into power without being rich, after all- there is a cost involved in buying votes and if you want a capitalist democracy you have to live with that. But they can't really say they understand the pain that their cuts will inflict on the poorest, or on the swathes of middle class public sector employees who will also get the chop.

When they talk about the cuts and George Osborne ( a man with an uncanny resemblance to the bastard offspring of Peter Mandelson and Noddy ) tells us that those with the broadest shoulders will bear the greatest burden, I can't help but feel he has an image in his head of broad shouldered peasants toiling in the fields. Given that those who will bear the greatest burden by far will be women, I think he's probably got a rather funny idea of gender physiology too.

I have a pretty bad feeling about these cuts, but no rational basis for it. I don't doubt that cuts were needed, because a bunch of shortsighted halfwits over the preceding twenty years couldn't see that a deregulated financial sector would not result in great fiscal responsibility, but the difference between surgery and butchery is largely a matter of where and how cuts are performed and the outcomes are noticeably different.

Edit:
Two articles that indicate how this week have made Cameron a liar:
On the Defence review
On the cuts - the latter of these is the most insightful discussion of the announcement I've seen so far and makes me feel pretty justified in having a bad feeling about them.

Reading this article on Afghan history and the ones that follow it made me very aware of how little I know about the roots of the current situation in Afghanistan and how deep our involvement with it goes. I mean sure, everyone knows about the retreat from Kabul and how the powers of the west provided weapons and training to the noble Mujahideen who later opened the door for the evil Taliban, we all know about that big picture stuff. But there is so much else there and until reading those articles I had not only not known any of it, I hadn't even thought to ask the questions that might have lead me to find out. Well worth reading.

I know I go on about him, but the guy hits the nail on the head so often it's almost like he's a carpenter:

"...the government simply refuses to look beyond the present, for fear of seeing something it doesn’t like. For example, it has failed to conduct any assessment of global oil supply. When I asked the business department what contingency plans it possesses to meet the eventuality that oil production might peak, it told me “the Government does not feel the need to hold contingency plans”(7). The survival of our transport networks - and therefore of the economy - is secured by touching wood and crossing fingers." - Mr Monbiot's latest column.

His suggestion of a Hundred Years Committee to represent the interests of the future is a really interesting one and something it would be really good for our parliamentarians to pick up on.

So I've been reading a book by a bloke called Greg Palast. It's very interesting. He's an investigative reporter, investigating stuff and then reporting it. The book is called The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and it is genuinely shocking. I always thought I was fairly cynical about politicians and the people in power, but I was mistaken. Things are worse than I thought, by several orders of magnitude.

The world genuinely is being run by a malevolant cabal of the incredibly rich, everyone who matters has already been bought and those who wont play the game are attacked through every available method, some subtle and some less so. The globalisation stuff is deeply shocking, the deliberate destruction of country after country by the IMF/World Bank/World Trade Organisation combination and their incredibly stupid far right economic dogma (it may be good theory but if it has never been successful anywhere in the world maybe it's time to try something else?) which pretty much serves to channel money from the developing world into the US Federal reserve. It makes me angry.

The corporate connection things are very interesting too- there is a very good chance that money from your electricity bill went into Dubya's campaign kitty. Along with the money you spent on petrol and quite possibly your water rates. Doesn't it make you proud?

It struck me yesterday that maybe the reason that conspiracy theorists all seem to lean so far to the right is that if your political views incline towards the centre chances are you have provable facts.

There is one thing that we Britons can be proud of, though. In the BBC and the Guardian newspaper groups we have two of the only not-for-profit professional news organisations in the world. That means they can put news stories out without an owner intervening because they conflict with their commercial interests, unless they cover dossiers full of obvious lies anyways. Judging by the utterly cowed state of American journalism, that is a very good thing indeed.

It's a good book, I recommend reading it. I don't know what the solution is to the consequent despair.