I voted libdem, and think that now they have been given the opportunity, Clegg et al are making a fair go of it. They said they were going to change the way Britain was governed and I remember feeling as happy after the end of the speeches in the garden of No10 as I had been on the morning that Tony Blair finally put the Tories out of office.
However what I've noticed more and more as this last year wore on is that it is the media that paints what the various political machinations are. It is the reporters on the today programme, the political editors on the evening news and the scare mongerers of the press that can't believe that things might have changed. "surely they can't mean they are in partnership, that of course it's all labours fault, look at all the broken promises they have on all sides. The media are today's myth makers. They are the ones who need the spin to make their papers sell and viewers watch.
(or, tragically they could be right about all the political posturing)
I would argue that you can't replace the system of governance we have. What we need to do is replace the media establishment that perpetuates the story that politicians can't be trusted. Those that go into politics to serve their own ends are few in this country. I bet even Thatcher thought her vision was a good one. It's the game playing, the short term view taking, avoiding the baited questions of the media and not being blunt about who is not being fair or not pulling their weight or being obstructive because of their selfishness that finally seem to break most of any vision of fairness and justice that they may have had. And how do we come to that conclusion of them; because the media tell us that it is so.
We could replace it with a SFS, society for sorting-it-out, or we could just keep face-booking and tweeting and blogging, letting each other know, spreading what we know to be true, being more in touch with each other. We might still need Wiki leaks, but not if we all tell the truth.
