Monday, March 22, 2010

Health Care

Barack Obama achieves the impossible and gets Health Care passed. This may signal the start of an America that is not only there to help those who help themselves. Indeed it may signal the beginning of the end of the age of greed.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

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Unbelievable Malice

The Right Wing strikes back! In memoirs published by Karl Rove and reflecting attack dog Dick Cheney and his daughter, truth is not respected but the myth that Bush did everything to contain terrorism and that "no attacks happened in America during his term of office" would be a joke if it were not for a sizeable slice of American that actually buy this twist on reality.

More

Sunday, March 7, 2010

More on "Broken Britain"

The trouble with negative campaigning is the feeling that it is all mouth and no head. That is what we can see in David Cameron's harping on about "Broken Britain" - the social disorder he disingenuously ties to the Labour Government due to a few isolated incidents of teenager violence - which were hardly representative of all teenagers. His remedies were insipid as his understanding of the root causes of social disorder seem to be. As has been the case with Labour. Giving freedom to gambling and too much leash to the banking community while allowing so many to fall below the irretrievable line demarking endemic poverty and persistent unemployment.

A credible conservative solution would be to encourage investment in enterprise. Instead its volunteer groups and marriage. How is that going to fix things, exactly? "Look your kids have been robbing the local pensioners, so anyone going to volunteer to give them a bollocking?". Or, perhaps - "your teenage daughters are getting pregnant to get on welfare. So we have changed the law so they have to get married to get on welfare."

Victorian times were wealthy times due to the British imperial expansion. Face it, conservation of those values is hardly a 21st century recipe for progress.

The intellectual poverty of British politics is what is broken. There is no credible solution from either side due in part to weak leadership and mouthing of solutions without much brain behind them. It becomes a matter of who we trust the most not to continue to ruin people's lives with their hollow greed rather than which party has the highest quality ideas.

The expenses crisis was not a financial crisis. It was a catastropie of trust. The sheer embarrassment of the Lord Aahcroft affair is evidence of just how little the Conservatives really care about due process and respect for the average man on the street and his progress in life. Conservatives will not just slash public services, but now it seems they feel they have to raise taxes in order to reduce the deficit.

The lack of inspired confidence shown in the people of Britain by both sides of the house is the problem. It is us, not they, who will pull the country out of the mess that has erupted after both parties went mad for the fruits of capitalism without regard for education.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Is Cameron the problem?

The Conservatives, rattling on about black clouds and being generally negative about future prospects are creating a bleak outlook with an up to now near certainty that they will form the next government. The UK economy is reliant upon Government spending and this is what Cameron sees as the "real" problem. The Ashcroft affair (his non-dom tax status has just been revealed, and he is high in the ranks of the Conservatives) threatens to derail the very sincerity that Cameron so relies upon so his negative electioneering not only seems mean on the surface as he talks of cutting basic public services - a response to the structural debt arrived at after the public bought loss making banks - but it is also shaking the pound into devaluation.

Is that such a bad thing? Well, it increases the level of the deficit in pound terms. It makes it harder for the Government to reduce debt and instantly increases it.

So is Cameron and his razor gang of the greedy not in fact the problem?