MPs - taking the mickey.

Wow, who would have believed it.Nadine Dorries is back in the Tory party. Are they mad? She put two fingers up at here constituents and waltzed off to become famous without any warning. Even her mother complained she wasn't fit to be an MP, I believe. This typifies MPs believing themselves to be more pop star than representative of the people. With David Cameron as a role model, appearing on David letterman's chat shows tying to emulate his hero Boris Johnson (you failed by the way David) I suppose the party had no choice.

All MPs and all parties are letting us down and this is yet another example of government in shambles.

Stupid Politicians - Complacency is Destroying the UK.

For some time now I have struggled to put my finger on what it is that I am dissatisfied with about politics and politicians. Finally I have had a Eureka moment and it came listening to the Deputy Leader Simon Hughes, commenting about lib democrat performance on the May 2013 council elections.

“We are not complacent,” he declared, with the smugness of the Cheshire Cat.

How can one man be so utterly wrong? In one simple statement he has identified the crux of the woes of the last 10 years of government. What is sad is that he and other politicians are oblivious to the many problems and their potential solutions. They accept too much as the norm rather than questioning them and they appear utterly incapable of understanding the anger in the public ranks.

Blithely Mr Hughes explained his party’s council election failure as the usual mid-term tactical vote by the dissatisfied public. He seemed to roll his eyes as he explained this down turn – it always happens and is inevitable was his message. That is why his party was unpopular. He didn’t question why the voters are always frustrated mid-term. He saw this as a natural occurrence. Again – how wrong can he be? The reason for the mid term dislike of government is that the public is fed up with failed policies. The fact that MPs accept the mid-term drop in popularity reflects how complacent they have become. They need to understand the sheer frustration amongst the voters and our key message that they are failing us. His complacency doesn’t even let him see this. By the time government does, they will no doubt commission various contradictory reports, yards long and full of blether – when the answer is so simple. You, the politicians are failing us, the people.

Mr Hughes and all other MPs are dreadfully complacent in another key area and again they don’t even realise it. Fifty percent of the public are turned off from voting? Why? Because no matter whom you vote for you end up with the same mess. Fundamentally, politicians are failing us i.e. one government is as bad as another. Perhaps it is how politicians are trained. After all does endless debate actually achieve anything? It seems that years go by before comprehension dawns and then years go by before policy actually changes. Perhaps we need folk who understand business and the running of things, rather than people trained in politics.

An area that makes me very angry is the obvious complacency stopping the politicians from identifying the key issue behind the financial crisis. Complacency by successive governments has allowed business to simply stop paying taxes over many, many years. Initially, this probably started small with business testing the water, hiding some profit here, other profit there. Government should have nipped this in the bud 10 years ago when it first started. Their complacency must have seen like a windfall to many business leaders. Wow, we no longer have to pay taxes.

The first thing business did was award the Chief Executives with startling pay rises. Who can blame business; after all it was probably a Chief Executive who identified these massive savings in money. Bonuses came next; all at the expense of taxes, leaving a massive black hole for the public to fill. Finally business realised that government wasn’t interested in taxes at all. Many haven’t paid taxes for 7 years! It has become the norm and business is entrenched in avoiding taxes.

Tax avoidance has now grown to a staggering thirty billion pounds a year; a massive proportion of the national debt, especially when considering the years that this has not been paid. Rich people, probably seeing the success of business, followed suit and they avoid paying five billion pounds a year. Complacent government has looked on – and done nothing, allowing this practise to grow over the last ten years. If there is a financial crisis – this is it. Government – look no further and stop hounding the public.

In another area, for years, the government has expounded the virtues of competition then Ms sink back into a mire of complacency as the country tries to come to terms with yet another crazy dictate. Is competition beneficial to the public purse? Look at the water industry as an example. In the last decade in England water bills have risen by 68%. In Scotland, where there is no competition, they have only risen by 24%. That doesn’t seem like competition is working.

In another example, we have seen hundreds of building projects, won by the cheapest bid, suddenly delayed and costs escalate to double and triple the original bid. The parliament building in Edinburgh and the trams in the same city are wonderful examples of competition failing. The cleanliness of the hospitals is another example. Then there are companies winning bids and then walking away with a fortune after leaving the company/business in the mire – Southern Cross old people’s homes’ fiasco.  Government watches this shambles with utter complacency, believing it is all going swimmingly well, while roads now costs millions of pounds per mile to fix and years of delays. Look at the M25 junction 5 with a completion date of July 2014. Is competition working? No one believes it is and yet government are asleep to the problems they have created and we the public suffer as Fat Cats get wealthy on the sheer and utter waste of public money.

Often government policy and activity take years to realise and correct. For more than 10 years the public and media have known that GCSEs have been dumbed down and only recently has the government woken up and finally admitted this. Another example is whether schools can sell playing fields and the benefit (or not) of competing on the playing field ... years of oscillating from one view point to the next when common sense would dictate a sensible route forward. Complacency by government, as schools try to follow one failed policy after another only to have them changed in the blink of a sleepy eye.

The utter complacency by MPs when GPs negotiated their own pay deal, when their pay leaped to a staggering two hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year and they refused to do any more night calls, landing the country with a massive bill to pay locums, many under qualified.

The complacency of government after Germany has warned us about the forthcoming Rumanian influx and the despoiling and crime in the areas they inhabit.

The list seems endless. I have barely scratched the surface. What can we do though? I firmly believe that politicians need a serious wake up call. The people and press need to present the damming findings above to government and they should be called to account for their failings. Send this essay far and wide, send it to your MP and demand an explanation, copy it on Facebook, Twitter and any other media as you can. Spread the message far and wide and help the people to realise why the country is in crisis. It is not the fault of the public, but years of government complacency. Perhaps voting for UKIP en mass as a protest is an answer. Politicians have failed; let’s vote for MPs with experience in work and industry rather than wannabe popstar-MPs like Nadine Dorries, from I’m-a-celebrity-get-me-out-of-here fame, and David Cameron following in her footsteps by appearing on US chat shows. The rot is clearly from the top down.

Let’s re-examine government policy. As an example of lack of policy – look at our overcrowded roads. Why not ask hauliers to take a break in rush hour? Why not speak to motorway services and ask them for a 50% discount for lorry drivers in the rush hour. Surely there are many policies that could work that haven’t even been explored or thought of, all because our MPs are devoid of ideas and accept too much as the norm. Complacency is killing our once proud country. Don’t be complacent yourself and take action as suggested above. Now.