Wiretap

1 Mar 2010

It is sooo tempting to use this word as an excuse to go on at great length about how much I love The Wire. I’m not going to do that. Nor am I going to talk about a friend of mine who has accused me of “stealing her life” by lending her the DVD Box Sets. I am actually a soul-sucking fiend, but it’s not my fault in this case, guv.

Like Denethor’s palantir, it’s very hard to make this word look at anything else, but it did eventually remind me of something other than Jimmy McNulty.

Someone was asking – in a polite, rant free way – if I believed they could ever vote Labour again because of the proposed law blocking internet access to anyone accused of downloading illegal material. And despite my general position, I thought it quite a good question.

I’ve had similar thoughts. New Labour – despite huge advances in some kinds of “no choice” social liberalism (people are gay, people are women, people are black - it’s just the way it is) – have been depressingly bound by Daily Mail style moralism or paranoid overreaction when it comes to anything else (you chose drugs, you bad boy, off to jail you go; well, you did have to option *not* to take a photograph of that building, give me that camera; ooh, you’re downloading an illegal film? We’ll shoot your dog).

This upsets me. I don’t like this shit. It’s lowest common-denominator, run-away from the press stuff. There was a brilliant short film on Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe a couple of weeks ago that alluded to the reforming zeal of Roy Jenkins, (Newswipe) that looked at how we got to the stage where everyone jumps to the tune of the press – watch it, it’s sobering.

But we have 2.5 party politics in the UK, and until we have a more responsive electoral system (i.e. one in which you can pretend that you’re voting for a party that matches more of your personal inclinations, until they win and get into bed with the Bugger Animals to Death on Tuesdays Party and you kill yourself in despair* ) we have to choose from a menu of shit. If we ruled out voting for parties because of one or two policies we didn’t like, we’d be utterly disenfranchised.

So the fact that New Labour want to wiretap me just to make sure I’m not saying anything mean about Ed Milliband’s hair has to be put in a broader context. For example (to scratch the surface):

Labour Cons (LC)

Con Cons (CC)

(LC) John Hutton looks like Gollum

(CC) Michael Gove looks like Smeagol

(LC) They want to watch you to make sure you don’t want to kill everyone

(CC) They haven’t promised to stop watching you, and they’ll probably have one hand down their pants while they do

(LC) Labour have barely changed the debate on drugs in 13 years, but did give us 24 drinking.

(CC) The Tories think 24 hour drinking is a terrible evil, but won’t promise to reverse it because they know we don’t. Until we’re not looking.

(LC) Labour gave Murdoch free reign to dominate pay-TV and newspapers.

(CC) The Tories will destroy the BBC so that Rupert Murdoch can become 7% richer and our TV and radio will go to shit.

(LC) Labour fucked the economy by giving the bankers too much freedom so that they could use the money to fund public services

(CC) The Tories *are* the bankers and would have used the money to make themselves richer

(LC) The 10p Tax debacle

(CC) Ashcroft

(not very easy to do tables in this format!)

Put like that, you just want to stick your head under a pillow and hope that someone quietly shoots you through it.

That’s plenty of reason not to vote for either of them. But if I actually knew what the 0.5 Party Liberal Democrats’ policies were yet I’m pretty sure I could list six reasons why they couldn’t be stomached either. And of course you *can* vote for someone else. But the problem is that you won’t *get* anyone else, so I fear that by voting for someone else you might as well draw a rude picture on your ballot paper and write “fuck you all” in green marker pen. It will send a message, but no-one will take it very seriously.

If, unlike me, you’re not a tribal voter, I can only suggest one thing. Get all the manifestos before the election. Actually read them. Select what you think are the 40 most prominent policies. Grade them from -3 to +3 on what you think of each one. Add up the scores. Don’t score on personalities. Do factor into your scoring whether you trust the parties to deliver each manifesto pledge. Vote for the winner.

See what happens.

Then pick the policy you hated most from either party, and join a pressure group to oppose it.