“No matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in” is the title old Neil Innes/Vivian Stanshall song, written in the late 1960’s.
http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/n/
nomatterwhoyouvoteforthegovernmentalwaysgetsin.shtml
Forty years later and it seems that today the lyrics of the Bonzo Dog’s humourous little ditty have become frighteningly relevant. Fact is that our once-proud nation is not far from becoming a dictatorship. Sure the faces in Parliament change from time-to-time. But the policies don’t. Neither do the lies and cover-ups. For example, have you ever tried to find out how much of our money has been wasted on say Iraq and Afghanistan? Basically you can’t because of “national security“. In fact, these are some of the least accountable and most opaquely funded wars in modern history.
Granted they’ll tell us about the dead, because it’s hard to hide flag-draped coffins. Besides, nicely-presented dead service-people boost national morale, according to some MOD “thinkers“. It makes people more enthusiastic about the wars(s), aparently. Personally I find that notion utterly obscene and it breaks my heart every time I see one. But you try to find out how many of our young people have been crippled for life? You can’t! It’s secret! In fact, everywhere you look, vital pieces of information are being withheld from us, supposedly “for our own good“. To compensate, we are fed a never-ending diet of soft porn, crime drama and reality TV by the very media whose job it is to keep us informed. That’s because in reality we actually have no real opposition to Government at all, if you think about it…
Over the last 20 years, we have seen a steady erosion of our civil liberties and freedoms, whilst our Governments and the corporations that line their pockets have robbed us blind and scared us into believing it is “for our own protection“. I’m not saying the proverbial grass is greener. I think actually it is worse in places like the United States where the so-called “anti-terror” legislation has given them the Patriot Act – meaning amongst many other things that librarians had to tell the Government what books you are reading! So much for the “Land of the Free“!
But the fact is that right here, right now in Old Blighty, we are sleepwalking our way towards a police state, whilst being forced to pay ever higher taxes for ever poorer services. Today we are expected to tolerate a level of corruption, obfuscation and incompetence from those that are paid to protect us, on a scale that was unimaginable even thirty years ago. Yet anyone who dares to complain is branded a “traitor“, “unpatriotic“, a “terrorist sympathiser” or told simply that he or she “should be grateful“.
Well I’m not!
Check out Ralph Nader’s “Corporate Fascism” video. Takes a few minutes to get going. But stick with it. This guy explains the phenomenon far, far better than I can:-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do…76553130&hl=en
Honk! Honk!