Another Election

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Much to agree with there, people would perhaps be more likely to protest if they had reliable sources of information beyond the hideously right-biased media (and I include the BBC with that). I think it would help if the deluded middle classes stopped siding with the rich, and accepted the fact that they are being shafted just the same - I'd recommend a read of The Road To Wigan Pier on this point, as nothing much has changed.

I also agree that we need a different system and would love to see proportional representative replace first past the post, which only serves to perpetuate the useless short-termist approach to governance and politics as conflict. Countries with PR also have generally higher percentages of female politicians, something the UK falls very short on (barely scraping 30%) but which I think would help make Parliament more co-operative and less adversarial, as women politicians tend to be more willing to work across party lines than their male counterparts.

Well I read the Road to Wigan Pier many, many years ago. There was E.P. Thompson - The making of The English Working Class, and Massingham - Prophecy of Famine. Social history books that applied to their times, today Naomi Klein - This Changes Everything and Paul Mason - Post Capitalism and then there is Owen Jones on - The Establishment. Gosh that Mason is difficult to read!
The long view of history, says that it will all change, chaos is the best arbiter of that, one of the problems stem from the fact that there are just too many of us humans around, though others would argue against it. I am with David Attenborough on this. Until you can stop people from aspiring to better cars, bigger houses, and maybe larger capital from their houses they have invested in then perhaps it will be fairer. And here I quote Wendell Berry

"In keeping with our unrestrained consumptiveness, the commonly accepted accepted basis of our present economony is the fantastical possibility growth, limitless wants, limitless wealth, limitless natural resouces, limitless energy and limitless debt. The world ending fire of industrial fundamentalism may already be burning"....

Anyone here for 'de-growth?'