more on politics

That last post about what's really going on with the world got me to thinking about all kinds of things that governments do. Now, I'm going to be talking about politicians here but I do not mean to make politicians the bad guys and not governments. The job of the government is simply to perpetuate itself. The politician is simply a tool. Now, that leaves the question of who the government is if the politician is just a tool for it. I could answer that but I'll let you think about it.

The more time I've spent over here the more I've begun to hate the British government. Recently there was a scandal where Members of Parliament were using legally allocated money for their living and travel expenses to enrich themselves if they live outside of the main London area. One woman claimed her sister's house as her primary residence and got something like 100,000 pounds per year for it even though it was not her primary home. Her real house would have gotten her significantly less.

Gordon Brown's statement was that the law for this kind of compensation needs to reduce the compensation and ensure that it cannot be abused to assure the voting masses that MPs "serve the public and not themselves." Well Mr. Brown, when a vast majority of people resent the fact that your government is closing down all of the post offices, you're not serving them. When you install CCTV virtually everywhere, you're controlling the population through fear of reprisal not serving them. When you allow the National Health Service to revoke the credentials of a nurse who secretly filmed abuse and neglect of elderly patients due to institutional failures, you are not serving the public. I'm amazed to say it, but the government here is worse than the government in the United States.

One thing I miss is the ability to talk cops and border agents however I wish. Although the constitution is a giant pile of crap, it serves me some good in that way. Here, I do not have nearly the same freedom as I do in the US in terms of that. However, encounters with the police are much rarer here. I don't think I've ever seen a cop pull anyone over and the only people I've seen them stop are people who are blatantly drunk and causing problems. And as a side note, they aren't allowed to carry guns or tasers, only mace and a truncheon (beating stick).

That's not to say that I like the US...even though the gods sent Obama to clean things up. First of all, and I've mentioned this before, his economic team is on the side of the wealthy elite, not the other 95% of Americans. Those guys have made an absolute fortune on Wall Street -- of course the plans they have developed involve no risk for the companies and no benefit for the tax payers. More than that, I recently read that Obama's new budget is going to actually increase military spending by 4%. The navy is going to get a bunch of this to fight a new enemy with some fancy speed boats -- PIRATES! I've said it before and I will say it again. WE CREATED THOSE PIRATES!! They first began pirating when chemical companies began dumping waste off the Somali shore because the "government" there had no ability whatsoever to patrol the shore with the chaos we destabilized, then started to fix then, tragically bailed on.


There's more than just pirates and rich bastards but I'll leave those for another time. For now, I'm going to write a few of my several final papers and work on a post about Spain with a ton of pictures. To the bar!!