Monday 2 November 2015

security for some at the expense of insecurity for others



there was no constitutional convention broken by the house of lords in scuppering the recent bill for proposed tax-credit legislation; the salisbury convention - of not opposing the second or third reading of any government legislation promised in its election manifesto - does not apply in the current parliamentary instance, because:

  1. in its general election manifesto, the government did not specifically state that working tax-credits would be cut.

  2. due to low voter-turn-out and the winner's small share of the vote at modern general elections, governments do not now command the true national mandates which would formerly have been considered undemocratic for the lords to have blocked.

there were no procedural rules broken by the house of lords in shelving the recent bill for proposed tax-credit legislation, because, despite being named a "finance bill", this bill was not officially designated a "money bill", as defined under the parliament act, but in fact a "statutory instrument" linked to a welfare act, over which the house of lords has the full right of veto; conversely, if george nob-borne had been bothered to introduce this legislation as a public bill in the house of commons, where it would have been subject to the full heat of scrutiny and debate, the house of lords would not have been legally permitted to touch it.

to a large extent, this political move against the cameron government was simply socialist 'tit' for conservative 'tat' - for the conservatives do not care about 'freeing' the working-classes from the shackles of poverty any more than the socialists really care about making everybody in society 'equally' entitled to the ill-gotten profits of western neo-colonial mineral-wars, which it-must-be-said have cost the lives of millions of africans, arabs and asians in such places as congo, the middle-east and afghanistan. moreover, the ideological case for reducing the welfare-state has already been made and won by successive conservative and labour governments from the thatcher era right through to the contemporary times of cameron.

however, the public principle at stake in this latest tax-credit débâcle was not just one of work-ethics, nor even perhaps one of backbench members of parliament hanging onto their shitty little seats at any price, but actually the far wider one of fucking bad form and bad attitude on the part of david cameron, george osborne, iain duncan smith, jeremy hunt, and the rest of the uncouth, unchristian conservative cabinet, who care not one judicial jot for the suffering of those working far harder for a mouthful of meagre state-benefits than do cash-rich government ministers for their fat westminster salaries and unchecked, unearned expense-accounts.

the summary slapping-down, which the chancellor received at the hands of a cross-party swathe of our socially embarrassed parliament, was weighed out in return for his and his colleagues' cavalier insouciance in protecting jobs for the old-school boys in the banks and big business, whilst punching the poor in the peanuts; generous personal tax-cuts for the wealthy, a proposed cut of 2% in the corporation-tax pipeline, yet piddle-stick in-the-pocket pilfering from the plebs; a plethora of opportunity for those privileged with public-school or private education, and a door comprehensively slammed in the face of the council-house kid with the wrong colour upbringing. yessir, let's say it straight, this tax-credit bill was the domestic fiscal equivalent of bombing the wogs for political and financial ends, in accordance with the parochial, race-driven, class-co-ordinated doctrine of prime-minister cameron and company, which consistently asserts: it's all right for them, but we wouldn't want it to happen to us, now would we?

another precept imperilled by the legislative actions of the government was obviously that of honest-dealing: why sneak an unannounced, unmandated welfare-cut through parliament as a sly, run-of-the-mill statutory instrument, when correctly it should have been presented to the people's representatives as a bold-as-brass public-bill in the house of commons? why cut a low-paid worker's benefits in the disingenuous expectation of the employer raising that person's wages to plug the hole, when oftentimes the employer and government are one and the same party, pledging no less than to hold down that very public-servant's pay-deal?

as the conservatives rightly stated, this whole unseemly constitutional spat ultimately turned upon the question of finance and convention: the unwritten convention that the government represents the wishes of the people, who are duly offered a constitutional choice between financing immoral wars waged with american weapons of mass-destruction, controversial infrastructure construction-projects contracted out to friends in the conservative-club, and of course last-but-not-least, a fairly-administered, fully-functional welfare-state.

well, drawing on my vast personal experience of parliamentary procedure and party-politics, it is my considered opinion that reducing the powers of the house of lords, whilst strengthening those of the house of commons, would eventually prove extremely hazardous to democracy, and that the wishes of the people will only ever be represented, in a constitutional manner, by effecting the complete abolition of the house of lords, whilst neutering the house of commons through the introduction of a system of open-party-list proportional representation - indeed such radical parliamentary reform would appear to be the sole method by which the unaccountable cunts in the palace of westminster can practicably be compelled to concentrate properly on the important national business-at-hand.

meantime, i should add, the empty chamber of the house of lords might usefully be converted into a refrigerated repository for mummified members of the remaining legislative house who have popped their clueless clogs and thus require preservation for posterity on the padded red benches of another place - such that, paradoxically, an independent casual observer would not necessarily notice any active difference in the progressive parliamentary programme of that hallowed hall of huffed-up haughtiness.

however, whatever our adopted constitutional system and the square-peg political ideology it subsequently produces to rain over us, in royal retribution for our immoral relinquishment of individual responsibility, the extirpation of establishment corruption and its counterpart, privilege, the poisonous antagonist of opportunity, is paramount, for down the road of perverted power lies perdition, by a thousand petty and vindictive paper-cuts, of public and parliamentary souls alike.

so can we root out the cia-knotweed before we're woven irrevokably into a wicked whirlpool of world-war? thatcher's obsessive-compulsive conservatism is pushing up the daisy-cutters, major has faded away into the sleaze-sodden scene he pedantically painted as his grimly-reaped legacy, shatout mutton brown is being served up as scotch broth for a beleaguered and battered brussels pout, cameron's set on retiring to ride randy red-haired sheep 'round his ranch in the cotswolds, but the ever-evil presence, otherwise known as blair, blight of bucks, must be socially scapegoated for the serial-slaughtering sins he's blithely buck-passed to his barbaric brothers in corporate war-crime: he can choose either to move up the lane to hmp grendon underwood, or 'move on' permanently to another fucking continent.

during the second world-war, eastenders were initially forbidden by the authorities from using the london underground-system as an air-raid shelter, despite the devastating ferocity of the blitz - and ridiculously were forced to buy tube-tickets in order to circumvent war-time restrictions - whilst the sensible people of hard-targeted southampton were reportedly frowned upon by deeply-bunkered whitehall for 'trekking' out into the countryside each night in order to avoid losing their lives in the terrible bombing of that city; clearly, from recent experiences, such as the iraq war, the war on terror, together with this latest tax-credit scandal, we as british citizens must inevitably therefore conclude that our government is not only crookedly incompetent, but also completely uncaring, and that, as our lords and masters in westminster have just shown us, legally, a pinch of positive civil-disobedience, in the face of abhorrently arrogant authoritarian stupidity, is absolutely essential for the british way of life to survive.


3 comments:

the slippery salaried slope of schizoid social-thinking said...

"british way of life"?

so is that the tarditional tea-drinking weather-cussing leaning-on-yer-shovel sort of a 'british way of life' we're trying to conserve?

better that i suppose than the committed hard-working corporate hell-bent downward head-strong dash towards permanent self-penned global oblivion.

high-sleaze-two said...

"controversial infrastructure construction-projects contracted out to friends in the conservative-club"

it's difficult to know which will be more environmentally cataclysmic: an excruciatingly expensive third railway from london to birmingham, or a techno-dodgical french nuclear power-plant with cheap-as-chips chinese parts, which will inexorably become an ideological magnet for isis with the irresistible pulling-power of mecca?

jerry auspuf - the genocidal gas-man said...

if for naught else, carbon-emission-crazy blair and his errant eco-nazi ministers should face immediate criminal trial for having leveraged fuel-tax-incentives, in 2001, to encourage millions of british drivers to swap to dirty old diesel vehicles which are now killing us - with their minuscule nitrogen-oxide-particle-laden, multi-poisonous, asthma and heart-attack-inducing exhaust-fumes - to the lethal loony-tune of a possible 29000 people a year, such that londoners now officially breathe some of the most polluted air in the world.

of course, our former, celebrated prime-minister can still firmly rely on the feral fox-vote though...