To be disgusted with the government and increasingly negative about life in this country.

[nottherighttime]

I'm not sure if it is getting older and having more experience of things not going very well or that politicians seem to have becomes more and more dishonourable and self serving to the extent that many in the current cabinet are happy to tell bare faced lies to the general public and give extremely lucrative contracts to the chums.

I feel that the general public are increasingly manipulated by the very small percentage of super wealthy and privileged inidividuals in power and by the media who act in tandem with them. Johnson really seems to be a master manipulator and liar but still so many seem to think he is doing a good job. Williamson has been beyond incompetent and has made some embarrassing gaffs. Patel has been accused of bullying and there has apparently been a large payout made. Rishi professes to be honest and likes to 'level with us' (and apparently some believe him according to the polls) but has increased taxes for the poor and middle-higher earners but failed to increase capital gains tax or inheritance tax at all which would affect the wealthy and deliberately put a rocket under the housing market pushing the prices up a ridiculous amount and further out of reach of FTB and lower earners/ those without family money. Jenrick has been caught out telling lies on several occasions, the Cummings fiasco, enough said!

The media has served the government's purpose well. They are pitting public sector workers against private sector, furloughed workers against NHS workers asking for more than a 1% pay rise and it is working brilliantly. Instead of all working together and taking collective responsibility for the society we live in there is in-fighting and the wealthy happily taking more and more from people who can't afford housing or food for their children at the lowest end of the scale (and many others in the middle). There seems to be so much more of an 'every man for himself' attitude in more recent decades and less thought for society as a whole.
There is also the lie perpetuated about how there is no money for funding essential services, UC, free school meals, etc but yet there have been billions for track and trace, millions wasted on PPE which was substandard without any apparent thought. The government can create money via the B of E when it suits them and it is a political choice not to fund certain things and to fund others.

Does anyone else feel this way?

@Eleganz summed it up on the first page of this thread, but was ignored. Why is nobody interested in taking individual responsibility, why does nobody realise that as a collective we so have power to change this?

Collectively, we can achieve much. Sign petitions, join pressure groups, bombard your MPs with complaints, start understanding what proportional representation means and why the criminal Tories are still in power when 22 MILLION votes are wasted at every UK election, start looking at what MSM are not telling you, and get the corrupt fuckers OUT.

Agree, excellent post @MistressoftheDarkSide

@donewithitalltodayandxmas- I think we'll have to agree to disagree on most of what you have written. I don't disagree about the NHS needing an over haul, however. We can look much further than Western Europe (or The US) and see examples of countries that have been able to deal with the pandemic much more effectively. It's pretty telling that Western democracies have come off worst in all this.

@Justanotherlurker- I have no idea what you mean by this line which you presumably think is clever. Actually it's incorrect and patronising. You can always disagree with some facts rather than just trying to put others down.
'This weak, uninformed, twitter hot take is why the terminally online a needing a reset.'

Thanks for the interesting article @MangoFeverDream. It all started with Thatcher and now we have cheap goods from China. I always disagreed with Blair about his education policies.

@bathsh3ba- you are quite right. It has become the system reagrdless of which party is in power. I think this particular government have lowered the bar even more though.

@PersimmonTree- I will be writing to my MP (not a Tory). You are correct, we all need to take responsibility and do something.

Thank you for all the replies.

Divide and rule

This is not a prevalent strategy from the current government. It is common in other political parties though, or certain kind of 'activism', yes.

Yep O. P. That's how I feel.
Also questioned why money could be found for hs2 and foreign aid whilst we were dumped in austerity measures since 2008. Local councils funding was slashed, NHS and schools were underfunded to the point of collapse every Winter.... But at least hs2 and foreign aid were still on track 🙄

They found the money tree pdq last march, whilst people struggled with severely reduced services for over a decade.

They're all a bunch of greedy liars yes, people fighting each other detracts from the real crooks aka the government and the media.

@Norwaydidnthappen

I agree but they were voted in by quite a substantial majority and a lot of poorer people voted for their best mate Boris too so we reap what we sow.

They were not voted in by a substantial majority of votes.

About 14 million voted Tory last time.

Around another 19 million voted for something else, but because of our wank electoral system we got the fucking Tories.

@Snowdrop30

Yes, I am in Scotland wondering if it could be better here. I don't think the Sturgeon/Salmond row is in the same ballpark at all. ScotGov clearly messed up the process for looking into harassment complaints badly, and have really let down the two women concerned. That's it - no law breaking, no breaking of ministerial codes, no nepotism or greed. The sight of two such senior politicians knocking chunks out of each other is not edifying and needs to stop. But not in the same ballpark at all, in my eyes.

You clearly weren't affected by the city of Edinburgh Council statutory notice fraud. A cuning piece of legislation allows the council to compel Edinburgh home owbers to have repairs carried out by their small number of approved contractors. What is done and the standard of workmanship is controlled by the council. It somehow spiralled in a multi million pound business and you had the situation of people facing bills of over £100,000 for badly carried unnecessary work, yet having to file FOI requrests to actually see a description of the work they were being asked to pay for! Only 2 people were ever jailed for fraud. Did the Scottish government bother to debate it? No.

And what about all the new housebuilding currently going on everywhere around Aberdeen? It's destroyed the local market, there's no need for so many houses in the recession hit economy of Aberdeen, but still they're being built. No one seems to know why, except people like Stewart Milne and similar.

Thats just off the top of my head. The press in Scotland is terribly bad at exposing these scandals but I'm sure they're ride. It's far easier to cover up in a small country.

@Chimeraforce

Yep O. P. That's how I feel. Also questioned why money could be found for hs2 and foreign aid whilst we were dumped in austerity measures since 2008. Local councils funding was slashed, NHS and schools were underfunded to the point of collapse every Winter.... But at least hs2 and foreign aid were still on track 🙄

They found the money tree pdq last march, whilst people struggled with severely reduced services for over a decade.

They're all a bunch of greedy liars yes, people fighting each other detracts from the real crooks aka the government and the media.

What has foreign aid got to do with anything? or hs2 for that matter? youve been convinced by the narrative of a countries budget is like that of a household narrative, the impact Englandthe UK has had on different countries globally in the past and present the least we can do is help countries in need, austerity was an ideological choice that had nothing to do with the deficit or debt it was designed to punish those who were unable to do anything about it

[quote PersimmonTree]@Eleganz summed it up on the first page of this thread, but was ignored. Why is nobody interested in taking individual responsibility, why does nobody realise that as a collective we so have power to change this?

Collectively, we can achieve much. Sign petitions, join pressure groups, bombard your MPs with complaints, start understanding what proportional representation means and why the criminal Tories are still in power when 22 MILLION votes are wasted at every UK election, start looking at what MSM are not telling you, and get the corrupt fuckers OUT.[/quote]
Such optimism. Have you forgotten how many spent so much time doing this very recently, over the Brexit referendum?

Utterly useless. The corrupt fuckers have taken over. The only escape from it for any of us now is socioeconomic collapse.

@MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes. Campaigning is not useless. The truth will out, causing a lot of pain in the process.

The vaccines farce on the Continent has proved that the EU is equally full of corrupt fuckers, who are now somebody else's problem.

Rather than despairing at inevitable collapse, we can now argue for the next 3 years about what our new political structures should look like.