There is something in nearly all human beings that makes us relish power over others. Very few of us have the power of life and death over others but many of us enjoy the feeling of power enjoyed by being the boss or a manager in a company. There is something in our psyche that relishes power.

How we choose to use that power can decide both how successful we are and how long we can enjoy the power and authority we have earned or been given. Gaddafi lasted over four decades but he made few friends along the way, apart from those who made enormous fortunes through corruption and abuse of power. How much is their wealth worth to them now though? I would not want to be in their shoes now with the man who protected them from the public, gone.

The lesson must be that no matter how much power you have you must keep the people under you on your side. They may not love you and they may at times resent you but you need to keep them on your side to a degree even when times are hard and life is difficult.

The collapse in the banking system in 2008 led to the banks being bailed out which has in turn led to nations struggling to find the money to fund all those things they were previously able to pay for. Ultimately the people are being asked to pay the price and as this has dawned on people they have begun to rebel at the way this has been done and the people who have benefitted from a biased system.

There are protests all over the world at the way rich bankers have been enjoying high salaries and huge bonuses while ordinary people have to cut back on the essentials of life and go without help and assistance from government because the bankers want all the money for themselves.

The people are beginning to wonder why they should suffer when we see so many wealthy people continuing to enjoy a life that most of us can only dream of. Most of us support the idea of rewards for being successful but judging success in simple monetary terms is no longer enough.

It is all too easy to look back to previous times through rose tinted glasses. Business and politics have always been tainted by dubious and corrupt practices, They always have benefitted some more than others but there was a trickle down effect that produced jobs and benefits for the whole of society. What seems to have changed since the 1980s and the widespread freeing up of markets and financial dealings is that money has become the most important thing in the world. Profit always was the ultimate motivation but now people and jobs have become a far less important consideration.

The banks care only about money. The financial markets care only about money. Even governments seem more focussed on money than people these days and the people are beginning to sense they have been forgotten.

Perhaps this is the ultimate fate of capitalism. Perhaps it becomes so incestuous that the original purpose of money as a tool to simplify trade has been forgotten. When money is the only motivation and dealing in money can be a very profitable enterprise it is all too easy to forget the people who are the only reason the system can work. When those ordinary folk at the bottom of the food chain have no work and no prospects the system begins to break down and the people beging to turn against the system.

The death of Gadaffi is proof that no matter how much power and control you have, the system depends on keeping the people behind you. The worlds financial system is so far removed from people that few can possibly understand how it works. All we know is that it isn’t working for us.

The banks have become such an integral part of the system that governments felt they had no alternative but to support them but the effects have been devestating for millions of people around the world. Whatever the worlds leaders decide to do next they need to remember the lessons of Gaddafi. They may not face being found in a sewer and shot through the head but they do face the wrath of the people if they forget who they are supposed to represent

None of that justifies or excuses the embarrassing custard pie incident the other day during the select committee hearings into the hacking scandal. It was a shocking lapse in security at what surely should be one of the most secure places in the country. How on earth anyone could get a cream pie or a can of shaving foam through security is a puzzle that will no doubt be carefully looked at.

The investigation of the incident will take it’s course and charges may be brought but the behaviour of the authorities in excluding the pie incident cameraman who brought us those important pictures is a sign that the authorities are more concerned with their own embarrassment than they are with informing the public.

Paul Lambert (known as Gobby) is a producer/fixer for the BBC who succeeded in bringing us those memorable pictures as the pie incident cameraman and he should be applauded for that. The response of the authorities has been to ban him from the Parliament premises.

Filming in and around Parliament is restricted for obvious reasons and there are strict rules on what should and should not be shown but when an extremely unusual incident such as this occurs we should be glad the cameras are there to record it.

Banning someone for doing what is in the public interest is surely a sign that the embarrassed authorities are more concerned with covering their own backs than they are in being transparent with the public they are there to serve.

We are supposed to be a democracy. The government and all the supporting institutions are ultimately there to serve us, the public. The pie incident was embarrassing for the country but that doesn’t mean it should not have been shown.

We should be thankful that the people supplying us with the images of what occurred did so and those in power who have revoked Paul Lamberts permission to have access to Parliament buildings should be ashamed of themselves. He did us a greater public service than they did and he should be reinstated immediately with a proper apology for their hasty and misjudged actions in banning him.

Gordon Brown has the dubious distinction of going to great lengths to praise the banking industry and tell them all what fine fellows they were just a short while before the biggest financial crisis ever seen. He was praising the people who were at the heart of the banking crisis and he was the main man responsible for the huge government debt we are all being required to repay now.

How can this man possibly be considered for the role of head of the IMF? Perhaps it just demonstrates that the financial world has little connection with the real world and the sooner it all collapses the better. It will be tough getting through such a major change in the way we manage our society.

It is a strange situation. A financial system that is obviously broken with more debt than can ever be repaid yet we need it as the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate. Gordon Brown as head of the IMF? They must be joking.

Mistakes are one thing but hypocrisy is something else. Saying one thing while doing another is just shameful.

So, I sat and watched a Panorama programme on BBC1 the other night. It was about the illegal tobacco trade and how the government are losing millions of pounds in taxes from illegal tobacco smuggling. It is apparently a very lucrative trade for criminal businesses all over the country. The government are investing a lot of money into customs and excise, or whatever they are called this week, to increase their efforts in restricting this trade to get the huge amounts of tax that are levied on tobacco products.

All well and good. Maybe we should all start smoking to help the government raise more taxes and reduce the deficit. I can see the banner headlines now. “Smoke more and help the country out of recession”. It makes you proud to be British.

Hang on. What is this I see? Apparently the government are going to make it more difficult for people to buy smoking products! The Department of Health are going to press ahead with the plan to require that smoking products be hidden from display and to insist they are sold in plain packaging. To reduce the effect of marketing a brand, I assume.

Surely the department of health should be worried about the health of the economy? Shouldn’t they be out there, alongside customs and excise trying to make lots of people smoke the tobacco with all that tax levied on it? The Department of Health wants to reduce the numbers of people smoking and cut the amount of tax revenues the government collects. Don’t they know there is a recession and the government coffers are empty?

Somebody should tell the Dept Of Health they have misunderstood what the Prime Minister said. He said make cutbacks, not cutback the number of people smoking.

Or maybe hypocrisy is government policy. It certainly was in the previous government and it appears to be continuing. If the government are really serious about stopping people smoking they should show they mean business by stopping the collection of tax revenues on tobacco products which would stop the criminal trade in smuggled tobacco overnight and it would demonstrate they believe it is dishonest and hypocritical to be taking enormous amounts of money in taxes on smoking products whilst at the same time saying they want people to stop smoking because it is so bad for us. Yes, it is bad for your health but you cannot have it both ways.

Spending government time and money on both ends of the argument is like betting on red AND black on a roulette table. You are never going to win.

Maybe smokers should have a peoples revolution and stop smoking for a day just to show what the effect would be if everyone did stop smoking. If the department of health was successful and everyone stopped smoking overnight there would be howls of protest from all the non smokers who suddenly faced huge tax increases to make up the difference. So, does the government really want everyone to stop smoking? Maybe, but only if all the ex-smokers decide to donate three-quarters of the money they previously spent on smoking to the exchequer.

If smoking is a bad thing then why does the government charge tax on it? If drugs were made legal and tax was charged on it we could probably solve the Government’s  debt problems within a year and cut the police numbers by at least half because crime would almost disappear from our streets if drugs were legally available and taxed. They don’t do that because they tell us that drugs are so terribly bad for us and we are too stupid to be able to decide if we should take drugs or not.  No doubt many of us are but they don’t stop us using alcohol instead.

The result of this decision is that we have to suffer terrible crime problems and we help make the criminals who deal the drugs rich. It certainly doesn’t seem to restrict the availability of drugs and it costs the country a fortune in a wasteful drugs ‘war’ that can never be won. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for drugs to be made legal and for the government and legitimate business to earn tax revenues and profits.

It would, of course, also create work for the department of health because they could then spend huge amounts of money telling us to stop taking drugs.

Governments admit they are not able to run the Post Office profitably and they are eager to sell it on to someone else who will, no doubt, expect to make a profit. Maybe we should sell off the business of running the country to one of these eager potential buyers and perhaps they would be able to run a country profitably. For the last 60 years, it seems, no government has succeeded in doing that but I guess being a total hypocrite does make it rather more difficult to be successful.

Interesting facts:-

The cost to the Health Service for treating smokers is said to be around £2.7 Billion per year.

Lobby group Forest has previously pointed out that smokers pay over £9bn a year in tobacco tax.

It is a wonderful thing to see the people having a voice at last and having a say in how their country should be run, and who should be allowed to get the money produced off of the backs of those ordinary people who work hard every day to provide for their families.

It is hard to argue that this is not a good thing and the only people who would see this as a bad thing are the people who have benefited from such evil behavior. The people who have taken millions of pounds and stashed it away in their personal bank accounts.

So we should all work hard and support efforts to prevent these evil people who cheat the populations of their countries out of their hard earned money. No longer should the Banks and financial institutions of this world be allowed to get away with such behavior.

Time after time we have heard politicians critisise the city institutions that have done all but destroy our country along with many others but those same politicians have done little to change the structure of how these companies operate. Ordinary working people are now suffering because governments chose to side with the banks rather than the people who elected them to power.

Anybody who has worked in these financial organisations over the last ten years should ask themselves if they made the right choices and decisions. They should ask themselves if their bonuses were truly deserved or whether they took those bonuses under the false pretences of actually doing something constructive and beneficial to the company they worked for.

Either the bonuses were deserved, and the people who decide such things were acting in the best interests of their shareholders or they were not. The argument that you have to pay such high salaries and bonuses to retain staff only works if it is actually a good thing to keep those people and that assumes they are going to help make the company successful.

It didn’t work in the past so why should we assume it will work in the future?

It is hard to understand that so many huge corporations could be brought to their knees by careless and stupid behavior by so many apparently highly talented and highly paid people. If they are that stupid then it was criminal behavior to pay them so well. If they are not stupid then they were acting criminally by knowingly destroying the businesses that were paying them. Somebody should be going to jail but of course, nobody has.

Nobody has gone to jail because these small cliques of powerful people are able to ignore any laws that apply to ordinary working people. The take vast sums of money and stash it away in their private bank accounts while ordinary people suffer and have to pay for their greed.

We need a peoples revolution to take back control and prevent these little dictators controlling our lives and denying ordinary woking families the opportunity to lead happy and healthy lives.

So, David Cameron is to be appluaded for owning up to the fact that the government plan to sell off large parts of the British woodland was not such a good idea.

The plan has now been abandoned and the Minister responsible, Caroline Spelman, has appologised to Parliament and the country. It cannot have been an easy thing to do but admiting to mistakes is a sign of good character and something to be admired.

The idea of selling off large areas of woodland found was very unpopular in all areas of society from rich and poor and from the politcal Left and Right.

It was hard to understand what the point of it was when the minister was arguing that there would not even be any financial benefit to the treasury. It was very difficult to see what the point of it all would be.

The U-turn will no doubt be seized on by the opposition but we should congratute the commitment to common sense that this change seems to demonstrate. If a government are so certain of their infalability that they pursure their policies without regard to public opinion then democracy loses.

We saw the result when Tony Blair pursued his plans for going to war in Iraq disregarding a million people on the streets of Britain opposing the move and millions more at home disagreeing but not taking action. The issue is still a big factor for many of us who felt it was a bad decision and the Tony Blair and his Labour government have been tarnished ever since.

It would be a great thing if Minsiters and government were more ready to admit to making mistakes and change direction when they are clearly on the wrong side of the argument but they should also make efforts to argue a case if they feel it really is the right thing to do.

If they can make the case for something and convince the public it is the right thing to do then good luck to them but conversely when they cannot they should accept that perhaps they were wrong and drop their plans.

U-turns lead to more democratic and better government. A few red faces may be the sign of democracy in action.

BBC News – Forest sale axed: Caroline Spelman says ‘I’m sorry’.

Perhaps the only solution is to revoke the laws that make it illegal to do your business in the street but I don’t think anybody wants that to happen. The only real result I can see from closing all these toilets is that more people will shop online and the shops in Manchester will have fewer paying customers.

The lack of public toilet facilities will hit the smaller shops most as larger stores and retail shopping centres often have their own facilites for shoppers to use.

It does seem to be that we are moving back into the stone age when it comes to council services. Quite who is to blame for that is open to discussion but the overall feeling is that basic council services are worse these days than they were 30 or 40 years ago. I wonder if the problem is that there are too many additional requirements on councils these days over and above the basic requirements they used to provide or, maybe, we just expect too much of them.

It certainly has oodles of potential but somehow they haven’t quite found their feet yet. I hope it is given the time it needs to develop into something as revered as TWTWTW back in the days of black and white TV.
I don’t quite understand why it was felt important to be live but there may come a time when a live story is breaking and they can add their brand of cutting edge humour to the events as they happen but so far I would say that a bit of editing might have tightened up the show.

The problem seems to be that they can’t decide which is more important. Interesting interviews and discussion or jokes. Trying to make a serious interview funny by throwing in silly quips just doesn’t work for me.
I will stick with it but if they don’t figure out what they are trying to do I fear I may be one of the few viewers still with them when they move it to a less popular time slot. It is competing with the main evening news, newsnight and question time which seems like strange scheduling to me since people who are interested in news and politics are likely to be watching them and people who aren’t won’t want to watch satirical political comedy anyway.
10 O’Clock Live has the potential to be funny, entertaining and interesting and I hope they find the right mix soon.

It sounds rather unlikely but that is apparently the plan and it is certainly a good thing that the public will be allowed more of a voice in what is being discussed in the coridors of power.

It remains to be seen exactly how this will work. Some subjects such as Hanging, reducing income tax and perhaps even the repeal of some drug laws could get enormous public support but I doubt any government would change their minds because of that view.

It will be interesting to see how this idea develops and what the effect of it will be. Don’t hold your breath though. A petition giving you immunity from speeding tickets is not likely to change the law of the land anytime soon.

BBC News – Online petition plan for Parliament to go ahead.

You could easily wonder if the drug dealers are not the people encouraging governments to continue this war on drugs because they are the main beneficiaries. Yes we often hear of drug busts taking x amount of this drug or tht out of circulation but if the availability on the street is anything to go by there seems to be a heck of a lot of drugs getting through.

When there are such vast amounts of money being made the criminals can spend fortunes to achieve their aims and they use ever more sophisticated methods. On the TV news just the other day a tunnel between Mexico and the US was shown. It was over half a mile long and 30 feet below ground. Complete with electric lighting and a small rail track system for transporting the drugs. It is one of no doubt many such tunnels and it shows just how much money the criminals make and how much they can afford to spend. The war on drugs isn’t working and is never likely too.

So, it was refreshing to hear an ex labour minister proposing that there should be some sort of controlled legalisation. Such a move with the drugs being made available under medical supervision and perhaps with taxes applied would possibly solve Britain’s debt crisis in a few shot years thanks to all those extra taxes.

We would suddenly find crime reducing significantly and it would be more than likely we would have to start laying off police officers for lack of work for them to do. The drugs ‘business’ almost certainly accounts for a huge proportion of crime from burglaries to raise money to feed a habit, prostitution to feed a habit and inter gang deaths from fights over drug dealing areas.

If a former DRUGS minister feels the system isn’t working we should surely sit up and pay attention. Nor is he the first to say such things after leaving office. We even had an MP called David Cameron arguing the case for liberalization of drugs policy some years ago.

But of course Ministers are appalled by the idea now. The labour party was quick to establish that they do not share Bob Ainsworth’s opinions. All the parties are scared of what the public would think of such a move but the only reason the public would be upset is because we have been brainwashed for years about how dangerous drugs are to society and that argument has only been used to prop up the drugs war. It smells like vested interests.

The drug dealers make huge amounts of money because drugs are illegal. Governments and political parties support the drug war. Why would any political party be in favour of a system that leads to very wealthy illegal drug dealers?

It can only be a matter of time until some sort of changes are made to this crazy system. Everybody knows it does not work. Everyone knows the only people who benefit are the major drug dealers and everyone knows that drugs are at the root of a huge proportion of the crimes we see across the country. There has to be a better way and a caring government that really wants to look after the population should be looking at alternative ways that can reduce the problems and treat drug use as a medical problem like alcoholism rather than a criminal matter like bank robbery.

We should all applaud and support Bob Ainsworth because he knows what he is talking about and he is suggesting a better approach that would benefit everyone in the country. Except of course those very wealthy drugs barons who need the drugs war to continue so they keep on making their millions of pounds in profits.