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Tuesday 7 April 2015

Blog 130. Getting ‘Clegged’.

Mischa Barton knows how if feels I suspect...

Weirdly Clegg still doesn't get why he is a pariah and the Liberals will be nothing and nowhere on May 8th.

Here let me explain.

‘Clegging’ will become slang for blighting youth or conning the young for personal gain. So for example a father found to have drunk the money gran left his son will be said to have ‘Clegged’ him. Ms Barton is apparently suing her ma for spending her childhood acting earnings.

Other than demonstrating the pointlessness of the TV debate, Nick’s defining Cleggacy will be that he epitomises the betrayal of a generation. His post-election treachery simply defines how tomorrow’s people are flung into a swamp with weights round their necks and told to swim. It also demonstrates why those least likely to vote are the ones who must. (So c'mon guys - get your faces out of fb and get involved in LIFE).

Clegg did not start the trend. That would be crediting him with too much colour.

I recall the 80s ditty “Thatcher Thatcher – milk snatcher” which evoked the essence of a leadership that ended the post-war ideology of caring for the vulnerable by stopping free milk for school children. The floodgates were open to an era of shamelessly levering up the living standards of the comfortably off at the expense of those at the bottom of society. Ironic that Clegg should grab onto the idea of free lunches for primary school children as a sop to young parents whose adult lives will be overshadowed by debt they had no choice in acquiring.

Thatcher gave us decimated mining communities, council tax (which helps fuel current housing inequalities) selling off council houses (so now in many areas there is no decent stock of social housing for those starting out in life) and orgiastic privatisation. For those too young to remember – gas, electricity and water etc used to BELONG TO US. But all subsequent governments have failed to climb out of the trench she dug Britain into.

Never mind religious conflict between Christians and Muslims – the God of Mammon is in the ascendancy – just in case you wondered why immigration is daily in the media stocks and the bankers/financiers who actually wrecked the economy got a tap on the wrist.

The thing that is lacking overall is humility, (may I suggest reading blog 4?)

Blair gave us entrenched and damaging PFI in the NHS (oh yeah – and Armageddon), Brown was soft on financial regulation. Cameron has just carried on mopping up what Thatcher didn't get round to and Clegg wiggled into power on the back of a promise so straightforward that even the disenfranchised young could understand it. Then he crapped on them.

I can only assume Clegg is a G.B. Shaw fan and literally believes that “youth is wasted on the young. Youngsters now emerge from university – however useless the course – with the kind of debt my generation only got when purchasing a house.

Government has failed to protect youngsters in ordinary families from the ravages of targeted advertising, pornography, cigarettes, pollution, debt, the effects of endemic gambling, toxic food and so on and so forth. We are leaving a legacy of decreasing living standards for the majority, greater disparity between the haves and the have-nots, lack of security, global conflict and global warming. But politicians still think they are worth their pay packets - and some think they deserve more besides...

To this generation of politicians I say ‘shame on you’.

To young people I say – ‘for god’s sake vote’. Then renationalise everything that used to actually belong to the people of Britain and introduce euthanasia for tax avoiders.