Honourable Members of Parliament

Amidst all the accusations of MPs fiddling the system that've come out these past couple of weeks, I think probably their worst (and most characteristic) action was to force the Speaker of the House to resign. They made him a scapegoat essentially because he refused to condemn THEIR actions! Typical of politicians to try to deflect attention from their own wrongdoing.

Dark Moon Rising

Just had a BNP leaflet come through the door, in aid of our upcoming local and Euro elections, and you can see how they're playing on all the nationalist sentiments in order to capitalise on both the recession and the recent expenses scandal in British politics. Sickening thing is they're probably going to do well as people are so hacked off with the mainstream parties that they're not going to bother voting. Reminds me of Weimar Germany in the 1930s - hard times leading to people losing all faith in politics leading directly to nutters getting into power and making things a hundred times worse for everyone. There's no easy solution to what's going on at present, but I hope it isn't the thin end of the wedge for a return of nationalist hatreds. People forget far too quickly.

Politicians, eh?

I heard our Foreign Secretary on the radio yesterday, speaking about the Russia/Georgia debacle going on at the moment. He said something along the lines of Russia having to accept that the days of solving international disputes by force belonged to yesteryear.
Someone should tell him what our British armed forces have been up to in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last few years. He's obviously completely unaware of what's been going on else he'd not have come out with such rank hypocrisy.
Mind you, if it's the one I'm thinking of, he looks like he hasn't left school long so perhaps he was too busy sitting exams to notice when we trundled in ill-equipped and under-financed.

Thinking further on this Russia/Georgia situation, it's interesting how forgetful our western media can become when it's convenient for them. It strikes me that the two provinces who want to secede from Georgia are doing exactly the same thing that Kosovo wanted to do in removing itself from Serbia a few years ago. Russia hasn't done anything to Georgia that NATO didn't do to Serbia - we bombed the hell out of Serbian infrastructure until they gave in. How come it's okay for NATO to do it but not for Russia to do it? At least they've got some ethnic Russians they can claim to be "liberating". All we were "liberating" in Kosovo were their coal and mineral reserves!

Violence is rarely the answer to anything of course. When the tanks start rolling and bombs start falling it's invariably civilians who suffer the most. I find it hard to believe that war-mongers can still get away with this sort of behaviour in the 21st century but I suppose human nature only changes very slowly, if at all. You'd think without all the communism/capitalism rubbish getting in the way we'd all be able to get on alot better now, but it seems like various interested parties are determined to keep things boiling over occasionally. When politicians cave into them, they cut away any claim they subsequently make to higher moral ground , which is why this western clamour over Russian behaviour sticks in my throat. It's like a diving footballer complaining when a member of the opposing team takes a dive! "You can't go thundering into Georgia like that, ya damn Ruskies! Why, if we weren't busy accidentally killing scores of civilians in Afghanistan with our gung-ho, trigger-happy, kill-em-all punitive policies we'd come right over there an' sort ya out!"