From The Archive: Lies, Damn Lies and Vote for Me

From The Archive is a special Friday feature. It features posts from my earlier (now-deleted) blog: Stuff & Nonsense and a few items from previous versions of A Tangled Rope that I feel deserve reprinting here, mainly as a way of archiving them. The dates are only approximate, I’m afraid, and there is a possibility that some links may no longer work (although, I will try to remember to test the links before republishing the piece).

Lies, Damn Lies and Vote for Me - 01/04/05

From Open Democracy (30 - 03 – 2005) (may need registration), this could be the best article about the impending election, and the official campaigns haven't even started yet.

I think that one of the biggest turnoffs from politics for us ordinary folk is how politics through the fault of politicians, their minions and the media have reduced political debate to this petty playground bickering:

My spending cut is bigger than yours!

No, it isn't!

Yes, it is, and my Home Secretary is a control freak! So there - with knobs on!

And anyone who dares utter a single original syllable, or shows that they may have a single free brain cell of their own that is not under direct control from central office, is immediately hounded from the party like some free-thinking heretic, or some small boy who dares to point out the Emperor's sartorial inadequacy.

I used to watch Question Time, at one time, many years ago. I gave it all up when I realised I could recite that particular party's mantra on the subject under discussion almost word for word along with whatever subdivision of the party's hive mind that had been dispatched to appear on that evening's programme.

I remember - several years ago - in Interzone, the SF magazine, their TV reviewer (I forget his name, sorry) once saying that all TV programmes eventually tend towards Soap Opera. Now, with politics mostly a game played out on our TV screens, it too seems to be little more than a soap opera itself: Westminster-Enders, Corona…Downing Street. A place where what Gordon thinks about Tony, or what Howard said when Michael's back was turned, or Charlie's drinking problem, Peter's money troubles, John's affair with Edwina and so on and so forth are all pored over endlessly like the particularly fascinating entrails of a recently-slaughtered chicken, while the rest of the stuff, mere trivia like the fate of this and other nations, our freedom, our duties, crime, disorder, Ikea's world-domination and the price of fish are all ignored, or glossed-over.

Now, more than ever, we need to heed the words of one of the 20^th centuries greatest philosophers - Don't vote, it only encourages them - Billy Connolly.