For 2015 when we are asked to vote again…
As our Socialist friends are wont to do, let US recall what Blair & Brown did for us…I hear so many people saying “we have had it, remember what the Tories did last time, when Maggie was in….” and then it’s basically Miners and Poll Tax.
Of course it’s easy to “Remember” what the Tories did last time, and a LOT of Tories were repeating the same mantra when Labour got in in 1997. I remember feeling gutted when Blair flounced into Number 10 (my dad is Labour through and through – he was cockahoop) and today is the first time I personally have felt that opportunity may well present itself for economic rebuilding again.
I was only 8 when Maggie came to power but I remember the Poll Tax riots, I remember being worried that my mum & dad would go to prison for not paying, I remember (vaguely) the miners strikes, but you know what?
Now I will remember our troops dying for wars based on lies, I will remember the economic collapse that we were promised had been abolished, I will remember “No New Taxes” except the ones Labour have brought in and the 100 tax rises in 10 years that GB brought in to 2007, I will remember the complete dismantling of our privacy laws under the guise of protecting us, I will remember the death of our right to protest, the death of innocence until guilt is proven, the death of the right to move as we would like without having to explain ourselves to part-time cops and mostly, I’ll remember Labour for the death of the future of my child, a future that would have involved privacy, hope, education (not social engineering), a chance to aspire, a chance to go to university and a chance to express her own opinions without fear of being hauled through the courts, having her DNA taken and stored forever and getting a criminal record for speaking her mind.
Those will be the things that haunt my dreams when Labour get in again (and they will). It goes around, it comes around.
So yeah, we all have things we will remember and I do not discount the value of the fears people hold but, politics changes and change happens.
There will be a lot of angst for all those people (40%) who work for the State as costs are cut and non-jobs are erased, it has to happen if we are to prosper as a country again.
All we can do, all of us (because we all pay taxes and all live here) is hope for a brighter future, after all isn’t THAT what politics is about?
Pax