Dogsville UK
Francis Sedgemore, Saturday 16 January 2010 at 12:48 UTC
“Oh land of my fathers,
ancient Celtic warrior race,
how are your tomatoes doing?”
The British general election campaign is underway, even though we have yet to be given a date for the poll. Prime minister Gordon Brown has set the ball rolling with a somnolent speech designed to appeal to Middel Ingeland. Labour will create “more middle class jobs than ever before”, he says, and is the party of the “mainstream majority”.
This is wrist-slittingly depressing stuff. At least Margaret Thatcher stirred people’s passions, even if they were the more base, materialist impulses. Today’s mainstream politics, by way of contrast, is all blameless bourgeois domesticity and comfy slippers.
Chris Dillow comments:
“Is this a society for humans, or for dogs?”
“[T]his speech is billed as an appeal to middle class voters. The genuinely poor want any house, not a bigger one, and they want a job, not their own business.”
“There’s something, though, that depresses me even more than the narrowness and lack of ambition of Brown’s words. It’s that they might actually appeal to voters.”
It is a society for humans, all right – humans who have made their modest baskets, and are set on snuggling down in them while making the absolute minimum amount of effort required to keep things ticking over nicely, thank you very much.
And of course Gordon Brown’s words will appeal to voters. I imagine that a small army of political consultants and social psychologists have advised exactly this course of action: a little bit of class warfare in the form of half-hearted bashing of the bankers, followed by a much larger appeal to the comfort zone. It’s the only thing that will keep Labour in power.
Feed the writer! 
Saturday 16 January 2010 at 16:42 UTC
Wholly agree, it’s time for a change. The disaffected, the disillusioned, we need to have our say but we need to make it count. We need to break the old-boy, oxbridge, party-political monopoly if we are to have a vibrant, inclusive democracy.
I’ve set up a facebook group today (I’m the only member so far, so maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree!?) to try to urge those, like me, who can’t, in all conscience, give their vote to any of the big three.
Please take a look, join if you like it, send me abuse if you don’t but please pass it on.
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#/group.php?gid=254176783772&ref=nf
Saturday 16 January 2010 at 17:29 UTC
Sorry, but I don’t have a Facethingy account, and am not inclined to set one up. I spend enough time as it is on the Interwebs, and have no desire to get sucked into (virtual) social networking.
Saturday 16 January 2010 at 17:31 UTC
“At least Margaret Thatcher stirred people’s passions”
You dirty little man!
Sunday 17 January 2010 at 09:49 UTC
I know what you mean about the facethingy account, I’m of a similar disposition myself but joined to see if there was any interesting political discourse/campaigning going on.
Voter apathy is easily dismissed but why vote if you don’t feel that any of them represent you? I feel we need to reform our electoral system to re-engage people. I favour a ‘None of the Above’ option on all ballots. There was a party called None of the Above campaigning on this issue at the last election, they didn’t get very far, it costs too much to field candidates but they did get some onto the ballot. Shortly after the last election the government enacted a law to ban the name None of the Above from appearing on ballots. They were obviously worried.
Your options are basically ‘agree with the status quo’ or ‘keep it shut’, assent or silence. Dissent is obviously not allowed.
There may be another way to push them though: deliberately fouling your ballot.
Fouled ballots are counted, a statistically significant increase in fouled ballots, coupled with a campaign encouraging the same could arguably give a voice to those of us who are disaffected.
Given recent revelations about our political classes and their cynical exploitation of expenses perhaps the time is ripe for this sort of direct action?
You seem to care, why would you write if you didn’t?
Monday 18 January 2010 at 09:48 UTC
A “None of the above” option would be a good idea. Or alternatively a candidate write-in option.