Re: UK election. So much for our votes counting - worst result possibl
i'd rather get rid of the monarchy and the peers thanks.
I would prefer that they remain.
If people are voted into power, the government is going to attract the power hungry, who are perhaps going to be guided more by their own power hungry agendas than they are the objective welfare of their nation.
Two things:
(1) I do like that a proportion of our government consists of people who haven't clawed their way to the top. People who are born into power are likely to be fairly ordinary people, who have responsibility forced upon them. Their presence and influence help to shield our nation from potentially harmful politics.
(2) The monarchy and hereditary peers consist of fairly large families with a great sense of tradition, so are unlikely to up and leave the country should things go awry. They have their offspring to think about, and want a country that is fit for them, and an economy that is stable and prosperous in the long term.
Hereditary peers are less likely to want to sacrifice the long term successes in favour of short term gains; which is what a power hungry person would be more inclined to do, and 10 years later could emigrate with the wealth they've accumulated while in office, and leave the mess they've made behind.
hereditary peers are being dumped out of the Lords. most of them were/are old farts who didn't have a bloody clue.
life peers are just as bad, becuase they're all cronies (on ALL sides!) who paid a ton of cash and got a title for it. Hello, Lord Ashcroft.
it's fundamentally undemocratic that unelected toffs and cronies can stop laws being passed by the government elected by the people, no matter which party it is.
as for Cameron, his education and his class count for a lot. he's lived a priveldged life of nobby schools, nobby university and got jobs without EVER living and working in the real world. he got his first job thanks to a friend of his dad and he got jobs in the Tory central office off the back of cronyism.
i don't like ANY MP who's never lived in the real world or had a real job. Cameron's just the biggest example of the worst of them, Osbourne and the rest of the Bullingdon Club mob in the Tory party are just as bad.
So I take it Tories like Ken Clarke, William Hague and Eric Pickles are ok then?
To be fair here, Cameron has had as much life experience as Brown or Clegg have (actually he's probably had more than Clegg) And I think having a disabled son, having to spend a lot of time seeing the NHS close up and then having that son die at a young age counts as living in the real world.
(and actually the same does go for Gordon))
Saying you can't be PM because you went to Eton is about as stupid as saying you can't be PM because you went to state school--I mean where is the cut off point, who decides who's lived enough in the real world? Maggie was less of a toff than Cameron yet was way more right wing, Tony Ben's the son of a fucking Lord yet is more left wing than most Union leaders.
As for the Lords...I'm not sure I want a 100% elected second house that would at the mercy of party doctrine and, lets face it, the public. Isn't it kind of useful to have a second chamber that isn't beholden to the party whip and the electorate's knee jerk response? I mean we'd probably have 42 days detention and ID cards already if it weren't for the Lords?
Frankly I can't se Labour as the party of the working class any more, they're the party of the public sector, the party that scrapped the 10p tax and so effectively raised taxes for the least well off in society, they're the party that wants to film and cataloge it's population more than any other democracy, that wants us to have ID cards, and wants to keep our DNA even if we aren;t convicted of a crime.
And the Lib Dems and Tories don't agree on anything? Interesting because obviously on civil liberties they do, they both want a smaller state and more freedom for people to do their own thing. They have similar plans on education, and on cutting tax credits to the well off. There are many Lib/Con councils in the country where the parties currently work well in partnership, as they've done in Parliament as well (Ghurkas anyone?)
Clegg is closer to Cameron than people think. The question is can he get a refurendum on reform from them. Doubtful, but his alternative is propping up Brown, and I can't see the country standing for that. A Lib/Lab pact with a new Prime Minister? Again you have to ask how much of a mandate they'd have?
I'm going with a minority Conservative government with loose Liberal support, but I think we all know we'll be voting again soon.
