So I thought I’d put together a last post on this referendum. Im also sharing an article I think is important ahead of tomorrow, hopefully youll read one or the other, ideally youll read both, but for the benefit of your sanity, Ill share the articel in a seperate post. I may share any relevant links through teh evening, but where I do I’ll happily leave everyone to make up their own mind, however this will be the last opportunity I take to share my thoughts before we go to the polls tomorrow. For me the choice we make tomorrow won’t guarantee us any massive social changes, it certainly won’t guarantee any sort of socialist utopia. There can be no guarantees because even if we do get a yes vote tomorrow it is merely chance we are voting for. An opportunity to build a new form of governance with a written constitution and a parliament, hopefully similar to the Folketing, decided by proportional representation and with legislation passed by broad coalitions based on consensus politics where one group of parties might come together for one policy and another for a different policy. That way everyone has a voice to some degree and we have a written constitution to serve as checks and balances on our Government. What we have at present in Westminster is a massively outdated first past the post system where we get to choose between two, or arguably three, marginally different strains of centre-right neo-liberalism. The Lib Dems proposed a chance at minimal change with their proposed AV system, but Labour and the Tories voted it down. Why, because they have both realized it doesn’t really matter whether they are in power or not, if they wait long enough they get their shot on the gravy train. Politicians are largely rewarded these days with Sinecure directorships, whereby they do one day a month work for a large corporation for a ludicrous salary, usually well over the UK median wage. When David Milliband quit the UK for the states he alone gave up 11 sinecures. Given that the companies offering these are legally obliged to deliver profits for their shareholders you have to ask where the profit is in paying these sums for a day a month from someone often completely unqualified in their particular field… Aside from that even when our ministers are not in power they can still claim expenses. Even taking just two MPs on the campaign trail Jim Murphy and Alistair Darling both took around £500,000 in expenses from 2007 and 2010 alone. Darling flipped his home five times and was asked to pay back expenses. Both voted for the Welfare cap though. As for checks and balances, all we have in Westminster is the magna carta, which is not a proper constitution, and the House of Lords. When LAbour came to power they promised to reform the lords as it was undemocratic and outdated. They removed Hereditary peers, which on the surface seemed like a good idea. Sadly, an elected house has never come to fruition with hereditary peerages having largely been replaced by the appointment of former politicians and party supporters. Where hereditary peerages was far from ideal at least the peers would make their decisions based on how it would affect their future lineage. Now peers reflect only on what is good for them at the present or what is good for the companies they own. We now have 774 peers claiming £300 a day from the tax payer that is over £80 million a year for a system that is, if anything, even more undemocratic than it was pre-reform. Even if the Labour party got in next year with a massive majority and suddenly reconnected with the labour movement and issued left wing policy the lords, filled with corporate interests could still veto things. And let’s face it I doubt anyone is under any illusions about New Labour suddenly re-discovering their roots anyway. One of the big arguments I have heard is how do we knoe we will get anything different under a yes vote? We don’t, we can’t, but what we are getting, as I stated above is a chance. More importantly a democratic and non violent chance. How else will the entire UK get a chance at change otherwise? Over a million people marched against the war on Iraq and were roundly ignored by those in power in Westminster. More recently pretty much every major city in England erupted into riots ,the Government did worse than ignore it, they and their friends in the media vilified the very people who felt they had so little to lose that they felt civil disobedience was their only option. If we don’t take this chance what can we possibly do to make Westminster change tack? The last clear result of that nature I can think of was Argentina in 2001 where austerity (and remember we have apparently only faced 40% of our austerity) forced the government to freeze 18 million bank accounts. The ensuing protests did remove four presidents in three weeks and resulted long term in a left of centre government, but then Argentina already had a viable political left at that point plus a LOT of blood was spilled to achieve that, romanticists tend to forget that revolution is bloody and messy business and in reality you wonder how many Britons really have the stomach for that, I know I don’t. Besides, even of we could achieve that the NHS would be lost to TTIP then, the tories have chosen not to exempt health from TTIP and Labour are not shouting much about it. You may wonder how Scotland could possibly safeguard it, but in a Sovereign Scotland it would be under Sovereign control and as such is automatically exempted. Sorry for the long winded rant, but I promise it will be my last one of this referendum campaign. We have a chance tomorrow to vote for a potential fres start and if we take it my strongest hope would be that the rest of the UK would see there can be a viable alternative to the corruption and corporate complicity of Westminster. If we do not take this chance any promised powers from the Westminster parties will disappear off the table either to appease marginal voters in the general election or as a result of a lords veto as they already reported as far back as 2012 that any further powers without a full UK wide referendum would be unconstitutional. If we choose not to take this chance we may as well go back to sleep and trust in the fact that Dave and Ed and Boris and their ilk will suddenly turn into philanthropists with a sense of social conscience which has never been apparent before now, because that is our only other hope at change.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 16:28:07 +0000
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