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.
We’re just not that into you, Gordon
The Centrist has been listening to the speech Gordon Brown made today to what appeared to be his best friends in the world, although the BBC calls them ‘party activists.’ Whatever that means.
Mr Brown went on at some length about how he could not possibly resign now because, as he explained it, we need him. We really, really need him.
According to the BBC:
‘Mr Brown went on: ”What would people think of a Labour government faced with an economic crisis… if we ever walked away from them at a time of need? We are sticking with them and working with them.”‘
If he ‘ever’ walked away? Is Labour planning to stay in power in the UK forever?
He keeps saying things like that.
’I will not walk away’ he said on Friday, as if that would make the country feel better.
The mind boggles
There is so much wrong with this statement, that the mind boggles.
- He’s not ‘faced with’ an economic crisis. As the chancellor for 10 years he built this crisis up from nothing. Did anybody else ever hear him mention America’s financial practices before the British property market bubble burst? No? Me neither. Through lack of regulation, short-term thinking, and poor practices, he made this.
- No political party gets to decide when to leave. As much as he’d like to stay and help, most of the voting population has strongly indicated that they’d prefer a different fireman in this emergency. And in a democracy the voters decide who is in charge.
Why does the Labour party at the moment seem to consider democracy to be optional? Leaders of the party keep explaining why an election is unnecessary. I’ve never heard anything like these verbal political contortions in my life.
Please leave us alone
Let me ask you something. Did you ever, when you were a teenager, have one of those boy- or girl-stalkers? You know the kind: they asked you out (or maybe you asked them), and you went out once, but there was no there there. So you decided… nah.
But they kept calling, and coming around, clinging to your sleeve in the hallway, gazing at you lovingly, refusing to accept that the feeling was not returned. Begging, even.
And there would come a horrible moment when you thought, ‘I’m actually going to have to be mean to this person to make them go away.’ Even worse, maybe you found yourself wanting to be mean to them, because they were so needy, or so wrong about you and what you felt.
That’s what Gordon Brown (and by association, Labour) reminds me of now. He thinks we love him. Or at least, he thinks we need him. We know we don’t. We keep telling him this, but he won’t believe us.
Gordon Brown is stalking us
We might have to be mean to him to make him understand that, when you get right down to it, we’re just not that into him.
