Monday, May 31, 2010
Now the dust has settled...
The General Election is long over, the ConDem-nation is now in being, the coalition has suffered it's first significant casualty (thanks, "Daily Telegraph", that's another timely demonstration that only the media wield real power) and we in the local Labour Party have to reconcile ourselves that we've lost the best MP that Gillingham and Rainham ever had.
It's hard to come to terms with the Tories holding this seat, especially when the new incumbent is a former Labour Party colleague, who happily regurgitates the Tory line which, a few short years ago, would have been poison to his lips. How times change, eh, Mr. Shifty? I just hope you're happy now, having switched sides for personal advantage and preferment - I wonder if it will feel as satisfying in a few years' time when you're out on your arse and neither side wants you? Because there'll be no coming back to Labour, not now. The Tories won't give you anything until you've managed to hang on to the seat for 20 years (and you won't!) because they won't trust you, and no-one else will trust you either, so you're in for a lonely and frustrating time. Serves you right.
As for Labour, we'll come back, stronger and better, and we'll take the seat back again. Maybe next time there won't be Ashcroft's millions to help with getting the leaflets out, maybe next time the electorate will realise, after the years of Tory cuts and misery that they've apparently voted for, that you can't trust the Tories (and now, it seems, the LibDems as well) to do what they promise - you can only rely on them to make life harder for ordinary working people and take away the props of what should be a decent, caring society.
All the talk of the deficit is a smoke-screen to allow the Tories to do what they've always tried to do - keep working people in their "rightful place". They'll try and destroy the unions, they'll engineer job losses and engender a climate of fear for their jobs among working people, to keep them quiet and powerless to resist. Today the ConDem-nation has announced they're reviewing the school-building programme and re-examining contracts for new school buildings entered into since January 1st this year. So, give it a few years and we'll be back to leaky school roofs, portacabins in the playground and, no doubt, further sales of school playing fields and any other assets they can get rid of to raise a few quid to pay for the unemployment benefit of the millions that they plan to throw out of work.
The debt that was raised in the 1940's to pay for essential armaments, and the subsequent re-construction of our bombed cities, was only paid off a few years ago. Nobody even noticed that we were still paying it off. We are still a very wealthy country and we can sustain a high level of debt without everybody getting into a panic. All the talk about the level of our debt "making the financial markets jittery" is a nonsense - the "financial markets" are nothing more than estate agents in different (and much more expensive) clothes, they are spivs and back-street bookies who gamble with other peoples' money and never, ever, no matter how crap their results, lose any of their own money or forego their excessive bonuses. Why should we care what the "financial markets" think? We own, via the bank bail-outs, a substantial chunk of the financial institutions of this country, and we should be able to exert enought influence to prevent these pikeys-in-suits manipulating the situtation to their advantage and acting against the national interest.
It's hard to come to terms with the Tories holding this seat, especially when the new incumbent is a former Labour Party colleague, who happily regurgitates the Tory line which, a few short years ago, would have been poison to his lips. How times change, eh, Mr. Shifty? I just hope you're happy now, having switched sides for personal advantage and preferment - I wonder if it will feel as satisfying in a few years' time when you're out on your arse and neither side wants you? Because there'll be no coming back to Labour, not now. The Tories won't give you anything until you've managed to hang on to the seat for 20 years (and you won't!) because they won't trust you, and no-one else will trust you either, so you're in for a lonely and frustrating time. Serves you right.
As for Labour, we'll come back, stronger and better, and we'll take the seat back again. Maybe next time there won't be Ashcroft's millions to help with getting the leaflets out, maybe next time the electorate will realise, after the years of Tory cuts and misery that they've apparently voted for, that you can't trust the Tories (and now, it seems, the LibDems as well) to do what they promise - you can only rely on them to make life harder for ordinary working people and take away the props of what should be a decent, caring society.
All the talk of the deficit is a smoke-screen to allow the Tories to do what they've always tried to do - keep working people in their "rightful place". They'll try and destroy the unions, they'll engineer job losses and engender a climate of fear for their jobs among working people, to keep them quiet and powerless to resist. Today the ConDem-nation has announced they're reviewing the school-building programme and re-examining contracts for new school buildings entered into since January 1st this year. So, give it a few years and we'll be back to leaky school roofs, portacabins in the playground and, no doubt, further sales of school playing fields and any other assets they can get rid of to raise a few quid to pay for the unemployment benefit of the millions that they plan to throw out of work.
The debt that was raised in the 1940's to pay for essential armaments, and the subsequent re-construction of our bombed cities, was only paid off a few years ago. Nobody even noticed that we were still paying it off. We are still a very wealthy country and we can sustain a high level of debt without everybody getting into a panic. All the talk about the level of our debt "making the financial markets jittery" is a nonsense - the "financial markets" are nothing more than estate agents in different (and much more expensive) clothes, they are spivs and back-street bookies who gamble with other peoples' money and never, ever, no matter how crap their results, lose any of their own money or forego their excessive bonuses. Why should we care what the "financial markets" think? We own, via the bank bail-outs, a substantial chunk of the financial institutions of this country, and we should be able to exert enought influence to prevent these pikeys-in-suits manipulating the situtation to their advantage and acting against the national interest.
Labels: Chishti, Gillingham, Labour, Paul Clark, Rainham, Tories
