I have already noted this morning that Trump is looking as if he might return in the USA.
I have also noted the UK government's plans to turn a blind eye to corruption and the rule of law.
I am not alone in desparing. Jessica Simor QC is:
As Matrix Chambers note of Jessica Simor QC:
Jessica is recognised as one of the country's leading specialists in public/regulatory, EU and human rights law, acting for a wide range of clients, ranging from large companies, regulators, Government departments, NGOs, and for private individuals. She has particular experience in data protection privacy/data protection, tax, regulatory/competition law across different industries and in civil liberties work.
That is not the usual foundation for revolutionary material, but it is a revolution that she appears to be calling for. I am not sure how else to interpret the term 'brought down'.
Is she right?
Will the young do that?
Why will they? What is the tipping point? Or have the right succeeded in dropping democratic degradation so steadily into our systems that people, like boiling lobsters, don't notice what is happening until too late?
I am worried.
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Johnson and Co are also intent on destroying any semblance of democracy including at Local Authority level
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/02/cash-strapped-councils-must-sell-off-town-halls-and-public-toilets-warns-minister
In Somerset 4 Districts and 1 County Council with 269 Councillors are being forced rapidly into a single Unitary Authority and currently the intent is to have only 85 Councillors across one of the largest geographic counties in England. Financial savings being the main driver behind the whole process.
So Somerset & Dorset is set to become a Tory fiefdom? Sounds like it to me.
Wow.
But let’s face it – Parliament is stymied – it has been since Theresa May was in power and when the FTPA was created prior to that which she used cold bloodedly to keep the Tories in power whilst fighting the ERG and at a time where the Government was so riven with infighting it had effectively stopped governing and should have gone.
If this were a Labour Government they would have been hounded out by now.
More and more it looks like a coup – a very British one and well planned as well.
As a working class person it’s nice to see a well heeled, well placed middle class professional speak out like this.
I am however dominated by one feeling: that perhaps its time to go – to leave?
This country has always been been a bit of sham to be honest (in my life time at least) but now it is total sham of a ‘democracy’.
I’ve just moved to Scotland for that reason.
We moved to Spain 12 years ago , and watch with horror from afar the crumbling democracy and fear the rise of fascism in uk. People here ask us “what is happening in England?”, often normally apolitical friends seem mystified by uk behaviour . I like Richard’s lobster analogy.
We marched against the Iraq war
Said Blair was wrong about WMD
And we went to war
We marched against an EU exit
Said the public was wrong to vote for it
And we went to Brexit
Now we are urged to march against this government
To bring this government down
And bring in another one
With a vote for choice of clown
No doubt the fact that this government is attempting to bring in a law to ban protests (except ones it approves of) is purely coincidental, and not part of a wider plan.
Or that their proposed ‘Online Harms Bill’ looks designed to censor any online comment it doesn’t like, which would probably include this blog. See : https://skwawkbox.org/2021/11/01/tories-planned-minority-report-law-assaults-political-freedom-and-free-speech/
As it is also coincidental that the Labour party is veering further to the right under its current leadership and will back just about any draconian measures the Old Etonians decide to inflict on us.
As Pilgrim Slight Return says : a very British coup. And worst of all, enough of the population will vote for it to give it a veneer of democracy.
At some point Mendacious Fat & his corrupt crew will be voted out. The problem is, that the next bunch will be able to use the enhanced powers that M-F & Co are giving to themselves against the tories. Who knows what will happen as the so-called checks & balances are removed/negated. & I say “so-called” because Mendacious-Fat & Co have been playing fast & lose with them since the start – suggesting that these wondorous checks and balances are anything but & that the UK has always been, at best, a very very weak “democracy” (witness the press – mostly foreign owned – & mostly quasi-fascistic a situation wholly absent in other European countries).
I happened upon this very clear description by Yuval Noah Harari of what is happening politically here…..and elsewhere.
https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/4805689752782960
It’s a clip from a longer interview on Channel 4 which is well worth a listen.
I just despair at how difficult it is to convince people of just how bad this situation is…..that they need to engage, and yes, as Jessica Simor says, bring down this corrupt government. Like many it’s so hard to know how to effect change and not to feel completely powerless.
Thanks for the link, I find his books most absorbing too.
The problem is systemic not about the Tories, no reform to parliament will ever be effective because it cannot be, power resides there, and thinking that next time it’ll be different is a triumph of hope over evidence. So is thinking it’d all work well if only the right kind of people stood for election. The folly is believing that somehow, 45 million people voting away their power to 650 other people is anything other than a terrible idea. Elective dictatorship, since voting in elections is not democracy, is what needs to end, a permanent closure of parliament, as it was never set up to do what people think it is there for. It is not only young people who need to put a stop to this, it is also their parents and grandparents.