Sunday 16 January 2011

Old and Sad.

So Labour won in Oldham and Saddleworth, a constituency that sounds like a cheap porn film about a stables, with 20% of the electorate saying 'Yay, we want to be represented by a total cretin who thinks money pops out of the earth at the behest of the plastic hair brothers'.

I am delighted.

Why? The captain is furious. Jerub-Baal is at least despondent. Why am I hopping up and down like the Joker at a Batman-tormenting contest?

Well, look at the facts. 52% of the people of Holdem and Saddleup (wait, I think that's the film) didn't vote at all. Well over half of that electorate is now thinking 'Those buggers got in again, but at least it's not my fault'.

Well, yes it is. Over half of you could not be bothered to put an X in a box. If you had, and if you really wanted to send a message, you could easily have sent Buss Pass Elvis to Westminster. You could not be bothered.

So yes, it is your fault. Would Buss Pass Elvis have made a good MP? Well, look what you ended up with and ask yourselves if he'd have been any worse. He would at least have been amusing.

Eventually these people will realise. The only way to really waste your vote is to vote as directed. As your father dictates, as your family or religion prescribe. Or to vote because 'any vote for anyone but the Borg is a wasted vote. The little ones can't win'. You know why they can't win? Because you won't vote for them. Instead you vote for the vile three-faced machine that pretends to run things but in fact sits on its backside and lets the Grinch run everything.

Vote for Bus Pass Elvis. Vote for the Monster Raving Loonies. Vote for the cheese appreciation society and the otter poking party. Over half of you are sitting at home moaning about 'foregone conclusion'. Morons. It's a foregone conclusion only because you refuse to tick the box that stops it being a foregone conclusion. FIFTY TWO PERCENT will get absolutely anyone into the MP seat, absolutely anyone, even if it's Hurl Vom Bucket from the 'Stop the car now' party. Anyone at all. The Labour drone had 20% of the vote and won. More than double that number could not get off their lardy asses long enough to spell 'X' and okay, most of you are illiterate and utterly worthless anyway but those who can read, tell the others.

YOU did this.

YOU are responsible for the resurgence of a party that cosies up to the banks, destroys communities, and calls itself 'labour'. They did not do this. YOU DID IT.

You did it by indolence and apathy. You caused the delight among the champagne socialists. You might as well have poured their fizz and said 'Three bags full, massah.'

Eighty percent of you Oldham and Saddleworth constituents did not vote for a Labour MP. So what's it going to be, O my droogies? What will you do? You will do nothing at all. The same as 52% of you did at the election. Nothing. At. All.

Except one thing. You will feel resentment and betrayal. That's all you will do and it's enough for now.

Tunisia went 'pop' but this country won't. Not yet. Most people in this country, as in Tunisia, don't give a stuff about politics. Most of those who have looked into the matter want us out of the EU, true, but by far the majority have never even thought about it. They are just getting on with their lives and nodding their approval of every new control and restriction because they believe it won't apply to them.

They regard the inquisitive and intrusive forms they fill in whenever they encounter authority as little more than a nuisance. They nod in approval of stricter controls on smokers and drinkers, including some who drink and smoke themselves. They are complacent about further and deeper controls and demands for absolute control over everything we eat, drink, smoke and breathe. They accept that nicotine is a poison and that nicotine patches are the cure. They accept that one pint of beer is good for you and that three pints is binge drinking. They accept that they must have five portions of fruit and vegetables even when they are told it's a made-up number with no science of any kind behind it at all. They accept global warming, they regard the coldest winter for a hundred years in which 49 of the 50 US states saw snow as 'local weather' because they are told to. They believe that the warm weather moved to the south of Europe while they marvel at the frozen fountains of Rome. They still believe Australia will become a desert due to warming even while the floods cover an area as big as France and Germany combined and are still spreading.

In short, they are well indoctrinated in doublethink and they will not break out of that unless they get angry. Very angry indeed.

That is why I was delighted to see Labour place another of its troughing drones at the Oldham and Saddleworth election, and even more delighted to find that they installed an MP that 80% of the people there didn't want. If UKIP had won, they wouldn't get angry. They'd be relieved. A win by the Tories or Lib Dems would have achieved nothing at all. They are the same as Labour. If UKIP had won, the whole country would believe that the turnaround had started. Not yet, and a slow turnaround will be quashed by the troughers before it can get any momentum going.

One UKIP MP isn't going to achieve anything. They will be sidelined and ignored. How much do you hear about the SNP or Green MPs?

As in Tunisia, voting in another lot of troughing control-freaks will never achieve anything at all. As it is, that is all that will ever happen here. There are no worthwhile candidates coming up and no parties able to break that 'wasted vote' mantra that keeps the pigs in their sty. The only way out is if the whole lot comes crashing down, all at once. Then we can start again.

That will not happen through some lefty students smashing windows and chasing Cameron in a pack, like the hunting dogs they despise. Look at the election result again. Twenty per cent. There are more smokers than Lefties in that constituency. More obese people than Lefties, and far more three-pint binge drinkers than, I suspect, the total number of votes cast. In fact, I would go so far as to say that many of those who voted Labour did so because a) Dad used to, b) they couldn't bring themselves to vote Tory or for their buddies in LD, and c) they were told that to vote for anyone else was a wasted vote. Not because they genuinely believe in Labour's gradual fascism.

No, as in Tunisia, it won't be a political coup. There will be no politics at all because all three parties demand the high life for themselves and austerity for us, while we pay for it. None of them listen to the people they claim to represent. None of them can be trusted. No, it won't be political. It will be an apparently trivial incident that triggers the downfall of the British parliamentary system and it's impossible to predict when or where it will happen.

Will it be the introduction of calorie counts on restaurant foods? No, because as with 'units of alcohol', most people will ignore them. They'll be appreciated by Weightwatchers members but the rest of us will soon learn to filter them out as we do with advertising.

The censoring of literary classics like Tom Sawyer? No, because few people read it now and those of us who consider literary classics to be of importance are few. Censoring music, films and books won't trigger anything. Ask Bloke in the Pub. He'll tell you that those things are censored already and have been for years, so what's the problem? Besides, only the backdated censoring will even be noticed.

This could do it. Which is why, I suspect, the council backed off sharpish. They aren't all totally stupid. Oh, it won't be the 'Eek! Smoker!' aspect of it, it will be the denial of such films to the children of the Righteous. You can take away Poirot's cigar or Holmes' pipe but you stop kids watching 101 Dalmatians because Cruella DeVille had a Rothmans on a stick, and there will be war.

Especially since it won't stop there. I believe the seven dwarves had pipes too, one of the Aristocats was a cigar chomper (not forgetting the racist portrayal of those Siamese cats) and didn't the old guy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang smoke in his little hut? Oh, once they get their hooks in, it all goes.

I think it will be something like that. It will be something the bansturbators and control freaks believe is just one more step on their road to total control and they will not see it as a step too far until the whole country explodes in rage. The best part? They won't understand why everyone is so angry.

That step too far has to be taken and it is, under our current deaf and blind political system, inevitable. The only way out is radical change and the utter dismantling of the whole left/right system we have now. Neither side can initiate a change because they offer no change.

If Labour had lost to UKIP in Oldham and Saddleworth, that inevitable step too far would have been delayed by a very long time. The control freaks would have backed up and regrouped. If they had lost to the Tories or the Indecisive Party, it would have been delayed because one third of the three party system would have backed off and regrouped.

Labour winning that by-election was the best thing that could happen. Winning it with such a paltry share of the vote was even better. The control freaks are encouraged to push and push and push and that step too far comes ever closer.

I don't know what it will be. I don't know when or where it will happen. Neither does anyone else but it just came a lot closer to happening.

It won't be a momentous announcement. It will be a little thing, a trivia, a small nudge over the edge of the abyss we've been nudged towards for many years.

One last, lightweight, inconsequential straw.

13 comments:

Oldrightie said...

great but very sad but true post.

Anonymous said...

The last lightweight straw will be banning smoking in your own home.
First it will be if kids live at home, then the rest of us.
Should be fun.

Leg-iron said...

I don't think it'll be smoking related.

I think it will be something absolutely ordinary and banal. Something we smokers will look at and think 'After all the crap they've given us, they're getting worked up over this?'

It will be a small thing. Literally, a straw.

And nobody will see it coming.

PT Barnum said...

I fear the divide-and-rule practices of the Righteous may be too far advanced for there to be one single thing that would tip the masses over the edge. Any form of food rationing would plug into some wartime memory bank. Any form of censorship could be accomodated by the animation equivalent of airbrushing.

I see the best hope in what is now a hundred forms of covert disobedience (no TV licence, buying tobacco and booze abroad etc) becoming steadily more overt. If all of us who see through the lies, bullying and control were to convince two other people and they then each convince two more and so on, momentum would build and our 'masters' would not notice until it was far too late.

We are not naturally a violently rebellious nation, but we are very stubborn. And inclined to appear law-abiding while acting otherwise.

boohanna said...

Speaking personally it's also interesting that many many people leading perfectly comfortable/secure existences (myself included) actively wish for such change.

What would drive one to support (actively or otherwise) change that, by definition, may be detrimental?.

For myself I would like to think that I have the self-awareness to consider that the current paradigm is going to be ultimately far more destructive but many don't think this way (consciously).

I certainly agree with the premise that it will be a completely unexpected event that will catalyse major change.

Most interesting.

unions said...

Surprisingly it might be caused by the unions.
Millions marching against the wars made no difference. Student protests about Cleggs U turns made no difference.
But tanker drivers blocking refineries and so stopping the flow of food and other essentials will wake people up. And it's happening within weeks. I suspect tanker drivers will get a massive pay increase. The alternative is too dire for the coalition to contemplate.

Anonymous said...

It will be when the lights go out. Rationed electricity will affect everyone. Darkness is just around the corner.

hangemall said...

"The censoring of literary classics like Tom Sawyer? No, because few people read it now and those of us who consider literary classics to be of importance are few."

Yes, your words remind me of a few things, L-I.

1. I read a short while ago that the Wilson government stopped the teaching of British Constitution in schools. Few people know we have written parts of our constitution. Like Tom Sawyer, in a generation they will be forgotten if TPTB have their way.

2. This "dropping down the memory hole" has been reinforced a couple of times recently by people saying that we have no written constitution. Obviously lies. How can anybody "forget" Magna Carta 1215 and the English Bill of Rights 1689, for example?

3. As sure as Parliament is a basket of rotten eggs any proposed written constitution will give us fewer rights then we are supposed to enjoy today, and there is no guarantee that that TPTB will even abide by *that*. I remember Jack Straw talking about "rights and duties" or some such when Labour were in power. I suspect these duties will either be repressive (eg spying on your neighbours' bins)or will be so worded that anything you do no not do can be interpreted as "failing one's civic duty."

4. I have just read again in the Fail on Sunday that Rave Cokeathon wants local communities to have more powers by being less subject to Parliament. All well and good, but this could also give the EU more direct control over our everyday lives, by by-passing parliament.

This is just a few words knocked off before I have to go to work. Hope it isn't too disjointed.

hangemall said...

OOOPS "anything you do or not do"

Anonymous said...

I really hope you’re right, Leggy, but I sometimes think that people in this country are, for the most part, already so brainwashed and gullible that all politicians have to do is to mimic every step of the activities of the anti-smoking movement, with a few adaptations for circumstances, and they’ll get away with whatever they want. It’s one of the reasons I so despise the whole anti-smoking movement and regard the smoking ban as such a disgrace – because it’s a perfect example of how to control the masses without them noticing, based largely on divide and rule coupled with the “salami slice” method of gradual encroachment to cover a larger and larger number of people, and then – bingo! – you’ve got the perfect cover to bring in any kind of legislation you want, because the majority of the population think it’s being done for their benefit. Anti-smoking has provided the perfect template which, quite clearly for anyone with their eyes and ears open, the powers-that-be have every intention of now applying to anything that they don't like.

Most of the people of this country are fools – nothing more and nothing less – and, to be honest, after each and every local election, by-election and general election I feel more and more that the statement that “a population gets the government it deserves” has never been more true.

andrew hammerschmiedt said...

Hard to believe that someone would actually want to comment in such length and depth on such an irrelevance.

Anonymous said...

QED

Olly said...

Sorry to be a link whore Leggy, however....

I'm standing for election in 2012 in London. Help! If voted in:

London weill get a referendum on Europe
Landlords can choose to be smoking or non-smoking

Etc, etc ad infinitum.

Fuck what parliament says. If I get a mandate from the people of London via my manifesto by god I'll give them what they want!

http://youve-been-cromwelled.org/sirolly4mayor/

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