Elections and the Big Mouths

I was VERY interested by the Labour manifesto. I read through it, taking in as much as possible and then, believing myself to be mistaken, I did a search for anything related to transpeople and came up with nothing. There were two allusions to preventing homophobia but, man alive. How does this, to the untrained eye, weigh up against the Lib Dem and Conservative manifestos? Well, the Lib Dems, being the only ones to mention transpeople, an actual plan to stop product testing on animals and oppose the expansion of Heathrow, they have my vote, for want of a more radical alternative. The Conservatives made a lot of noise about the environment, managing to mention specific issues that had come up in neither the Lib Dem or Labour manifesto - but they apparently have absolutely no interest in any type of equality for queer or transpeople, since we didn't get a mention in the whole damn thing.

Literally anyone who has done any type of sociology can see through the way these are written. Don't put any type of faith in a promise to "prevent" or "further" or "support" or "promote" when it isn't followed up with an actual plan.

I'm not very political, in terms of governmental structure. I don't really understand the lingo and to be honest, when I look at Nick and Gordon and David all neatly lined up, with their ties, I see three rich, white, straight men, christian with the exception of Nick Clegg, an atheist, raising his children to be catholic - hmmm. I took geography instead of modern studies and learnt about how the shape of a building can reduce crime rates and about the vicious cycle of the spread of AIDS in Africa. I only vaguely know what a seat is and how it works and often I see the government in a sort of BNP/not-BNP binary, because I know for sure that I don't want it to be the law that everyone must own a gun and join the military for a year and I'd be papped out the country anyway for not being quite white.

However, being as it is that I am a person, a U.K. citizen, fairly intelligent and with a valid opinion and the option to vote, how I view the three most popular parties is quite relevant. If I'm going to vote for them, they're going to have to represent my needs in some way and take into account all the important minorities that make up a large chunk of the British population. Moreover, something I really don't enjoy is being pwned by political smartarses who talk purposely in terms that they know for sure I won't understand and in the tone of making the assumption that I understand it and I might as well bend over and enjoy a good political shafting whilst I cry bitter, salty tears about the sheer lack of humanity in the whole system of competitive politics.

And that really is the thing in the manifestos I've been reading - were they written by a robot? Some kind of media expert robot, that knows how to sound better than it is to those who haven't had the benefit of being taught about the tricks used to fool the general population? Just throw together the last linguistic ingredients you found at the back of the cupboard and make a yummy-looking word-pie, the kind that you scoff and then end up in the night, on the toilet, feeling like someone plunged a knife in your gut. There is nothing human about these manifestos. It's the mocking chat before a fight. Like any other business, it all seems to me like a game of shoogling the little people around a map and assigning them to red, blue or yellow.

This is the excerpt from the Labour manifesto that interests me and the most. Oh, where to begin dissecting this.

"We have banned foxhunting and animal testing for cosmetics and tobacco, and we will bring forward further animal welfare measures. We will campaign internationally to end illegal trading in ivory and to protect species such as polar bears, seals and bluefin tuna, as well as for an EU-wide ban on illegally logged timber, banning it domestically if this does not succeed."

Now, I wrote to Tom Harris when the animal welfare laws were being overhauled, imploring him to support the least cruel routes possible and he wrote back to me in full support of such ridiculous practises as tail docking and the use of snares. Nice. So what we've got is one big, fat, mouthy policy to "further animal welfare measures" which doesn't permeate the entire party. When it came down to it and Mr Harris exercised his power, he voted against better animal welfare. The thing of it is, I focus on this section because it interests me. But there's no evidence that this incongruity isn't a pattern across the board. We need to know what we're voting for.

Something that has been particularly annoying me about the Labour campaign is this habit they've developed of pointing to everything they've done in the past, boasting about how brilliant they are, instead of looking to the future. "We have banned foxhunting and animal testing for cosmetics and tobacco." Foxhunting was banned six years ago and animal testing for cosmetics was banned no less than TWELVE years ago, and only after some quite extreme activism. Labour didn't sit up and think this a good idea for themselves, they reacted to the severe pressure of animal rights activists and are now using it as a trump card.

"...we will bring forward further animal welfare measures." Oh, I'm convinced. Nice use of detail there. It's convenient that any number of laws could be skewed as an "animal welfare measure." You could give chickens a marginally larger cage or use one less rabbit per LD50 test and call it an "animal welfare measure."

It's nice also to say that you will campaign internationally to end the illegal ivory trade, but that's also extremely convenient. We're talking about a trade which is already being fought against so thoroughly by so many different groups, which has already been made globally illegal, but again, Labour rummage around in their pockets for something to pull out and wave around, the easiest passing bandwagon that they could jump on to prove they're concerned about animals.

Ditto the polar bears. Want to help polar bears? Help the environment and maybe we can stop the ice caps melting. Labour support the expansion of Heathrow. Now, I've spoken with the man who glued himself to the prime minister as a form of nonviolent protest relating to climate change. I was advised that the world is seriously hanging in the balance and that the expansion of Heathrow is one of the worst possible things that can be done to the environment - and from someone doing his masters researching the effects airports have on climate change, I'm inclined to pay attention.

Ditto the tuna. Concerned about big, endangered fish? Oh, no, just the ones we eat. And then, to cap it all, to exemplify the absolute, sheer stupidity of whoever bothered to try and include animals in this manifesto - timbbbeeeeerrrrr! Again a ban is proposed on something which is already illegal. I'd prefer to hear "we will enforce the system whereby illegal timber is prevented from being sold in the U.K." or "we will regulate the origins of all timber entering the U.K., thereby ensuring no illegal timber is sold." But what irritates me more so than anything else is the idea that elephants, polar bears, seals and tuna have anything at all to do with timber.

Like with so many other important issues, they touch on a few of the more obvious points, play a few cards, wiggle their shoulders intimidatingly and then relate nonhuman animals... to timber. Oh dear.

In the words of the aforementioned activist, "we are not going to wait around for politicians to catch up."

I just wish I was brave enough to sit atop the Parliament to protest climate change.