The Road to Perdition.

So as the Greek storm threatens the destruction of what is left of it's fragile democracy, and the two Ed's join together in a trip to Knotty Ash, in an attempt to rival Ken Dodd's stage presence, I look to our leaders for guidance and comfort. Cameron's not for turning; I vaguely remember that from my past. No, it's gone. Ball's will not promise any change. And Angus is pissed off with Tesco.

So, as the sun slowly sinks over the UK economy I am left to my own devices to ponder the solution for our ills, and I am reminded of something that one of my few hero's said. "The world cannot get out of the current crisis with the same thinking, that got it there in the first place." Yes it's from the wondrous Albert (Einstein that is). As is usual, that which he said about the crisis of capitalism applies equally now, as it did way back in 1949.

The British political classes, irrespective of whichever party to whom they belong, have one priority; the repayment of the 'deficit' by those who can ill afford it, and didn't cause it, rather than those that did and can. The Financial sector, basking in the sunlight of handouts and bonuses, is completely unperturbed, safe in the knowledge that Governments all, are held in thrall by their pronouncements about whole economies, and remain hostage to the fortune of diktats honed by wankers bankers in boardrooms throughout the Western World, despite their implication in the very crisis to which they profess to have the solution. All whilst we continue to wage wars in lands afar, support the 'Arab Spring' with strong (ish) words to the dictatorships to which we still peddle arms, and rain down Brimstone missiles on the opposing side, and the innocents, in a Libyan 'proxy' war, fueled more by the prospect of oil, than any righteous hope of the rise of Democracy. I have no time for Gadaffi, but frankly none for the self styled rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil either, who is staging little more than 'coup' than any revolution, and has slaughtered thousands both in the past, and now in his pursuit of power. Not of course forgetting the Napoleonic ambitions of one Nicolas Sarkozy.

This moral bankruptcy is redolent of the paradigm in politics of the past thirty years, the Neoliberal agenda. That which espouses the 'market' as the most efficient tool of Administration and accepts, on behalf of those who vote for them, that a large proportion of the people will be condemned to both poverty and/or inequalities that spring from it's policies. It's democracy usurped by the rich for the impoverishment of the remainder. Forged by the 'Iron Lady' in concert with an aging film star who ruled the USA in the early eighty's, it has predominated Western politics ever since. This is why politics is bankrupt of any new ideas that can extricate us from the hole in which we now reside, but which nonetheless pursues the same one's anyway, as it has for the past thirty years. The word 'Socialist' has been eliminated from all the parties of power in the Western World just like 'nuclear' was expunged from the names of the power generators, and who now hold out their hands for subsidy from the people, to build a new generation of reactors, so they can charge even more for the product we can none of us live without.

Neoliberalism is the reason why the NHS is what it is now and more, what it is to become. The Paymaster once more becomes the supplicant, hoping for some crumbs that may be scattered from the 'top table' of Serco, Carillon, Crapita, and all the myriad facilities managers, management accountants, hedge funds, merchants bankers who 'leech' off the funder of their profligacy, the people. This agenda is not openly touted, so the 'paranoid indifference' of the masses is largely a myth, invented at the dinner parties of the chattering classes, and the pages of the 'Indy' or the 'New Statesman'. It is in fact a hidden agenda, an open secret that is almost the 'elephant in the room'.

It's the movers and shakers, who 'flit' through the revolving door of public service, and back again with the ease of those who know power and relish in it who have shaped this model. Heavily subsidised from the taxpayer, they feign resolute independence and ardent if not passionate belief in the 'market' to sort out all of economy's ills whilst enjoying the hypocrisy of their six figure comfort of taxpayer gold. The rest of us look on in startled incredulity that such a belief system can be sustained, but that is the supreme tenet of politicians; perverse and single minded confidence in their own stupidity, as being wisdom. It is the MP's who have never known what it is to work for a living in a 'real' job, who came straight from University, to research assistant, to PPS, or the 'Parliamentary Silk' from a lowly place in 'chambers'; all of these are responsible for the paucity of 'real people' in the corridors of power, and for the rise and rise of the Neoliberal agenda.

So then Ed and err...Ed. Try to remember you are in the Labour Party, an organisation formed from the blood, sweat and tears, all spilt on its foundations, in a world that was different from today's. We can return there if you continue with the cowardice and hypocrisy of Blair and Brown. But I cannot forget the men of my youth who recounted tales of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, of battles with mine owners, and of blood spilt to provide the children with enough food to sustain life. If you want us to return to those days then just go as before. You and your ilk will not feel the sting of poverty, wrought in the name of the 'deficit', your deficit will be in the integrity that you fail to display. Less 'bollocks' and more balls is what we need!