Every event has a cause, and every sequence creates a consequence. Since 1979 the neoliberals in government have waged war against the state. Thatcher dedicated her efforts to 'rolling back the state' and reducing the influence and the role of the 'dead hand of the state'. It has become a mantra that the state is a bad thing, that it is self-evident that the private sector is superior to the state in every aspect of economic life. If anyone like me advocates an active and interventionist state they are looked on as, as best, eccentric, at worst a lunatic.
The entire South of England and large parts of Wales are flooded and in desperate need of help and relief, and what is the government and the state doing, nothing! When the chickens come home to roost and those poor people look to the state for help it is not there any more, it has been neutered, and has been neutered for ideological and political reasons. The people of Somerset, Cornwall and the Thames Valley have been left completely to their own devices. The only people doing anything for these people are volunteers and whatever emergency service is available at the local level. On Channel Four news, the only people who they could identify actively offering outside help in the Somerset area was a Sikh charity from London who came down to help them. John Snow interviewed residents from a flooded village right under the Heathrow Airport flight path, a mere 30 miles from the centre of London, and they had no outside help whatever, despite the lies of their local Tory MP.
The reality is that the Thatcherites have been spectaculary successful and the state no longer has the manpower, the finance, nor the strategic planning available to adequately cope with any form of national emergency. The government has been shown to be hopelessly out of touch and without a clue what to do to tackle this problem. The Chief of the Environment Agency could not even tell Channel Four news who was responsible for coordinating the emergency services in such an event. He thought is was either the local Chief Constable or his Deputy, but when pressed he did not know. This is not me propagandising, this is all from the reports on the national news.
As I keep telling you, the dominant ideology in this country is simply wrong and this is being highlighted more and more with every passing day. However, the people who are suffering worse from this catastrophe are the same people who have persistently voted for this neoliberalism year after year. This situation is the result of their choices at the ballot box, and I have no confidence that they will be any different in the future. All the evidence points to them even switching to UKIP in the near future, so, they will go from one set of incompetent nutters to an even more extreme form of incompetent nutters. The only thing that will begin to rectify this disaster is state spending and that is one thing they will not vote for. Scotland must not replicate this insanity, you have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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