Eastleigh Waldo Moment

The by-election at Eastleigh is today. Formerly a safe Liberal Democrat seat but since the disgraceful Chris Huhne resigned all bets are off. Ok, well, some bookies have got the Libdems keeping the seat but unbelievably, some have got UKIP to win the seat. This is quite exciting stuff. Typically, you can have individual candidates stand as a protest against the incumbent or due to the antics of the MP who has resigned and win. Martin Bell, Caroline Lucas and George Galloway have proved that. And UKIP used to be basically one issue and one person (Nigel Farage). But now UKIP have actually managed to crib together some sort of organised manifesto and are actively challenging Eastleigh.

For the record I abhor UKIP. I disagree with all of their policies, and I cannot stand Nigel Farage, their erstwhile leader. However, I am also sick of the main three parties treating the voters as a tappable resource, as idiots who will vote for the big parties no matter what. The main parties take us for granted and in the case of the Coalition, do not carry out our wishes. At a general election, a party publishes a detailed manifesto about what they will do and they get voted in if people like that manifesto as there is the reasonable presumption that they will either achieve what they say will do, do something like it due to some necessary politicking, or will at least try. The current Coalition threw both manifestos out of the window when it formed and trotted out a few wishlists and mashed them together.

I want disruption. I want the Westminster elites to be shocked. I want the normal rules to not apply. I want UKIP to win at Eastleigh today. I do not want the populace to be taken for granted. I want to have a person say they will do something, and then they do it. I do not want craven career politicians suppurating their oozy politics of self-interest to rule us. I want honest people.  I want the main parties to take note of what we want, not do what they think we want according to lazy anecdotes and asinine and disconnected focus groups.  

I want a Waldo moment. The episode of Black Mirror this week (which I have written about here) could not have been timed better. There was some terribly lazy stereotyping in the episode but that can be easily overlooked as the genius was how it connected into how dissociated normal politicians are with normal people and the fact that if you have something new, then people will be attracted to it. It is fresh compared to the current offering, even though it is still stale by comparison. Waldo slinging dirt just like the politicians (case in point – Lord Rennard’s 2009 indiscretions coming to light just before a crucial by-election) but in a way that people can associate with is popular.

Bring it on, Waldo 

Mad George 2: Beyond Moodydome

So the credit agency Moody’s has downgraded the UK’s credit rating from AAA to AA1 due to medium term sluggish growth, the projected continuation of the austerity measures into the next parliament, and the fragility of the UK’s balance sheet. All this sounds like very frightening stuff, doesn’t it? The shit has really hit the fan. We are all fucked. Already I can hear baying mobs of people roaming the streets clad in leather pants wielding machetes and taking off the heads of all the people who are wearing a different shade of leather pants. A thunderdome has been erected just by Leicester Square and squads of former telephone hygienists who are now cage fighters are oiling up and sharpening their sharpened slate tipped sticks. Babies are eating pools of feculence on the flinty rubble of destroyed buildings.

Hmm. My imagination might be running a little bit Tahrir Square on that one. Fact is, the US and France have been downgraded (the US is lower than the UK, France is now the same) and their cost of borrowing hasn’t changed one iota. Fact is, neither will the UK’s. The problem with the international credit agencies (Standard & Poor, Fitch, and the aforementioned Moodys) is that for decades they were highly sought after purveyors of information without people realising that they were completely full of shit and whose data means nothing at all in an emperor’s new clothes type scenario. With everything coasting along nicely all they did was rubber stamp things. When the shit hit the fan they didn’t move quickly enough or even give any warnings like, you know, they were being paid to do. Enron was rosy until they were found out. Freddit Mae were coasting along fine flinging out toxic sub-prime debt packages until Warren Buffett said something on TV then the credit agencies made a statement whilst putting their trousers back on hurriedly. There are other numerous criticisms of them but the point is that the credit agencies don’t really matter.

Unless, of course, your name is George Osborne, erstwhile Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, who has staked his entire Chancellorship on the UK maintaining its cherished triple A credit rating. If it got downgraded, then George Osborne would be pretty embarrassed. Well, it turns out, that triple A status doesn’t really matter now that it has been downgraded according to Curious George. 

The Politics of Self-Determination

There is currently a swathe of people who want to break off from a larger socio-economic area and become a smaller self-governing entity. One group of people already had a referendum in place and they know when it will be with certainty. The other group of people have an “if this, then that” date for a potential referendum. Both splinter groups don’t really have the foggiest idea what will happen if they are successful in their respective leaps in the dark.

I am of course referring to Scotland in the first instance and the UK (with or without Scotland, depending on timing) in the second instance. I believe that people should be able to determine their own future. I also believe that people are stronger when they are together – indeed, stronger than when they are apart. For millennia, the natural instinct of mankind is to herd together for greater protection against the elements. However, there are always a few who believe that they could be automagically bigger fishes if the pond were made artificially made smaller. Hence we have scant but powerful megalomaniacal people who are poised to rend asunder hundreds of years (in the case of the Scots) and decades of unity (in the case of Europe).

I believe that a “yes” result in these promised referendums would be an abstract lesson in pyrrhic victories. The outcome would be so unfathomable that the resulting paralysis would be catastrophic in terms of the overall sovereignty of the respective nations. In the case of Scotland, there are virtually ‘no knowns’ in terms of dealing with the aftermath of a ‘Yes’ vote and the SNP have inveigled and obfuscated facts continually and repeatedly about the nature of the after effects and how they would deal with the transition. Similarly, Britain would suddenly cease to be relevant in terms of trading and being a financial hub in the context of the wider world, let alone Europe itself yet for some bizarre reason a few UKIPers and Tory Grandees would be rubbing their hands together before realising how much trouble they would be in.

However, the force of democracy is the only way to determine what should be done about the future of a nation. I welcome the opportunity to vote in referendums, indeed, many populations do not have that luxury, and if the arguments are true and sound then the people’s voice will heard and that will be the determination of the direction of the country.