I haven't posted my Blog for a while now because there is just something about this election that leaves me sad and depressed and alienated and effectively disenfranchised.
The fact I suppose that whatever I do I will be faced on May 7th with the face of the same MP staring at me from the pages of the local press and TV News.
The fact that by no standards of independent assessment or review can the claims of the ConDems be justified at all.
The economy has not been fixed.
We're clearly not in this together.
The rich have got steadily richer on their watch whilst the poor have become increasingly poorer.
The jobs that have been created are in the main rich only in zero hour contracts and faux self employment.
The Murdoch Empire of News clearly wants to persuade us otherwise ( I have recently cancelled my subscription to The Times).
I have swapped my vote and will vote Green on May 7th.
In my dreams I imagine that Labour, Green and SNP will merge to form an anti austerity alliance that will start to move the Country forward for the benefit of the majority who actually create wealth by their labours.
The idea that wealth trickles down so that all benefit in due course seems to have begun during the Thatcher years but what has become clear over the last five years of coalition is that wealth is actually lighter than air, it rises and forms clouds of wealth that wreath the heads of those who don't actually create it leaving the rest of us to reach desperately upwards only for our hands to pass through the wealth cloud and remain empty.
There have been so many half truths and statistical obfuscations at work during the campaign so far.
Claims and counter claims and broad statements of intention (reducing the welfare bill by £12 Billion) without any evidence of where the cuts will be imposed and who will be picking up the real cost in terms of reduced living standards.
The Labour Party has been suckered into making its own commitment to the austerity con so that it seems there is little to choose between the offers of the two largest parties (hence the success of the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales).
The Liberal Democrats are stranded in Post Coalition Triste, whilst to watch the Bullingdon Club lite behaviour on display in the Conservative election campaign is to see Schadenfreude at work.
Austerity, we are told is necessary because the Nation like any family needs to balance its budget, but this equating of national budgets with family budgets is simply a false comparison, national budgets differ in very many ways from family budgets and as Keynes demonstrated during the depression of the Thirties and again in the rebuilding of the shattered economy in the post war years, economic output is influenced by total spending in the economy which of itself does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy.
So borrowing to invest rather than being a necessarily bad thing might rather have been the better way to re-energise the economy.
We need new ideas. Ideas such as those put forward both by the Labour Party and those on the Left of the Liberal Party but also those proposed by the Green Party.
This election could have offered an opportunity for a national conversation about the kind of society we need to be, open hearted, generous, communitarian, respecting the earth we depend on for survival and which we will bequeath to future generations.
We could and should have been asking
Who are we as a people?
What makes us better?
How can we aspire to achieving 'the common good'?
I have written in a previous blog about a conversation I had one evening over a small beer sitting on the veranda of a Tower Block in the West Midlands.
I was talking with a man who was a Trade Unionist, Community Organiser and a Communist.
He shared his general philosophy as he looked out over the Estate where he lived. His commitment was to work for the good of his community so that he had a comfortable home, a sufficient income, to live peaceably with his neighbours so that he was be able to walk home safely in the evening and sleep soundly each night.
It is what most of us want.
The fact I suppose that whatever I do I will be faced on May 7th with the face of the same MP staring at me from the pages of the local press and TV News.
The fact that by no standards of independent assessment or review can the claims of the ConDems be justified at all.
The economy has not been fixed.
We're clearly not in this together.
The rich have got steadily richer on their watch whilst the poor have become increasingly poorer.
The jobs that have been created are in the main rich only in zero hour contracts and faux self employment.
The Murdoch Empire of News clearly wants to persuade us otherwise ( I have recently cancelled my subscription to The Times).
I have swapped my vote and will vote Green on May 7th.
In my dreams I imagine that Labour, Green and SNP will merge to form an anti austerity alliance that will start to move the Country forward for the benefit of the majority who actually create wealth by their labours.
The idea that wealth trickles down so that all benefit in due course seems to have begun during the Thatcher years but what has become clear over the last five years of coalition is that wealth is actually lighter than air, it rises and forms clouds of wealth that wreath the heads of those who don't actually create it leaving the rest of us to reach desperately upwards only for our hands to pass through the wealth cloud and remain empty.
There have been so many half truths and statistical obfuscations at work during the campaign so far.
Claims and counter claims and broad statements of intention (reducing the welfare bill by £12 Billion) without any evidence of where the cuts will be imposed and who will be picking up the real cost in terms of reduced living standards.
The Labour Party has been suckered into making its own commitment to the austerity con so that it seems there is little to choose between the offers of the two largest parties (hence the success of the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales).
The Liberal Democrats are stranded in Post Coalition Triste, whilst to watch the Bullingdon Club lite behaviour on display in the Conservative election campaign is to see Schadenfreude at work.
Austerity, we are told is necessary because the Nation like any family needs to balance its budget, but this equating of national budgets with family budgets is simply a false comparison, national budgets differ in very many ways from family budgets and as Keynes demonstrated during the depression of the Thirties and again in the rebuilding of the shattered economy in the post war years, economic output is influenced by total spending in the economy which of itself does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy.
So borrowing to invest rather than being a necessarily bad thing might rather have been the better way to re-energise the economy.
We need new ideas. Ideas such as those put forward both by the Labour Party and those on the Left of the Liberal Party but also those proposed by the Green Party.
This election could have offered an opportunity for a national conversation about the kind of society we need to be, open hearted, generous, communitarian, respecting the earth we depend on for survival and which we will bequeath to future generations.
We could and should have been asking
Who are we as a people?
What makes us better?
How can we aspire to achieving 'the common good'?
I have written in a previous blog about a conversation I had one evening over a small beer sitting on the veranda of a Tower Block in the West Midlands.
I was talking with a man who was a Trade Unionist, Community Organiser and a Communist.
He shared his general philosophy as he looked out over the Estate where he lived. His commitment was to work for the good of his community so that he had a comfortable home, a sufficient income, to live peaceably with his neighbours so that he was be able to walk home safely in the evening and sleep soundly each night.
It is what most of us want.
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