Power and Fear: Do You Remember Voting For Them?
There’s one thing you can guarantee, the government will have used the last few days of the Harry and Meghan mania as a blanket to cover over their own inadequacies and failures. They needed a big blanket, and they don’t come much bigger than Prince Andr… erm, sorry, I mean Harry and Meghan, exposing the Royal Mafia for what they are.
The fact the establishment media are calling this the “biggest Royal crisis in 25 years” is quite staggering.
I’m not a royalist. I would ditch them yesterday given the opportunity. I honestly couldn’t care less if they cost us a packet of custard creams each, and I don’t care about how many tourists they bring in to the country. Do these tourists expect to have a cuppa with Liz, or do they tend to take a few photos of the most exclusive council house in Britain? I say exclusive, because there aren’t very many of us that can avoid paying bedroom tax on a 240-bedroom property, although I’m working on getting my husband to lower the flag on the roof whenever I make an essential visit to ASDA.
Mine is a fairly simple one. If a human is brave enough to admit they have had serious mental health struggles, regardless of wealth or stature, we should be decent enough to take them at face value. I am a socialist and I believe compassion is contagious. This doesn’t make me a fan of the royal family, far from, but if you want to accuse me of being a fan of humanity, you’ve got me bang to rights and I’ll plead guilty now to save the cost of a trial.
When Harry spoke of his mental health struggles a few years back he was rightfully applauded for using his stature to tell people it really is okay not to be okay. His wife spoke of her problems and gets called an actress, a fraud, and quite laughably, a gold digger.
I find it hard not to show empathy to anyone that has married in to the Royal circus. Of course, she knew what she was marrying in to, but I doubt she expected to be told there was no help for her when she needed it the most, and I certainly don’t believe she expected to marry in to a family that would raise concerns about the colour, or should I say the shade, of Harry and Meghan’s child.
Even if you simply don’t like her, which is absolutely your right to do so, I’m afraid you do need to acknowledge the simple fact that she has exposed the Royals for exactly what they are.
Seriously, how many of you curtsy when you go and visit Nan?
Just three companies control 71% of national newspaper circulation, and five companies control 81% of local newspaper circulation.
This type of concentrated ownership creates conditions in which wealthy individuals, such as Rupert Murdoch, and organisations, such as the Daily Mail and General Trust, can amass vast political and economic power and distort the media landscape to suit their interests.
Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to empower journalists, audiences and readers and reduce the power of media bosses and owners in the private sector really wasn’t that radical.
Offering journalists the power to elect editors and have seats on boards for workers and consumers when a title or programme gets particularly large and influential really wasn’t that radical.
The right-wing press called these ideas “hard left” - but they are simply policies agreed by the Labour Party conference in a process of widespread research, consultation, discussion and debate based on democratic and human rights to enhance and secure the lives and future of ordinary people, young and old, home and abroad - not the policies favoured by the Murdoch’s and Rothermere’s of this world, which inevitably enrich the bankers, the big corporations, the private equity sharks, the big landlords and the mass polluters.
While the Royal Family may well fear the media, it was the media that feared Jeremy Corbyn, for he posed a serious challenge to their unhealthy stranglehold. Jeremy was, and still is the most smeared politician in our history.
So you’ve got a racist cabal of privileged Etonian turds masquerading as a government, a Royal family more concerned with the shade of a baby’s skin than they are of a senior member of their family avoiding questioning from the FBI over allegations of sexual activity with a minor, and both of them live in utter fear and under the control of a demonstrably racist and hateful media.
It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. They have allowed this to happen, it wasn’t you. The media hold the power because they know the grubby secrets of the ‘lawmakers’.
Excuse the profanities, but for fuck sake, why the fuck are we letting them get away with this?
I appreciate a huge number of flag-waving numpties with the Princess Di tea towel collection couldn’t care less. They just see the pomp and pageantry and it makes them feel proud to be British. A few lines from ‘Rule Britannia’ and our days of global genocide and the enslavement of Black people who were treated as no more than subhuman, are forgotten quicker than you can say “Gawd bless yer Ma’am”.
I say “forgotten”, but that means they would need to acknowledge our shameful past in the first place, which can be very difficult if you voted for Winston Churchill to be named as the greatest ever Briton.
Just imagine, you might be black, or mixed race, you’re walking through the town with your child, and you walk past a statue of some strange looking man with a dodgy haircut, hopefully covered in pigeon poop and the urine of a thousand urban foxes.
Your child says to you, “what’s that statue there for mum”? - and if you choose to be honest with your child you would say something like, “well my love, that statue is to celebrate and commemorate the life of a man that used to oversee the rape, torture, enslavement and deaths of your ancestors”.
I’ll never experience that, maybe you won’t, but one of your friends or your family will.
Is Britain racist? I don’t know, it’s a mass of land, but it is inhabited by an unthinkable number of racists. It’s like when people tell you ‘Brexiteers’ are racists. This is wholly untrue, it just seems to feel like that because most racists voted to leave the European Union.
The racism varies from the Britain First ‘go back home’ nasty rhetoric - politically represented by Priti Patel, or it might be the more common racism you witness everyday, such as the use of the P-word, and the N-word, or the gormless imbeciles that see a Muslim and mutter something about “terrorists” under their breath - politically represented by Boris Johnson - although selective ‘anti-racist’ Keir Starmer is giving him a good run for his money.
But my point is clear enough, racism isn’t exclusive to any particular class, whether it be the Royal Family, the government, or the utter pilchards that insist on flags and bulldogs all over their social media profiles - and the interview with Harry and Meghan did nothing to change my view.
If you ever need proof of just how endemic it is, put on your best Hazmat suit and take a look through the Daily Mail readers comments section. Granted, it is like swimming through a sea of rat vomit, but you can learn so much about the thinking of the modern-day Neanderthal.
A free, diverse and independent media is vital to the functioning of any democratic society. Is that where we are now? A Royal Family and a Government that live in fear of the British media?
Last year, this research found that Rupert Murdoch and his senior executives continued to enjoy unrivalled access to government, meeting with senior ministers and officials over 206 times over a period of 24 months.
Mr Murdoch had five personal meetings with Ministers during 2018-19, and he met Boris Johnson three times in last two years, and twice since Johnson blagged his way to victory in 2019.
Why? For what purpose? No answers and absolutely zero accountability - so you are left to find the answers for yourself, because they’re sure as hell not going to grass themselves up.
I wonder how many people realised Mr Murdoch was alleged to have told Theresa May she would end up getting a bad press unless she gave his personal friend, Michael Gove, a senior government position?
“A man wearing a dustbin on his head received more votes at the last election than Rupert Murdoch. The extraordinary political access he and his employees enjoy at the highest levels of Government is a threat to the integrity of our democracy.”
That’s the truth of it folks.
To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
All those experiments have a bad ending.
I’ll leave the nearly-final words today to a chap named Tony Benn. In his eloquent farewell speech in the House of Commons he said -
In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”
“If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system”.
Rachael x
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, if you want to chip in towards improving my ongoing campaign, and it would cause you *no hardship*, you can do so here:
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