So I have to get utterly bored with US politics all the time - I heard about those elections everywhere for months and months and months...
So...
Labour
Tory
Lib Dem
- UKIP, BNP, Green - Monster Raving Loony -
What do you all think?
Post Merge: April 13, 2010, 04:25:47 AM
There is some serious nostalgia going on in this election...(Which is odd considering they are all talking about change).
Yesterday Labour launched their manifesto
Labour's manifesto looks like a communist picture or a cornflakes advert.
There are already jokes that they hope the 'future fair' has candyfloss and dodgems.
For a party claiming to be 'in the future business' they are harking back a little bit - like a future as imagined in 1945.
A nuclear family - I must be a member of one of the very few nuclear families here - and what is with all them fields? The population of this country have been largely weighted to cities for over 150 years... similarly Gordon Brown infront of fields.
The manifesto launch was in a building shortly to be a brand new hospital (this not being yet a hospital is important, as it is against the rules to hold meetings in public service places). The message of course being, 'Look what we've done, we've made hospitals'. It was big, shiny and trying very hard to be optimistic.
It started with a video summing up the manifesto - it's quite cute - as someone said, 'I'm looking forward to the adult one'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCO-KwYpH0M&feature=player_embedded# - It does sum up stuff though.
Now I tend to vote Labour in stuff and I like the rhetoric on fairness, I like any talk on working together and community but there are some big alarm bells ringing out for me.
Gordon Brown pledged the 'largest middle class ever' - this seems a bit wrong to me, if we have the largest middle class ever then the surely the working class and the upper class are more separated then ever. There is huge social inequality in Britain and this doesn't seem a way to solve it but to increase it.
Similarly they want to train us all up to be able to work in skilled areas of science, creative and green technologies...apart from my fear of 'the creativity industry' as a way to permanently kill any creativity whatsoever. But - I have already experienced the labour wish to give as many people a university degree as possible, the result being I have a worthless degree (or two) and I am chasing any job I possibly can. - Funny it's being described as 'the new industrial revolution'.
Also, there is a lot of typical new New Labour type responses to problems - namely targets and boxes to tick and those who tick all the boxes taking over those who do not - very much a one size fits all. The New Labour seems to confuse fair treatment with identical treatment. This tactic is being applied to police (police authorities taking over failing ones) schools (good schools taking over weaker ones) &c...
Working in a school and looking into training to be a primary teacher, education interest me particularly. The whole better schools taking over less successful ones seems a bit dumb to me, I am in a school that is a lesser school that has been taken over by a better one - and it weakens the better school and produces resentment in the better. There is a promise to almost universal one on one tuition, and seeing as I am in that sort of business - would do me good.
Indeed, as a write about this, I am getting increasingly unsure about it all.
- However Labour has introduced a minimum wage, systemised many chaotic and unorganised things, done a lot of good stuff with the NHS - I reckon they have mostly done well and although I do not sync with them completely, it could be worse.
Also, there was a very nice idea about an international banking tax - if that could ever be set up and enforced - I think that'd be the way to go with getting some money of them bankers.
On a lighter note, the song they chose was 'Higher' by Jackie Wilson. Total old school.
Today it was the Conservatives.
So sitting in a large tent inside the shell of what used to be Battersea Power Station, they did lots of talking and presented their manifesto.
The tory speech, rhetoric and design seem to be harking back to the second world war.
Their manifesto is a hardback book, the first ever hardback manifesto, looking a little like an old wartime manual. (Interesting that Labour used new technology - having a digital manifesto given away on usb sticks when the Tories have got this).
The big idea is that it wants people to get involved in what is being called 'the big society'. Very odd, that the party who said 'there is no such thing as society' now wants people to join the 'big society'.
Now I'm not a tory, dislike most tories I have met, hate posh people - but I have to say, I like this rhetoric. I like talk of people taking responsibility and working together for the good of everyone, I like the talk of an open government with the people feeling involved in the decision making process - I like all of this.
I also like the almost wartime pictures and diagrams in the manifesto - I can't find any images low res enough - but there is a serious retro thing going on (interestingly all three parties went to saatchi and saatchi for there election materials). Even the diagrams (which are actually not very informative) are beautiful in an austere kind of way that reminds me of the cover of a 'British Sea Power' album.
Even the talk was WWII, 'We're in this together.' Obviously linking national debt crisis to the war - and very inspiring the talk of joining and and being part of the government is. There were repeated calls to 'do your bit' and the old JFK line was wheeled out.
However, as much as it is thrilling talk - the practical application of it sounds a bit bonkers - and just a little bit more of traditional toryism - let them get on with it and those with the money will do good.
I mean, the rich will be let off any hook as always - there are no talks of raising national minimum wage and it all seems a bit get on with it yourself. There is a policy to be able to start your own school. That seems total nuts - starting your own school - imagine all the people who would want a school to indoctrinate kids, we might actually have people believing in creationism (!). Having people 'involved in the day to day running' of our hospitals sounds like a great way for them to go to rack and ruin. As much as I don't like the Labour box ticking approach, surely any approach is better than 'sod it, run it your own way'.
Then there is a thing about letting local communities make more decisions on new building works and changes in their local areas - like a local referendum on what size and shape building to be built (was the example given). That sounds great, I'd love to feel that involved, but knowing the British people it would only mean one thing - nothing would ever get built - people don't like change and they would always vote against it - they would always vote for their own needs and not society's needs. That's the flaw with the 'big society'
Finally they said they would pay for stuff by 'savings made' - but never said what they were going to cut to get said savings.
So the talk is good, but I am unsure they are really saying what they sound like they're saying.
Finally, UKIP launched their manifesto today, bless.
This is the party of the grumpy old man in the post office queue - they don't like foreigners, they want to get out of europe, they hate immigration and everyone agrees with them except they don't say it because of political correctness gone mad...
...what they do have going for them is an actual interesting person (!) in there MEP Nigel Farage.
Oh - and the Green Party
I know sod all about them but they do have a very good video manifesto themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHLfzPFsz5c&feature=player_embedded#Lib Dems tomorrow, looking forward to them.
