Comrade Cable

So I've devoted most of the text on this blog to bashing the tory party (and rightly so), but once again I find myself discussing the Liberal Democrats.

Not sure how many of you caught Vince Cable's speech today, but I was listening to it intently and he said some pretty important things giving some pretty powerful impressions. First up is that Cable placed himself to the far left of the lib-dem party, knowingly, and second is that both the lib-dem and tory leadership let him. He addressed the hall of people as 'comrades', obviously a poke of fun at his critics who cite him as being too far to the left, but what was vitally important was his very blatant criticisms of capitalism and his pointing out that currently 'competition' is only speeding up the crushing of new and small businesses, counter to right wing claims. But his solution is to correct this and make a fairer and 'more free' market, laissez faire, still a liberal economy, and hardly what Labourites and lefty lib-dems were hoping to hear, but then again, lib-dems are prepared to accept it as gospel.

I haven't fallen for it. I'd like to trust Vince Cable, heck I think he's a brilliant man and would love to see him as a labour minister, but even if this really are his own words - the fact that Dave and Gideon are happy for a major minister to blurt out policies and intentions (sometimes) counter to the official line is evidence enough that Cable is being used as a lib-dem 'leftist outlet' of sorts. It keeps enough of the further left lib-dems happy to let the con-dem's continue their work.
As ingenious as it is, it's also damaging. Damaging to the progressive liberal agenda and damaging to Labour's chances of converting leftist lib-dems.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/22/vince-cable-no-marxist

Sit, stay, roll over, play dead!

It seems that big business has the Condems neatly wrapped up. 
I've already blogged about the despicable privatisation of education by Michael Gove, but now they've taken another step in that horrible direction in the form of Andrew Lansley's 'reforms'.

One would imagine that when the Condems talk about modernising and making things more efficient that their policies would be a little progressive and forward thinking, but no. Lansley has decided to abolish the Food Standards Agency, a watchdog set up in response to the growing concerns of consumer groups and after the BSE (mad cow disease) crisis which occurred, I should add, under Tory watch after they loosened regulations. I'm sure I don't need to go to much into the whole crisis, but some 150 have been killed by vCJD caused from eating infected meat, with a further 5 cases diagnosed every year (average). The FSA was set up to prevent anything like this happening again, and has been vital to strict regulations in regards to food. I don't think that strict regulation being imposed on the food industry is overly active government, and the FSA have battled with the food industry and helped make what we buy in supermarkets healthier, battling fast food companies and the ingredients they use.
To abolish the FSA for protecting consumers, that's everyone who eats (so, everyone) is groundless and can only been denoted to Lansley and the Condems yet again servicing big businesses and industry. Gove and Lansley have already mastered sit and stay, soon they'll learn play dead.
It worries me that this "government" (and I use that word with a pinch of salt) is managing to get away with this. They take advice from the Taxpayers Alliance, a group that has no relevance and certainly does not represent the tax payers in terms of their make up (upper middle class leadership, and can boast only several thousand members.... not exactly much in comparison to the tens of millions of actual taxpayers) and their vehemently conservative outlook, as well as media moguls like Rupert Murdoch - the Ernst Stavro Blofeld of the media. And when a regulatory body such as Ofcom challenge the relationship between the Tories and Murdoch the Tories turn around and squeeze them, threatening their very existence.
There's a big difference between pluralism and elitism.

I'm of the opinion that a government is there to serve the people, not the other way around. And removing protective watchdogs is NOT in the people's best interest. That's not a matter of opinion, it's fact, plain and simple.

Government just one big business?

What I see as one of the biggest problems of the right wing and the Conservatives is how they treat government.

Their entire approach feels like it's based on the idea of government as just a large business. That the people of the country are mere commodities to be used 'as efficiently as possible'. Natural resources, foreign policy etc. are all treated as if they are part of this business. And for me this is despicable.
Perhaps the reason the left has traditionally been associated with freedoms, civil liberties and rights is that the left treats government as being the result of the people,. and not the other way around. Democracy isn't those at the top letting 'us at the bottom' in on decision making. Democracy is 'us at the bottom' telling those at the top that actually, we'll rule ourselves thanks.

The idea that a thousand job cuts now will save enough money to create two thousand in three years time is to me completely absurd. Cutting is never good, we all know this. But those thousand people have now lost their jobs, cannot support their families and their only way forward would be to accept much lower paid jobs. What's worse is that under the right wing welfare would be scaled back meaning those one thousand wouldn't receive the support to keep their families afloat - so you've just thrown one thousand people into poverty.
Whether it creates two, three or four thousand more jobs I frankly couldn't give a damn.

People always, always, always come first. This should be at the forefront of every ministers mind. The fact that it isn't, particularly under Gideon and Dave, is a travesty to democracy and representation. We need to remember that trade unions aren't there to slow economic growth, they're there to stop the exploitation of workers. Civil rights activists aren't there to cause a nuisance and political correctness to go 'mad', they're there to give a voice to the silenced minority.

I'm not a fan of Karl Marx in the sense that he focuses far too much on economics. I agree capitalism is the last true evil of our days, the root of most worldly problems, but you cannot assume that politics must follow the route carved out in economics. Instead WE can control the economy; through politics.

This may have been a confusing post, but I'm just trying to say that we have to remember that government is not a business. People are just that, people. They're not a commodity, and can't be treated as such. Government isn't above the people, it is the hand of the people.