The best little whorehouse in Britain
Let’s take a break from busting the government-sponsored myths about swine flu, and watch Parliament head out for its covetable 82-day summer holiday. Shall we wave a fond farewell to them as they duck into their Jags, gun the engines and roar off to (one of) their homes?
It’s almost impossible to write a post that conveys their cowardice and corruption, and my own contempt for the self-protective reform legislation they came up with just before running away – running, as all cowards do.
But then, I’m hardly surprised. We are asking them to reform themselves. And that never works.
I mean, think about it. What if you had a really good deal – I mean a really sweet deal – at work. Let’s say you made around 70K and up, your work week was about three days, your expenses added 25K to your pay free and clear, and those expenses needed to be approved only by you, your annual holiday allotment was in excess of three months, you were massaged by a subservient and docile staff paid for by somebody else, you were protected from your bosses completely, except for one day every five years or so.
And then some do-gooder shows up and says, ’This is wrong. And you have to change it. Nobody can make you change it, but it is immoral and irresponsible of you not to change it so you must change it and give yourself less – less freedom and less money.’
Would you? Honestly?
Well, neither will they.
Britain has a whorehouse in it
So here we are at a spectacular impasse, in which our elected government has so abused this country’s ancient and veneered political system that the vast majority of people in the country look at them as no better – and possibly worse – than criminals. Their approval ratings are uniformly low, regardless of which party they’re in.
There would have been a revolution in France already over this, had it happened there. If this had happened in America, MPs would need armed guards to protect them from their constituents. In the Ukraine the nation’s entire population would be out in the streets every night, holding candles, singing songs, bringing the economy to a halt.
But here? Well, it’s been a very British revolution so far. Isolated shouts during BBC’s Question Time have been the only evidence of the simmering outrage. That, and so many MPs losing their seats in by-elections.
Lord have mercy on our souls
I believe the country is furious over this huge con job in which we were all the victims and our own governmental representatives were the thieves. But it’s a quiet kind of fury that often expresses itself in increasing political apathy, a belief that each politician is as bad as the other, and comments like ‘I couldn’t vote for any of them, so I think I’ll stop voting.’
There is nothing worse for a democracy than a population losing its faith. Personally, I’d rather see people setting themselves on fire in the streets of Westminster than see them shrug and walk away.
So, before you all give up on the democratic system, remember: you are not alone. Politicians – whether they are elected fairly and honestly or seize the role as dictators – are prone to believing themselves invincible, and taking more than their share. This might have been the biggest scandal I’ve ever seen in politics, but it is not an unusual kind of scandal, when you think about it. A bit of petty stealing. Padding the old nest. It’s a time-honoured tradition.
Politicians will always treat you with contempt. But they do it at their peril. Remember: you have all the power. You cannot fire them now, but, working together, we can eventually fire them all. And soon.
Even better: you can remember who they are.
Remember the MPs with two, or even three houses paid for by you, while you struggle to make your mortgage.
Remember the MPs who bought porn and charged it to you.
Remember the MPs who had you pay to clear their yards, or their moats, even while you broke your back to clear your own.
Remember who they are. And treat them with the contempt they deserve.
Those duplicitous, thieving MPs may have slipped away for now, but they have to come back sometime, and when they do, as they say in Texas, you need to open up a can of whup-ass on them that they’re unlikely to ever forget. In the voting booth.
Serious underlying rubbish
So, now seven people have died in the UK from swine flu. And seven times the mainstream media have duly repeated the government’s contention that the dead suffered from ’serious underlying health problems’. The clear implication is, were it not for these serious problems, the dead wouldn’t have died.
Having heard the same thing over and over, though, one could be forgiven for becoming suspicious.
When a government says the same line over and over, they’re trying to influence the way you think. And when the press repeat that line without investigating it, that’s your propaganda machine, right there.
Ministry of Disinformation
Propaganda. Not a word we’re used to seeing in the modern age, but these are interesting times.
Britain is ‘well placed’ to survive the recession. Britain is ‘one of the most prepared countries in the world‘ to handle swine flu. The recession ‘started in America‘.
You heard those over and over and over again, right? Each one repeated by the government and the media blankly. Each one a little piece of propaganda.
The International Monetary Fund later said Britain was the worst positioned in Europe to survive the recession. Britain now has the most cases of swine flu in all of Europe. Among the most egregious sub-prime lenders were European banks including Barclays and Deutsche Bank.
Let’s get serious
The Centrist, no doubt like you, takes the word ’serious’ seriously. If you say a dead person had serious health problems, I tend to think, ‘Hmm, HIV positive? Terminal cancer? Multiple Sclerosis? Parkinsons Disease?’
Nah, how about asthma, diabetes or epilepsy? All rarely fatal, eminently treatable health conditions.
(And can somebody please tell the British press that the word ‘fit’ is as archaic as ’swoon’ and in its own way as wrong as ’spastic’? The modern term is ’seizure’.)
I know people with every single one of those mild health conditions, and I’ll bet you do too. I myself have asthma, which the government, through the National Health Service, has treated with an almost devil-may-care lack of concern, tossing me an inhaler when it first flared up a couple of years ago and telling me to let them know if I was ‘worried’ about it.
Now I know that if I die of swine flu, the government will use my asthma to explain it, as part of its propaganda, so that you can continue to think swine flu is just a bad cold. They’ll put on their sad faces, look moist-eyed at the BBC camera and talk about my serious health problems.
Let me tell you now: my asthma is mild. It should never, ever kill me. I have had flu several times and survived just fine. I’m just a bit of a hypochondriac, really. Not terminal. Not serious. Ought to live.
Here’s the truth
The government’s inability to get a handle on swine flu, it’s failure to take it seriously enough and to properly educate the population about it, it’s failure to encourage self-quarantining as other countries have, the fact that it has not encouraged people to work from home and the fact that it did not ask them to stay out of crowded places, allowed the virus to spread out of control.
Because of all of that, those seven vulnerable people caught the virus through no fault of their own, and now they’re dead.
Rest in peace
Increasingly there are murmurs outside of the mainstream press that this government doesn’t understand how epidemics work.
But I believe it’s more callous and soul-chilling than that. I think the government doesn’t want you to know how serious the situation is, because then you might lose faith in them. You might support the Labour party even less than you already do. You might vote against them in the next election.
And that genuinely appears to be all that matters to them. Or at least, that’s what matters most.
So the propaganda machine swings into motion, and it keeps telling you everything’s Ok. You probably still think swine flu’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a mild flu or a bad cold. The young and healthy will be just fine. Right?
Who told you that?
The government and the press. And you believed them.
Did you know that swine flu disproportionately impacts the young and healthy? It’ll kill you if you’re old or ill, but it almost prefers to kill the young and healthy. The British government doesn’t want you to know that. You need to know that. Everything is not going to be Ok.
Google it
Again I say: Don’t believe this government. It’s scared. And scared, bad governments lie.
And don’t trust the mainstream press: it’s slow on the uptake.
Do your own research. And be careful out there.
