sorry guys, this is going to be a rant. i have a few stored up (including a youth lib one, which considering i'm 22 now amuses me ) but this was the most pressing.


i'm afraid i'm about to get all political

i firmly believe that in a time of crisis (and a recession is definitely that) that both powerful political parties should stop trying to destabilise each other and work together to fix things. however, as david cameron has just called for the queen to call a dissolution of parliament for an election so that his party can do a bad job too clearly this is too much to ask.

i am also appalled that a tory politician has just tried to blame the pm for the state of the country since the 1960s, i'm sorry, have the tories not been in power since then? I mean, as an archaeologist i can't be hugely sorry that maggie thatcher was in power then as her party introduced the polluter pays legislation that means i have job prospects. i was, however, brought up in an old mining town in the eighties: luckily i'm not of the generation that can remember times when there was no food in the house because of the tories, but kids two years older than me had to STARVE for a few months until their parents could find alternative work. that is not a good path to steer your country down.

the trouble with DC is that he's made himself into a 'face', he's using the media and their sensationalism to get his party into power and has absolutely no policies to help the country. the conservatives are being a very irresponsible shadow cabinet; what it seems to amount to most is bullying. i don't think any group of people whos reaction to a recession is _this_ will be in any way prepared to run the country responsibly. not that labours' brilliant, but i heard the argument in the commons yesterday and GB was saying sensible things like 'everyone in this house should be working together' while the opposition basically hurled personal abuse. i think i'm getting more wound up about it as grandad has bbc news 24 on loop, so ALL i heard about yesterday was this; the fact that some poor man had been murdered by his hostage takers barely got two mentions all day. seriously, every five minutes i heard about b****y hazel blears, for a whole f***ing twelve hours. my brain nearly dribbled out of my ears, but it did lead me to consider the media response.

have you noticed, that whenever it's a tory leaving their job they're 'the latest victim' while if a labour minister leaves they're up to something? i have no great love of HB, but the contrast is striking, particularly considering the media is apparently objective. i feel like the language they're using is trying to steer us into voting against GB, and i don't think that's right from what are supposed to be unbiased observers. I mean, i realise that people's opinions will creep into their work but this? in the name of sensationalism? i don't like it. it was just like this with the recession, i mean i know that it was coming and there were a whole lot of messy economical things that contributed to it, but the fact that the media worked really, really hard to panic us about it certainly didn't help. consider the swine flu outbreak, they reported before they thought and their terrifying pan-demic (which i admit it could have been, but they needed to confirm that before spreading panic) which turned into 'oh, well no-one else has died of it'. parents were taking their kids out of school because of these people for gods' sakes!

and now, with the expenses debacle they're doing it again. the telegraph took the story and ran with it, starting with picking out the biggest names. jack straw, for example, who made a mistake on his council tax form and rectified it within a week with no outside influnce LAST YEAR, for days they were crucifying him. it tickled me no end when i found that DC had started this expenses war and most of the people abusing their power the most were the tories; labour are by no means blameless, don't get me wrong, but attacking GB because he paid a fair wage for someone to clean his house was just silly.

my mum told me once that one of her students (she taught a-level english to 16+ and adults) asked her how to vote, because he'd never done it before and he didn't know who to choose. mum replied that no one could make that decision but him and that she personally made her choice based on the following:

basically there are two attitudes within the prevailing few parties:
one: let's help me get more of what I want and a better standard of living
two: let's help everyone get a better standard of living

mum always chose the second party attitude and i think she's right. i may be struggling for money and to stay in a house but my boyfriend and i can feed ourselves, we have an allotment to grow things in and occassionally have enough to visit home and go out for meals or catch a train to go for a walk somewhere. we're ok, we can get by. there are people in our civilised, sophisticated country however, who can't feed themsleves or their kids, have nowhere to live, often through no fault of their own (or, really, the government's, regardless of who's in office) and the policies of one party might help _them_.

there is only one party that i can currently think of that hasn't got _any_ policies of that ilk; the party in question seems more upset that the slightly more well off aren't going to be able to buy that farmhouse and keep their ponies instead of whether someone somewhere can provide appropriate care for someone else, or that the party in power actually IS doing it's best to fix the recession and that it is working.

there are times for a hard campaign and there are times for knuckling under for the good of the country and a dissolution at this moment in time would help absolutely no-one in the whole country EXCEPT the leaders of the Tory party, who would feel very pleased with themselves indeed.


here endeth the rant for today.