Political parties and shopping carts

I thought I'd make this first post on something dear to my heart - politics in the UK. Well indeed politics everywhere as the party political system is more or less the same everywhere.

I realise I am likely to lose a significant proportion of my readers just by mentioning the word 'politics', but if you can bear with me for a moment I think you might just appreciate what I have to say. 

In the UK we are all encouraged to vote. Indeed any failure to exercise that right to vote is taken as a sign that we have forfeited one of the most cherished rights of living in a democratic society - that of choosing who governs us.

Political parties go to great lengths to win over our support in the hope that once every four or five years we will vote for their particular party. We are told what X party is doing on Y issue and how their particular party will make Britain a somewhat better place to live for us if only we vote for their party.

The range of issues is overwhelming and each party puts a slightly different slant on the issue or prioritizes or de-prioritizes issues depending on what they think caters to our world view - or indeed their world view. 

Yet at the end of the day we are voting on whether we want party X in power or party Y in power and all the policies that they have come up with. (Parties A, B, and C are really no hopers even if they appeal to our sense of justice on any particular issue. What influence do we really have on their policies? Do they really listen to the voting public when deciding what policies to present.

When you go shopping do you wander round the supermarket picking up what you like and ignoring what you don't like. Or wishing you could afford something yet discarding it because you know you really can't. I know I do. 

So why is it that the sum total of our political engagement is similar to going to a supermarket and being presented with two shopping carts with lots of things preselected for you and being asked to buy one or another of the shopping carts. For this is what party politics in the UK has been reduced to. Go for shopping cart X (ie vote for Party X) or go for shopping cart Y (party Y). The choice of things to buy (policies) has already been preselected for you with no element of meaningful choice. 

If we don't accept supermarkets to choose our shopping carts for us why do we accept political parties to choose a range of (complex) policies for us and expect us to reduce our political choice to either X or Y?


If this resonates with you at all do leave a comment. I am always interested in refining and developing my views based on your feedback.   

Meet Ochola John

Meet Ochola John... Well, he is not in fact someone you are actually likely to meet in the street - at least not in Europe because Ochola John is from Uganda and unlikely to venture far from his homeland. Ochola is like many people we all know. Friends of ours. He has a nice home, a loving wife and a baby boy. He has a job, friends and, in common with the rest of the world he has his own problems. Unlike most us however he lacks certain body parts. He has no hands, no ears, no lips and no nose. And no, he wasn't born like that. A few years ago Ochola was kidnapped along with a number of other people from his village in northern Uganda and for 12 days they were tortured, mutilated and many of them killed.

Elsewhere in the country every night tens of thousands of children, known as the 'night commuters' walk long distances to local town centres. They do so, not for the nightlife the towns' have to offer, but for the protection afforded by large numbers of people gathered together. These children and their parents are afraid of what might happen to them in the night when men come to kill, kidnap and mutilate them. These men come mainly at night when families are sleeping. Children are separated and taken away. However, before being taken away the men have a little ploy to prevent them escaping and running back to their families. They force the children to kill their parents or other children in the village. Children with no parents or a place to return to will less likely try to escape. They have no where to run to even if they have a place to hide along the road.

The man responsible for these atrocities is Joseph Kony of the Lords Resistance Army. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague. However he travels freely in northern Uganda and South Sudan signing ‘peace deals’ with the government of Uganda who have reportedly offered him an amnesty. Joseph Kony is a terrorist in the true sense of the term – he inspires terror among the people of northern Uganda. Hundreds of thousands are unable to sleep in their own homes because of Joseph Kony. Ten of thousands can not walk or tie their shoelaces, or kiss their wives, or hear or see their children because of Joseph Kony. Many can not have children or have sex because of Joseph Kony.

If the Ugandan government offer him an amnesty it is more likely that you will meet Joseph Kony in the street than one of his victims. In case you don't know what he looks like, meet Joseph Kony...