Here's a cool thing about internet culture. While the politicians plot and the media pontificates on what the electorate really wanted by voting in a hung parliament. Facebook can actually just fill in the missing information.
Here's the comment I made :
I'd rather see a Lib/Lab pact than the Tories eviscerating the welfare state (just you watch, Cameron fanbois)
Sadly though, I think that any attempt to make that work is going to be so unpopular (with the media and public) that it will fall apart within weeks.
Better, then, would be Lib Dems not to commit themselves to supporting Tories, but agree to ad-hoc co-operation (just enough to get through the Queen's speech) then joining Labour to block all the really egregious cuts.
Unfortunately, that will take courage, as they'll be accused of uncooperative behaviour at a time of crisis.
(Sorry, I meant "uncooperative behaviour at a time of getting shafted by those same Rating Agencies that failed to understand or warn anyone about the instability and total fucking dishonesty of the CDO market; but nevertheless, and despite being unelected and not disclosing conflicts of interest, think they're the best placed to decide when and how fast the government should repay the debts it incurred cleaning up the mess that the finance sector created.")
I don't suppose the Lib Dems have the courage to stand up to that. (Nor would Labour, either, that's not a partisan point) and so I think we'll get the Lib/Con pact which will focus on pushing spending cuts AND tax cuts through parliament leaving us unable to guarantee even a basic quality of life for the poorest and weakest British citizens.
1 comment:
Off topic like I generally am.
Facebook or no, it seems pretty clear people don't want what's coming.
In the post about Greece I thought about how the US government is propping up the prices of homes with tax-payer guarantees to keep the whole edifice afloat. But that just seemed a non sequitur.
John Robb says the global economic system is winning. I think he's right about the diagnosis as gloomy as it is as well as what can be done: resilient communities.
The fracturing of society that Robb predicts isn't just the poor on the streets but the widespread engagement of wealthy in criminal activity.
But Robb hardly mentions is also a sort of shared value of world citizenship. I think that fundamentally people know today that we're all in this together. The notion of thinking globally and acting locally really is deep.
Perhaps there is no real way to influence the sort of austerity imposed upon any of us by governments. Still it does seem that neo-liberal economics is widely discredited. Politics is going to be tough.
The bright spot in your reports is the election of a Green MP :-) Regardless of party it seems that at least dressing up the rhetoric in some ways green is the best way to bring people along with austerity.
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