Inviting catastrophe

Democracy is the great bulwark against unaccountable private interests. Roll back the state and you dilute democratic accountability until finally there is nothing of significance to vote about or influence.

Decisions regarding our lives - social, economic, political - are taken by people outside democratic reach. There is no peaceful redress.

Over the last two to three years the state has bailed out the biggest private sector failure since the Depression.

But is the response to reform the private sector? No the response is to roll back and dismantle the private sector. This is to invite catastrophe.

For the idealogues of the Coalition the job of government is not to govern but to outsource the task to others, effectively, privatisation.

Such abandonment of democratic accountability and responsibility should come as no surprise. Even before the Coalition was cemented, both parties had torn up the manifestos their MPs had just been elected on.

Democracy is not a priority as Business Secretary Vince Cable’s recent remarks testify.

This brings us neatly to Prime Minister David Cameron’s Big Society. Millions of words have been spoken about it, but through the mass of verbiage one thing is terribly clear; it’s a very exclusive society.

The big idea is “workers’ co-operatives” which sounds terribly Communistic except you will search in vain for any mention of such co-operatives running banks and supermarkets, utilities and transport, big pharmaceuticals, big tobacco and big booze, and nothing - absolutely nothing - about co-operatives running the big landed estates.

Yes, the Big Society is exclusive, very exclusive. It excludes us.

The students are leading the revolt. Watch this space!

STEPHEN JACKSON

Second Avenue

Bexhill-on-Sea