slenderbeak: What Is To Be Done About English Politics?

slenderbeak: What Is To Be Done About English Politics?: People keep adding more information to the overflowing pot. We read avidly, to understand more. But do we? Is our search for greater unders...

What Is To Be Done About English Politics?

People keep adding more information to the overflowing pot. We read avidly, to understand more. But do we? Is our search for greater understanding just a disaffection that infects us all sooner or later? I'm on the Left politically, have been since I was fifteen. Why have we just chosen to punish ourselves with another five years of Tory government?

Yes, we can argue that the three Party, first past the post system is unfair and explain some of it that way but what about those who voted Tory who are not Tory bigots, who didn't go to Eton, who work in ordinary jobs with average wages that don't allow them to get a mortgage or even pay the rent? Or those without jobs at all? Maybe they are just 'aspirational.' They want better things for themselves and their children and they believe they have more chance of getting these if they vote Tory rather than Labour or Lib Dem. Maybe they want to be like David and Samantha.

It's difficult for people who have a comfortable life (not luxurious, forget them), just comfortable, to believe, let alone understand how impoverished some of the UK population has become, how food banks are necessary for a growing number of people. If you live in a leafy suburb or a village it can be like hearing about a completely different world and certainly if your circle of friends doesn't include anyone who is struggling then you may have cast your vote for the bigots. Others will have voted UKIP but let's leave those aside because they're not in government and Farage didn't even get elected in South Thanet. I'm from South East Kent, near Dover. I get embarrassed every time UKIP and immigration is on Southern news. I know not everyone in my home area is a UKIP voter but still...

So, the Tory vote. Another thought that comes to mind is that the English, on the whole, don't particularly embrace change. We are still too deferential towards the political establishment. Some people voted Tory because they believed a change in government would be worse than staying with the devil they knew. (In saying this I'm in no way writing off the English working classes. I'm one of them). But we need to get rid of our timidity when faced with laws that don't serve our interests or when a government threatens to take away such laws that do protect our interests. We allowed the Thatcher government to take away one of the most important trade union rights with the 1982 Trade Union Reform Act. We went from standing on the picket lines in solidarity with other workers to standing in police stations because we had contravened the new law. Without solidarity across industries workers are ripe pickings for an anti trade union government like this one. Laws present a huge barrier to the English. We respect the law even when we know deep down it's a rotten one and has been introduced to disable us in our opposition. Trade union leaders have a lot to answer for here. Why aren't they more apparent, outspoken, obviously going all out to defend their members and to recruit new ones? Where are the Arthur Scargills of today?

Here, in Greece people have a less deferential attitude. You may say 'and look where that's got them.' but that would be missing the point big time. There is a courageous spirit here that goes all the way. A passion that drives. A people who were brave enough to take a conscious risk by voting for SYRIZA. And don't imagine for a moment that all those voters believe that SYRIZA alone can solve the Greek monetary crisis (which isn't of their making anyway). Many of them have huge reservations about the government and what it's trying to do. Among those who voted for this coalition, some of whom are MPs, are people who believe Greece should never have entered the Euro. Despite this they said οχι to the Samaras devil.

Even if we had voted in a Labour government (I did vote Labour without illusions) that would not have been a government of the Left. Miliband is not a radical. A shame he didn't continue in the footsteps of his late father. So, some people will have refused to vote Labour because they knew that they would not get a Left government if they did. Others were afraid of the opposite. For some weird reason they believed Miliband represented Left-wing scary. He hadn't convinced the Left of his credentials and he hadn't convinced the Middle and Right that he was harmless. So in the end he achieved nothing and Labour is in a wilderness.

We could try entrism again. In the 1970s some people joined the Labour Party to radicalise it from within. If we believe power comes from the bottom up then this is one way of doing it. More recently we tried forming alternative Parties that would appeal to a wide electorate. For a while it looked like Respect was getting somewhere but then the inevitable cracks started appearing and now even George Galloway has lost his seat. In the words of Lenin: 'What is to be Done?'

slenderbeak: A Writer's Lament

slenderbeak: A Writer's Lament: What's the point in writing when it's all been said before? My short story has failed to even make the short list for a recent com...

A Writer's Lament

What's the point in writing when it's all been said before? My short story has failed to even make the short list for a recent competition. Apparently short stories are different from what I wrote. The judge's feedback on how to write a successful short story includes the following: 'All short stories are about change and transformation', 'need to kick into life immediately with a strong, vivid and involving first paragraph.' Well, what about the reader persevering a little?  I have read short stories that I didn't get into until the second page let alone the first paragraph and they were fine examples of writing.

 I really do question whether it's worth subjecting myself to all this. I am to blame of course, for putting myself up for this form of external evaluation. My internal evaluation likes my writing but it never feels this is enough. I wish it did. I feel like all I have to look forward to is more rejections which in turn reinforce my sense of failure. Writing is a form of masochism. Well, not the writing itself but what the writer does with her writing, that's the masochistic part. We are constantly bombarded with messages to enter this or that competition, to pay a mentor to guide and edit our work, how to write a best seller, to attend workshops that will inspire our imagination. Then there are the marketeers who follow you in order to make money by offering to get your book published. A whole noisy industry has grown up around what was once the quiet world of the writer. It's hard to ignore it especially when writing is and has to be such a solitary occupation. The need to get out and mingle, the curiosity for some feedback on the hours you've spent pounding the keyboard or getting cramp from holding the pen are surely common to all of us writers. And then we retreat into our caves again and mull over what we have heard and somewhere among all this tangled web we have to retrieve our own voice again, not that of others, however well meaning.

So it seems to me that the Twenty First Century writing industry has got us over a barrel. Before the Twentieth Century writers didn't have these distractions but their lives would have been harsher in other ways. Yes, I know stamina is a vital ingredient of any writer's recipe but I wonder if  Dickens felt he could add nothing to the world because it had all been said before? Did George Elliot doubt she was writing something revolutionary about her sex? Answers anyone?