Democracy in Britain is clearly dead!

Well, that's if we've ever had real democracy. Given that one half of our law-making body is the unelected House of Lords, our executive office is an unelected monarchy and our legal system is run by even more unelected "lords" it's hardly surprising that those in power can get away with just about anything they want.

What is a real shame though is that the current government has been telling us since day 1 that it wants to listen. Has it listened? It's really hard to tell because if they have they're not taking a lot of notice.

A few years ago there was a large protest against the government when fuel prices suddenly shot up. Oil depots were blockaded and a fuel shortage followed. The government finally seemed to give in, the price went down a little and calm was restored... until a few short days later new laws were draughted making it illegal to blockade oil depots and since then the increase in fuel prices has continued unabated.

More recently we've seen the setting up of on-line petitions on the 10 Downing Street website. The nuts have come out in force and their are clearly a number of frivolous petitions on this site, but there are also quite a few with quite serious subjects - one being road pricing. Public feeling was quite high on this one... 2 million plus as I recall. So, did the government listen? No. Yesterday our law makers decided to allow local authorities to go ahead with road pricing schemes which promise to be as unpopular as the one already operating in London.

Just when you thought it was all over, today there is another one. Regardless of the fact that the general public has made it known that they are against taxation of rubbish collection, our esteemed leaders have decided that they're going to allow local authorities to do this too! Oddly enough, both of these things have occured within a week of the same government who have decided to excempt themselves (well, MP's at least) from the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, a potentially good law which allows us, the people of Britain, to ask some very awkward questions and get a guaranteed reply. Well, no more!

Given the way this country reacted against the Poll Tax of the conservative government I am surprised at how the current labour government seem to have managed to do these things without any reaction from the people, but the truth is that they're getting away with it because of the attitude of the people, an attitude which seems to be heavilly driven by a "tabloid mentality". We're living in a country where the things that people seem to think are most important are the sex lives of sports and entertainment personalities such as David Beckham and Hugh Grant. These stories are intertwined with scare stories about how the world is out to get us, about the seeming increase in murder, child abuse and crime in general. The tabloids cry out that something has to be done, and so it is... our high streets and country lanes are being peppered with CCTV systems and speed cameras, when we fill up with petrol our number plates are being scanned. It seems that we can't go anywhere or do anything without being watched. Now we're on the verge of having our rubbish bins checked and our cars tagged so that the same people can see exactly where we go and what we do with our money.

At the same time, the tabloids are printing similar scare stories about the foreigners who want to take over our country. The EU and everything related to it is bad... the metric system spawned by the devil and the Euro, both concieved to take away our national identity along with the European Constitution... if you believe what the press print on an almost daily basis. Most Brits however seem to ignore the fact that the UK is itself a union of countries run from a centralised point, with a single currency enforced on it. The system of weights and measures used differs in many respects to what the Scottish used to use... and add to this the fact that in the UK we're not citizens, we're subjects. There is no written constitution, no bill of rights, no independant judiciary.

In contrast, Europe has given us the Court of Human Right (not affiliated with the EU). It has given us citizenship within a wider community. It has given us freedom of travel. If it wasn't for the tabloids it would have also have given us a written constitution and a single currency (saving all that money we pay the banks to spend abroad). I'm not going to mention weights and measures because metric is something that we were doing before we joined the EU, as part of modernisation along with the introduction of decimal currency.

Ok, so the EU has it's fault, much as any democratic establishment has, but the point of democracy is you can vote to change things. But then many Brits don't bother to vote in EU elections thinking it's a waste of time. You could of course be excused for thinking that given that voting in our own local and national elections seems to be a waste too! But at least the EU has given us cheaper cars, cheaper phone calls, cheaper CD's and DVD's, freedom to live and work in other EU countries, freedom to buy goods in another country and bring them home if we wish, freedom to go to doctors and hospitals in other EU countries if we get ill... the list goes on, but still the tabloid mentality wants us to leave the EU because it is evil.

At least the EU isn't trying to take our rights away, one by one!