This article first appeared on page 19 of Birdwatching Magazine July 2024
I’m writing this before the general election, safe in the knowledge that it will influence no-one as you will read it long after your vote has been cast. Because of our crazy system, most of your votes will have been wasted, given that 60% of voters don’t vote for the party that wins. I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt there will be any Green MPs. On standing down, Caroline Lucas said how exhausting it had been to be a lone voice of opposition to short-sighted policies that wreck the world. Just one voice for around three million people!
I often hear people say that we all want the same thing… we just don’t agree on how to bring that about. How I wish that were true. Some of us have principles and live by them. Some people are just plain selfish and short-sighted. We cannot be naïve enough to believe that we all want a rural idyll with happy cows chewing organic cud while bunnies hop happily among vegetarian foxes. Some people want super yachts and diamond fripperies, some want power and violently pursue it. Even among the enlightened and selfless we cannot agree on how to bring about heaven on earth, or on our priorities.
I believe in a general good will and that the majority of people are sharing and caring, but I know there are others who only care about number one and don’t even want to share with kith and kin. Sometimes the general good has sway and sometimes the super selfish will whip up public concerns and bring out the worst in us. Fascism happens, genocide happens, when the public believe the lies that the unscrupulous peddle.
To ensure that the saints are heard, the devil has to be allowed to pontificate too. We badly need ALL shades of opinion to sit in parliament not just two warring tribes. In the current campaign I have heard both of the big parties telling us all that a vote for any of the smaller parties is, in fact, a vote for the other tribe. Vote Green and Labour will lose, vote Reform and the Tories will lose. Because of our system these are self-fulfilling prophecies. ‘First past the post’ will go on delivering two warring tribes forever. When one tribe is in, they can ride roughshod over every nuance and just seek to deliver the top priority of the party’s leadership.
So, the emperor is fiddling and the empire burns, literally. Fires rage from California to Queensland, rainforests are harvested by multi-nationals, and other stateless multi-nationals pump yet more pollution into out skies.
Why is it windy all the time? Why do planes plummet in turbulence, why do millions face killing heat and drought or floods. Why are our rivers open sewers and our seas unsafe to bathe in? Because there are insufficient checks and balances. In the UK millions and millions of us care and hundreds of thousands protest against water companies paying huge directors fees and massive dividends only to then turn around and say that we have to pay more to repair what they have broken. Yet, when it comes to it, the priorities of the governed are not those of the government.
It’s not enough to limit director’s salaries. We need investment in infrastructure before a penny is paid to shareholders. It’s like the aristocracy buying diamonds instead of paying the peasants wages. People need water above all else. We want clean rivers and beaches, not unfulfilled promises.
But, no matter how you voted, the government got in, it always does!
