Splitter!

David Miliband is a crybaby. Just because he doesn’t win the leadership election, he proceeds to throw all of his toys out of the pram and refuses to be a member of the shadow cabinet. Even though I don’t like David’s ‘New Labour’ politics and was very happy to see him lose to his brother, I still would have liked to see some party unity; David received almost half the votes and could have rallied everyone to a unified cause if he had wholeheartedly placed his support behind Ed. But no, David has put his own ego before ideological success; and because the party is having a change in direction, he’s throwing a hissy fit until he gets his own way. What a child!

Congratulations To Democracy

Finally, something good to report. Ed Miliband has become the new leader of the Labour Party. It would have been disastrous if his big brother David had won the election as all three leaders of the main parties would have been virtually identical. But now we have a distinctly different leader in Ed; someone who is principled rather than consumed by spin. It's unfortunate that it took the trade unions to get him the job - if it had been left to party members or MPs they would have handed it to David, the Tony Blair wannabe - but at least the right result was achieved in the end. And even though Ed would never admit to this himself, I hope he throws New Labour in the dustbin and goes back to a time before Blair changed the whole concept of what the Labour Party was meant to stand for, i.e. the working class. Incidentally, the voting system used in this election was the Alternative Vote, so let's hope people take that into consideration next year when we get to decide in a referendum on our general electoral system; AV is much fairer than Proportional Representation. But that issue can be discussed another time; for now, well done Ed!

Incredulity

On a recent gameshow, one hundred people were given one hundred seconds to name as many axis powers from World War II (that is, countries who the Allies fought against) as they could remember. More people remembered that we fought Italy than those who recalled Germany or Japan. How is that possible?!

Improper Finances

Okay, so I said that I probably wasn’t going to write this blog anymore, but sometimes the world just pisses me off so much that I simply have to put it out there!
George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has recently announced that four billion pounds will need to be cut back from the annual welfare bill. His reasoning behind this is that it will stop people from seeing living on benefits as a ‘lifestyle choice’, and of course it will help to reduce the overburdening national deficit. But there are some significant flaws in his reasoning. From a social perspective, people who are currently suffering long-term unemployment after having only just got out of the worst recession in a generation can hardly be condemned as choosing that lifestyle; redundancy is something which is inflicted, not asked for!
Yet even if your political ideology does condone Osborne’s applications of the deficit reduction, it cannot understand the hypocrisy of other overspending. One and a quarter billion pounds in contracts has just been awarded to the building of two new aircraft carriers. So apparently it’s okay to take pauper’s benefits away from them as long as we’ve still got the capability to bomb little foreigners out of existence! And let’s not forget that in just a few days from now the Pope will be visiting the UK at a cost to the general taxpayer of anything between eight and twelve million pounds. This is the same Pope who condemns contraception regardless of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and believes homosexuality is a mortal sin. As I am a liberal minded person, I’d rather not have to pay for him to visit my country. Hasn’t the Vatican got it’s own supply of finances? And what about Christian charity? Can’t churchgoers foot the bill to chat to their leader?
So, Mr Osborne, if you are going to take money from generally hard working people, then at least attempt to make it morally justifiable.