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Musings on a world I am no longer sure about
I ♥ Douglas Adams
Was listening to some H2G2 today and this gem cropped up. Reminded me very much of where we are today...
[An extraterrestrial robot and spaceship has just landed on earth. The robot steps out of the spaceship...]
“I come in peace,” it said, adding after a long moment of further grinding, “take me to your Lizard.”
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat with Arthur and watched the nonstop frenetic news reports on television, none of which had anything to say other than to record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this totally other number of people, and then say it again, because the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error messages.
“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see...”
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
“What?”
“I said,” said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, “have you got any gin?”
“I’ll look. Tell me about the lizards.”
Ford shrugged again.
“Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happened to them,” he said. “They’re completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone’s got to say it.”
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A short essay on politics
The DEBill is to become the DEAct. Suddenly everyone is indignant that Parliament is not supporting the will of the people and that it must stop. The most ironic thing, however, I’ve seen so far was a tweet saying “go out and vote”.
Why?
Seriously, our representative democracy is a good idea, like socialism or communism. Fine ideas. Only when put into practice it doesn’t work.
What should happen:
A representative of the people should be elected by those people to speak for them.
What does happen:
A representative of the people is elected to speak for lobbyists/funders, ignoring the people until they can’t stomach it any more and vote for another representative to speak for lobbyists/funders.
When will it stop?
When people stop voting.
A politician should be a servant to the people, not reined in by the people when (s)he gets too silly.
And we don’t even have that any more. Anyone busy boggling about the passing of the Digital Economy bill with so much clear opposition from the people has a very short memory. Iraq? Million+ people on the streets protesting a war that happened regardless.
And you know that it doesn’t matter who was in power, this war was demanded by their backers, funders and friends. Tory, Labour, irrelevant, it would still have happened.
We are the world’s biggest arms salesman. We achieved this honour a while ago. If you weren’t aware, it’s what drives economic policy. We’ve reached a place where there’s not quite enough natural conflict in the world so we need to knock over a few anthills.
So we will soon have a “Digital Economy Bill” that is supported by whomever it is that gets into power. Who can you vote for to end this? No-one.