Why do we keep voting for "more of the same"?

Friday 7 November 2014

Why do we keep voting for "more of the same"?

Since 2010 the working people of Britain have suffered the longest sustained real terms decline in wages since records began.

Since 2010 the number of families dependent on social security payments like housing benefits in order to keep their heads above water has grown exponentially.

Since the global financial sector insolvency crisis people who have spent lifetimes saving and investing in pensions have seen their investments eroded away as a consequence of policies like Quantitative Easing (designed to save the reckless bankers and selfish property speculators from the bankruptcies they so richly deserved).

In November 2014 just a tiny proportion of MPs bothered to turn up to a debate on the living wage (see picture), a clear illustration of the fact that the vast majority of the wealthy establishment class really don't give a damn that millions of working families are living in poverty and benefits dependency in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

So why do we keep voting for the same establishment class who created this mess in the first place by allowing speculative financial practices get so insanely out of hand, and then imposed ideological austerity on the public instead of jailing the people who crashed the economy and confiscating their ill-gotten gains?

Why don't we vote for something different?

It's hardly an excuse that the mainstream media won't let us know of the alternatives anymore. There is a world of information out there on the internet, all we need do is bother to look for it.

The exponential growth of the Podemos movement in Spain to go from nothing in March 2014 to the second most popular political party in November 2014 shows us that real alternatives are possible, especially given that the Spanish media and political classes are just as biased and corrupt as our own, if not even more so.

Maybe it's just that us British are far more complacent and apathetic than the Spanish? I don't want to believe that this is the case (racial/ethnic/national stereotypes are bad OK?). Perhaps it's just that we haven't had it bad enough yet (youth unemployment in Spain is over 50%) that people are willing to throw their support behind a new party with very limited experience of running things, rather than continuing to support one of the establishment parties that have extensive experience of running things extremely badly?

Perhaps it's trite to reduce things to one of the most over-used Einstein quotes of all, but he was absolutely right when he said that the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

If we don't vote for real change in 2015, we'll only have ourselves to blame when the privileged political establishment continue serving their own interests (and those of their wealthy backers) and more-or-less completely ignoring ours.

What you can do:

If you would like to find out more about the Living Wage campaign click here

If you would like to find out more about the negative effect of Quantitative Easing on the savings and pensions of ordinary working people, you could do worse than reading my article on the subject, or checking out this short video from Positive Money

There are myriad alternative parties out there who could do with more supporters. This is an old article of mine detailing some of them. I'll be creating a new article on alternative parties before the 2015 General Election, so keep an eye out for that too ...

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