Back for seconds

Following my piece published on the National Rust yesterday, please excuse me popping up so soon with another full of more cynicism about those who play the British politics game.

I was prompted to do so partly because of an article by Robert Colville on the hypocrisy of Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg – see here – DAILY TELEGRAPH

Re-reading yesterday’s effort again (as you do), I noted that a key theme had been the ‘gap’ between those who would be great ministers but for the fact that they cannot or do not perform well trying to win the votes necessary to get into Parliament … and those that could be described as excellent and popular campaigners at election-time yet would be completely hopeless if ever they made it into any position of power.

Since then it has struck me that is perhaps a similar gulf between what the main political parties deep down know to be true about some of the key political issues and what they say in public about them, for fear of offending the electorate and thereby losing votes.

Without worrying about which parties say what, let me list just a couple of them – e.g. the facts that:-

(1)

The National Health Service, the taxpayer-funded national pension scheme and the welfare system are now sufficiently large financial black holes that no amount of radical reform [e.g. cost reduction and/or ‘other way of funding’] can ever resolve them. Well, no amount of radical reform that any party can dare talk about in public and/or adopt as a policy. There are simply no British politicians alive possessed of the cojones to propose and implement policies which would potentially be that unpopular with sufficiently large numbers of the electorate.

(2)

That the British armed forces have now been reduced to such an extent that all they are truly fit for is a combination of ceremonial duties and the odd politically-face-saving ‘joining in’ exercise with America and/or other multi-national coalitions of the willing attempt to deal with wars and crises in far off places such as the Middle East and Africa.

[I’d go so far as to suggest that all the monies expended by Britain by renewing the Trident deterrent are also completely wasted. Not so much because Trident is incapable of ‘doing the job’, but rather because no British politician would ever find the courage within themselves to press the ‘fire’ button that would activate a mutual destruction situation.

Take the crisis in the Ukraine over the past eighteen months – nobody in the West seriously wants to go to war with Russia, which is why a loose cannon like President Putin knows he can annexe the Crimea and effectively carry out overt operations in eastern Ukraine with impunity].

… just thought I’d mention it, even though no British politician would.