We might need the Politicians

I started sending myself insane last night reading a few of the petitions being put up to the new Government Epetitions website. There are some very strange people putting these up there, for example this one includes the phrase "Jeremy Kyle does it, why can't we." Does anyone want anything to do with this? If you do start running now. I'm sure someone could start a petition saying George Osbourne should sit an Economics A-Level and get 100,000 signatures, doesn't mean that should be passed as a law, or debated in parliament. At least one of the others demands a referendum be called for everything. Not practical, not realistic, and just bloody stupid.

There's been a fair bit of comment about the governments holidays last few days, ignoring the people calling for them to return, or some of them anyway due to riots and the financial issues, there have been other comments asking why do we need politicians, Civil servants run the country anyway, polticians are a waste of money, lets ignore them. The problem with this would be when you want something changed, the civil service will keep things ticking over and run on the same lines, but nothing would change. And this would be a problem, at least some of the time. Looking at the petitions people put up apparently in all seriousness you couldn't run referendums for every decision, aside from the cost issues, as who would decide what would be asked? And god knows what would result anyway.

We might want better politicians than the ones we have, on all sides, we might not like what they decide, but they're better than the alternatives. And we can always vote them out eventually, we can't sack the public.

Divided into Them and Us

I'm not one of them. I'm not sure who "they" are. It's the playground coming out in people, you have a gang of friends as a child and the other groups are them. We're always us, even if we're them to someone else. Thing is this is basically how our politicians are currently talking. You have to be with us, or you're against us, and one of them. Them being either evil, stupid, or just someone we don't agree with who needs to be demonised or removed from visibility. 

The Labour party have been doing this pretty much since they went into opposition. They're saying if you don't agree with these cuts the government are making you have to support us. If you don't support us you're with them and you're wrong. This seems to be the only argument, as I haven't heard exactly what they'd do differently, although I may have missed something, but it's basically what our politics have descended into, you're With us or Against us, don't ask us to elaborate. Playground arguments between elements of what is becoming a political class, worryingly similar to the Hydra in that you could cut off a head and another would appear almost the same. They are all similar enough to each other that the them and us thing makes no sense when used by political parties. 

When you make everyone who disagrees with you "them", you're trying to ostracise them from the mainstream. From here extremism comes, for if you refuse to listen to what people are saying, and condemn them as stupid or ignore their views and say they have to agree with you and you alone then you push them to the margins. If you don't address peoples fears and explain, or leave them nowhere to go and say that they are "them", who no-one wants to be then people kick back. Sometimes this is targeted in violence, sometimes in protest, but if you push people into a group you just think of as "Them", to be ignored then you damage the democracy you claim to hold dear. You disenfranchise groups of people, who have no-one to support with a good conscience. What do you think starts to happen then?

Freedom of the Press

We're happy to have a free press, our politicians are always saying so as well are they not? But they don't exactly want a free press in one sense, they want a compliant press, one that will back them and not criticise them too much. That might ignore a few inconvenient things. Which is why they were all sucking up to Rupert Murdoch so much. Owner of one of the few papers that sometimes changes sides, to it's own benefit first and foremost, which is fair enough for them, but when it becomes to it's benefit through political promises then that becomes an issue.

One of Murdochs comments the other day did make me laugh a bit, he was asked about politicians and PMs coming to him and inviting him to Downing St and everything and said that he wished they'd leave him alone. Would be easy to get them to leave you alone Rupert, although they may be doing so anyway for a bit now, but tell them you're going to leave your editors to make the decisions, they will back what policies they believe is best, and criticise what they disagree with, holding the politicians to account as they do so. But that won't happen will it, and never would.

You invite politicians in to your circle, and use the influence to benefit you, you back the winners and convince them they won because of your support. We now have the situation where our politicians believe it's more important to appease the editors and owners of newspapers rather than the people of this country and it's depressing.

You used to have the situation where the newspapers would give unqualified support to politicians, we've wound up with the politicians giving unqualified support to a newspaper group. And it's now stopped and the world moves on. Will they learn? We hope so. If not we must make our voices heard louder then before to say they must.