General Election After Thoughts

The Observer newspaper is now raising the fairness of  British voting system.

 Fairness is of course fine to raise  but to do so now when there is for a change a right wing government. seems strange to me anyway as there was a recent  referendum on the subject  under the Tory Lib Dem coalition and the majority of the electorate surprised the Lib Dems by favouring the staus quo which is I accept far from perfect.

That the current system resulted in several  Labour Governments did not seem to be of concern to Labour supporting press at the time so it is slightly surprising to find it being criticised now.

In much the same way  as until recently some political parties did not seem to feel that the will of the people was worth looking at as regards EEC membership, possibly some of the press are now of the opinion that the will of the people as to  a system of voting  is irrelevant. More worrying in my view are reports that in Belgium some ethnic minority voters are being  warned off voting altogether by religious fanatics. This highlights how fragile  the democratic system can be and the importance of protecting it.

Reverting to the British situation, younger brother has raised the issue of the new Conservative government proposing to reduce unemployment benefit. Obviously the more cash that can be given from the state  to help others the better but the concern I have, is that the UK has for far too long provided generous state benefits from funds borrowed from eg certain  countries of the Middle East where democracy and some freedoms including religious minority rights seem to be anathema to the rulers.

Borrowing from such  people seems  quite wrong to me at least  but more significantly is the idea of the left to keep the British benefits high for the current generation and let the next generation deal with the huge debt that results?  Raising the taxes of the very wealthy would hardly make a dent in the need to borrow though ensuring that all taxpayers pay a fair share is or should be always a priority. Sadly the idea that the Tories have of cutting the borrowing by reducing some of the benefits seems to me at least to be worth trying if only to spare the next generation from an even higher burden of debt.

Let us give the new government time to thrive or fail - after all in a democracy  the people will be able to speak again by the end of 5 years if not before.