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Sometimes it might be better not to write some Editorials and a prime example was this one in the Independent today on Lord Ashcroft funding and directing the Tory campaign in over 100 key marginal seats. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-how-money-can-distort–the-democratic-process-1912359.html

The whole Lord Ashcroft thing is rather boring in the sense that the Law bans foreign nationals from funding British Politics for obvious reasons but a British national who arranges his affairs to minimise tax is hardly the same case. Also one might question the Labour Party’s acceptance of the support of Rupert Murdoch and the Sun Newspaper, he is now an American citizen and before that, Australian. Some people do not only write total crap, they obviously think it too.

My Response

“It’s just not fair, I’ll scream and scream and scream !” Oh please do grow up and stop writing total twaddle.

As Editorial points out, “The drive has been masterminded by the party’s deputy chairman, the Belize-based billionaire, Lord Ashcroft, who has bankrolled the Tories for the past three decades.” During which time the Tories have lost three General Elections on the trot so, how much difference does money really make ?

Back in the 1950s in London, candidates knocked on your door, there were loudspeaker vans. Today it is all Battle Buses, Helicopters and slick Party Political Broadcasts, more money is spent and less personal contact made.

As for the Tories carefully targeting their efforts, is that unfair ? If you were a General fighting a battle, would you play to your strengths or not, just because you want to be “fair” and allow your enemy the chance to defeat you and slaughter your troops ? How outrageous for the Tories to try and win these seats surely, that can’t be fair ?

If Ashcroft’s cash were used to offer bribes to the electorate to vote Tory, that would be illegal but the incumbent Government can offer all bribes to the electorate to get re-elected using the taxpayer’s own money, is that fair ?

If I remember rightly, we have had three Labour Governments where their share of the potential national vote was less than 26 percent. I suppose if you are a Labour supporter that was totally “fair”, if not it was totally “unfair”.

The Real Issues

This article is pretty poor stuff which essentially seems to have as its central core “We don’t want the Tories to win” and then mixes up two separate issues, Party Funding and Electoral Reform.

The answer to the first is that if one could persuade the British Public to stop voting for “Branded Parties” and instead vote for Independents and “The best person for the job”, the grip of the main political parties would be broken and funding would come down to the candidate level, heck we may even get more representative Government !

On the second, “first past the post”, I suspect that unless you are LibDem and therefore hopelessly well short of ever forming a Government in your own right, PR of some kind is “Totally the Right Thing” to do but for the majority, FPTP fits in with the national character based upon our “Adversarial System”. However, if we can get a major reform of the Commons including a cull of MPs to 400 or less, because of the larger and more diverse constituencies that would create, we would most certainly need to reform FPTP and devise a transferable vote, even a second vote run off (polling twice), to make for a fairer and more representative House of Commons.

Personally, I think Cameron will make a fine PM but frankly, I will be happy with anyone except Brown, Balls, Cooper, Harmon and the rest of those Labour deadbeats, wouldn’t you ?

Vote for a Hung Parliament

Someone wrote in to encourage people to deliberately vote to create a Hung Parliament which is as dotty as it gets because that will do no one any favours. As they say, this coming Election would be a good one to lose whatever political party you belong to because thanks to the combination of World events and Gordon Brown, the UK is in a dreadful mess economically.

I believe that David Cameron will make a fine Prime Minister and has the guts to get the job done despite how unpopular it made him in the process. But rather than have a Hung Parliament, I would prefer to see Brown and his cronies elected because it would only take at most a couple of years for the public to take to the streets and in the process, wreak revenge upon him. My comments in reply follow:

A Hung Parliament

Sorry but that is all well and fine but also rather juvenile. A Hung Parliament will serve no purpose and is certainly not in the interests of the British people. Also how do you imagine: “…the real wishes of the population be exposed.” (a quote from him), will come about, will Magistrates allow such lewdness in public ?

The nearest thing to a Hung Parliament is the LibDem Party, all very nice people but trying to lead them (rather like herding cats one suspects), has driven their best Party Leader to drink and Clegg would find it difficult to make headway in his life as a Solicitor in a rural Market Town. A Hung Parliament is a vote born out of fear and a vote for stagnation in a World that will be moving on and passing us by.

The Way Ahead

We are quite amusingly in a period of time of “Where the Policy which dare not say its name” exists. Whoever gets into Power, the policies will be identical, severe cuts upon severe cuts the only difference being if Brown were still PM he would call them “Investments”, Cameron would call them cuts and blame Brown, Clegg would hum a lot and look out of the window.

The fact is that no politician will tell the truth openly until the public accept the reality of our economic situation and the public are just not up to it yet. The proof of that was the total waste of uproar, bile and time spent on the MPs Expenses thing, a true sideshow distraction if ever there was compared to the important issue, the real state of our economy.

Will Health Care have to be rationed ? Of course it will, it is total botox to say that there will be no cuts in the NHS, Education and Overseas Aid, in the latter case, the devaluation of Sterling has seen to that already. Whether in Health, Education, Social Security Benefits or endless daft legislation on “Employment Rights” Maternity and Paternity Leave, we in the UK have been “paying ourselves” far too much, far more than our productive output warranted, it would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

There Will be a Massive Reduction in Living Standards

As a consequence, we must accept that both our standard of living and our expectations need to go back some 15-20 years. We need to become, we will anyway, a low wage economy to encourage inward investment in manufacturing from abroad whilst in parallel building up self sufficiency in energy, food and clean water. We need to retain our political stability, likely renegotiate our relationship with the EU, have a low taxation environment for business and individuals, expand the Voluntary sector to fill in gaps created by cuts in publicly funded services – we have 8 million economically inactive people so there is the capacity to do that using the Benefits System – Workfare.

If either Brown or Cameron said any of that, their poll ratings will plummet instantly but that is where we are at right now and we need to face it. So just how would a Hung Parliament help ? The politicians, Civil Service and the City know what needs to happen, it is the public who don’t want to accept it yet or more likely, they do accept it but for “other people” and not them personally.