The Political Thread

[ZenArcade]

I would say it was a conversion on the road to Damascus Shark: Alas the only conversions going on near that benighted city are the living to the dead. Z

[Professor Bear]

Seeing as petitions are on the table, consider signing this one to make MPs work Saturdays for no extra pay, seeing as apparently Saturday is part of the regular working week now.  It's only got 70,000 signatures so far, and needs 100,000 before MPs are forced to bring it up in Parliament.
My one solace in his dismantling of the NHS is that sooner or later, someone who loses a loved one or gets diagnosed with something terminal is going to snap and smash Jeremy Hunt's brains in with a claw hammer, but while we're waiting/preying to Jesus for it to happen, you can try signing this petition calling for a vote of no confidence.

[The Legendary Shark]

Perhaps there should be a petition to force MPs into working only half a day a week (time to be used exclusively for the filling in of expenses chitties) for double the pay. That way, they can do far less damage and still get to live like the useless pigs in shit they are...

[IndigoPrime]

The no-confidence vote idea strikes me as a bad idea. It won't happen, obviously. But even if it did, he would win. I really wouldn't want to see anything the Tories would use to claim he has some kind of mandate for all the horrors he's inflicting on doctors and the NHS.

A better one going around was the petition to force Hunt to resume meaningful dialogue with the BMA. Alas, the no-confidence one's sailed past 250,000 signatures now.

[The Legendary Shark]

I doubt any petition will have much effect. Even if the one to stop supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons succeeds, another way will be found. European arms manufacturers will simply set up proxies, selling tho the U.S. (for example) instead and then on to Saudi Arabia from there.

The main point of these petitions, to my mind, is to communicate to "governments" that the people are getting sick of the way they do things. Even dyed-in-the wool statists, of whom there are a majority, are beginning to realise that democracy is currently little more than a sham - a veil designed to promote the illusion of public control over governmental behaviour and mask the reality of the small special interest groups who really call the shots.

In themselves, individual petitions are fairly meaningless but, taken as a whole, they do put pressure on "governments" to at least think about beginning to consider the needs and desires of the public at large. This can only be a good thing.

[Professor Bear]

These sentiments are somewhat at odds with what you've been saying up until now, Sharky.
Myself, I am on record as preferring the claw hammer solution, and if people are marginalised long enough, I'll get to see it implemented.

[The Legendary Shark]

Belief in the false god of "government" will not be swept away overnight, nor would such a thing be particularly helpful. Government must be dismantled in stages. First it needs to be exposed for what it is, then tamed towards what it pretends to be, then replaced by public organisations, then devolved to individuals.

Gonna' be a long job.

[Hawkmumbler]

I really can't get behind the analogy of government as 'God', sharply. Government as inefficient as it may be is a very real and tangible concept, God is puerile nonsense created to pacify the unimaginative and easily led.

[The Legendary Shark]

If I ask a deist to show me "God," my attention will be directed to a flower, an emotion, a sunrise. If I ask a statist to show me "Government," my attention will be directed to a road, a law, a health service. The former are nothing more than the products of fairly well understood physical and biological processes needing no supernatural entity to force their existence. The latter are nothing more than the products of fairly well understood human interactions and cooperations needing no supernatural entity to force their existence. I don't need God to force the sun to rise for me and my society any more than I need government to force me into cooperating with other individuals for my personal and wider societal benefit. The only things those people who believe in God or "government" bring to the table is violence. "Do it this way, or else..." Both are abstract concepts with no intrinsic power or tangible form.

Pointing to a road and saying, "because government" is as simplistic as pointing to a flower and saying, "because God."

To me, it is "government" that is puerile nonsense created to pacify the unimaginative and easily led.

[Modern Panther]

Because roads and national health services of course evolve naturally over time.

[The Legendary Shark]

And of course the only way to maintain national health services and roads is to turn them over to a small group of profit-oriented bullies.

[Modern Panther]

I'd suggest that the best way to manage them would be to have democratically elected representatives who we can remove from power when they lie to us.

[The Legendary Shark]

Yeah, and how's that working out for you?

[Modern Panther]

Ever seen a functioning alternative?

[Jim_Campbell]

Ever seen a functioning alternative?

I hear the view from the shed is lovely this time of year...