Voting for a large supermarket chain instead of a political party may at first seem a ridiculous idea.
But think about it some more.
Government occupies most of its time collecting, then spending, money and an increasing amount of that money is spent through private contractors rather than public servants. From refuse collection through to health care, more and more public services are being delivered by private companies. The reasoning behind this is that the discipline of market forces delivers the best return for tax payers’ money.
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The problem is that even though companies are becoming more involved in the delivery of public services there is one sector that is closed to them – the overall management of those services. Not only are they held back by being managed by politicians whose only attribute is the ability to bullshit, the companies also have every incentive to steal as much as they can from the State whilst lobbying for and executing their contracts. Neither would be the case if a company were in overall charge.
That’s why we should be able to vote for Tescos.
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!!!!!!!!!!!
Actually, this is what I stumbled upon:
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Looking back on the Poll Tax it’s increasingly difficult to see what all the fuss was about. At the time, the Poll Tax was seen to be a tax on the poor. The reasoning being that more poor people would live in any given house than rich people. The Poll Tax was also seen as being a pernicious tax on your very existence, as if all the other taxes aren’t.
As it happens, most of these objections to the Poll Tax were bollocks. Of course it had its flaws but so what? Most taxes do, particularly indirect taxes. People on low incomes would have received a rebate to cover the Poll Tax and the system that it replaced, and the system that replaced it, were even less connected to an individual’s ability to pay. What the Poll Tax did represent was an excuse to demonstrate against a hated government and burn down a few McDonalds at the same time.
I mention it now because the thought of 200,000 people running amok around the West End over any particularly issue seems rather unlikely these days.
This is partly down to the fact that our current, supposedly progressive, government has locked down security pretty tightly; marches and demonstrations are now policed to a ridiculous level, but mostly because most people on the Left of politics are hypocritical and full shit.
And lots of it.
Why am I picking on Left-Wingers? Well, people with more Right wing views don’t pretend to give a stuff about anyone else; Self-Interest is King. Whereas people on the Left are always prattling on about the Human Rights and twaddle like that.
They don’t really mean it though do they?
Forget for a moment the fact that the current government has presided over unprecedented levels of corporatisation and globalisation of this country or that the tax burden on the rich has been held back at the expense of the less rich. How else can you explain the conspicuous lack of any real resistance to the Government’s assault on the right to trial by jury, restriction of the right to protest, imprisonment without trial, the imposition of ID cards and that stupid, frickin’ war…
That’s the sort of stuff that should bring people out on the street to light bonfires and build barricades, not a few quid either way on the rate of property tax.
What little effective resistance there has been to the rise of fascism in this country has come from the likes of the House of Lords and the Judiciary. Both unelected and both despised by the Left.
That past generation of Left Wing protestors and the generation that should have followed them have been well and truly neutered by The Machine. Sure, some of them talk the talk but barely a handful walk the walk. Wankers.
Hmm. Well you could just as easily call ‘Right Wingers’ wankers, as the government’s authoritarianism is increasingly stamping out the ability to live an individualistic life free from the state
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(monday)
I was going to write a bit more earlier than this but I’ve been feeding the rats with copious amounts of mucus.
Taking the Tesco idea at face value – The most important aspect of democracy is/should be as a protection against tyranny. In our almost democracy we actually have, in effect, a 4-5 year monopolies on governance – this is already wrong, and it takes the best efforts of private interest and parliamentary standards committees to minimise level of corruption by politicians. Any representatives of a private firm would by default be compromised as Irdial outlines below – in their obligations to shareholders, etc.
I am less picky about private companies being involved in delivering certain public services as long as those services are not either essentially monoplistic (utilities, public transport) or handle private personal information (NHS, police forces) and that the private firms are not involved in management roles – the difference between garbage contracts and PFI.
If we ever achieve a proper localised democratic structure in this country I see no problem with individual communities allowing Tesco or whoever to tender for collecting garbage or to take care of the local park.
Left wing wankers. I chose the extract because it identified the docility of the generation you would expect to be most activist. As for ‘left wingers’ I have to admit that the ones I’ve met are more likely to cling to Party allegiances even so anyone who is not upset, outraged and willing to resist ID cards etc is worthy of being called a wanker. Right wingers and liberals too.
the huge scale model is .9 km tall by .7 km wide. It is adjacent to what looks like a military base with many camouflaged vehicles. Last week, the same poster