MYWAY

In the recent local Council elections the current governing party in the UK, Labour, was given a bit of a pounding. It seems the people of Britain were ready to show Labour their lack of trust in the way they are being led. And rightly so.

The current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was never actually elected to office, he inherited a position from the previous PM’s departure. In itself that wouldn’t be a terrible thing as long as the core values and promises the original PM was elected on were kept up. There is no eveidence that they haven’t though, so what’s the big slap in Gordons face for?

My own personal belief is that it’s for politics in general. Sure someoe took the votes from Labours local councillors, mainly Conservatives, but that was just because the people had to vote for someone and they are the next big party to vote for.

No I think the slap is because the system is going wrong. The elected representatives are supposed to be doing the will of the people. Increasingly it seems that the elected officials of GB are riding roughshod over the peoples will, and foisting their laws and views on the voters against their wishes.

We all understand the need for laws, and the need to give the government some free reign, but the people in charge also need to listen to the people before forging ahead. For some examples of the complete disregard for public opinion, you only have to look at the EU Treaty, which the government of the day want to push through without recourse to a reluctant public.

Nanny state is a term bandied about and with good reason. Every day unpopular laws are passed through, and our civil liberties are eroded, usually in the name of anti-terrorism or health and safety. It seems the voters of the UK have had enough, although I personally don’t believe it will be much different under a different ruling party. It also won’t get anything changed back which has already gone through.

In retrospect the recent voting looks less like a slap for Labour and hopefully more of a slap for the whole of the political system. The people want to be heard, they want to be involved in the decision making which affects their lives. Who is going to give it to them?

Here’s some food for thought on liberty, and Unions between Countries

A couple of years ago the UK was sold on the idea of Chip And Pin for their credit and debit cards. We were all told the inconvenience was worth it to significantly cut fraudulent use of our debit and credit cards. As usual there were some valid arguments against the chip and pin, which the card issuers assured everybody were invalid, and chip and pin would stop card fraud.

Now the BBC news site reports a ” 25% rise in the fraudulent use of UK credit and debit cards” Yep the same cards now protected with chip and pin are being used fraudulently.

A lot of the fraud is carried out overseas where there is no chip and pin, or in online and telephone sales. Strangely one of the arguments against chip and pin was the fact that unless it was worldwide it wouldn’t be as secure as we were told. Score one for the naysayers, who also pointed out the online insecurity at the time.

It looks as if someone has the opportunity to give out a big “told you so” to the chip and pin companies.

Just one last thought from me, if they were so wrong about chip and pin stopping card fraud, what makes the UK government so sure that the proposed ID cards will really stop ID theft, terrorism, and illegal immigration?
ID cards have been proven not to work elsewhere in the world but when did that matter as long as you can convince the people otherwise, like was done with chip and pin.

The blame culture, it’s a festering sore on modern life. Somebody smokes themselves to an early grave in spite of 30 + years of warnings on packets and discussion of the damage to health in small groups in pubs, around the coffee machines, and on TV and radio. Blame the tobacco industry, it can’t be their own fault.

Somebody else takes drugs, and shuffles of this mortal core, blame the seller of the drugs, the police for not stopping it, anybody but the poor unfortunate who made the choice to take the drugs. Yes somebody dieing young is a tragedy, whether through smoking, drugs or being knocked down by the proverbial bus, but we make our choices and we pay the price.
Only in this modern world we don’t expect to pay the price anymore. We all expect to do as we wish, then blame somebody else.

Parents blame schools for their failing offspring, the nice people of the world blame society for hooligans, vandals, and robbers. Isn’t it time we went back to taking responsibility for ourselves?
It’s not societys’ job, or the schools job alone to sort out our wayward youth, it’s up to the parents. Arguing with headmasters and teachers when your brat plays up and gets punished, then blaming them again when little johnnie is not listening to anyone anymore is plain stupid. Take responsibility for your children, and help the school to instill discipline.

Tripping over in the street used to bring a tut, and self admonishment for being clumsy. Now it’s an invitation to sue someone because you didn’t pick your feet up and mind where you were going.

Suing a hospital because somebody died in their care won’t help to fix the NHS either, all you do is drain more money from the system. Blame never helps, and claim just keeps some greedy lawyers in champagne and ferraris.

It’s also because of this lack of taking personal responsibility for ourselves that lets our government exercise ever more control over what we do. If we’re all willing to let somebody tell us what risks we should and shouldn’t take, relieving us of our responsibilities we shouldn’t complain as our rights are eroded away.

We all have free will, but with it comes responsibility too. If we wish to do as we want when we want then we also need to stop blaming other people when it goes wrong too.

According to the BBC News website in this article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7247470.stm

Smokers could be forced to pay £10 for a permit to buy tobacco if a government health advisory body gets its way.

Before we start let me just say I have never smoked so this doesn’t affect me directly, yet still I think it’s wrong. To all intents and purposes this is an extra tax on tobacco products. Smokers are taxed highly here in the UK anyway, and probably rightly so as smoking does cost a lot in healthcare to the publicly funded health service. The government can dress it up as a way to help people stop smoking, or say it’s another form of id under 16’s won’t have and will deter them from buying cigarettes. It isn’t and it won’t

What will happen is that it will open an opportunity for people who operate outside the law to supply even more cigarettes with no duty paid to people who will pay less for them than in the shop. This includes the young would be smoker who will find it easier to buy their cigarettes from the drug dealer in the street who can then offer an upsell of harder illegal drugs to get a new regular client.

My main reason for not liking this idea however is the spin being put on another stealth, backdoor tax. If the British public fall for this, the government has an open invitation to find even more things they can “licence”. We already pay for a licence to watch tv and a licence to drive, I wonder how many other “licences” would be found to be required in addition to these and a smoking licence?

Bicycle licences for those who ride push bikes? It has been touted by some people that the cyclists should pay for a numberplate style tag for their bike for “identification purposes” if they break road laws.

How long before we need a licence to walk the streets oh yeah, that’s already in the process and it’s called an ID card…