The Importance of Being Idle

You Say We Need A Revolution?

Okay, I'm in, where do we sign up?
I don't often wander into politics any more, there doesn't seem to be much point as both main political parties have become so populist that they lack any major points of difference, let alone an idealogical basis, but I do wonder what the hell is happening to this country. We seem to be under the almost total control of an allegedly socialist government that is so terrified of it's own people that it constantly legislates to limit our freedoms. And perhaps what's worse is that they don't know their arse from their elbow. I think it was Wednesdays budget which really annoyed me, as the idiot chancellor stood there and told us how well the British economy is rolling on (despite it being obvious to anybody who lives in the country that it really, really isn't) and then increasing our already almost unbearable tax burden. There'd been a lot of other dumb shit before this too, as the government floundered about looking for something to do, some way to paper over the cracks of our increasing social inequality and complete lack of social cohesion and coming up with such cretinous ideas as a pledge of allegiance to the Queen, or a massive tax increase on alco-pops. Here's a thought; you want to stop kids binge drinking, why not make a country where their existence actually has a point? As for the pledge, I'm not sure when I last heard such a ridiculous idea. Not the pledge so much, although that is in itself quite anathema to me, but why allegiance to the Queen? How about this instead; fuck the Royal Family, let's get rid of 'em and become a republic? Sound good to you? We can start again in this country, finally destroy the old divisions and build a society based on merit, rather than who your father was and where you went to school! I have nothing personal against the Queen, I'm sure she's a perfectly nice person for someone who has never wondered where the money for her next meal is coming from, but I cringe every time I hear "God Save The Queen" as our national anthem! Bollocks to monarchy, it puts us on the wrong foot to start with; no matter how much the government says we're citizens of the UK we fucking aren't, we're SUBJECTS. I think that's so ingrained into the social fabric of this country that people don't even realise how it limits their aspirations, but we KNOW in the very core of our beings that we're never gonna be diplomats or corporate leaders or anything of the sort because that's just not how the system works.
Of course I think the chances of any sort of revolution are minimal; let's face it we did manage to have a revolution once, but even then the working man couldn't be bothered with it and we switched back again. Maybe that's the true British character, that we're born subjugated, born defeated. Even if we did want a revolution there's simply no way to make it work in the modern world; the government have very craftily used the "threat" of terrorists to protect itself at the expense of the erosion of our civil liberties to a point where I'm quite sure I could be arrested under the terrorism bill for even posting this, and I'm not talking about bombing anything or killing anyone, all I want is full on civil insurrection! Which, okay, is asking for a lot, but a man can dream can't he? Mind you, even if we did manage it we'd have the bloody US army in here to return "stability" to the region again, wouldn't we? Not that the internal politics of a country is their business, but that's never stopped them before, has it?
And I guess that's the problem; everything went wrong so long ago and nobody did anything about it. I'm not sure things can ever be put right now. But we can hope.

posted by BadMonkey @ 10:40 AM