Tim Leslie wrote: > Yes but he has no option if he gets a vote of no confidence, does he? > But exactly my point Steve, the whole thing these days is not the politics > of the people but the politics of ego .... theirs. The country comes > second to their ambition and yet they are SUPPOSED to be there to serve > the people!
I recently read Tom Bower's biography of Gordon Brown - partly because of Tom's excellent "Broken Dreams" (which I always assume every real Leeds fan has read) and partly because I have come across Brown and his cronies a lot during my long and bitter association with the Scottish Labour Party (you think it's wank in Englandshire? you should try the version of people's party that wears a tartan bunnet). In Tom's book he constantly refers to Brown's indicisiveness and the way that the (usually) inconclusive results of this indicisiveness always leave Brown in the depths of despair. In his youth, away from politics there was a lot of drink and a disastrous series of relationships with women, including an Eastern European Countess no less! His early life with his brother in a Fifeshire manse has been spun to give him some sort of socialist credibility but anyone who was brought up in a family even vaguely related to the Scottish Church and its abject self belief in it's theology and how that is put into practice in 1960's Scotland will be flawed. Trust me the established churches in Scotland are probably the most difficult part of living here for anyone with even the vaguest desire to question, to be innovative or to reverse slowly into the second half of the last century. So I say, Brown is totally unsuited to run even a small Parish Council ne'er mind the UK (well maybe Stoneybridge). He is where he is because of the interventionism of a large number of people happy to follow the diktat of the New Labour project, not on close examination of his character or his merits. In part these people have gone about doing what they think is best - a great deal of the Sure Start programme is testament to this in the fields of Health and working with families, something of which I have had first hand experience of here in the Highlands. The downfall, however, is in the ugly manifestation of the Labour party's attempts to deal with the populist aspects of it's tenure. Because of the staid nature of those who rose to the top within Blair's entourage (and they are all still around with Brown) they deal with presentation in a parallel world normally only occupied by dad's dancing at family parties and drunken 50 year old women in jewellry bought on QVC. In most cases they are at best embarrassing but their worst excesses come out when we see them being greedy (Mandelson and his mortgages, Cherie and her Bristol property deals, Robinson and his benevolent Countess etc etc etc). My argument will always be that, on a small island like ours, there is no sense of political proportion. Local democracy is at the whim of a few and largely driven by a rabidly right wing media, centralisation is rife and in the main people end up acting like babies because we are treated like babies. Any attempt at root and branch change in society only ever results in the lining of the usual pockets - bean counters lawyers and soi-disant consultants. If you need proof look at the arse that was made of the Scottish Parliament building. They should have put the windy bastards in a shed and left them to keep warm on the hot air they constantly spout. You don't believe me? We have (because of the Liberal Democrats insistance in its coalition with Labour in the first Scottish Parliament) proportional representation in Scottish local government. To make the wards big enough for PR to mean anything they created Super Wards some with 2 some with 3 members. I live in a 3 member ward. Since it's inception my ward has three councillors one of whom lives 5 miles away (but still in the ward) and two who live over 10 miles away (but still in the ward) two of them have changed party since they were elected (so we are none the wiser as to what they stand for now) and one we only see when someone dies in the village 'cos he's the local undertaker and spends most of his time doing the 60 mile round trip to the crem in Inverness. They are now paid £18k a year to do this "job" fulltime (all of them have their own businesses which must be bloody marvellous given the amount of time they should be away from them if they are doing the councillor job right). We never see them other than when they need our votes. Democracy in the UK is a sham. It's a greasy pole and if the establishment or those that would be the establishment wish to ensure their "people" get up that pole they will. Then of course there's the Freemasons, but don't get me going on that one...................... Betty _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist "He's not the saviour, he's a very naughty boy" Sean Emmott 15th Sept 2008
