Wishlist for 5th May, 2015
(Note – the next general election might not actually be on the 5th of May. It might be the 15th. But right now I can not be arsed looking it up. So for now I am going with the 5th)
Item 1 :-
OD Gets a UK Politics Circle so that I don’t have to keep posting these entries in to what appears to be a circle devoted entirely to Republicans ranting about how fair the world is becoming under a Democratic President and how they want to see the good old days of pre-RoeVsWade, pre-Emancipation Proclamation and pre-Civil Rights return to THEIR country
Item 2 :-
Someone to tell Nick Clegg that he might as well just sit down and shut up, because no one – NO ONE – in their right mind is EVER going to vote Lib Dem again. If you are a party that promises to campaign against tuition fees, campaign against tax cuts for the rich, campaign against benefit cuts for the poor and basically promises to act like the Liberals they claim to be, and then – within a year of taking office – break all those promises and a thousand more for "the greater good", you really cannot blame ANYONE for not wanting to trust you again.
Clegg threw away EVERY SINGLE ONE of his principles for a tiny bit of power, and if ANYONE thinks he wouldn’t do it again in a heartbeat, then they are just kidding themselves.
Item 3 :-
Someone to ask David Cameron the following questions (preferably during one of the debates we are going to be subjected to again – see Item 4) :-
Why did you cut benefits for the poor and then cut taxes for the rich?
Why did you freeze public sector pay and yet give most of your front bench a huge tax cut?
Why did you say you had no plans to raise VAT and yet do it less than a second after taking office?
Why did the rioters in London not deserve a second chance and yet Andy Coulson did?
Why did you applaud tough sentences for rioters who stole bottled water and yet let David Laws off of stealing £40,000 because he was ashamed of being gay?
Why did you raise tuition fees to extortionate levels and then give rebates to anyone who can afford to pay off the loans early?
Why do you make such a big fuss every time the BBC put a foot out of line, and yet make no comment on ITV, C4 or any other channel when they screw up just as much, if not worse?
Why did you commission Leveson and then ignore it?
Why are you rewriting so many laws that specifically target the unions?
Why did you promise to leave the NHS alone and then enforce a massive, top-down reorganisation?
Item 4 :-
I might have mentioned this before, but here in the UK we – the general public – do NOT vote for our Prime Minister. We vote for our local MP. And even if you live in a constituency that has Cameron, Clegg or Miliband as an MP, you are still only voting for your local MP, not for The Prime Minister.
This is British Politics 101 and should not be that hard to grasp. And if it is that hard to grasp, then schools need to get better at teaching it.
How do I know we do not elect our Prime Minister directly? Well – aside from understanding British Politics 101, I have – in my life time alone – seen two occasions where the party in power changed their leader without ANY consultation of the rest of the country. Major replaced Thatcher, and Brown replaced Blair. And while it is true a lot more people bitched about Brown being an "unelected dictator squatting in Number 10" (more a less a direct quote from a BBC Political Correspondent, by the way) than they did about Major the fact is that both of them came to the office of Prime Minister in a perfectly legal and legitimate way.
Why? BECAUSE WE DON’T ELECT OUR PRIME MINISTER.
So when I see the ideas for yet another round of "Prime Ministerial Debates" being floated, I quite literally want to vomit.
They are based on the American Presidential Debates of course, and in America it makes sense – they do vote for their President. I know, because I’ve seen it on TV and seen it on the news.
But here – I don’t get to cast a vote for Cameron or Miliband or Clegg or the leaders of any of the other minority/racist/bigoted/nutjob parties that might be out there.
I get to cast a vote for one of the seven people who stood for election in my constituency last time, or one of the however many will do it this time.
Now – if we got a televised debate for what they would do when they were elected, I would probably watch that.
But we won’t, because – basically – it would cost too much money.
So instead we get the three leaders of the three biggest parties (which – whatever they say – is incredibly discriminatory against the rest of the minority/racist/bigoted/whackjob parties out there) and the implied suggestion that they are really the only three MPs that matter, and all the rest of the elected members of Parliament are just there to do their bidding, rather than having minds of their own.
(Which might be true, but we don’t need to glorify that idea).
Item 5 :-
That the news media start to hold our politicians to account – properly to account. That if they lie, the news calls it a lie and demands the truth. That if Cameron says one thing this year, then directly contradicts it next year, someone calls him out on that and asks him why.
That the press stop being afraid of the politicians, and instead make the politicians afraid of them.
Question them until they answer, then let them go.
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I realise that since Item 1 on my list is probably never going to happen, Items 2 – 5 are even less likely.
But I live in hope.