It struck me as I listened to a major political party making six pledges prior to the election that's bound to come soon ... every one of their pledges started with the word "YOUR". It was "YOUR health", "YOUR school", "YOUR job" ... and it struck me that they're appealing to the selfish worst in everyone. This is the Labour party - our "left" - and it's reminiscent of the worst that they were complaining about in the Conseervative Party in Margaret Thatcher's day - the capitalist "me" culture as they would have described it. But at least Maggie was encouraging wealth generation to stimulate the economy and bring the willing along; I've an uneasy feeling that this lot will do it by higher taxes. Tell trainees on a course to allow for a changing VAT rate in a program (always best programming practise to anticipate the need for change) and you get howls of laughter if you suggest the rate may go down, and a glum look of realism if you say it may go up.

The selfishness is sad. But where it's at the expense of people who want to join our society and work hard for everyone's betterment, it's a tragedy. The UK is a melting pot of nationallities, but there's still a fervour whipped up by talk of people who seek asylum, and people who seek a better life here. There's a fear that there won't be enough jobs to go around, that the country can't cope, and that the indiginous local population will become the minority. The tragedy is that much of that fear is founded only on the words of politicians looking for short term votes.

A vote based on gross misrepresentation and/or narrow minded bias and fear in an election carries just the same weight as a properly informed vote. A loosing canditate may say "but the people who voted for me were better informed" but as there were fewer of them, it doesn't do much good.

In the UK, we've got near-full employment. It's hard to find a good electrician or builder. It's next to impossible to find cleaners and other staff that we need to help in our business in the way we need; at best, we find someone to do a job in their timescale between other jobs to the detriment of how we run. We have yet to find a windowcleaner who can clean all of our windows and not just the bottom of the house. And yet the people are there who want the jobs ... just not able to come and take them up. The political partys seem to be playing a game of "outnastying" each other. Schemes designed to appease the voters, and in the process crushing down those faceless people who aren't here, can't speak for themselves and (the real crux of the matter) don't have a vote.

(written 2005-02-15 06:07:29)

 Z300 - Extras - Politics

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Cheap purchase - votes paid for with selfish promises
Open Source becomes mainstream
Futility of war?
Off to Munich
Tcl/Tk (wish) Grid layout example
Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL.