text from leaflet, republished online at indymedia!

The election is practically here and the politicians are once again urging us “Vote Me, Vote Me” and spouting meaningless policies to which they have no intention of keeping. One party’s policies are almost impossible to distinguish from another’s - Labour wants to buy more police and lock up more asylum seekers. The Tories want to lock up more asylum seekers and buy more coppers. We are told this is a choice but it is no choice, It is a farce.

A farce to cover up the fact that more and more, politicians are taking the control of our lives out of our hands. Our lives are bit by bit being handed over to those who are committing atrocities against the planet and its’ people in our name. And what’s left? A series of meaningless rituals - work, pub, television – each tiring us just enough to keep us from finding another way. So we stay on the same old treadmill: be Born, Consume, be Silent, Die. The system relies on our apathy and so far we are giving it to them every inch of the way.

The election is just another one of the meaningless choices we are given to try to appease us, but what choice is this really? Blair or Hague, Nike or Adidas, Burger King or Macdonalds, Coke or Pepsi?

By presenting us with another consumer’s choice, this time for our rulers, they are distracting attention from the fact that the world is really run by greedy multinationals. They present us with an alternative scenario which is simpler and less painful to believe in, but the fact is that corporate machines, out of the control of any human, are intent on eaking every last drop of profit out of the planet, with complete disregard for the destruction of the life support system which we depend upon. Our apathy and refusal to accept this reality allows them to get away with the rape and murder of our mother planet.
In reality, a vote for Hague or Blair is the same thing: A vote for more government and corporate control of our lives and minds. Labour have proved one thing over the past four years, as they delivered the oppressive policies they used to oppose: that once in power, any politician, no matter how good their intentions, will be forced to comply with a system in which there is no room for human need, the system based purely on economic growth and profit.