Ok, so here's a question. You have woken up, you are feeling hungry and you can't be bothered to make yourself breakfast. You did however notice that the cafe at the bottom of the road had a big sign saying "New chef, Gordon Ramsey - Full English breakfast only £3.99" So you go down and say "I'll have one of those nice Gordon Ramsey full English breakfasts" When your breakfast comes, it is a dry slice of burnt toast and a cup of lukewarm tea. What would you say? Just suppose you assumed the toast was just the start of the tasty breakfast, so you ate it? Would you pay? Just suppose you queried how Gordon Ramsay could burn toast and the owner said "Well he didn't agree with our policies so we sacked him so we could pay ourselves more money" How would you feel? What would you say?
You would probably take your custom elsewhere. Now just suppose for a second the political party you voted for did the same thing. Suppose they promised you the earth and then as soon as they had your vote, suddenly unveiled a completely different manifesto? How would you feel? The odd thing about human beings is that when it comes to politics, we are strangely tribal. Take the Tories in Barnet. Their last manifesto contained no mention of outsourcing and One Barnet. It contained no mention of parking charge hikes. It contained no mention of the decimation of care services for the disabled. It didn't say that by the next election, disabled people would not be cared for by the council, but by a private company called Your Choice Barnet. They didn't say that this company would impose draconian cuts to the care packages for many of the most vulnerable people in Barnet. They didn't say that the cemetaries that our loved ones are buried in would run by Capita.
They also didn't say that they'd give themselves a big pay rise as their first act. The Tories knew that all of these things were in the pipeline. They knew that people wouldn't vote for them if they told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So they said nothing about any of this. They do this in the knowledge that we all simply put our X on the ballot paper next to the person in our tribe.
You wouldn't take it down at Sid's Cafe would you? You'd kick up a right stink, so when when Richard Cornelius tells you that there's to be no sausages with your full English, all you meekly say is "I didn't really want them anyway". There are reports that UKIP will do well at the next election. Personally I think this is terrible, I think we have much to learn from our continental cousins. Not least from the French with how they deal with lying politicians. The trouble with the English is that when someone slams the door in our face, we are the ones who say sorry. Until we learn to say "Hang on a second, you lied and I'm not having that any more" nothing will change.
Whenever politicians break their promises and are caught lying, we get called anti democratic if we threaten direct action. Sadly the biggest threat of all to democracy are the lying toerags who have devalued our traditions to such an extent that when they are caught out, we simply accept that this is what politicians do.
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