Alan Sugar quits Labour Party

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/11/alan-sugar-resigns-from-labour-party-over-shift-to-left

It’s funny how the very people who have benefited from favorable government policy in the past are usually the first to criticise when things start not going their way...

I’m not saying that if I owned a multinational conglomerate I’d necessarily be thinking about giving up profits, but I’d certainly be in a position to ‘repay’ society by paying more tax to enable other businesses to take off. People keep saying that it’s a ‘difficult question’ in that we apparently ‘need’ to attract foreign investment and companies without compromising our own economic interests. But as long as we prioritise them staying, and pander to them in terms of tax cuts, subsidies and let them send their income back home un-taxed, we’ll never really be making and developing anything ourselves.

Alan Sugar, I think you’re throwing your toys out of the pram on this one.

Another Five Tory Years

I’m sure like many others; the results of the 2015 election were really very depressing. It is so hard to come to terms with the fact that in spite of all the best efforts and all the wonderful campaigning that Labour did, voters were still not convinced enough to vote Labour and that the United Kingdom is so much less than I wish it to be.

Once upon a time when I studied A-Level politics and went on to do a year of Political Thought at university, I was a radical young thing who believed in social justice and wanted the world to be a better place. I went to conferences, protests and had everything to say against the immoral capitalist system that we live in. However, the pressure of getting good marks, university finances and the fact that I had fallen in love with another country and their politics and history (Spain) meant that these good intentions and admirable causes got left behind. It wasn’t until several years later that I came back to the UK after years of wanderlust and craving new experiences that I realised just what a complete mess our country was in.

In my naivety in the 2010 elections, I voted Conservative. I had a personal resentment of our Labour party candidate and had come head to head with him directly regarding Top-Up Fees and what he looked me in the eye and said he’d do, and then did not. The Tory candidate on the other hand was engaging, much less smarmy and involved in the local community rather than focusing on getting ahead in Westminster. I read the manifestos, and given that it was my first election that I was able to participate fully in, I believed a lot of the promises that were made in the Conservative 2010 Manifesto. I realised very quickly that I had made the wrong decision and I had unknowingly and naively backed a complete liar.

One Conservative ploy in the run up to the election was for them to delete more or less the entirety of their 2010 election manifestos and promises, I assume so that people like myself could not run through it with a red pen pointing out which promises have been lost, broken and ignored. And this has spurred me to be more careful in this next 5 year term of what I can only imagine will bring more doom and gloom so that I can map out a more comprehensive list of promises that have been broken, more dirty scandals that are brushed under the carpet and to do my part in making my voice heard. I feel simultaneous bouts of outrage and frustration with Britain’s political system after this election, and if more people engage in politics and policy (two linked but quite different things) as a result of it, then so much the better. There will be light at the end of a five year tunnel.