My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
A decisive minority of idiots, fashionistas and the innocent.
Politics is all about getting voted into power. If you don’t get voted in, you’re a loser – that’s it. There are no prizes for second place; it’s defeat any way you cut it. All political analysis starts and ends with that. No matter how high-principled a politician is, that’s the imperative they’ve got to work with. When they’re in power, the imperative then becomes to stay in power for as long as possible. The good ones hope they may do some good when they’ve achieved that pinnacle and they usually do. The bad ones just hope to rewrite mediocrity or outright failure in their foundations and autobiographies.
Politicians, as they always have and always will, pander to the concerns and fears of the electorate, no matter how unfounded or illogical those things might happen to be. There is nothing new in this. That’s how you garner votes and get elected.
This is exacerbated in a modern democracy by the floating voter effect. Left wingers invariably vote for the left and right wingers for the right. Politicians pay some attention to their own voters but they’re already in the bag and very little to the opposition voters, whom they know will never vote for them anyway. Where they really concentrate all their attention, is on the floating or uncommitted voter, promising them pretty much anything that will swing the vote in their direction.
A factor that greatly influences the floating voter effect is quite simply the amount of interest the people are taking in politics at the time of the election. This is usually governed by the state of the economy but occasionally by an external threat, such as a potential war with another country.
When times are bad and people are fearful about employment and therefore money, they start looking to the current political parties to fix the situation. In response to dire economic circumstances, the policies of the main left or right leaning parties will tend to polarise to their respective extremes. If they cannot fix it then the electorate will turn to extremist parties with extremist policies. In the end, if things get bad enough, the people will vote for any new and untried face who says convincingly they have the answer. Hello Herr Hitler.
When times are good and the economy is on a peak, people in general take less interest in politics and tend not to vote. Why bother? There’s nothing to get excited about, nothing to fix. The few who do, will certainly not vote for a mainline party whose policies threaten to derail the good times. In response, the policies of both left and right leaning parties will tend to retreat to the centre and a very innocuous centre it is, making them politically indistinguishable. They get into ‘style’ politics; that’s to say, content free politics. It is also the time when extremist parties find it difficult to make any progress since anyone who bothers to vote is not interested in fringe parties who might be even more likely upset the current happy situation.
We thus arrive at a situation where national policies are adopted that only a small percentage of the electorate actually have any concern about or even any real interest in.
We live in recessionary times. These were preceded by a decade and a half of prosperity. Government coffers were full which allowed them to promise pretty much anything to the floating voter because they knew they had the money, or thought they had, to meet the commitments. They’d never had to deal with a recession. They’re on a learning curve now.
AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming or man-made global warming) was slowly foisted upon us by diverse people who know these things, saw the opportunity and took it. They didn’t have to convince the whole electorate, just the young, the uncommitted and the floating voter. With the cooperation of a degenerate journalistic establishment who concentrated more on presentation than on any critical analysis of policy, they did it with just the right spin too. To be pro AGW was seen as being somehow virtuous, forward thinking and stylish but in my view, hiding behind the AGW facade were always the forces of creeping totalitarianism.
That might seem like an extreme statement but it seems self-evident to me. When a political movement tells me I should feel guilty about taking a jet flight to go on holiday, that it’s wrong to have a decent car, that I should feel happy to accept a lower standard of living, that I should have only a certain number of children, that I really shouldn’t eat meat, that I should be glad to pay higher utility bills, that I’m suffering from global warming when I’m freezing, that I should pay carbon taxes when I’m a Carbon-based life form and that I am even obliged to use ‘low-energy’ light bulbs which not only contain lethal chemicals but provide terrible light, then I know I’m dealing with a bunch of Fascists. If it looks like a Duck, waddles like a Duck and even quacks like a Duck, then it’s probably a bloody Duck.
The world economy is in recession. What does this mean fiscally? Forget Economics and cast it in very personal terms; you’re a person who has a lot of debts and your outgoings currently exceed your earnings. What do you do? You get a second job to earn more, cut back ruthlessly on what you spend and start paying off your debt. From the government perspective, these simple actions translate directly into higher taxation to earn more money, draconian cutbacks of public spending and the rescheduling or maybe even the floatation of a lot of government debt. Bite down on it folks, that’s what’s ahead of us all in the years to come.
In that environment, massive expenditure fighting Global Warming, like a lot of the silly promises of the good times, will go to the wall.
© Pointman
Pointman's 
Long ago I recognised the politician as a self-serving, selfish animal.
Their first priority being survival and the second to continue the gravy train, then low down the priority list, the needs of the electorate.
As you say the electorate only matter just prior to an election when they will promise what they think the plebs want to hear, at other times the party line controlled by the whips, scoring points off the opposition, attending sometimes the zoo called parliament before working out how much expenses can be claimed or which cushy side-line to set up.
The expenses scandal, the placement of ‘preferred candidates’, the ethnic mix and the female content all demonstrate manipulation of the elected representatives. I suspect the policy of preferred voting rather than first past the post will place us like the Australians and others with a permanent coalition, which based upon the last six months, will benefit the Green AGW faction in confusing and delaying necessary decisions.
Your conclusion that AGW will go to the wall makes sense, but by the same token our membership of the EU and Brussels should go to the wall, not to mention our overseas aid to countries that should support themselves or the aid is used as a form welfare payments upon which the local population are dependant.
My thoughts are that not only has AGW become a religious doctrine but there are other powerful forces at play. The MSM, The financiers, The speculators, The pension funds and The renewables/subsidies leeches. – Just to mention a few.
The scientific community have been bought off by the politicians in terms of grants and prestige and this has created a massive distortion of the true facts, and this is still continuing, for example it is now being suggested that the MET office and the Cabinet colluded to suppress the cold weather forecast, because of the potential negative effect at Cancun. A freedom of information request is urgently required to open this dark corner.
The whole AGW scam is based upon a theoretical computer model, with a built in bias and tipping point and my conclusion is that another tipping point will be required to kill off AGW. Collapse of the EU, a war, a second economic crash or even a major volcanic eruption or similar natural catastrophe, are all possible tipping point candidates. Thus the change will be an unpleasant revolution rather than a passive resolution.
The future is a minefield and the outcome very uncertain.
motm
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As it happens, one of our MPs was sentenced to an 18 month jail term today for fiddling his expenses. He actually had the cheek to plead ‘Parlimentary privelage’ before he came to his senses.
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Pointman
Your observations and conclusions and are all valid and how things really are in today’s Western world.
Politics have become a parody of our respective forebears’ very-best-intentions and a ghastly charade of deceit and avarice in the administration of Public Affairs and our Treasuries.
In all my 40 years of observing Australian politics, there is only ONE man who stands out in my mind as a man of integrity and honour. Pathetic isn’t it?
Ted Mack, originally a much-loved Mayor of North Sydney became an Independent NSW State MP and went on to become a Federal Independent. He never made a back-room deal, he couldn’t be bought by pork-barreling bribes for his electorate, he refused to claim any unjustifiable perks of Office and resigned just before before he was eligible for his Million-dollar Pension Fund. His declared disgust at his up-close-and-personal experiences of the machinations within a highly corrupt System has forever endeared him to many Australians, although others scoffed at what a ‘mug’ he was not to take his ‘dues’ and shut up about them.
For Ted, as well as many other well-intentioned aspirants to high office, I think the true realisation of his inability to effect positive change could well have crushed a lesser man.
We now have well over 800 State & Federal MPs – for a population of 22 million people, a disgrace – which can be added to many hundreds of officials of the local Councils throughout a very Big Country, plus all their various staffs, advisors, consultants, minders and gophers all sucking greedily on the taxpayer teat.
And now they intend to screw us a little more with a Fraudulent Carbon Tax.
You’re right Pointman – totally unsustainable, dysfunctional and destined to implode – magnificently.
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I suspect they’ll persist in trying to levy some sort of Carbon tax simply to balance the books (and the books do have to be balanced at some point).
Using that Green fig leaf, some people will not see it as just another tax …
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“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Orwell
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I think it was Billy Connolly who said something like:-
“The desire to be a politician should bar anyone from ever becoming one!”
Sounds about right.
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I think it worth saying that in general, I’m not cynical about politics or politicians but I am a complete realist, as are the latter because they have to be. The effect the floating voter has on the outcome of an election is something that all politicians have to work with, irrespective of how honourable or not they are.
When any voter votes for a particular party, they are rarely in agreement with all the policies. They are in essence making a compromise in order to get the party they consider best for the people into power. Politicians are forced into the same choices.
The art of course, is how far do you compromise?
Pointman
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Pointman
I would entirely agree with your argument that logically AGW will go to the wall because of the economic state of the western world except that humans do not act logically.
During Australia’s 2007 election campaign Climate Change gained traction in the MSM and was a significant for the landslide vote that returned the left (Labor Party) to power. After that since the voter had given a mandate a new department for “Climate Change” was set up. Two successive bills were drafted and passed in the House of Representatives but failed in senate. This was because the Greens would not pass them. Their reason was that the bills did not go far enough! Oh so close and the Green rejection seems silly, they had it in their grasp. What was passed though will affect us greatly is that Australia is to produce 20% of its electricity from co2 free sources by 2020. Against this backdrop our PM Kevin Rudd and his CC minister Penny Wong were boasting how they were going to show the world how it was done and bring nations together for a decisive vote at COP15. Anyone who did any research or looked at the pollution in China could see this was a delusional. When Rudd finally realised that the developing world did not want anything to do with it said “Those Chinese fuckers are trying to rat-fuck! Us,” His political career when down from there.
We have compulsory voting which does change voting patterns as also does the preferential system. After Rudd was ousted and the 2010 election we have a Labor/Green coalition. Labor did this to stay in power and it has consequences. We have a very small percentage of the vote controlling action on AGW and because of this we will probably introduce a carbon tax. Utter madness since we produce 1% of world GHG and the developing world only provides lip service but is there any opposition? Very little because we dealing with the same thing as drives religion. It is so well accepted here I have to be careful what I say in public and even to fellow members of the Skeptic society I attend. Logic does not come into it we need to save the planet and be told what is right.
I really hope you are right and that my doubts are unfounded but soon I fear I will be paying a carbon tax.
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