[Python: Life of Brian]
At last, an actual post about politics.
The reason I don’t post all that much about politics, despite this being ostensibly a political blog, is (a) because I don’t actually know very much about it, knowing less perhaps only about economics, in which I’m not sure I believe at all, and (b) because others do it so much better, probably since they do know something about it, and (c) because, as I have mentioned before, I don’t really think that blogging is as productive politically as actually going out and meeting the people and talking to them about the shocking state of affairs before leaving them with an LPUK card.
I make a game of this; I say: go to the official Party site and read the manifesto. Then follow the link to the unofficial members’ blog. On the right-hand side is a list of as many members’ blogs as they can find; it’s up to you to guess which one I write. This is supposed to ensure that if they try it at all they will probably read several libertarian blogs, at least, whether or not they ever identify (or even read) this one.
Now there is not much I can do about (a), because quite honestly I have probably more chance at my time of life of memorising Callender’s Steam Tables than of learning all that much more about a subject in which I have until recently believed only slightly more than I do economics.
What I do about (b) is link to articles like this, from LPUK leader Ian Parker-Joseph, who ought to be the next Prime Minister.
And what I do about (c) has consumed almost all of the last batch of LPUK cards sent me by the Party; I am going to have to send off for more very soon.
Not one member of the public has ever returned one of these cards, nor have they challenged any of the assertions which I make in support of Libertarian ideals and policies.
In fact everyone has, without exception, been enthusiastic about the possibility, however remote, of a political party which can be elected and which sets out in the first instance to undo as much of the damage caused by the last few governments as it possibly can, before undertaking to ensure that such damage is prevented in the future.
This includes a gentleman who until quite recently was a Liberal Democrat local councillor. I explained to him that the indistinguishable tax-and-spend policies of the two-and-a-half socialist parties were uniformly so, well, so twentieth-century that, having abandoned the LibDems (or been abandoned by them, not quite sure about that), and having, frankly, little chance as an independent, he really ought to consider joining the LPUK and getting, as our American cousins put it, with the program; the country is sick, sick to death of being taxed and taxed and taxed again by corrupt, decadent socialists who have replaced our once proud nation with a shabby, cut-price Chinese copy of East Germany. People will not, I told him, warming further to the subject, continue to vote for parties which support the godawful EU, the most expensive retirement-home for failed politicians in the history of the world, so unless he fancies his chances with the local BNP (which are zero because he’s not related to any of them; they’re like that round here) he needs to reconsider the validity of socialism in general and start thinking about government as a model of minimalism, thrift and efficiency rather than precisely the opposite in all three parameters.
He didn’t give the card back either, though he did ask rather carefully whether I would be standing against him myself as an LPUK candidate (I told him I probably wasn’t fit enough and he looked somewhat relieved).
Anyway, this is why I don’t write much about politics. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Good man