With the Glasgow North East by-election, (my home patch) due to take place next week, and a mountain of paper garbage pouring through my letter box and the unusual vistors at my door, I thought that this little piece that I posted in the Radical Glasgow web site prior to a previous election was still valid. It seems that some things never change.
In today’s society we have lots of strange and bewildering events, festivals etc.. One of the most bizarre festivals is the “Festival of Crooks and Liars”, this comes round every four or five years and usually goes under the odd name of “elections.” This festival starts with the groups and/or individuals wishing to participate in the “Festival of Crooks and Liars” breaking into outbursts of incoherent verbal diarrhoea. These verbal outbursts tend to get loud, more ridiculous and more persistent as the festival date looms ever closer. The event culminates in a mad frenzy of the contestants running around the country trying to prove that they are indeed the biggest crook and the best liar in the land.
The aim of the “Festival of Crook and Liars” seems to be for the contenders to make every attempt to out do the other contenders in verbal rubbish, hyperbole and deceit. This part is foolish enough, but the part played by the public is much more of a mystery. It would seem that some members of the public believe that if they take part in this trip of insanity and actually vote for one or other of the contestants in the “Festival of Crooks and Liars” this will in some way end poverty and bring peace and stability to their lives. What is more strange is the fact that those who take part in the voting ritual of this festival have been doing so for many years and have seen the results each time to be that the “Crooks and Liars” do very well, but they themselves remain, relatively poor and insecure and their environment keeps going down hill, yet they persist in participating believing that somehow the next bunch of “Crook and Liars” will not actually be crooks and liars.
Perhaps those “voters” should start to organise among themselves to take control of their own lives and communities and try to shape them the way that they would like in co-operation with others and leave the ridiculous show of insanity that is the “Festival of Crooks and Liars” for what it is, a dangerous illusion, a disempowerment that allows our wealth to be siphoned upwards.
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