Getting annoyed
I deal with a number of difficult and often emotionally charged exchanges during my working day. Getting round the pejoratively charged verbal assaults takes a great deal of character (I think so anyway) and using ones brains, you know, that grey lumpy thing inside your skull. Getting annoyed or angry simply doesn’t help you deal with any situation, no matter how satisfying it might be in the short term. Getting people to see the error of their ways as well as handing out a Parking Ticket to them is no easy task and requires diplomacy and not a little tact – maybe some good running shoes too, but that’s another matter.
This rule however, I ignore when I hear about the ballot box stuffing going on in certain major cities. I get angry, incandescent even, to think that the very basis of our freedoms, so hard won in the 19th and 20th centuries, at the loss of so many lives, are being chucked down the pan because certain New Labour members can’t trust the will of the electorate. Such behaviour galvanises me to vote against New Labour, no matter if I like their electoral manifesto or not. I don’t like cheats. I’d rather have Geoffrey Archer or Jonathan Aitken as Prime Minister than Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, or even heaven forfend, John Prescott. The two old school Tories might have been sleazy and corrupt, but at least they would never stoop so low as to cheat the electoral system.
Now I’m not accusing the Prime Minister or any of his MP’s of ordering or being complicit in the ballot rigging reported in Birmingham for example. However, they are the top of the party machine that is tainted by association with such practices. They allowed it to happen. The same as if the Liberal Democrat or Conservative hierarchies were to allow ballot rigging to be done by their members. Rigging elections is heinous, it is criminal, it is nothing less than an act of treason against the British electorate.
I’m sure that any enquiry would absolve the New Labour machine of any official part of this scandal. Then again, there have been a number of incidents throughout the tenure of this government that raise a querulous and suspicious voice inside the conscience of any believer in liberty and democracy. Weapons of Mass Destruction? The questionable forensics surrounding the death of David Kelly? Forcing the Queen to renege on her coronation oath? Repeated use of the Parliament act? The emasculation of the House of Lords? Trying to roll back the liberties and freedoms of the British people with ID cards and the Civil Contingencies act? Peter Mandelson? The Hinduja’s? Lord Levy? Rover? How many other ‘incidents’ do we have to endure before we wake up and kick this lot out?
Up until this year, the old Prevention of Terrorism Act needed to be renewed every 12 months. Yet the threat of Irish Republican and Unionist terror groups was very real throughout the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s and ID cards etc were not thought necessary. So how will such measures avert the purported threat from ‘Islamist’ terror groups? As I posted in a previous blog entry, if we go down the route of repression, the terrorists have won. If ballot boxes need to be ‘stuffed’ to keep New Labour in power – theirs will be a pyrrhic victory and we, the British electorate, will be the losers.
As I am too fond of saying – I’m only a Traffic Warden - and it’s pretty damn obvious to me.
This rule however, I ignore when I hear about the ballot box stuffing going on in certain major cities. I get angry, incandescent even, to think that the very basis of our freedoms, so hard won in the 19th and 20th centuries, at the loss of so many lives, are being chucked down the pan because certain New Labour members can’t trust the will of the electorate. Such behaviour galvanises me to vote against New Labour, no matter if I like their electoral manifesto or not. I don’t like cheats. I’d rather have Geoffrey Archer or Jonathan Aitken as Prime Minister than Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, or even heaven forfend, John Prescott. The two old school Tories might have been sleazy and corrupt, but at least they would never stoop so low as to cheat the electoral system.
Now I’m not accusing the Prime Minister or any of his MP’s of ordering or being complicit in the ballot rigging reported in Birmingham for example. However, they are the top of the party machine that is tainted by association with such practices. They allowed it to happen. The same as if the Liberal Democrat or Conservative hierarchies were to allow ballot rigging to be done by their members. Rigging elections is heinous, it is criminal, it is nothing less than an act of treason against the British electorate.
I’m sure that any enquiry would absolve the New Labour machine of any official part of this scandal. Then again, there have been a number of incidents throughout the tenure of this government that raise a querulous and suspicious voice inside the conscience of any believer in liberty and democracy. Weapons of Mass Destruction? The questionable forensics surrounding the death of David Kelly? Forcing the Queen to renege on her coronation oath? Repeated use of the Parliament act? The emasculation of the House of Lords? Trying to roll back the liberties and freedoms of the British people with ID cards and the Civil Contingencies act? Peter Mandelson? The Hinduja’s? Lord Levy? Rover? How many other ‘incidents’ do we have to endure before we wake up and kick this lot out?
Up until this year, the old Prevention of Terrorism Act needed to be renewed every 12 months. Yet the threat of Irish Republican and Unionist terror groups was very real throughout the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s and ID cards etc were not thought necessary. So how will such measures avert the purported threat from ‘Islamist’ terror groups? As I posted in a previous blog entry, if we go down the route of repression, the terrorists have won. If ballot boxes need to be ‘stuffed’ to keep New Labour in power – theirs will be a pyrrhic victory and we, the British electorate, will be the losers.
As I am too fond of saying – I’m only a Traffic Warden - and it’s pretty damn obvious to me.
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