My thoughts on current politics in the UK

I think it was Noam Chomsky who said that we are given the illusion of freedom by being allowed free speech on the topics the elites want while being denied any form of speech on the topics the elites don’t want.

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As a preface statement, I want to say that I am NOT telling anyone else how to vote; merely explaining what I’m thinking at the moment and why. 

Firstly, I want to suggest that there is very little point reading any of the political manifestos. There is no legal requirement for Parties to put their manifesto pledges into action and there is no legal comeback if/when they don't. As we all know, they put in place the bits of their manifesto they want to, ignore the bits that they just put in to get votes but never had any intention of doing, and do things which were not in their manifesto but which are brought in so quickly that it was obvious they planned to do them all along. Political Party manifestos are and should be treated like simple propaganda and, as we know, propaganda is a form of lying.

In my view, Labour will be no better than the Tories. Neither Party deserve my vote.

They are two sides of the same coin. Like a coin, the sides may look different at a quick glance but in practice give you the same outcome. The direction of travel is the same, the only difference may be in the speed.

The huge Conservative majority in 2019 was ridiculous and undeserved as will be a Labour huge majority this time. 

Swinging wildly between two useless, entitled, and highly outcome-similar Parties shows the poor state of our democracy.

What? They aren’t similar?

Let’s look at the big topics.

Economy – no change. The global economy, particularly that of the USA which will drive the performance of our economy at a macro-level. Taxes will continue upwards with no discernible improvement in services. All the increased revenue goes on the yearly servicing of our massive national debt plus the automatic annual increase in administration costs of the State (wages, product procurement, pensions etc). There’s none left over to actually improve the services given. The cost of living will continue to rise via increased taxes, increased prices & continuing poor economic productivity, thus continuing to widen the gap between the top & bottom 50% which will end in tears.

As usual the tax increases will affect the middle 70% most. No government will increase taxes on the bottom 20% (other than indirectly). And neither will they increase the taxes on the richest 10% in any meaningful way as they will simply leave the country which will lower the overall tax take since they pay way more than 10% of the overall tax.

NHS  – There will be no change overall. A new Government may choose one or two areas to throw money at and improve but it will be at the expense of other areas they deem less politically harmful. Like the economy overall, any extra money is swallowed up by increased annual administration costs. Neither of the two main Parties will dare suggest structural change to a sacred cow. If we continue as we are, the NHS will become, in a real sense, unaffordable in a generation or two but who cares? That’ll be for them to sort out; not our problem – thanks grandad!

Education – Again, it’s the same here as with the NHS. There will be no meaningful change. Extra money will not translate into better education for the same reasons as the NHS  - increasing costs & lack of political will. There appears no appetite to address structural issues, only ideological ones.

Immigration – huge increases in the last 25 years. The last 10 years make the difference between open borders and sensibly managed immigration a purely theoretical one. 

The levels of immigration (legal and illegal) we have witnessed over the last decades is a sleight of hand to appear to be growing our GDP. 

Pretending our GDP makes us 6th in the world when per person we’re down at 27th!!

The only difference between Labour & Conservatives is the latter does it for cynical hard-nosed economic reasons and screw the societal problems, whereas the former think open borders is morally the right thing to do and screw the societal problems. The outcome is the same and will end in tears.

Climate - whether Labour or Conservative there will be more doom and gloom and ‘the end of the world is nigh’ predictions that we’ve had since the 1960s justifying more climate related taxes, more restrictions on movement, more laws, rules and regulations justified ’cos climate, obviously’, with no improvement to the actual climate and continued increases in the cost of living via rising energy & food prices. More tears on the horizon.

Understand that China has more carbon emissions than the developed world combined. But let’s blame it on ‘western’ farmers & cows, plaster solar panels on prime farmland, fill landfills with wind turbine blades & use electric vehicles with batteries that include rare elements like cobalt mined by child slaves in Congo, all for the greater good, apparently.

I have a separate piece on climate change policy and its effect on society here. https://rantsramblingsremembrances.blogspot.com/2024/06/my-thoughts-climate-narrative-both.html

Utilities/Energy – is nationalisation the answer or is the real problem net zero policies & lack of energy security via insufficient storage capacity? 

Anyone old enough to remember the s**t show of the 1970s will understand that nationalised or privatised, the end result (i.e. quality of service and cost of gas, electricity and water) will be the same – always going up over time. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. 

Nationalisation is not a silver bullet solution here and it’s a lie for politicians to say otherwise and naïve of folk to believe it. 

I do though think that allowing foreign companies to own our utility companies is plain daft and asking for trouble.

The important stuff little discussed by politicians and the BBC

The even more important, if less obvious, societal issues is where the bigger choice of policy is and is where my decision will be made.
after all, if our society collapses, the economy won't save it!

So things like:

Identity politics generally

Trans rights & racial politics in particular

Islamism/Anti-semitism

The change to a purely digital economy & the control that gives the State

It's actually these less discussed but in reality vital societal issues that should be deciding this election as that’s where the real differences are between all the competing Parties. 

So for example:

Are you happy with the current high immigration levels or do you want less? 

Do you want trans-rights to mean biological fact can be circumvented at will in the name of inclusivity or do you agree with J K Rowling that inclusivity must stop when the existing rights of others are eroded?

Do you want Islamism (including blasphemy laws and by almost unavoidable extension antisemitism) to increase out of fear of being labelled Islamaphobic or a false belief that minorities or the losers of a fight MUST be the good guys irrespective of other considerations or that speaking honestly about the lack of integration, particularly of Islamic communities, makes you a bad, as opposed to sensible and honest, person?

Do you agree with the steady removal of using cash & forcing the use of online banking & digital currency with the control over your money that gives the State via the banks & credit card companies? 

Do you agree in principle with a Chinese style societal-credit system in which what you can do, where you can go, and access to your own money is determined by how obedient you are to the State?

[We’ve seen this already with governments around the world, not just China but Canada(!) ordering banks to deny people access to their own money if they don’t obey the government]. 

Are you content with those who run our national civic & political  institutions in bed with the mainline media and large corporations to force conformity by propaganda and removal of rights & services if they don’t like your views? 

None of above important societal issues are discussed in the mainstream media and, however we as individuals would answer these questions, we all know why. 

But pretending problems don’t exist doesn’t make them go away. Worse, ignoring real societal problems just allows them to grow and anger to fester bringing civil strife.

The way I see it, it’s not about Left and Right anymore. That’s out of date thinking.

This is the grey technocratic elite class in our society getting a controlling stranglehold on the majority.

Simplistically, it’s about the top 10% income bracket and their wannabe apparatchiks in the 75%-90% income bracket deciding that liberal democracy has had its day as the plebs keep giving the wrong answers. 

It’s ‘we know best’ technocratic managerial elitism trying to prevent any further use of very annoying democracy to de-rail their self-righteous and self-serving plans for the world. 

It’s a modern day regressive throwback to the medieval feudal system where the elite and their immediate underlings do as they please, decide what’s right and wrong, and everyone else just has to do as they’re told or be punished.

How can these real issues that affect many in their daily lives now and will be unavoidable for all soon, not be discussed openly by politicians and in the media as vital issues which should inform people’s choices? 

The fact that they’re not, merely emphasises how ‘guided’, propagandised or  rather ‘conned’ we are being by those happy with the system as it is.

I think it was Noam Chomsky who said that we are given the illusion of freedom by being allowed free speech on the topics the elites want while being denied any form of speech on the topics the elites don’t want.

Voting either Labour or Conservative just aids and abets this rise of the predictable anti-democratic technocrat with the demise of liberal democracy and I for one will be voting against more of the same.

My thoughts the climate narrative: BOTH extremes are wrong

As an opening statement, I want to say that climate change is real. My concern is the exaggeration, as I see it, of the human causation of it and the reason/agenda behind that exaggeration.

My opening question is, why are so many people willing to believe catastrophe narratives?

I understand why people want to believe good news that they're told, that's obvious. But it's much less obvious to understand why people are so willing to believe potentially really bad news, apparently uncritically.

We have been given, via politicians, global unelected quangos and the media, climate catastrophe ‘the end of the world is nigh’ predictions since the late 1960s. For example, in the 1960s we were assured that overpopulation would mean we ran out of food before the end of the century; in the 1970’s we were told that oil would run out before the end of the century; we were told in 2017 that the Great Barrier Reef is dying, then in 2023 that it has recorded the fastest growth of coral in 40 years; and there are scores of like examples. None of them have come true but we’re continually promised they will or a new one will soon. The predictions of catastrophe keep coming and vast swathes of the population keep believing them.

I can only think that there are three issues in play. 

Firstly, people simply cannot believe powerful and influential people/organisations would lie about something as important as this. Therefore, they aren't lying and it's all true. This well-meaning wilful credulity is being used to alter society in ways which under normal, (i.e. non fear & panic) circumstances, would be deemed unacceptable.

Secondly, and this picks up from my previous comment, there are people who have ideological agendas which benefit from keeping people permanently on the defensive, worried, frightened;

Thirdly, and extending the previous point, the climate industry is worth £billions which will not be given-up easily.

People will object to me saying that those people making climate catastrophe predictions are lying and I suppose it depends on how you define lying. If, for you, something has to be 100% untrue for it to be a lie then you are correct; they aren't lying. However as in a court of law where you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, then yes, they are definitely lying. 

Let me put my cards squarely on the table. Climate change is real but the extent to which humans are causing it is exaggerated and they know it. The science, to the extent that highly complex multi variant models can be called science, does not support the level of concern which those responsible for communicating on this matter choose to message out.

To me, that constitutes lying because they are not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Of course we shouldn't be putting raw sewage into our rivers; of course we shouldn't be chucking plastic into the oceans; of course we shouldn't be deforesting & should be planting trees; of course we shouldn't chuck litter and fly tip in the countryside; of course we shouldn't over fish and kill animals to extinction. 

The stopping of these things is sensible and obvious.

But as we know, the Net Zero Policies being enacted, both in our country and around the Western world, go much further than this and directly impinge on freedom of movement, freedom of speech, financial security and energy security via unreliable pretend green (think of the rare elements that go to make them and the short working life plus disposal costs) alternative energy sources.

China has more carbon emissions than the developed world combined. But let’s blame it on ‘western’ farmers & cows, plaster solar panels on prime farmland, fill landfills with wind turbine blades & use electric vehicles with batteries that include cobalt mined by child slaves in Congo. Let’s flagellate ourselves while China laughs at us. But it’s all for the greater good, apparently.

All of which brings me on to the political philosophical question of just how austere and restricted we are prepared for our lives to become in order to supposedly (we hope) do something which will benefit humanity on the planet longer term. As in all things in life, there comes a point at which the lack of enjoyment, the lack of freedoms, the lack of civil liberties, the stifling control that the State apparatus has over your life will simply make life so grey and drab that you question whether or not it’s worth living, at least for those who can remember when we had the freedoms. Just ask those who lived behind the iron curtain of communism.

Now I understand that comfortably off people, especially those living in cities with good public transport, will not see many of these things as a major issue because it will be some considerable time before such creeping restrictions on freedom of movement and freedom of what we can do, where we can go, what we can & can't eat etc will hit home to them. 

But surely we are intelligent and unselfish enough to project ahead and say that, as usual, restrictions that affect a relatively small number of people in relatively small ways initially, will increase and escalate to the point where it affects a huge number of people in major ways, and it's really only the top 10% or 20% of people who will be in a position of financial strength and/or political influence such that they can continue living as they wish. Everyone in the bottom 80% downwards will find within a generation or two that they'll have lost many freedoms and civil liberties compared to their grandparents and great-grandparents (i.e. us). That where people can go, and by what means (car and plane travel) and how often etc are all severely restricted except for the rich and powerful and there will have been no change from a positive point of view to the climate whatsoever because it's too big, too complex and we cannot alter it unless we set off hundreds of nuclear weapons in one go or something like that. But otherwise we cannot alter it meaningfully either for good or for bad and we should stop allowing this myth to  be used as an excuse for giving the State apparatus and unaccountable unelected global bodies like the UN, WHO etc control over our lives and allowing them to restrict our freedoms and civil liberties all based on an exaggerated problem with a series of unachievable goals using civil liberties reducing & financial independence reducing solutions.

I think that the likelihood that those pushing climate change as a human made catastrophe rather than an historically continuous variable and by extension, pushing various policies which just so happen, purely by coincidence of course, to reduce individual freedoms and civil liberties and accrue more power and control to the State & global quangos; the likelihood that those people have only the best motives and intentions, that the increase in State & Global quango control and power is simply an unfortunate accidental by-product as opposed to the reason they are doing it; I think that will turn out to have been a naive and credulous viewpoint.

If I'm going to be criticised for being too sceptical, for being too distrusting of politicians, too wary of large and remote powerful and influential bodies, a conspiracy theorist (see addendum below) then all I can say is that I would rather be criticised for that than being a credulous accomplice to the slow but steady removal of freedoms and civil liberties which our forebears fought so hard for, over many centuries. 

After all, someone who is heavily sceptical, who wants to closely question authority and hear opposing views, is merely asking other people to think more closely and more deeply before deciding whether to believe and do what they’re told or not. 

What’s wrong with that? 

Whereas the credulous are allowing a small number of powerful people with their own selfish agendas to subjugate the majority, which ironically will eventually include themselves, in a modern form of the mediaeval feudal system. 

As Huxley said, ‘we'll all be slaves and be happy about it’. 

Well, I won't be, and I encourage everyone else not to be either.

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Addendum

In order to try and shut people up or get other people to ignore them and certainly to avoid having to have a sensible conversation about the issue, the derogatory term ‘conspiracy theorist’ is bandied about. First of all, just as a technical point, they aren't theories they are hypotheses; they are conspiracy hypothesists.

Hypothesising is observing what is happening and then putting causal scenarios together that seem to fit that observed evidence. 

That just seems sensible to me. 

That is properly engaging with what is happening in society rather than just either ignoring it or believing whatever you're told. 

The strange thing is, nobody seems to ever discuss what the opposite of a so-called conspiracy hypothesist would be. 

Someone who either focuses on their own life to the extent that they really neither know nor care about what is happening (i.e. if it's not affecting me, it's of no importance) OR someone who is happy essentially to go along with whatever is the mainline view given out by, for example, the BBC as long as their life is cushy (i.e. I’m all right, Jack, don’t rock the boat).

If a conspiracy hypothesist is something you shouldn't be (but you should!) then a blind adherer to mainline political narratives is definitely something you shouldn't be. 

Perhaps the derogatory term for them should be something like ‘complacent sheeple’? And as I intimated above, I would rather be criticised as a conspiracy hypothesist, for being too sceptical of State & Global quango sanctioned authority via tame ‘experts’ while alternative experts are silenced, than being not sceptical enough, or indeed, at all. 

It’s the complacent sheeple who allow those with power and influence to behave just as they like, while telling the rest of us how evil & selfish we are for not agreeing to continually tighten our belts and accept reduced rights, reduced freedoms, reduced services and reduced financial & energy security.

Narcissism, victimhood and social media: the bane of Western societies

A few years ago and in a different town to where I live now, there was a letter in the local paper castigating the local community for not supporting a concert of some sort in a local venue. 

The message was that this group had worked hard to put this concert on, it was excellent, and we (the local people) should be ashamed of ourselves that only 15 or 20 people showed up to watch. How can we expect groups to bother putting entertainment on in our town if we don’t support them?

The fact that a) this was not a local group but a touring group of some sort; b) there had been almost no publicity for it other than a poster on the notice board of the venue; and c) people neither have the time nor money to attend all the entertainments put on (such is our fixation on constant entertainment these days), seem not to have occurred to the writer.

I am often reminded of this episode as I see social media posts along these sort of lines. Something I care about didn’t or doesn’t get much support, how unfair/immoral/unkind this is, how awful you who disagree are for not seeing how important/necessary this is etc.

My specific problem with these sort of posts?

It’s a distasteful cocktail of narcissism and arrogance (everyone should agree with me on what’s important) trying to hide behind a highly dubious if not downright false claim of victimhood.

Social media makes these sort of instant emotional rantings very easy. 

Again, many years ago, I learnt the hard way about NOT sending Mr Angry/Offended replies to emails. 

For the last 25+years now, if my knee-jerk emotional response to an electronic communication is to type an accusatory or ‘how dare you’ or ‘you’re an idiot’ response, the first thing I do before typing anything is to delete the address of the recipient. This allows me to let off steam as I like without the danger of hitting the send button, only to regret it later. 

I allow time for my better self to re-establish the dominant position and re-write the email using less emotive language, while still getting my view across.

My suggestion for everyone using social media is similarly to write a post or response out not on the platform itself but in a separate word document. This allows time to calm down and allow your more rational reasonable self to re-establish itself before cutting and pasting the better reply across into the social media post.

The issue that instant social media replies shows is that there are some who  think their knee-jerk highly emotional first thought is normal rational thinking and others who seem more than happy to be whipped up and to whip others up into a frenzy on a regular basis.

This is no way for important decisions to be made, topics discussed or attitudes to be formed.

Finger-wagging or ‘how dare you’ posts, along with using aggressive language or personal insult or blocking people who disagree with you politely, are all signs of us not being in control of our emotions. Not allowing our better judgement time to dominate our instant emotional reactions.

Note that I am NOT saying that you shouldn’t say WHAT you think. I AM saying that HOW we say things matters enormously both to personal and societal harmony and instant emotion-lead reactions to reading posts you don’t agree with is both your enemy and by extension that of our wider society.