McCain is running in the UK?

social mobility has fallen.
Same here in USia. Actually we do have social mobility. If you're falling down, you're mobile.

Have you considered not voting? Or voting for a fringer (or Tory) you know will lose, as a protest?

Here's a wild thought: Get involved in party politics, and change Labour from the inside.

Earth First!
_{(We can strip mine the rest later.)}

I could see myself voting for anyone (short of BNP/UKIP) just for a change. And it's mostly because of the "anti-terror" legislation, but partly because I think they have just plain run out of ideas. As somebody else said, the sequence of events seems to be a tabloid headline followed by "We must do something", "This is something! Therefore we must do this!".

I agree with what you say about "managerial politics" - although it is depressing. I assume you've seen Wedgie live on tour and he expressed this some time ago. My view is similar: we should be electing people to represent us, not manage us like a bunch of fresh MBA graduates for the University of Crack Smoking.

Aside from some of the anti-science woo, I think the Greens probably represent my views better than anyone else.

Oh, and I gather that the BNP aren't actually "far right". Their other polices are really quite left wing. Sort of Nationalism with Socialism I suppose.

You can't outlaw rabbits! They'll just go underground - Milton Jones

My current party is a bunch of cunts but I've been so brainwashed that I can't bring myself to vote the rascals out of office even though they totally deserve it in that they make the current Tory Party look good in comparison.

As I have mentioned before, we are in an age of managerial politics. The small details may change, the style, the presentation may change, but we will just have chosen a different group of managers.

I find the prison over-crowding fiasco very troubling. When you try to be tougher on crime with longer sentences nothing changes at first. For example, handing down a sentence of five years instead of three, for the first three years it is business as usual. Only in year four and five when the prisoner is still in custody and you cannot give his cell to somebody else, only then does the policy bite. So the government has had several years warning, but still managed to cock it up.

So are we in an age of "managerial politics"? If we were then that kind of mis-management would be the focus politics and fatal to Labour.

How would "managerial politics" respond to cannabis? It would see the advantages of trying to displace alcohol by cannabis. Less violence. Easy to give up when children come along and you need to grow up fast. We seem to have anti-managerial politics, with 10 years in jail for selling cannabis, to ensure that the prisons are so full that thugs don't have to fear a long sentence for stabbing some-one or threatening a witness to dissuade them from testifying.

One of the complications for our troops, fighting and dying in Afghanistan, is destroying the opium crop. That is a great way to piss off the locals.

Why are we doing it? We don't have age limits on opiate use. We are doing it to protect responsible adults. We could take a hard line and say: it is up to you to say "No." Responsible adults do not have a moral claim on their fellow countrymen to the extent that others must fight and die when those directly responsible could take responsibility and just say no.

You could see the war on drugs as some kind of moral crusade; Gordon Brown's version on Alan Ginsburg's Howl. That is not managerialism. The management approach doesn't just tot up the costs of letting the problem self-limit. It balances that against the far larger costs of crime, corruption, and foreign policy damage.

Have you thought about writing as a way of getting your views across ? Your style is very readable and still brings across your feelings clearly.
I honestly think you have a real talent. be a shame not to use your powers for good. Newsletter etc.

The Czar of Accounting. No Nit Too Small To Pick

And an interesting insight into the mind of a Labour supporter, born and bred.

"my tribe is Labour.  I am Labour.  Always will be."

Could that be re-written by others as "My God is Allah", as it smacks of blind faith borne of childhood indoctrination?  (That is more inflammatory than I intended but I can't think of a better way to describe it).

There is indeed a problem in British politics and this is part of it.  Blind faith of people voting with their tribe and regardless of what is good for them and by extension, the country.

I think we've covered the other reasons why this current government is unfit to govern in your previous writings.

One thing is for sure - unless the Labour party get a proper shock, it will never return to the core values that the dyed in the wool party faithful require.

As it is, they're running scared already in Scotlandland, and not even fielding a candidate.

Your point that the Tories would be more of the same also hits on another problem with British politics - not really a choice.  And until Labour move back into being proper Left wing again, democracy in this country is the poorer.

So in short, until NuLabia decides to become Labour again, you're going to be abstaining from voting.  Why not accelerate the process, "hold your nose" and vote Not Labour next General Election?