Forgetting the Past

My Dad used to say “You need to know where you have been to know where you are going” –  We are at real risk of forgetting that all over the world.

We need change, and we need to find the appetite for real change because if we don’t then we return to the Victorian Age, not just here but everywhere. The 1% have always been in charge, one way or the other, but their power was tempered to a degree by the battles won by our grandparents to get basic rights that human beings rightly demand. But we are losing them, little by little, drip by drip. The 1% are now brazen enough, and they see that they can again do what they want while holding most of the cards because too many of us stupidly bought into their shit while forgetting the lessons our grandparents learned, we only have ourselves to blame.

We have forgotten the lessons from our past to feast on indifference and fear. We have allowed the Tories of all colors to roll back on what little power we had by using the fear of losing your home, your job, and social security, which is the worst in the industrial world pretty much. They have convinced us that happiness is a brand, or an episode of Love Island, a Football Team. They have dangled just enough carrots to pacify, and just enough benefits and services to exist.

They have facilitated the decline in the standard of our politicians to the level of the shittiest managers we have ever come across, the ones who manage and get promoted because they can’t do the job and will do as they are told while being just stupid enough to believe they actually matter to the people who pull their strings, it is our fault, and we really are running out of time as we forget those hard lessons from the past as I noted. We really need to get our rights set in stone, the fact that we have put up with this state of affairs for so long should shame us, below are just some things I know we should be demanding.

Constitution – How the UK has gotten away with the bullshit that is an unwritten constitution for as long as it has is beyond me. We have rights based on law but law that can be changed, and often is, at the whim of the bought and sold right-wing politicians controlled by the 1%. Their needs are paramount while we scramble around for the scraps that they don’t want. We should be demanding a written constitution made by the people who actually do live, work, and die (too early) in this shit hole. A Constitution that puts into law the rights we demand and identified through a citizen’s assembly.

First Past the Post Elections – Joke of a system designed to pretty much keep the Tories in power with Labour getting a turn now and again. Each election only has around 50 seats that actually matter and Scotland’s vote is as irrelevant as they come due to the system and our colonial status. This has got to be changed and there is a reason why most of the world does not have first-past-the-post voting systems, in fact only 3 countries including the UK use this system. It is as undemocratic as they come. We need PR to ensure that every vote matters and we need people to take that vote seriously but there is no appetite from the two main Tory Parties (Labour and the real Tories) while too many believe the lie that PR produces unstable Government, it provides the need to actually represent people and find common ground. Democracy matters and we have allowed ours to be stolen away from us even more than it was previously.

Head of State – Again another anarchism from the past that serves the 1% and their desire to keep things as they are (shit), and to keep themselves on top with much of the power in their hands. This is all about money, power, and class. That is what this is about, it is a disgusting system that does nothing for the majority and sadly far too many (mainly in England) are happy to spend their lives on their knees like the slaves they have become accustomed to being and have been raised to be. If there is one thing that sums up the joke of the UK and Scotland’s colonial status it is the Windsor family, every single disgusting one of them, and what they represent. Stop fawning over these parasites.

Public Services/Taxation – Good public services should be a right, not an aspiration and it is long before time that we demanded that is where we want investment, and we need to accept that all have to pay what is fair and affordable to achieve that. We all drive on the roads or use transport that requires roads, we all use the SNHS in some way, we have all used the education system in some way, and we all want the bins emptied. Those are choices that are political in nature and unless we change our expectations and be clear that we will not vote for crap services, or accept them, then they will get worse until they are gone. It is time for tax to be fair, local land tax, second homes tax that keeps houses out of the market, fair business rates based on profit and investment in people not on how much the shareholder gets back, and how much the company can hide away.

I buy things made in the UK – I try to buy Scottish to be fair as I want to support jobs and families in Scotland. Maybe it is all an illusion but since Thatcher, we have stopped making things, we don’t even grow all that much. We need that to change and change soon, the world won’t get better until it gets worse and unless we start to produce things that we need here we will increasingly be at the whim of the largest corporations around the world with more and more wealth centered on the few while we get ripped off at every turn. If you don’t make things, people don’t buy the things they need at home, people don’t have jobs, people don’t pay taxes, services get worse, and health gets worse, it is not rocket science.

Independence – Goes without saying, just wish I knew how we achieve it given the useless bunch of planks we are saddled with right now.