David Cameron’s (Empty) Pledges

So I received a hilarious (and glossy) newsletter the other day from my local Conservative councillors here in Birmingham, and on the back of this dull piece of dross about 20mph zones and anti-social behaviour orders was the most hilarious political “filler” I have ever seen.

Entitled “David Cameron’s Pledges”, this third of a page is, I assume, meant to be the early yawning-signs of an ambitious party coming to life before a general election, but all it really is, once they are actually thought about, is a collection of empty platitudes that are as hollow as they are meaningless.

“If you save money your whole life, …you will be rewarded” goes the first one.  Well, great.  But that’s not really David Cameron’s pledge is it?  That’s the pledge of basic economics.  If you save money your whole life, the reward is all that money you saved.  End of story.

“If you are frightened, …we will protect you”

Well…I hope so.  That’s kind of the government’s job.  The State provides police, armies, social services…you know, all the things that we use to protect ourselves against the things that we fear, and these same protective social institutions have existed under twelve years of a Labour government too.  Last I heard, I don’t recall Gordon Brown saying that a re-elected Labour government were not going to protect us in the future?  Do you?

“If you want to raise a family, …we will support you.”

Yeah, because for twelve years the Labour Party have been doing their level best to dissuade us from raising our families.  Since 1997, prospective mothers and fathers have become social pariahs all across the country, spat at for wanting children, reviled for keeping a pet…  And all those various tax credits and benefits that Labour have implemented for working families (and that the Tories want to take away come 2010), they have been designed specifically not to support families under a Labour government. 

Meanwhile, let us not forget, it was eighteen years of a neo-liberal Conservative government between 1979 and 1997 that brought us to our current situation, where it now requires two wages per family to bring home the same amount of real-term money that just one wage would have brought in during the 1970s.  Ah progress, don’t it taste sour? 

“If you risk your safety to stop a crime, …we will stand by you.”

Because the running theme of the past twelve years has been the Labour government jailing and condemning those who risk safety to stop a crime?  Under David Cameron’s new government, I can only assume that this means he is condoning carte blanche for Watchmen-style vigilantism. 

“I injured my arm hitting a cricket bat into the hoodie’s skull after he terrified our neighbourhood by…gasp…riding his bike!”

“We will stand by you!  No jail!  More cricket bats!”

“If you start your own business, …we will be right behind you.”

Ignoring how sinister that sounds (right behind you…lurking; right behind you…ready to skim off our 10%), again, we have the false impression that somehow the Labour government are not right behind small businesses.

Every government in living memory has paid lip service to the idea of being “behind” small businesses whilst, in reality, helping to finance the mega-corporations that crush them.  The Tories did just this from ‘79 to ‘97, and Labour have continued from ‘97 to the present. 

The stuff about high taxation, etc is all a misleading red herring – the real reason small businesses often fail is not because of the overheads they couldn’t afford, but because of the monolithic competition they have no feasible means to defeat!

“If you risk your life to fight for your country, …we will honour you.”

Great.  Because Labour have spent the eight years of the war on terror publically spitting on soldier’s graves, haven’t they?

Any idiot can honour the dead (Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major all did it last week – callously placing poppies in “honour” of the innocent people they knowingly sent off to die in unnecessary wars to protect the economic interests of a small minority of powerful elites); the trick is keeping these people alive, not unnecessarily sending them into harm’s way.    

Yes – the war on terror transpired under Labour’s watch.  But let’s not forget, it was with the full, unwavering support of the Tories.  And as for Iraq – we would not have been there in the first place had it not been for the Tories’ original invasion back in ‘91.  A war which, technically, never ended until the 2003 invasion.

A lot of dead soldiers have been “honoured” by Conservative and Labour governments alike over the years…few have been spared their unnecessary sacrifice in the first place, and that’s the real missing pledge.

“We will reward those who take responsibility, …and care for those who can’t.”

If you’re interested in how this pledge pans out, see UK History, circa 1979 – 1997.  At its heart, the guiding Conservative philosophy is simply incapable of achieving this goal.  A more likely scenario, therefore, is: “we will reward those who take responsibility, …and demonize those who can’t.”

Remember kids: those who don’t remember their past are condemned to repeat it.  And those who are taken in by David Cameron and his empty, meaningless pledges, will be condemned to experience a brand new, 21st Century version, of one of the 20th Century’s last great living hells.

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,Conservative Party,General Election,Advertising,Democracy,Labour Party,Propaganda,Welfare,David Cameron

NBC = JBJ

Thanks to the good folks at FAIR for passing this bit of information on…

FAIR Blog » Bon Jovi Is News?

  It appears that Jon Bon Jovi is going to be saturating the NBC network soon, in order to promote a new movie…including appearances on the news. 

  First it was Starbucks on Morning Joe on sister network MSNBC…now this.

  Whatever happened to real news?

Technorati Tags: Propaganda,Links,NBC,Bon Jovi

Technorati and Amazon: WTF?

A few weeks back I got an email from the folks at Technorati and in it they mentioned that they were looking for new writers for a new and improved Technorati Blog.

Remembering the first time I ever wrote a politics column for a fanzine (an ad in the back of Scanner – I applied on a whim and, whadda ya know: I got the post!  Suddenly, I panicked, I actually have to do this: what the hell am I going to write!?! …but maybe that’s a story for another time, on another blog…) I thought: “why not!”, and sent off an application to be a UK Politics writer.  I was doing stuff about politics anyway on my old blog, and was already thinking about starting up this new politics-only blog, so I figured – why not get a little more exposure and work with Technorati too?

Well – here’s why not.

Yesterday, I received an email from the Technorati folk: “The Time Has Come To Write for Technorati”, it told me.

How exciting, I thought, I’m really going to get to do this!

But then I read the small-print.

At first it all seemed fine and dandy – apply for a special new account, send an email to the executive editor explaining who you are and what you do, fill in your online bio stuff and then blog away….

But it was the “blog away” stuff that caught my attention, because the following little gem lay waiting for me in the new Technorati “Posting Instructions”:

“4. Please LINK TO AT LEAST ONE AMAZON PRODUCT in every post.

“a) To get the code (ASIN) for your item(s), go to

http://www.amazon.com/ (U.S. Amazon), do a search for the product or topic using the search box. Click on the appropriate item(s), which will take you to the product page. On the product page, scroll down to the "Product Details" section and find the ASIN. (Speed hint: this ASIN is always in the URL of the product.) Some books in Amazon don't have an ASIN, use the ISBN.

“b) Type or paste the ASIN code into the Amazon ASINs and/or Review ASINs fields. The ASIN/ISBN is always 10 digits long -- please do not include any additional code.

“c) You can list up to 10 ASINs on any given post. Separate them with a COMMA: no space, no line break, and please make sure there are NO EMPTY SPACES OR LINE BREAKS after your final ASIN. “

Later on in the list of instructions for new writers, alongside no-brainer things like: “Read Technorati regularly, participate in the conversation by commenting on stories…respond to comments on your own posts, and link to individual Technorati stories that catch your eye from your own site as often as possible”, another Amazon-friendly instruction awaited:

“Purchase Amazon items through Technorati. We get credit for any Amazon item you purchase if you access Amazon via Technorati: just click on an Amazon product at the top or bottom of any story, or use the Amazon links on the sidebars. This helps cover our ever-growing expenses. Thanks. “

Now maybe I’m over-reacting here, but I signed up under the impression that I would be writing about UK Politics for a well-known blogging engine, not becoming a salesman for Amazon.com!

Needless to say, I will not be taking this thing any further.

Exposure might be nice, but not when it means imbedding forced advertising all around my chosen article.

I know that the Technorati guys have to pay their bills – but it is one thing to have ads on your site, and another to get individual bloggers to include Amazon-only links in every single one of their posts – by executive order.

Here, on my own blog, I may not get the traffic Technorati hopes to achieve, but at least I know that I can link to what I like, and don’t have to work as an unofficial marketing-man for an ethically dubious company like Amazon.  It may not be much, but it is something…and as this blog is as easy for anyone in the world to plug into as Technorati, I just don’t see why I’d want to sacrifice that integrity just to take a short-cut to numerical popularity?

Advertising is everywhere in this godforsaken world – can’t we just have a few decent spaces where we can read some stuff in peace – without having something someone wants us to buy forced down our throats?

Well, here on The Tone of Our Oppression you can.

I am assuming on the new Technorati, however, you cannot.

Technorati Tags: Technorati,Blogging,Amazon,Corporate Sponsorship,Media,Advertising,Propaganda,Manipulation

THE SUN STAYS CONSERVATIVE – WHAT A SHOCKER!

Yesterday, here in the United Kingdom, tabloid newspaper, The Sun, caused a huge stir by shifting their allegiance from Gordon Brown’s Labour Party, to David Cameron and his Conservatives.

The Sun is, sadly, Britain’s biggest selling newspaper, and I do not use the word “sadly” here because I fear that this shift in allegiance will therefore sway the majority of the newspaper-reading public into voting for the Tories come the 2010 General Election; I use the word “sadly” because The Sun has long been a knee-jerk, reactionary, and right-leaning organ, and the fact that more people in this country read that garbage than any other newspaper, is just hugely depressing to me.

That The Sun has shifted its support from Labour to Conservative, should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the paper’s owner: Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch – the man who’s FOX NEWS channel in the United States is the most reprehensible abuse of the concept of journalism in the whole of human history – is an unabashed conservative ideologue, and he has long used his influence and power as head of the all-encompassing media monolith, News Corporation, to spread his right-wing poison all around the world.  Indeed, The Sun, only ever first pledged its support to the Labour Party back in 1997 after the formerly socialist party underwent a cynical values-changing transformation and mutated into the election-winning beast we have come to know as New Labour.

As you may be aware – having lived through the past twelve years of New Labour rule – the Labour party voted into power in May of 1997 was a very different party, ideologically, from the Labour party of old.  Instead of giving workers a better deal, strengthening unions, and further democratizing the nation, it continued the trend of Thatcherite privatization and free-market neo-liberalism that it had previously opposed, continued selling arms to dictators around the world, took benefits away from the poor whilst increasing welfare for the rich, and waged unnecessary and arguably illegal wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and, throughout its entire time in office, Iraq (daily bombing of the no-fly zones leftover from the 1991 war, continued under Labour long before the 2003 invasion, not to mention the murderous UN Sanctions the Labour Party endorsed).

In other words – The Sun only supported the Labour Party, when the Labour Party became the new Conservatives. 

Not only were New Labour the new Conservatives in 1997, but the Conservatives themselves, at that time, had become an unelectable mess – much like the Labour Party of today.  As always though, this claim of being “unelectable” was not for any of the appalling policies the Conservative Party had promoted over their eighteen years in power, but for more superficial reasons – a public sick and tired of the same old faces and scandals, allegations of “sleaze” and abuses of power… 

We stuck with the Tories through their Poll Taxes and Falklands War, we let them denationalize British industries, pour bombs down on Iraq and terrorize the miners, we let them smash up the unions and take away our jobs…but when they started having sex with prostitutes, or trading in cash for questions, then we decided it was time for a change.

There were so many sound political reasons to oppose the Tories from 1979 to 1997, but we chose the “Lewinsky Objection” instead; which is exactly what we are doing today with the Labour Party!

Since 1997, New Labour have let down its core supporters in any number of ways.  They’ve broken promises, they’ve committed war-crimes, they’ve marched us into a global recession and they’ve part-privatized nearly every public institution you can think of…but that is not why people are sick of the Labour Party in 2009.

They are sick of them because of the expenses scandal (despite the fact that this scandal involved Conservative MPs too); they are sick of them because they don’t like Gordon Brown (on a purely aesthetic level – not because his economic policies as chancellor got us into this financial crisis and helped bankroll the disgusting war on terror, but because he’s “boring”); they are sick of them because Jacqui Smith’s husband watched a porn film or two, and because, after yet another decade of political disappointment, it is easy to lash out at whoever is in power and hope the grass might be greener on the other side (even if all the evidence points to it only ever getting worse!)

So the same thing that happened to the Tories in 1997 is now happening to New Labour in 2009: we are sick of them, but we don’t really know why; because we never spend the time to stop and think about the real causes for our growing hostility and unease, and let the media tell us why we’re angry instead.

What do I really want from my government?

What is it about the past thirty years of Conservative and Labour Party rule that has really let me down? 

What is it that this country really needs.

Enter Rupert Murdoch – there to answer those questions for you without you having to think about it.  Politics is hard, let’s leave the heavy lifting to the experts…

Once Murdoch starts framing his own ideological position as the people’s ideological position, then that vacuum of ideas and sense of confusion in the public’s perception gets filled: they hate the government because there’s too much bureaucratic red-tape; they hate the government because they’re taking too many taxes; they hate the government because they’re letting all those foreigners in; they hate the government because they’re not putting drug-dealers and petty criminals in jail; they hate the government because they’re not letting billionaires like Rupert Murdoch make as much money as they can…

In 1997, New Labour retreated away from the left of their party, the nation was sick and tired of the Tories, and so The Sun backed Labour – the most electable right-wing choice that was going at the time.

As the years went on, New Labour proved their worth to the people at News Corp; they not only sounded like they had turned over a new leaf politically, they had – UK domestic and foreign policies under Labour differed in no significant way from the Conservative policies of the previous eighteen years. 

The people – The Sun’s readership – however, were happy, because, as New Labour screwed them over financially and sent their children off to die (just as the Tories had done), it was done via a brand new narrative – and with a cast of new faces – that differed from their Tory predecessors in enough ways to make it feel like change.

These weren’t Tory cuts – they were Labour cuts.

These weren’t Tory wars – they were Labour wars.

What’s more, the Labour Party were wise enough to throw the public the odd necessary bone – a bit more money into public services here, a little more support for unions there.  In the good-cop/bad-cop routine of one-party systems masquerading as multi-party systems, the good-cop neoliberals of New Labour had to continue the appearance of change in order to maintain a continuity of right-wing policies in matters of the economy and national security.   

So the right-leaning Sun, supported the newly right-leaning Labour Party until – as had happened before with the Conservatives – they started losing their support with the public.  Once that happened, the paper merely resorted back to its roots and repositioned its unchanging support for right-wing politics by backing the seemingly more electable Conservative Party, now that Labour are on the ropes.

The important thing here is that whilst the name of the party behind which Rupert Murdoch’s mouthpiece has pledged its support has changed a couple of times over the past thirteen years, the policies which he and his paper support have always remained staunchly the same.

Murdoch wants his readers to vote the way that he would: right-wing.  The real question needs to be why the British Public continue to repeatedly buy into it: why do we vote for the same failed and disastrous policies election after election – whichever party is selling them –and put up with the same betrayals and violations decade after decade without ever re-examining our core political values and questioning why our available political choices in this country are so limited?

Perhaps, the answer lies in the fact that The Sun remains our most widely read newspaper? 

With Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda machine shouting loudly at the majority of people each day, is it any wonder that they soon start mistaking the illusion of change for the real thing; and the illusion of a change in the paper’s political allegiance, as real news?

Technorati Tags: Media,The Sun,Labour Party,Labour Party Conference,Rupert Murdoch,Propaganda,Fox News,2010 General Election,Cabinet Expenses,Capitalism,Gordon Brown,Politics,War on Terror,Welfare