Now that politics have focused down on the election, I find myself thoroughly demotivated.
There is a substantial percentage of the population who wish to see a very early withdrawal from the occupation of Afghanistan, who want genuinely firm measures against the casino banking economy, who are very sceptical about the direction the European Union has gone, and who do not want to waste many scores of billions of dollars on a nuclear submarine system which can wipe out half the world’s population instantaneously and the rest shortly thereafter.
Yet the great “leader’s debate” will be between three people who all follow the same pro-bank bailout, pro-Afghan war, pro-EU and pro-Trident consensus. The political differences between them are insignificant – they are engaged in a Mr Smarm contest. They are not even good at that – Brown is an aggressive churl, Cameron is comfortable only working alongside his team of fellow toffs, Nick Clegg seeks to avoid offending the establishment consensus at all costs.
Only in Wales and Scotland do any significant number of people have a hope of electing anybody who stands outside the cosy Westmnister consensus on key issues.
To work, democracy must present the electorate with real choices.
Our democracy does not work.
@Richard Robinson
They can choose not to vote; but if they choose to vote due to coercion, it would be their shame.
Those that vote to coerce others, such as feminists and other evil fascists, do so under the protection of anonymity, which shames the very democracy itself.
I think the result of the election has already been decided. Drip by drip the media are feeding us the scenario of a hung parliament. And drip by drip the Conservative party is being damaged just enough to put the parties on a par. Interestingly, there was very little coverage of the Conservative party conference. So we now expect a coalition government and when the election results are announced we’ll accept them. If the results don’t tally then no doubt they’ll be amended – postal votes are open to manipulation.. I anticipate that Mandelson will become PM
To all those who advocate the no vote option. If you do not vote it will be seen as a do not care – aka walkover.
If you do vote you will at least be seen as a doer, someone who cares. This means a larger electorate that should at least have a little more respect.
Vote for the person and not the party.
“They can choose not to vote; but if they choose to vote due to coercion, it would be their shame.”
Don’t be daft. If you don’t like the way that “cowards” vote already, how does exposing them to threats and intimidation improve things ?
“Don’t be daft. If you don’t like the way that “cowards” vote already, how does exposing them to threats and intimidation improve things ?”
It dissuades them. As I said, only cowards benefit from anonymity.
You’d like to prevent people from voting for fascists by threatening them ?
*shrug* I’m not voting for that. You want to put a brick through my window for it ?
“only cowards benefit from anonymity.”
So use your real name, you clown.
James McComb is my real name, you neurotic.
Sorry to bang on about this, but I agree with nevergiveup. Without a minimum percentage of the vote, below which an election is declared void, not voting simply encourages the politicians who make noises about ‘voter apathy’ when they know full well that it’s voter despair. A low turn out and low engagement suits them.
So I think people shouldn’t ‘not vote’ on principle. Because there is currently no way of making that protest felt. Even a ‘none of the above’ box would be a fine start.
Plus, whoever gets in makes the law. Whoever gets in makes decisions. Whoever gets in seemingly affects us all, until we learn to do without them.
That’s what I think, anyway.
So, you like the Nationalists in Scotland, you want to see the troops out of Afghanistan, you are skeptical about the EU, yet neither you nor anyone else here seems interested in the British National Party, which takes the right line on these issues and, furthermore, has the following sensible proposals:
An English assembly, allowing the English to rule themselves in most matters instead of having bad policies imposed on them by a Westminster Parliament run by devious Scots such as Blair and Brown;
Punishment for “bankster” — they’re a bit vague on this but they seem to be thinking on the right lines — probably the stocks or the pillory;
Back to basics in education — a bit of a cliche but again they seem to have the right idea, although one may doubt the value of beating kids (it didn’t seem to do me any good, or much harm, and it is hard to imagine that the beating Tony Blair received as a sixth form student at Fettes College helped, either);
Oh, and an end to mass immigration, which most people, according to opinion polls, apparently want.
So why does no one discuss this option? They’re fascists, Nazis, blah, blah. But is that so? For years they’ve been promoting the idea of referendums and devolution of power. They explicitly rejected totalitarianism in 2005, and they advocate a citizens militia, every male to own a rifle and know how to use it. Isn’t that the best defense against tyranny?
I should be glad to be enlightened.
Well there you have it. Someone at Craig Murray’s blog shows up and expresses support for the British equivalent of David Duke.
What the fuck is wrong with Britain?
Hey, Jimmy,
I don’t know why most Britons oppose mass immigration, but if that’s what they oppose, isn’t it democratic for the government to respect their decision?
As for fear of the ‘other’, I don’t know what that means.
I live here in Canada in a multi-racial society and I have not yet experienced this indefinable fear.
Moreover, I’m not against immigration to Canada. I’d be a hypocrite if I were, since I am an immigrant here myself. But in any case, Canada’s situation is very different from Britain’s. Canada is the largest country in the world after the disintegrating Russian federation. It is 32 times the size of Britain with only half the population. Canada is a treasure house of resources: hydro-electricity, coal, oil, gas, uranium, fresh water, gold, silver, nickel, lumber, wheat, living space and vast untapped tourism potential. We need people to secure these resources before someone else decides to take them off us. So we bring in people from all over the world and integrate them into our system. Oh, sure we give lip service to multi-culturalism, but that is bunk. Our immigrants are so diverse in origin, they find themselves very much on their own when the get here. All they want to do, especially their children, is integrate.
Britain, in contrast, is desperately resourced poor. Every few million extra people that arrive from abroad creates further stress on a severely stressed population. That’s why you have such an unaffordable housing market. The indigenous population is shrinking, but population is exploding and driving housing affordability down. Poor immigrants from third world countries can live happily on benefits or low-wage jobs in Britain, whereas, Britain’s indigenous are downward mobile and psyched out. That’s why Bangla-Deshi women have more children in Britain than their sisters back home, whereas Britain’s native, mostly Celtic, population is collapsing. The nationalist position is that the resources of the country belong to the people of the country, not to would be citizens abroad. This is not racist. It assumes that other national governments quite properly act in the interests of their own citizens. When you bring in a massive immigrant population, you are telling the pre-existent population to move over and make way: make over something like a fifth or a quarter of the resources of the country ?” now, and perhaps half or more of the resources of the country within 60 years.
As for WTF Larry, isn’t he the person Craig already identified as an agent provocateur?
“Britain’s native, mostly Celtic, population is collapsing”.
Yeah ! What have the Romans ever done for us ?
At least it makes a change from “indigenous caucasian”, I suppose.
If Larry sticks his nose in again, take a break and read this:
“Afghanistan’s My Lai Massacre”
http://tinyurl.com/y8pq67q
(truthout)
great post Craig. Reminds me of what Spengler wrote around 1912:
“The true class-State is an expression of the general historical experience that it is always a single social stratum which, constitutionally or otherwise, provides the political leading. It is always a definite minority that represents the world-historical tendency of a State; and, within that again, it is a more or less self-contained minority that in virtue of its aptitudes (and often enough against the spirit of the Constitution) actually holds the reins.”[1]
“The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has accomplished its task so well that the objects sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed. What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears… The public truth of the moment, which alone matters for effects and successes in the fact-world, is today a product of the Press. What the Press wills, is true. Its commanders evoke, transform, interchange truths. Three weeks of Press work, and the “truth” is acknowledged by everybody.”[6]
more at:
http://xpovx.blogspot.com/2010/03/media-entrenched-oligarchy.html
“Three weeks of Press work, and the “truth” is acknowledged by everybody.”[6]”
Equally, what the press ignores, never happened.
Re: Richard Rbinson and the Celts of the United Kingdom
I was quoting Bryan Sykes, Oxford Molecular Biologist who has surveyed the mitochondrial genome and Y-chromosome of more than ten thousand Brits from throughout the Isles and found, so he reports, that they are mostly Picts, i.e., celts and that reports of the invasion of the Saxons and Normans have been greatly overblown. Only the Vikings, apparently, made a big impression, accounting perhaps for 20% of the gene pool in parts of eastern England.
This, if correct, will be a shock to the Scotch Nats who, in their narrow nationalism, to quote one of them, will find it highly distasteful to be almost indistinguishable, genetically, from the damned English.
But, R.R., if you have different information, it would be interesting to know of it.
The anonymity of a ballot paper, although technically traceable, has the advantage that you cannot be victimised for your opinions by the state, because then we’d know they’d been cross referencing the codes and the names on the ballot papers.
Then you get a group of people from outside the democratic tradition who think this is a great joke. The number of bits of paper you can legally or illegally stuff into the ballot box, wins you a seat in parliament.
But in non-democratic systems of patronage, what is sent to the government is not your vote or your opinion, but your name as a non-conformer to whoever, like the CIA and MI5 who’s willing to buy this stuff.
You offend your landlord or the head of your mosque. You get stopped for a motoring accident with someone who’s better connected than you. Even in this country, it’s suddenly not in the public interest to prosecute the brand new mercedes that drove you into the hedge and cut off your legs.
At least here, the worst you’re going to get for expressing your opinions is a bed-wetting from Larry from St US. So I really appreciate our system, even though, apart from once for the Liberals, and once for the Greens, in my whole life I didn’t vote.
I didn’t bother renewing my membership with the Lib Dems due to their support for Trident – that finally did it for me. Only joined them because they were the sole party consistently against the war in Iraq.
Why didn’t the Lib Dems build on this populist platform of being solidly against the war? Not only would they have picked up seats, it would surely have shown them to be a genuine alternative, and a party of principle. But you don’t hear much about being anti-war from them anymore. That’s baffling, unless they’ve been pretty much told to sit down and shut up, if they even want to hang onto the coat-tails of power.
Having cancelled said membership, a Lib Dem operative duly called up and told me that Trident renewal was necessary to defend ourselves from other nuclear powers, such as Pakistan. Weren’t they supposed to be our ally? And anyway, why don’t Denmark, Holland and the Scandinavian countries feel the need to have a nuclear defence? Ah, but we have allies which aren’t liked in the world. So our association with America is our greatest security problem? (Answer – yes)
Clegg was apparently thinking about scrapping Trident, but nothing came of that. I doubt you’d find many informed people supporting the £100 Billion Trident is likely to cost over the next decade or so.
*
On not voting at all, because it might only encourage them or somesuch, consider what Tony Benn says on the subject. People died to give us the right to vote, they struggled with getting us the vote, were beaten, starved and imprisoned for it. It’s our duty to vote. If we don’t vote, we can’t complain. What have they been telling us for decades, activists, together with their counterparts like the League of Women Voters in the US – for God’s Sake VOTE!!
And most of us do nothing, leaving the likes of Margeret Becket to claim after the last election that the low turnout was on account of everyone being so happy with Blair/ New Labour, that we didn’t want to change anything. Nah, can’t be bothered. Not interested. Other things to do. Screw the lot of them. The result? We get screwed by default.
Vote Green if you can’t be bothered to petition candidates of the main parties to support your views. But at least do _something_ .
“But, R.R., if you have different information, it would be interesting to know of it.”
I don’t, directly, except for the way that I’ve seen a whole range of theories being ‘known’, at different times. Once upon a time a few decades back, I was under the impression, from the books going around, that ‘picts’ were definitely not ‘celts’, now it seems they are … are ‘picts’ still the oldest people known of ? No traces of any other flavours mixed in with them ? Andwhere are they all thoughtto have immigrated from, is it still somewhere vague in Central Asia ?
languages, too. Once it seemed “definite” that Scots/Irish Gaelic was way, way older than the Welsh/etc flavour, and more recently they seem to be saying the exact opposite …
I agree that mitochondrail DNA, & such techniques, could eventually help pin some of this down. I like the imperfections of science, the way it’s capable of discovering it was wrong. I might even start accepting some of it as probably so, if it stays put long enough (and if I do).
I definitely intend to continue mocking any political conclusions anyone might draw from any of it, though.
And, political ideas derived from peoples’ races *are* racist. By definition.
But, what about the other bit of seemingly-accepted-wisdom, that whatever ‘racial’ group you care to identify, you’ll see more variation within it than you will between any generalisation from that and from any other such group ? Know anything about that ?
Normans, I’m not suprised, it always looked like a mainly aristocratic exercise. Can they be distinguished from your ‘Vikings’, though ? They were only a small number of generations removed, after all. I do find that bit striking, in that I wonder if most English (Scots, I dunno. May be different ?) would expect even that much Viking (cf a brief exchange a few weeks ago, viz. their reputation for making like big-scale football hooligans and then buggering off again) – I’d been thinking about it, that actually they were all over large chunks of this island for a long time, and must have had some effect. The Orkneyinga Saga is a splendid exercise in geographical perspective.
Though, I rather gather ‘Viking’ is a bit of a tricky word – wasn’t what they called themselves, it was what they called the real psychopaths, v. small minority of the population.
Clegg will turn out to be, in my opinion, just like his name. You won’t know that something nasty has bitten you until you see the angry red swelling on your skin. Horse-flies are determined and crafty. They say to you: Oh I was just looking around for a nice spot in the sun to land on, or I was thinking it would be a nice idea to abolish tax under £10K, and the next thing you know they’ve signed up for trident, Iran invasion, and anything else the British public don’t want.
“The anonymity of a ballot paper… has the advantage that you cannot be victimised for your opinions” – anno
Exactly. Yes.
Richard,
According to Sykes, the Picts were what the Romans called the native Brits because they were painted (picti). They gave them tribal names as they got to know them. However, they found Scotland such a dead loss they walled it off, so everyone up there remained a Pict.
Sykes book is a good read:
http://www.amazon.ca/Saxons-Vikings-Celts-Bryan-Sykes/dp/0393062686
It deals with the points you raise, although I expect his data are open to various interpretations.
I am not sure what ideas you are mocking. Certainly, I advanced no political idea based on race, although I should think if one put one’s mind to it, one could formulate some valid political ideas based on race. For example, that genetic diversity reflects environmental adaptation and should be preserved.
It is true, I mentioned race a couple of times, but it was merely to stir up some reaction. I had a question about the BNP, but as yet, no one has been inclined to offer a response.
…And those who victimise others for their opinions will invariably expose themselves and risk democratic oblivion.
You simply have to be a little more brave. Evolution works by sexual selection; imagine if sex was determined by secret ballot!?
Democracy will only evolve through the bravery of declared voting rather than secret ballot. Surreptitious voting, only favours the coward, thus devolves democracy to fascism.
“I am not sure what ideas you are mocking.”
Neither am I. And I have no idea what this means, “Once it seemed “definite” that Scots/Irish Gaelic was way, way older than the Welsh/etc flavour”
Flavour of what? Welsh is closer to Breton, rather than Gaeilge or Scots Gaidhlig, as I understand it. What point are you making? or was it more a stream of consciousness?
“Flavour of what? Welsh is closer to Breton, rather than Gaeilge or Scots Gaidhlig, as I understand it.”
Flavour of language. “Welsh/etc” standing in for “Welsh/Breton/Cornish/probably others (Galician ?)” as opposed, as you say, to the Irish/Scots branch. I used to hear them referred to as ‘p’ amd ‘q’ branches of some underlying linguistic whatnot, I’ve no idea if that still stands.
“What point are you making? or was it more a stream of consciousness?”
Sort of, I don’t like certainties. To be taken in conjunction with the bit about liking how ‘science’ has ways of noticing that it was wrong.
And also because I’d rather point out that I Know Nothing and don’t really regard any of it as a main point in what was being said, but it might be interesting anyway, rather than collapse into heated argument about Facts.
You like it when science is wrong; and dislike arguing facts… no wonder you prefer to vote in secret.
Great. I’m glad that’s all settled, then.
Good God, is the Open Ballot (as opposed to the secret ballot) seriously being suggested as a cure to our failing democracy? I take it the proposer is fully versed in why the 1872 Ballot Act (secret ballot) was brought about in the first place, and aims of the Chartists in bringing it about?
What was voted for last time… stated most lyrically by Tony Banks in the mid-1970s in “One for the Vine”. At that time, British troops being sent to do what they did in 2003 was unthinkable:
“Fifty thousand men were sent to do the will of one.
His claim was phrased quite simply, though he never voiced it loud,
I am he, the chosen one.
In his name they could slaughter, for his name they could die.
Though many there were believed in him, still more were sure he lied,
But they’ll fight the battle on.
Then one whose faith had died
Fled back up the mountainside,
But before the top was made,
A misplaced footfall made him stray
From the path prepared for him.
Off of the mountain,
On to a wilderness of ice.
This unexpected vision made him stand and shake with fear,
But nothing was his fright compared with those who saw him appear.
Terror filled their minds with awe.
Simple were the folk who lived
Upon this frozen wave.
So not surprising was their thought,
This is he, God’s chosen one,
Who’s come to save us from
All our oppressors.
We shall be kings on this world.
Follow me!
I’ll play the game you want me,
Until I find a way back home.
Follow me!
I give you strength inside you,
Courage to win your battles –
No, no, no, this can’t go on,
This will be all that I fled from.
Let me rest for a while.
He walked into a valley,
All alone.
There he talked with water, and then with the vine.
They leave me no choice.
I must lead them to glory or most likely to death.
They traveled cross the plateau of ice, up to its edge.
Then they crossed a mountain range and saw the final plain.
Still he urged the people on.
Then, on a distant slope,
He observed one without hope
Flee back up the mountainside.
He thought he recognised him by his walk,
And by the way he fell,
And by the way he
Stood up, and vanished into air.”