We're damned if we do, they're damned if we don't...

The continuing tragedy of our illegal invasion of Iraq, is that we have no moral authority to demand action when we should!

Colonel Gaddafi has proven beyond all shadow of a doubt that he is a brutal and murderous tyrant, prepared to use troops, tanks, heavy artillery and war planes against the people of the country he ruled for 30 years. Western governments have now finally begun to recognise the "rebels" in Libya as the legitimate government, even as Gaddafi's "war against his own people" intensifies. Foreign journalists have been taken and tortured by Gaddafi's forces which raises serious concerns at the treatment Libyan revolutionaries who have been captured must be receiving, or what horrors await the people of Libya in the bloody aftermath if Gaddafi is able to crush this uprising.

Every humanitarian instinct in me is screaming out that we should already have sent in the RAF to provide air cover for the rebels, and that international forces should be enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya, preventing the regime from using its helicopter gunships, fighters and bombers on towns and cities held by the rebels. These people are rising up in the name of democracy and freedom, they deserve and need our help, and although they are understandably opposed to the idea of British or American ground forces in Libya, they have made increasingly desperate requests for a no fly zone to be imposed.

In the meantime western leaders appear to be making the right noises whilst sitting on their hands, and the cynic in me suspects that they are just waiting to see how our own interests in this oil rich state can best be served before we intervene. My own reluctance to insist that my government takes immediate and forceful action against the Gaddafi regime in these circumstances absolutely sickens me! If we are to have armed forces then surely this is the kind of situation where we should have no doubt that these people need and deserve our help, but I quite simply do not and can not trust our leaders enough to demand that they go to war in our name, simply to find that we have annexed another nation in the name of democracy only to seize control of their natural resources.

This is the legacy of Bush and Blair's "war on terror", and yet another reason to pile condemnation upon them for robbing us of any moral legitimacy to use force when it is absolutely necessary.

Now please excuse me but I think I need to throw up.

See If They Care!

Yesterday's by-election in Barnsley Central was a fairly predictable landslide to the Labour Party, with the Conservatives pushed into third behind UKIP, and Liberal Democrat Dominic Carmen losing his deposit and being relegated to the part of the table usually labelled "others". What is really fucking worrying to me though, is that only 36.5% of those eligible to vote actually bothered to do freely, what people in other countries literally risk life and limb to do.

Its pretty obvious that if more than 60% of the population can't be arsed using a right that generation after generation of their very recent ancestors fought to win them, then whoever does end up in charge of the country has a green light to do more or less whatever they fucking please for five years. Privatise the health service? Triple tuition fees? License arsenic as a children's medication? Why the fuck not? They obviously don't give a shit! Why the fuck should a politician give a damn about keeping their manifesto promises, when the majority of the population couldn't even tell them what those promises were?

Don't give me any of that "not voting is an act of protest" bullshit either. Turning up and wiping your arse on the ballot paper would be an act of protest, and at least they have to count soiled ballots. Not voting is an act of pure bloody bone-idleness, in some ways I hate them more than lifelong Tory voters and they should be ashamed of themselves! No, actually, shame would be a kind of an opinion, and when you refuse to take part in the democratic process you give up the right to have an opinion, on anything important anyway. Perhaps they should just piss off to some country where they don't expect you to slightly inconvenience yourself by walking half a mile to the local polling station once a year, like Saudi Arabia perhaps, or North Korea.

A slightly more practical solution, and one that would also help us cut the deficit, is a 25% tax hike for anyone who doesn't vote, a "Didn't-Poll" Tax if you like. Chances are that those affected will be too busy watching "My Big Fat Gypsy Talent Factor" to notice and even if they do, who gives a fuck? If they couldn't be arsed voting they're unlikely to sign a petition, let alone put in the effort required to start even a medium sized riot.

So fuck 'em! Cut all their public services, tax the hell out of them and give it all to fat cat bankers, turn their elderly relatives into soylent green and sell their kids into slavery.

See if they care!

Rant ends.