As a slight aside on this post, what is your position wrt the NHS? Do you see it as a good thing in principle on ideological grounds ie the provision of free health care? Or do you favour privatisation as the conservatives are allegedly doggedly trying to covertly (and overtly) to undermine the currently ailing system? It has been my observation in recent months that many, predominantly social sector employees including many or most doctors (especially younger ones), nurses and other allied health care professionals, have been persuaded that the current labour party are the only option politically that will prioritise the future longevity of the NHS. Many of these people appear to be disaffected convervative converts who have been persuaded by the political rhetoric that the conservatives are callous, heartless capitalists who continue to undermine and weaken the health and education systems to breaking point. It is hard to explain their passionate convictions as stupid based on the pre-requisite intellectual calibre one imagines is necessary to be doctors, nurses, university lecturers, etc. And so that tends to suggest to me that they are either wrong by virtue of their having been decieved or they are 'voting with their feet' as a passionate expression of their support of an imagined ideal free health care system, when really the political options on the table exclude other legitimate political positions. The current situation is that if you believe in voting, which most people do (and you are clearly highly exceptional in that regard) then there is a 'you can have any colour you like as long as it is black!' Fordian position.
@David - The NHS is a bad way to provide health services - in effective, inefficient, not even trying to do the right things. It is a vast Soviet Union Command Economy, and completely unreformable. But describing an alternative blueprint is futile.
21 June 2017 at 17:24
The US and UK elections were wildly wrongly predicted, and so have been many other recent elections. Why?
Firstly there is so much systematic dishonesty that nobody knows anything anymore. Most obviously, the process of opinion polling is now very obviously corrupt - designed to influence voting, rather than measure it. It has become actively-misleading.
But also people, including political leaders, are more stupid than they used to be. The recent UK General Election was the easiest to win of any I can recall in the past 45 years - all that the Conservatives needed to do was make it a single issue election about Brexit; stating that they were the only party that would deliver it.
This was so very obvious that it didn't really cross my mind that it would not happen - but it didn't; and the election degenerated into a confusing mess; with the building impression that the Conservatives were unsure about Brexit and everything else.
The election ended-up so close that today the Revolutionary Left are planing a coup (they have announced it in the press) to take-over the government in the next days or weeks; by organising disruption, violent riots, a crisis atmosphere and fear of civil breakdown.
With such an incompetent and cowardly mainstream leadership class in Britain - the Bolshevik Left may well succeed (even if the leadership class didn't covertly want them to win - which is another aspect) - and we may soon have our first de facto communist government.
The unknown factor is the British people - and whether they will wake-up now; or perhaps later, after the reality of totalitarianism begins to hit; or perhaps not at all. After all, Leftism is our national Achilles heel - driven by class, sex, race and anti-Christian ressentiment; and we have so far shown zero ability to learn from experience on that subject.
If people really do not want to become agent and free - then they will get their wish.
That is: a life of mental passivity, of total surveillance and micro-managed behaviour and thought; justified purely in terms of the balance of attributed pleasures or sufferings; hoping desperately that the masters of our mortal destiny will be kind, while dreading that they are, in fact, cruel.
"Why is modern politics so unpredictable? Dishonesty and stupidity (plus some notes on today's attempted coup)"
2 Comments -
As a slight aside on this post, what is your position wrt the NHS? Do you see it as a good thing in principle on ideological grounds ie the provision of free health care? Or do you favour privatisation as the conservatives are allegedly doggedly trying to covertly (and overtly) to undermine the currently ailing system? It has been my observation in recent months that many, predominantly social sector employees including many or most doctors (especially younger ones), nurses and other allied health care professionals, have been persuaded that the current labour party are the only option politically that will prioritise the future longevity of the NHS. Many of these people appear to be disaffected convervative converts who have been persuaded by the political rhetoric that the conservatives are callous, heartless capitalists who continue to undermine and weaken the health and education systems to breaking point. It is hard to explain their passionate convictions as stupid based on the pre-requisite intellectual calibre one imagines is necessary to be doctors, nurses, university lecturers, etc. And so that tends to suggest to me that they are either wrong by virtue of their having been decieved or they are 'voting with their feet' as a passionate expression of their support of an imagined ideal free health care system, when really the political options on the table exclude other legitimate political positions. The current situation is that if you believe in voting, which most people do (and you are clearly highly exceptional in that regard) then there is a 'you can have any colour you like as long as it is black!' Fordian position.
21 June 2017 at 17:14
@David - The NHS is a bad way to provide health services - in effective, inefficient, not even trying to do the right things. It is a vast Soviet Union Command Economy, and completely unreformable. But describing an alternative blueprint is futile.
21 June 2017 at 17:24