Thursday, June 12, 2014

What do you call a government who ...

Posted: 12 Jun 2014 03:13 AM PDT
If this article makes you think, please don't close it without using the buttons at the end to tweet it, share it and send it to your friends. This has been a scream inside my head for months now. 

What do you call a government who's first act is to make it virtually impossible to remove them from power, no matter how badly they perform? Who attempt to redraw the boundaries and cut the numbers of constituencies purely so that it benefits their own side, thus making it much easier for them to hold on to power?

What do you call a government who use the media and their own departmental outlets to run a partisan propaganda campaign against vulnerable groups? Who ensure that lies are printed, policies are not criticised, information requests are not granted and statistics are misrepresented?

What do you call a government who overturn laws retrospectively to make court rulings against them obsolete?

What do you call a government who erodes justice by ensuring the least able to defend themselves can no longer access it? Or who remove the right for ordinary people or organisations to take them to court? Or who limit the right to appeal decisions?

What do you call a government who introduce a gagging bill making it virtually impossible for third parties to oppose them through democratic channels? Who threaten charities and our independent national news service for covering important stories in the national interest?

What do you call a government that ignores the advice of it's second chamber entirely, effectively neutering it from providing the checks and balances true democracies demand?

What do you call a government who ignores court rulings not once but repeatedly that find their policies discriminate but ignore that ruling? Or who whitewash consultations and entirely falsify their results - or ignore them completely?

What do you call a government who tries to scrap the human rights act and buy your employment rights from you?

What do you call a government who send misleading and partial reports to our world partners on what effects their policies are having on its citizens?

What do you call a government who restrict education for disabled people and books for those in prisons? Who design our children's education based on personal whims and construct a syllabus that matches their own world view?

Reports today show that Trussell Trust, the charity responsible for the largest network of food banks in the UK modified their campaigning after threats that the government might get them shut down if they continued to make links between government policies such as welfare reform and the rise in food banks. http://www.civilsociety.co.uk/governance/news/content/17632/trussell_trust_chair_told_the_government_might_try_to_shut_you_down#.U5llhF5H1FJ

This following a week that saw Oxfam criticised by a Conservative MP for highlighting growing poverty not abroad, but here in the UK.

I have proof from FOI requests that Chris Grayling, that the then Work and Pensions Secretary asked civil servants repeatedly about closing down my own blog. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/correspondence_regarding_tribuna#incoming-316228

If you read this today, RT it, share it and ask everyone you send it to to ask themselves exactly what the actual definition is of a government who behaves like this? And I only scratched the surface. 

Reposted from the blog of  Sue Marsh : Diary of a Benefit Scrounger