Delivering Cartel Politics

April 21, 2015

UK politics are often defined as adversarial but a closer look at what’s happening shows a cartel masquerading as adversaries.
Cartel? Today’s definition is in terms of the commercial sector but the history of the words lies in the political arena. And in both environments a cartel is an agreement between those who control supply, in order to maximise their own benefits while excluding others from the same marketplace.
The DeliveryDemon has been struggling to decide how to vote in the forthcoming General Election. The main parties are too busy shovelling out marketing material to engage with real voters and are totally ignoring the press. Looking at their track records, there’s not a lot to choose between them. Looking at their PR bumf, none has a policy based on letting real people get on with their lives and limiting tax demands to what is needed for the efficient and effective provision of necessary services. There is a difference between the hinterlands of the various parties but it’s not something that affects the ravenous appetite for tax revenue of every single party.
What’s the difference between those hinterlands? That’s where privatisation comes in. Either tax revenue disappears into massive bureaucracy whose cost outweighs the money it spends on delivering services, or the revenue disappears into a massive bureaucracy whose activities swallow up money in administering the outsourcing of those services. Whatever the model, the bureaucracies constantly complain about lack of funds, and bolster their case by cutting services rather than by making the bureaucracy more efficient. Some choice!
Is the alternative the ‘protest’ candidates? The smaller parties without the backing to attain power? The independents? There isn’t an independent in the DeliveryDemon’s constituency and she hasn’t seen much from independents elsewhere. The smaller parties are following the examples of the larger ones in failing to engage with voters. The Scottish referendum showed UKIP sucking up to the cartel members who were using their publicity machines in a distinctly unethical effort to influence the results through threats. The Greens are wedded to large scale energy solutions which force a choice between environmental problems, rather than considering the sort of self-regulating solution which could be achieved by locating the problem, the solution, and the side effects in the area generating the demand. The SNP have Nicola Sturgeon, who may be the most professional politician on the scene at the moment. But SNP isn’t an option in the DeliveryDemon’s constituency, and anyway they wouldn’t get her vote after they decided to exclude native-born Scots from the referendum.
The DeliveryDemon is not alone in having a dilemma about how to cast her vote. It seems that a wide range of people have the same problem. At the last election, the idea of a hung Parliament seemed scary and unthinkable. But it happened, and this time round a hung Parliament seems almost inevitable.
The DeliveryDemon feels a need to exercise her vote as a form of damage limitation, but there doesn’t even seem to be an option which offers that.
In an ideal world, the DeliveryDemon would vote for a candidate whose overriding motivation was to represent the people who elected him / her, without giving priority to climbing the greasy pole of a career ladder within a self-perpetuating party structure. Or maybe she would vote for a unicorn. Given the current political climate, the DeliveryDemon has every confidence that she will meet that unicorn long before she sees a candidate worth voting for.


Delivering a Deaf Ear to the Electorate

April 8, 2015

Well, it’s over a week since the DeliveryDemon emailed David Cameron’s constituency office about the intrusion of multiple nuisance calls from his party. Has there been a reply? Has there even been an acknowledgement? Not a peep.

The DeliveryDemon is not party partisan. Rather she regards voting as a form of damage limitation. This one tiny example is part of the all-encompassing pattern which gives her reason to believe that no political party has any commitment to the issues which are important to the electorate.

The DeliveryDemon has a message for every single would be MP and their cohorts – if you want the least bit of credibility, be prepared to do the job that goes with the pay and publicity – listen to, and represent, the views of the people in your constituency.