A comment from Lola on Guido Fawkes' blog that caught my eye

If it is bad form to publish a comment from another blog, then I apologise and I will remove this. I just read this and it struck me as probbaly being true for a lot of people who were swept up in the "Things can only get better" tide in 1997 - I was not one of them.


"Lola said...
Like, I suspect, many people in 1997 I looked at the political alternatives offered and was not impressed. On one side you had a Tory outfit too long in the line and bereft of energy and good people in authority needing time to regroup. On the other side you had a fresh looking 'reformed' labour party led by someone dripping charisma. (I ignored the lib dems as any sane person should - at least in their current guise.) And I thought long. My decision to go with the Tories was based on a complete disbelief that any Labour party ever in all of time has ever been able to run the economy successfully. By nature they are tax and spenders. They just cannot help it.

So I voted accordingly. For the least worst option.

And I sat back and waited, and waited and watched as New labour morphed ever so not slowly into the flawed old ways of tax and spend. I saw that they had lucked into power at the most proptious time possible. The public finances in very good shape the economy strong, with a final international victory over Socialism. I watched as, as is usual under Labour, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. I watched as inflation stormed ever higher (house price inflation is just that, inflation), public spending and borrowing began to run out of control and taxes became eye watering, and visited entirely on those in the middle.

And I knew I had been right. And I am deeply ashamed of being so.

I am ashamed that we have yet again allowed ourselves to be ruled by useless profligate clowns and ashamed that we have yet again squandered capital on overhead and ashamed that we have let down so many public sector workers (who are frequently Good Blokes) by bad leadership and unsustainable fiscal management.

It is a tragedy that we will have to yet again go through a serious amount of financial pain all because we elected such a shower of incompetents into power.

It's not their fault that they are in power, it is ours. We should be thoroughly contrite that we have been so arrogant to assume that we have the divine right to all sorts of prosperity, genuinely bought at the cost to others.

And that is the final conundrum that confounds socialists. How come socialism, which seems to reside in 'fairness', always does the opposite and increases 'unfairness'? I know why. It is obvoious why. So why do they keep doing it time after time after time?

End of rant."