Freedom For The Pike Is Death To The Minnow

This is another of my previous notes from Facebook.

We need to protest about the way that the blue and yellow Maoists are imposing their outlandish policies upon our country without any democratic mandate whatsoever. Of course the media in this country are prepared to roll over and allow what is in effect a right wing coup to occur without any real protest. We need a general election and we need it now, it is time to demand a rerun of last May’s debacle immediately. When people voted Liberal at the last election most of them did not vote for a Thatcherite coup. Nobody asked me, or anybody else, whether we accepted the idea of a coalition government. Nobody voted in favour of the Big Society and yet it is being imposed in a truly gung ho approach to politics. I read the prime ministers article in today’s Observer where he talks about moving away from state imposed controls. He sees the decimation of public services a some kind of delivery of freedom to the people. He says he is going to set up financial arrangements where people can bid for funds to run post offices, schools, leisure facilities, anything they feel like bidding for. But these things already belong to us, we have paid for them with our taxes over the years and they are not in the possession of transient politicians to do what they will with, giving them away willy nilly to any group who comes forward to run them. All those people who have invested their lives to being public servants from University and college onwards, being trained and educated to manage and implement services in ways that have the benefit of collected wisdom from practitioners acquired over years of experience are being tossed aside with the kind of attitude one expects from a bored two year old tossing aside a toy they have got fed up with. I fully expect to see all kinds of organisations and political whiz kids trying to spin the Egyptian revolution to suit there own ends. I predict that Cameron and the rest of his cadre will be extolling the virtues of freedom inherent in their Samuel Smiles Self Help approach to running the economy and the state in the same way way as the shiny representatives of the current Arab revolution are doing. There is, quite rightly, a feeling of euphoria flashing around the world in the belief that the people of Egypt have, through the use of people power, overthrown a hated despotic and corrupt dictator, and this is true, Mubarrak has gone. However, how quickly the airwaves in the West are filling up with right wing exponents of US style democracy claiming that this is what the people of Egypt want and that things will be great when the elections come. I see all those American Republican spin doctors the BBC love to trot out on Newsnight etc emerging into the light of day claiming that this is the kind of thing they believe in whilst at the same they have acquiesced in the rendition of political prisoners for torture by the secret police of the very regime they are now reviling. Freedom of expression is something that everybody wants until it gets to a point when their own point of view is being overturned by the wishes of the majority. Those people who are in a state of reverie believing that democratic freedom is just around the corner need to wise up in my view. Democracy is something that is hard to define, let alone implement. The Western media have already embarked on their spinning and twisting, rewriting events and conducting interviews in slidy ways with untrustworthy pundits. In Britain we see the wholesale destruction of the welfare state taking place in front of our eyes. All those Butskellist rewards given to the people as a result of the deprivations suffered during the titanic struggle against fascism culminating in the second world war are being taken away trashed by lunatic ideologues who want to give all their school friends massive tax breaks and ensure that they maintain their, unearned, hegemony in what they laughably call a liberal democracy. I am reminded, yet again, of this quote from R H Tawney, “Freedom for the Pike means Death to the minnow”, We all want freedom but there needs to be a bit less rose tinted spectacle wearing during this period of global economic crisis. Elections in Egypt and Britain are needed ASAP and then maybe we can find out what the people want. Of course the real debate that democrats everywhere have trouble with is not being talked about about in the open at present, namely that of the General Will versus The Common Good, that is for another day………..I hope that they manage it in Cairo, we may see but not if Murdochs minions have anything to with it……

Copyright: Harry Rogers 13/02/2011, all rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed