One of the changes that has occurred over the last decade or two is the power of the personality to capture the voter through the television debate. There has always been a significant personality at the head of government. Disraeli, Lloyd George, Churchill, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair,
but there have also been periods when rather grey technocratic people have risen to be PM and we seem to be in just such a period now.
The arrival of the TV debate has popularised the image rather than the content of the manifesto and as the public seems to be heading for shorter and shorter attention spans, the thought of studying a political concept and weighing it against other concepts from other political persuasions seems past its sell by date.
The coalition between the Liberal Party and the Conservatives has meant that politics has changed, we now have to evaluate the limit a party can bring on another to understand the impact and therefore the implicit value of that party.
The other fundamental thing which colour our view is the Political Journalist, the Pundit who gets hours of viewing time on the TV screen and whose job it is is to make the politician uncomfortable.
The black art of sarcasm is honed by these people who lampoon each party politician irrespective of the weight and the importance of the subject matter. Its a 'game' to impress the viewer who enjoys the gladiatorial conflict for the conflict its self and misses the importance of the actual subject matter which we should be interested in, since its actually the subject matter which effects us.
The Liberal Democrats have taken a savage beating by the media. They are lampooned and criticised daily by most of the press and TV media, no wonder that people who take their written/spoken fodder feed as gospel and have turned in droves away from Nick Clegg and his party.
The fact that no junior party in a coalition can contribute very much in the way of political reform without getting the say so from the larger party seems to me the weakness in coalition government since the party is scarred by events of which they have little in common. Through strength of argument some of the more extreme issues that the Conservatives would foist upon us have been watered down through the political term but we see now, after the Conservative Conference just how right wing and irrepressibly protective of the wealthy the Chancellor and his mob at the Treasury are. The only inroads into Britain's deficit will be through a greater purging of the Welfare State and the poor who draw on it to extract a living wage.
Commerce having found a way to drill down on their costs by not increasing the take home pay for their employees for up to four years in a row (in total contrast to the directors remuneration which has seen a 25 to 30% increase over the same period) the self same employee now has to turn for "state help" to survive. No wonder our Welfare bill is rising, the tax payer is contributing to the bottom line of many business enterprises who pay less than a living wage. When the subject of controlling the deficit with increased taxes particularly on the rich who have seen their incomes rise so substantially their is a total denial.
For most of us it would seem fair and sensible but then politics was never the art of sense or sensibility.
http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/
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