Hit me baby one more time
I’m not interested in getting into a another debate about voting systems and electoral reform. Here are the facts:
New Labour were re-elected with a majority of 67 by 22% of the electorate.
Have people forgotten this? The supine British press certainly seem to have. The paucity of humility shown by the Government in the face of such antipathy is stomach-churning.
And yet, in the face of ID cards, imprisonment without trial, the supression of protest and continuing death and destruction in Iraq (to name only four issues) the “great” British public just shrugs and mutters “shit happens”, likening this travesty to being struck by lightning.
Where’s the outrage? Where’s the anger? How can we sit back and let such mediocrities lower the standards? The way we’ve been conditioned to just accept any level of atrocity and mendacity is staggering. Go back to sleep Britain, you are free to think what they tell you.
Contempt is a word I use a lot in connection New Labour and Tony Blair but it cannot be overstated in my opinion. Cataloguing the population and charging them for the privilege? The government think the public are dickheads. Banning political protests up to one kilometre from parliament? These people are public servants - we’re their employers, we pay their wages. They should hang on our every word not find increasingly Orwellian methods of shutting us up. (Not that the vast majority of the slack-jawed and bovine public would drag their leaden arses out of their chairs to march in defence of civil liberties. Maybe if they put Abi Titmuss in Belmarsh or Alfie Moon went to prison in Eastenders…)
And as for the war, even most of those people who were vehemently against it no longer give a monkey’s and the government must just love it. The proscecution in the Michael Jackson trial would have killed for evidence as watertight as that against Blair, Bush, Straw and the rest of the crew over their conduct before the war. But its shrugged off by the press, public and parliament as if the news was “the sun came up this morning”.
The government demonstrably hates the public and the public don’t care. New Labour have learnt that it can ride out any scandal of any magnitude by simply waiting for the press and public’s attention spans to elapse.
One of my favourite sticks to beat John Prescott with is his putting the low turnout at the 2001 General Election down to a “culture of contentment”. A lazy, despicable way of covering up the lack of enthusiasm for the New Labour project. But I’m coming to the conclusion that he’s right. Look at ID cards. New Labour said that 80% of the public were in favour of them. That number is slowly heading south. Not because we’ve woken up to the fact that ID cards would mean the repression of minorities, or the civil liberty implications, or that the consequences of such a complex system being implemented by such an incompetent government will very likely be catastrophic.
No. We’re going cold on ID cards because the week we have to put our hands in our pocket to buy one it’ll mean less Pot Noodles and scratchcards. The NO2ID campaign would be best served by agressively appealing to people’s basest instinct. They should produce a poster showing how many tins of baked beans or football matches on Sky 93 quid buys. As Lisa Simpson said, “You will never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator”.
The piece I wrote this week about the Downing Street Memo, garnered this comment over on The Sharpener from Jarndyce:
The trouble is, shouting from the pages of newspapers or the interwebnet about Iraq has become like screaming at the ref from Row Z or at the TV from the sofa: you may well be right, but They can’t hear you, and anyway aren’t listening anymore.
In the Simpsons episode, Homer at the Bat, Mr Burns hires a bunch of professional baseball players to work at the nuclear power plant and then puts them on the plant’s softball team in order to beat a rival team and win a bet. His place on the team taken by one of these ringers, Homer despairs…
Marge: What makes you think this Darryl Strawberry character is better than you?
Homer: Marge, forget it. He’s bigger than me, faster than me, stronger than me, and he already has more friends around the plant than I do.
Bart: You make me sick, Homer. You’re the one who told me I could do anything if I just put my mind to it!
Homer: Well, now that you’re a little bit older, I can tell you that’s a crock! No matter how good you are at something, there’s always about a million people better than you.
Bart: Gotcha. Can’t win, don’t try.
Now, I’m clearly in Row Z - my visitor count makes Robert Kilroy-Silk’s election result look good. The NO2ID and Make My Vote Count campaigns might be shouting louder and be nearer the pitch in this analogy, but “They” aren’t listening to us on these issues either. So what’s the point - shouldn’t we just pack up and go home? If not why not? If we can’t win, why try? Because it flatters middle class egos to soldier on? Because the fights against ID cards and for electoral reform are in front of us and Iraq behind? Using that logic, why chase murderers and thieves? Somebody burgled you? Let it go, it’s all in the past.
Life in Britain is like lying under the duvet on a cold Saturday morning when you’ve nothing to get up for. Hmmmm, isn’t it great? Don’t think about torture, until the needles are being pushed under your fingernails. Forget war, until it’s you on the wrong end of the bayonet. Poverty is a distant concept, until it’s you scraping to get by.
Most people in Britain will never, ever experience torture or war or (real) poverty. This “shit happens” to other people.
I’ll leave the last word to Warren Ellis:
The lesson of the 1930s is that, in a time of encroaching conservatism and creeping repression, the correct response is not to flush your fucking spine down the toilet.
What’s Wayne Rooney been up to this week?
(And just so you’re extra sick of me crapping on about Iraq, here’s more from Greg Palast:
Still today, the State and Defense Departments and White House continue to stonewall our demands for the notes of the meetings between lobbyists, oil industry consultants and key Administration officials that would reveal the hidden economic motives for the war.
What are the secret interests behind this occupation? Who benefits? Who met with whom? Why won’t this Administration release these documents of the economic blueprint for the war?
And with that…)
(File under: Iraq, ID Cards, Make My Vote Count, Politics,)
Posted on June 16th, 2005 at 11:52 am
| See also • That plan • Tomacco, anyone? • He still just doesn’t get it, does he? |
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Much as I agree with what you say, Justin, old chap, I can’t help feeling you’re not helping your case by writing “the government think the public are dickheads”, and then following that up in the same paragraph by writing “the slack-jawed and bovine public”.
Just pointing it out…
I had my cake, I’ve eaten it and am now enjoying the brandy and cigars.
Jarndyce has hit the nail on the head.
During the election, the Daily Show ran a report comparing American deferential town hall meetings to the boo-fest that was Blair’s appearance on Question Time. Stewart was obviously embarrased at the American media’s reluctance to criticise and humilate public figures.
But the wider picture shows that instead of having a truly challenging media, we have one which is set up so that dissent can be containted and bracketed away. Our civil sphere gives the impression that we are engaging in a democratic debate - but truly we affect nothing. Unlike the Tories, Labour did their media studies, and know how the news machine works inside from out. As a result, we are allowed to rant and rave as much as we like, but the actual public sphere is locked away within Whitehall.
In other words, what we have is the simulation of a public sphere, not an actual one.
Plus, I’m just one bloke whose misanthropy is born out of a deep disappointment that the human race has such low ambitions for itself.
New Labour on the other hand utilise their loathing of the public in order to cling to power without purpose.
And at least my disappointment is overt, their contempt is anything but.
You keep going because even if the worst happens, at least it will be said: you were someone who knew the score and said so.
I think your pessimism is overstated, though. The volume of informed commentary on the web is growing by the day. Look at this article on the EU budget, for example. I’m amazed and humbled by the amount and quality of self-education that’s going on everywhere I look. I don’t know if it’s yet a rising tide but if it becomes that, then there’ll also come a point where the entrenched powers - who are already in up to their waists - are quietly but firmly lifted off their feet and then set down again. They will realise that everywhere they look there are people who think differently than they do. The change will already have happened.
Justin, just you wait, you, and your like, will be blamed for the failure in Iraq.
Justin: The government think the public are dickheads.
But this is demonstrably true. Despite knowing all of the above, New Labour were re-elected with a majority of 67 by 22% of the electorate. The public are dickheads. We all knew the rules of the electoral game, and we still allowed these totalitarians-in-the-making to waltz it. The public are dickheads. But we have to keep shouting from row Z. You never know, the guys in row Y might hear us.