April 11th - Whatever Happened to Democracy?

 If I thought preoccupation with MT’s death would take me away from my search for a simple answer to ‘What’s gone wrong in the world?’ I was wrong!  In fact it has brought me face to face with what could well be at the heart of our problems – while it can be argued that capitalism has harnessed Man’s inventiveness and enterprise, the downside is that unregulated free-market industrial capitalism has led straight to many of the problems in the world today and, most importantly, it has destroyed democracy.

Norman Tebbitt in his tribute to MT claimed that in defeating the miners she had taken away the power of the Unions to dictate to government and had returned Britain to democracy.  The problem is that she did nothing to curb the power of industries;  in fact she deregulated the market to such an extent that huge companies can now dictate to government. The population sense they are powerless and have become apathetic or angry.

The very week of MT’s death a new campaign was launched ‘Leave our children alone’ which could be a litmus test to find out whether we in fact have any vestige of democracy left.  On one side are the campaigners who want legislation to make advertising to children under 11 illegal as happens in Sweden and Greece .  On the opposing side is the advertising industry worth around £12bn  who will be pulling out all the stops to prevent the legislation becoming law.  

There’s plenty of evidence that legislation that would be good for us (sustainable energy, restriction of chemical use, eliminating plastic bags etc … ) is prevented from becoming law by opposition from the financial interests of capital. Be interesting to see how ‘Leave our children alone’ gets on ..