Skip to main content

Perhaps I shall vote after all.


 The faces of British politics 2015.



Take your pick






I have not voted for many years, since just before Blair, Mandellson, Campbell and Brown destroyed the Labour Party in fact. From being an active party member, CLP chair, Council Group Leader, PPC, and a number of other posts, I became party less, as no political group matched my views on society or any of the other issues which I considered to be essential. It was not a case of me deserting the Labour party, but more the Labour party deserting me as it lurched off to the right in pursuit of perceived popularity and electoral victory at any price, rather than political belief. I never subscribed to the argument that being in politics was about winning elections at any price rather than campaigning for a fair and democratic society where people were more important than corporations and collective well being was more important than greed and self interest.

There is however a political manifesto in this General Election Campaign, which proposes a society and a catalouge of policies which in many ways, reflects what I have campaigned for in the past and still argue for today.

*Fight for a publicly funded, publicly provided health service free at the point of use.
*End austerity and restore the public sector, creating over one million good jobs that pay at least a living wage.
*Build 500,000 social rented homes by 2020 and bring empty homes back into use to ensure everyone has access to an affordable place to live.
*Build 500,000 social rented homes by 2020 and bring empty homes back into use to ensure everyone has access to an affordable place to live.
*Scrap Trident, The "Independent" nuclear deterrent.
*Phase out fossil-fuel based energy generation and nuclear power.

Until now I have been spectacularly unimpressed by the negative, cliche ridden hostility of the general election campaign from the majority of political camps. However, it may well be that on 7th May, next Thursday in fact, I will go to the station and vote after all.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Northern Ireland and Brexit. The return of "The Troubles"

Northern Ireland: police attacked in another night of disturbances | Northern Ireland | The Guardian When the "Brexit" debate was still filling our newspapers and our television screens, readers may remember why I had changed my mind since voting to leave at the referendum vote. Apart from the economic arguments, which had become crystal clear after peeling away all the lies and misrepresentations trotted out by Bozo Boris and his "Get Brexit Done" conspirators, there was always the problem of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Would it be possible to have a border between the European Union and the United Kingdom where people, goods and services could pass freely between the two nations without customs restrictions, tariffs, duties and all the other formalities? Would it be possible to have one part of the United Kingdom treated differently from other parts of the United Kingdom, particularly when Scotland for example had voted overwhe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Enough of this hysterical nonsense

  http://style.uk.msn.com/royal-baby/how-will-the-royal-baby-look-as-he-grows-up Media generated hysteria.                           This is too much. For the last 36 hours (thought it seems more like 36 days) there has been wall to wall news coverage, media and television comment and reporting, with Sky News taking first prize for frenzied minute by minute reporting from the Palace, the hospital, from a village somewhere in England, from the studio and anywhere else that Burley, Botting and company could stick a microphone into some obscure "celebrity's" face and ask for yet another banal quote. All this galvanising the mass hysteria of some elements of the public, (who the media would have you believe is the reaction of "the whole world",) with their flag waving, dancing, singing and cheering over what is after all, no more than a woman having a bab...
Post a Comment
Read more

A perverse and rather sinister media obsession to discredit, smear and undermine Jeremy Corbyn

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/venezuela-jeremy-corbyn-blasted-for-not-condemning-president-maduro-a3606156.html#commentsDiv Venezuela: Jeremy Corbyn blasted for not condemning socialist President Nicolas Maduro as violent conflict escalates There is a perverse and rather sinister obsesseion with the media and particularly television "interveiwers", in seeking to secure from Jeremy Corbyn a "condemnation" of some person or organisation or event. This time it is connected with events in Venezuela and the actions of President Nicolas Maduro and the bloody crackdown on protests against the result of last weeks poll which inaugurated a constituent assembly . The media "stories" and the interrogation by the television interviewers, are as subtle as a sledgehammer being nothing more than a variation on the "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question, which so many repoters use in order for them to make themselves appear very ...
Post a Comment
Read more