[This is long and about politics. Don't bother reading it if you don't like ranting.]

A lot like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, I feel I have to express my admiration and support for those on strike yesterday.  The ‘hit to the economy’ is of course one we should all be happy to bear as it is done far more in the national interest than the utterly pointless hit the economy faced because two entirely run-of-the-mill rich people decided to get married earlier in the year.

Now, there are of course very good arguments about why pensions need to be reformed. It reminds me of the argument about school fees in that respect.  For anyone who thinks university should be free for all, you have to at least address the fact that since we collectively decided it should be free there has been a vast increase in the percentage of the population wanting to go to university.  So if it should be free for everyone, how are we going to fund an order of magnitude rise in the cost? Similarly with pensions: given how much longer we are all living at the moment, if we want to give people a reasonable government pension, we are going to have to find a lot of money from somewhere.

These are all valid questions, no matter how far to the left you lean.  Of course, ‘maybe the rich could pay some fucking tax for a change’ is a pretty reasonable answer, but that is only one small part of the wider problem. The question should also be posed as to why, if we have a hole in our budget, is it once again the people at the lower end of the income scale who are being asked to patch it up? But we’re really in no position to answer that because the fundamental problem we are facing today is that democracy has ceased to function in any meaningful way, and we have to fix it. Read the rest of this entry »