You know, obviously, that our MPs and civil servants, local councilors, public sector workers, teachers, doctors etc., are there to make our lives better. We pay for them through our taxes to do what we need and want them to do. They owe their livelihoods to us and our desire for them to do the stuff that we're too busy to do ourselves. It's a system that, in theory, works well.
Laws and healthcare, governance, protecting our shores, keeping the place tidy, sorting out planning issues, that's all good work that these people who work for us do.
And they're paid, often quite generously, by us, to do this invaluable work.
That's all good then.
The trouble is that when these people have their own agenda, when they move from being our 'servants' - doing what we want and need to be done - to being the ones in control of what we do, setting the agenda, making laws that we didn't want, enforcing them through surveillance, then, it seems to me, we have a problem.
And that is where we are now. We have the lunatics running the asylum. And it seems that we have no easy way of clawing back our control or influence.
When these people are not 'working for you' but instead working for themselves, making laws that are in their interests rather than in ours, feathering their own nests instead of looking after the greater good of the country...
When they actively pursue the disconnect between Government and voter's opinions, concerns, views and beliefs on issues such as immigration, free speech, foreign policy, the EU, energy and planning policy; the way the banks operate and are regulated/supported...
When their policies, proposals and actions are clearly about party popularity and personal standing with the good of the country coming a distant third in their priorities, whether their motivation is from the unions or big business...
It seems to me that they have gone way beyond their original brief.
It is clear that donations to political parties have an influence on policy-making - whether it's Unite or the tobacco lobby, green energy companies or the oil industry. Otherwise why would these organisations make the payments? But how can the ordinary voter have his or her voice heard?
Then there's the civil service: unelected bureaucrats who seem to do far more than acting out the wishes of our Government but instead seem to rumble on with their own agenda regardless of Ministers' or voters' wishes in pursuit of some mindless, disconnected and distant edict almost certainly from the equally unelected and unaccountable European Union. How do policies decided in Brussels or Strasbourg actually connect with the local needs and requirements of us in towns, cities and villages in the UK? Or indeed in Greece, Spain, Italy or Ireland?
It seems to me that this 'they work for you' bollocks is just a complete sham. They do work for us in that we are the ones who pay them, but they are working for themselves and have absolute contempt for ordinary people. If we are paying, we are essentially the client in this relationship: And in the world of business, the client calls the shots. The client tells the supplier (the public sector) what it wants and the supplier then does everything it can to meet the clients' requirements.
This is simply not happening in the world any more. What the people want is simply being ignored. It's why we have embarked upon stupid unwinnable wars; why we have allowed completely unchecked immigration and almost no requirement for newcomers to integrate with our society and live within our laws and belief systems; why we are all being royally ripped off by energy suppliers and Governmental 'green taxation', why our strategically important utilities are foreign owned and why bankers can effectively stick two fingers up to the rest of us however disastrously they perform and behave.
I've seen, on twitter, the phrase: '650 of them 65 million of us'. But actually the 65 million seem to be completely impotent terms of having any real influence on how we're governed and what decisions are taken about how we live.
The level of surveillance we are currently subjected to is completely anachronistic to what is needed for our security. It seems to be much more about he authorities' fear of the people for whom they (proport to) work; much more about control than keeping safe. We are close to having a modern police state akin to East Germany in the post war period - and when the police have been clearly shown to be corrupt this is a terrifying prospect.
It's time for us to take back some control. So that those of us who have the welfare of the country at heart, who take a longer term view of life, who are concerned about what sort of life their kids will lead in 20 year's time (or tomorrow), will have a say. As opposed to the 5-year run of parliament and the 'me me me', 'make it while you can' attitude that currently prevails.
We're being fucked over at the moment. Ripped off and told what to do, by people who are supposed to be working for us. Mr Cameron used a phrase during the last General Election: 'We can't go on like this'. He meant in the way that Labour was mis-managing the country and in particular its finances, but I think the phrase still holds true three years into the coalition administration. We can't go on like this. Can't go on taxing 'ordinary' people to the hilt while allowing corporations to 'do a deal' with HMRC behind closed doors. We can't go on being ruled remotely by Brussels. We can't go on having policy-makers and administrators showing complete contempt for the people they supposedly serve.
I don't know what the answer is. But change is coming. I hope it's not violent but I think it might well be, simply because the system is now so tight, so controlling, so all-seeing, and so weighted in favour of these 'out of control' servants of ours, that using the existing system to deliver change is almost impossible. Social media will help massively as an engine for change but one thing is for sure, in my opinion, we need to change our governance, need to take back some control and need to re-create the original contract between client and supplier, between the people and those who serve us.
In short, it's time we kicked these self-interested fuckwits out, rebooted our system and our country and got back to what we, the voters, in whose interest these people should be working, wanted in the first place.
It is Bastille Day after all. ;)
Thanks for reading.
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