The UK Budget
Patrick Cooper-Duffy | 17.03.2004 20:22 | Analysis | Globalisation | Health | London
The art of the political con.The soft sell of austerity by your friendly labour party.Buy it quickly from your media.
Mr Gordon Brown says that we the British have never had it so good in 200 years.The we must be the ruling class and its servants in Parliament.So greedy are our political masters that they now have the best pension fund in the country.Mr Tony Blair is thought to have over £ 1.4 million pounds ($2.8) in his own.This may be further increased by consultancies,lecturer fees,book sales.
Even the left have been taken in this need for personal accumulation thus the New Respect leader George Galloway cannot survive without a personal chauffeur
(his London Town house and $500,000holiday home in Portugual. etc.)This personal excess of 8-11 houses Meacher and 2or 3 Jags (3 or 4)homes Prescott.Partly explains why there has not been an effective revolt against Blair the average MP is well looked after.
This affluence is true of the trade union leadership and the secondary layer through out Parliament and local government. To some extent Big business and government is one and the same thing. They share the same values and lifestyle and despise ordinary people. They fear their fall from grace and fight to maintain their power and position.
Thus the poor, the weak, the needy are to be punished even further. For those in employment increasing productivity, longer working days are the norm. This relentless drive for profit and the methods to extract it are not new. But the difference was in the past some kind of network and safety net existed.
If we look at the Health of the nation attacks on the elderly through the restriction of bed care. Attacks on rights by the erosion of the state pension and the introduction of much means testing. The intrusive and heavy handed management of the benefit system means that Billions of pounds go unclaimed.
Rights and legal issues are complicated matters yet we see the erosion of Law Centres, Unemployed and Citizens Advice areas. The trade union movement seems unable to provide even the most basic support to its members. For employment matters such as bullying the individual is left to their own devices. The consequence of this gross attack on the person road rage, trolley rage, binge drinking, drug overdosing or use.
Those at the margins of society might consider sublimating their living through crime, drug dealing,prositution,car theft.Perhaps for the most part Britain remains a relatively safe place. But one senses a build up of frustration and an explosive tension awaiting explosion.
Platitudes are made against drug taking, smoking, stress and mental illness. Yet a look at history shows that Britain was the biggest drug barron of all time and a major drug supplier to the world .In 1870 legalisation was passed legalising opium and a department overseeing its distribution through out India. Much of this opium was exported to China and its estimated this Opium trade cost some 30 million Chinese people their lives.
Where it suited the demands of the trading classes Burma was invaded. Its government thrown out and its resources plundered. So indeed the lack of ethical foreign policy is not new.T.E Lawrence writing to the Times in the 1920s complained of the treatment of the Iraqi people. We see that nothing has changed save the art of the great lie.
Britain may be the fourth richest country in the world but it occupies 10th rating in health and longevity.When people realise that politicians could teach Peter Foster master class conman how to con.Who knows what might happen?
Patrick Cooper-Duffy
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