Society must aspire to hope and intelligence within this world of‘ alternative’ facts
Society must aspire to hope and intelligence within this world of‘ alternative’ facts
By Matthew Clifton
Issue # 2, 22 nd April
The general election is in full swing with the release of the manifestos from each of the major parties. Labour’ s was announced and remained largely unchanged from the draft that was leaked, the Liberal Democrats was as expected, very pro-EU and the European idea. The Conservatives have no real ideas that are new, with more austerity expected. Of course, the Conservatives manifesto is merely conjecture because they haven’ t actually released it yet.
There isn’ t much evidence to suggest that the Conservatives will abandon their austerity measures and Theresa May hasn’ t ruled out an increase in tax and VAT. The line has been to give Mrs May a‘ stronger hand’ for Brexit, although no-one is quite sure how an increase of MPs in Westminster for the Conservatives will affect negotiations with the EU.
Labour’ s manifesto has been costed with perfect symmetry, the Liberal Democrats are very much pushing for the anti-Brexit vote but still their policies are a little confusing over which demographic they specifically targeting. Nonetheless we are in full flow and media appearances are ramping up, Theresa May did Facebook live with Robert Peston, which got hijacked by Jeremy Corbyn, who used his Facebook page to ask May, why she wouldn’ t face him in a TV debate.
Diane Abbott accidentally walked the wrong way off stage, thus prompted people to call her stupid and incompetent, as if them as individuals have never done
something like, not quite got their bearings right and walked the wrong way and had to quickly turn around. The same day Phillip Hammond forgot how much HS2 cost by £ 20 billion and had a £ 2 billion hole in his budget, yet most media outlets forget these or don’ t bother with it.
Covering this election is tiring because you hear the same rhetoric and lies over and over, they get rinsed and repeated. No matter how many times the lies get proven factually incorrect, the more belief in these lies grow. We live in an era of post-fact, where people fear innovation, scared of the future and what we could do, if we worked together. Scared that the alternative will fail and leave us with nothing, keeping the status quo is the safe option, better the devil you know?
Attlee and Wilson proved that fear of the unknown can work if you are strong enough to keep it under control.“ With great power comes great responsibility”, James Callaghan’ s downfall was his inability to control and failure to truly acknowledge the responsibility he had to the public. Our society once revered intelligent people, and their knowledge wasn’ t frightening but incredible. People used to aspire to intelligence rather than
5 belittle it, never feeling inferior because of it.
Those on the right who aspire for us to be‘ Great’ Britain once more must understand that Britain is no longer and hasn’ t been‘ great’ for a long time. The British Empire is a black stain of our modern history of oppression and innocent blood spilled for our own personal gain. The East India Company was a horrific organisation who built its empire through slavery, robbery, oppression and violence. The first time we became great was after World War 2, Clement Attlee won the general election and helped build the foundations we live on today, the NHS and the welfare state.
Our lawyers drafted the laws that led to the creation of the European Court of Human Rights( ECHR), so that people like Hitler cannot rise again. Since the creation of the ECHR and eventually the EU, we’ ve seen the longest period of peace between EU nations in history. Britain’ s impact has been significant, but we haven’ t been alone and the reason we were able to achieve so much, was because we were all informed. The first step in solving the problems of our society is to recognise that we are not‘ Great’ Britain.