The latest financial figures show a worrying trend for society, however, bringing the Prime Minister’s word clearly into question. Companies like HMV, Currys, Next, Matalan and Mothercare are all suffering terrible trading currently, indicating that their profits are down. These are places the poor and moderately well-off do their shopping. Marks and Spencer’s profits were unexpectedly up, however. Marks and Spencer is traditionally a place where the wealthy tend to do their food shopping. Food is one thing but what about the expensive commodities that you would expect even the wealthy to be cutting down in on these lean times? If Cameron is to be believed and the wealthy are being hit also, then surely they’re not updating the models of their prestige cars. Apparently they are. Jaguar Land Rover has just reported its best sales month in its 63 year company history. More prestige Jaguars and Land Rovers (the land-owner’s favourite vehicle) are flying out of the showrooms than ever before. It seems that the Conservative Party are still serving the interests of the wealthy by ensuring that, at a time when everyone is paying dearly for the economic crisis, somehow they can afford to spend even more on expensive food and transport.
Thatcherite policies can only mean one thing - the rich get richer and poor get poorer and that is the way they want it. We voted for them - we got what we deserved for so doing! What do you propose we do call an `'unvote?'
ReplyDeleteA good point. Not an ‘unvote’ so much as a shorter government term allowed by the existing one. We need the new politics that everyone has been talking about but not delivering. We need politicians who are ‘for’ the people even if they can’t claim to be ‘of’ the people. Five years is too long. A government can do a lot of damage in five years through incompetence and ideological engineering – whoever they are. Recent history has shown this. The argument against a shorter period in office is that little would get done. Isn’t too much already being done, at too great a speed, by all of the major political parties? Cameron and Clegg are moving fast but so did Blair and Brown. Shorter time frames would make government and the position of Prime Minister less profitable and desirable for those who want power just for power’s sake. Only parties and individuals absolutely committed to their issues, promises and public representation would appreciate the true worth of a short tenure and hopefully we would appreciate their true worth. The public might be willing to risk a shorter time frame on other parties or smaller party coalitions. These ‘untried’ parties would have opportunity to impress us but not enough time to commit serious damage to the economy, infrastructure and international relations, if the public’s appetite for them waned. Short-term governments would fear the repercussions of betrayal and broken promises. We would all have more control and more choice and that couldn’t be a bad thing.
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