"Don't worry about the government" sang Talking Heads a few years back. A couple of recent events have caused me to suggest an update of this to "why bother with a government?" I speak firstly of the business with Abu Qatada, who the UK government are apparently unable to deport, despite the fact that he urges death on all and sundry and, unlike this blog, people actually listen to him. Oh, and he entered the country illegally of course and so has no right to be here in the first place.
The there's the appointment of a bloke called Les Ebdon to some extraordinary post called "Director of the Office for Fair Access." Apparently our prime minister is "powerless" to block this appointment, the purpose of which is to twist the arm of universities to let in more kids who've been failed by the state education system. Might be better to concentrate on raising school standards you would think but of course that's far too hard.
Alright - I can hear you clamouring that there is a big difference between these two matters and you're not wrong but they just made me think about where power really lies these days. More meaty food for thought is not far away in the shape of the vast amount of UK legislation that wafts over on the breeze from the EU, like the spores of some plague epidemic, and over which the UK government (never mind parliament!) has no power. Or so they like to tell us. Then there's the recent "regime change" in places like Greece and Italy where new leaders have been parachuted in by the EU in a desperate attempt to shore up the increasingly loony-looking euro mission. The poor Greek poeple are now really feeling the consequences of puttng their fate in the hands of their mates in northern Europe. And this in the country that gave us the word "democracy". There isn't much of that around in Greece now, which is why the people there are resorting to burning the place down in frustration.
Maybe I'm being too UK-centric but it seems that increasingly governments prefer to have their hands tied by various club membership rules, whether that be political coalitions (see Les Ebdon above), the EU, the euro-zone, the European Court of Human Rights, the UN, NATO or things like the Kyoto agreement, which means the government is "powerless" to stop you and I paying large subsidies to multinationals and rich landowners to stick up more of these wretched windmills that spend so much of their time doing nothing. Not to mention solar panels that cost a fortune and produce enough power to make a cup of tea once a week - or twice if we get a heatwave. And somehow or other, we the voters let them do this. Why? Mainly because there seems to be no political parties anywhere that dare to think differently, perhaps because they're all members of another club: the politicians gravy train club, the one which controls all the juicy jobs in the EU, the UN, etc, etc.
Where is all this leading? To a takeover by someone who is happy to do their own thing and exploit the power vacuum left by all these global talking shops. And who is that someone? China. They've got all the money, they make pretty much everything we use, they don't give a stuff about carbon emissions and can you imagine them allowing a bunch of unelected judges in a foreign country tell them what they can and cannot do with a terrorist in their midst?
To paraphrase Nostradamus (and of course a well-known ad campaign): the future's bright - the future's yellow.
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