The almost total blackout on broadcast media of the police attack on the popular protest by thousands outside Downing Street – with 30 injured and 17 arrests – is in stark contrast to the wall to wall coverage of the staged fake “riot” in Glasgow in which 6 people were slightly rude to Jim Murphy with no arrests and no injuries.
Thanks to the UK’s appalling electoral system, we now have a seriously right wing government with absolute power from an absolute parliamentary majority, but which 63% of voters voted against, and which was supported by only 23% of those eligible to vote. Many of the 38% who did not vote at all, were not apathetic but actively disgusted by a corrupt political system which offers little meaningful choice in most of the UK.
Legitimacy is a different question to legality. The government is undoubtedly legal under the current rotten system, but its legitimacy is a different question entirely. Legitimacy lies on the popular consent of the governed. With an extreme government supported by only 23% of the population, actively planning to inflict actual harm on many more than 23% of the population, there are legitimate philosophical questions to be asked about the right of the government to rule. With so many, particularly but not exclusively young people, now reading sources like this one and not being enthralled by the mainstream media, today’s protest is but a start.
Succinctly sums it up Craig
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32678518
Were these “popular protests” (why “popular”, by the way? Are you using the word in its French sense?) free of violence on the part of the protesters/demonstrators?
Drones
On reading the link provided by Bannerqueen (for which thank you)I see that some of the demonstrators were carrying posters saying “Tories out” (perhaps even “Tory scum out” – I can’t be bothered to look at it again.
Was not the time and plqce to register dissatisfaction with the Conservatives at the general election on Thursday?
It’s all over the media; Times, Mail, Mirror, Sky, BBC et al. I’ve just heard about it on the World Service.
No, I have checked. Not Tory “scum”.
Michael Scally(wag)
If the protesters were using doines then that makes their behaviour all the more reprehensible, surely? But I think you’ve been misinformed.
drones
Habbabkuk
I pointed out on a previous thread that there does seem to be a peculiar fascination with the word “scum” among the left. Some SNP supporters seem to have no other word in their vocabulary, so they repeat it six or seven times in a row. They must surely be projecting their own habits and lifestyle?
Sky News are also saying that there’s some kind of protest going on in Cardiff:
http://news.sky.com/story/1480956/scuffles-at-london-anti-austerity-protest
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074752/Voice-angry-angel-Charlotte-Church-protests-against-Conservative-party-s-general-election-triumph-says-ve-given-reins-bogey-men.html
Bannerqueen
Yes I know there is a page on the BBC website – though the link to it on their front page is pretty obscure. But it was not in any of the main broadcast news bulletins. Much less coverage than the Murphy incident.
I am flattered by the speed with which the MI5 team on duty using the various identities go onto this one, after 11pm.
As a young person(16) living in the UK, I find it extremely difficult to talk to anyone about my thoughts on our political system. People my age think that by choosing the lesser of two evils, everything will change and yet that is simply not the case. Especially when the mainstream media neglect to inform us on anything of importance, not only in the UK itself but internationally. I highly value alternative news sources such as yours Craig, as I cannot seem to find any information of interest unless I actively seek it myself.
@Habbabkuk – one would assume that those protesting outside Downing Street were part of the 63% who did not vote for the Conservative party, which is the point of them being there. We have a government in power that only represents a very small percentage of the overall population but, because of an archaic system, have been given the ability to decide the future for the 63% who did not wish for them to be there…
@Anon1
9 May, 2015 – 11:05 pm
It’s not all over the media. It’s being reported in a small section of the media because they could hardly fail to do otherwise.
I’ll repeat JimmyGiro’s link in the previous thread, to a Daily Mail piece about today’s demos in London:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3074951/Socialist-siege-Downing-Street-Hard-left-activists-clash-police-following-David-Cameron-s-triumphant-return-Number-10.html
It’s like the Beano comic, but the sad fact is that many people believe it.
The protest was covered on Al Jazeera and RT
Craig … I am not in the least surprised at the BBC on Radio or TV they have longterm form for this sort of behaviour.
There’s no “MI5 team’, Craig. That’s just your paranoid imagination running away with itself again. Remember the MI5 graffiti campaign against the SNP? Sad and delusional.
What we do have in the real world is widespread media coverage of your protests, not “almost total blackout”.
* Not reporting
I’ll repeat this link again…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-03/meet-british-armys-77th-battalion-mobilizing-1500-facebook-warriors-spread-disinform
… and will ask readers if they think they live in a democracy; particularly readers of this blog who will be well aware of the government trolls who post here.
Democracy?! It’s like fecking North Korea.
Day 1. Cameron promised he would scrap the Human Rights Act. Now he says it’s at the top of his list.
‘Among Mr Cameron’s first legislative priorities will be to enshrine an EU referendum into law, bring in the so-called ‘snoopers charter’ to give police greater powers to monitor internet communications and give English MPs a veto over legislation only affecting England. The Tories also intend to publish plans to scrap the Human Rights Act within their first 100 days. All proposals had been previously blocked by the Lib Dems.’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/unshackled-from-coalition-partners-tories-get-ready-to-push-radical-agenda-10237611.html
~~~~
The fascisti are coming.
They Thought They Were Free – Milton Mayer
The Germans, 1933-45
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
‘But Then It Was Too Late
“What no one seemed to notice,” said a colleague of mine, a philologist, “was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.’
Says it all. 8 out of the first 22 comments here are from the regular trolls.
Nothing like a swift change of theme, eh.
Incidentally, the logic of Craig’s swiftly amended post would appear to be that voting in general elections should be compulsory.
Any support for that on here?
There is a big problem with the system of representative democracy (RD). RD is obsolete. People do not need anyone to represent them anymore. Communication technology advances have made it easy for people to represent themselves and to vote on every issue after nationwide discussions. It is time people’s power was exercised by people. Don’t you wonder how some candidates tell people “elect us so that we can allow you to do what you want”? How stupid! Why don’t people just do it themselves?!
Hababkuk
That is in no sense the logic of my post. It does nothing to address the problem. What is needed is an electoral system that does not award 52% of the seats for 37% of the votes. But that is just the start. A system where then entry for realistic participation in the democratic process does not require a party organisation funded by tens of millions of corporatist money and promoted by a significant proportion of the corporatist media is another small part of what is needed. As is a substantial reduction in the power of the state, and an economic system that does not produce ludicrous inequality of wealth.
Hol527
09/05/2015 11:23pm
Hol527, welcome, and thank you for your contribution, it was thoughtful. Very glad to learn that you are seeking information for yourself, and not merely content to absorb what the mainstream media chooses to disclose to you, and to everyone.
I would urge you to be sceptical of every contribution you read on here, especially mine, and if certain matters interest you, then to go back to the original sources, if you can, and evaluate them yourself. Does wonders for intellectual self-defence.
Now, why aren’t you asleep? 😉
Kind regards,
John
I have just been told ‘Threat Detected’ by my anti virus when trying to access
‘FactCheck: what would parliament look like under Proportional Representation?
Channel 4 News’
!!!
Yes, representative democracy does not work. At least not any longer, when the plutocrats have such an overwhelming proportion of the wealth.
The ancient Athenians knew how to limit the political power of the rich. They had an Assembly as what one might call the lower house of their legislature, which all adult male citizens had the right to attend, and indeed at times during their history were paid to attend. A state of the size of modern states cannot have that, although perhaps technical substitutes are possible. But, for the rest, except for their chief executive officers, the strategoi or generals (who were elected), they used the system of choosing officials, legislators (in the Council or Boule, the upper house), and jurors (who were all there was of a judicial system — there were no judges) by lot from among the whole adult male citizenry. We would now not want to exclude women from the choice, and obviously we do not want to have slaves the way the Athenians did. But, if we choose officials in this way, all segments of the population, in whatever way you define the segments, would be represented proportionally to their share in the general population, by the laws of statistics.
If you give decisions to representatives chosen in the Athenian way, rather than allowing immediate plebiscites all the time vote on by everybody, you will have deliberative democracy. Say the legislators are chosen for terms of two years. They will be much more competent to vote on an issue than people who have never devoted any time to considering the issue. And, since they are truly representative of the population, they will serve as legitimate proxies for the whole population. Remember, it worked in Athens.