Dear Folks ….
… and right now I mean you guys who diligently interact with me on the Soapbox. But I’d like to include all of you also who have left great comments on “Brian Talks“ on my new Video Channel, and my Twitter buddies, who are becoming pretty vociferous !
Although it’s 3am, and I need to recharge, I had to make a start on responding tonight. The comments you’ve given me in your feedback messages on COMMON DECENCY are amazingly inspiring. Thanks so much. There is much here that will inform the journey I feel I have to make, and with your support I feel I can make it – I feel WE can make it. It’s a journey a lot of people would probably call Quixotic, or just plain naive daydreaming. But for some reason I feel a strange confidence – it’s almost as if I can see a plan unfolding in front of me – see the future rising up in the mists.
Now ! All I did was throw a few hints out on “Brian Talks“ – in preparation for launching this idea – but it’s made a big splash a lot quicker than I dared to expect.
OK. Some of you have said, quite rightly, that I need to get a lot more specific about what I mean by Common Decency. This I will do, and we’ll be ready to press this button pretty soon. I need the web site and the machinery that goes with it to be ready before I start asking people to do things. But I can tell you now that what I’m shooting for is a completely reformed House of Commons. A house in which the MPs vote purely according to their conscience and the will of their constituents. You might say, “Isn’t that what happens already ?” Well, having spent the last two or three years in and out of those buildings, lobbying and making friends, I’d say definitively … on the whole, NO. Are you shocked ? There are a bunch of reasons why this is so, which I’d like to discuss later … and I believe those reasons are at the centre of the dark depressing hole which our supposed democracy has slid into. The House of Lords is another story, but I believe that will be sortable if we get the Commons right.
And out here, in the land of ‘ordinary’ people, how many times do I hear “I hate the way politicians behave – I don’t know WHO I could vote for this time. I want things to change, but … my vote won’t make any difference – so I probably won’t bother.”
I hear it constantly – and that’s the way I felt, too, until recently. I now believe that, ironically probably because of the very mess the major parties have got us into over the last 25 years or so, the opportunity is now there for the common man to seize the opportunity to sweep it all away. By coming together to form a community united by a simple concept: COMMON DECENCY. And this is how we will end the intolerable unfairness which riddles our country. This is not a new political party – it’s a badge – a kitemark – a pledge.
I believe there ARE good people currently in Parliament, of all political colours, MPs that deserve to be returned in the next election. But there also many people in there dedicated to hanging on to old unfairnesses, powered by selfishness and vested interests, and this element is what needs to be thrown out with the dirty washing. We need an assembly of altruistic, morally decent, non-career-minded individuals who will not be influenced by personal gain or the colour of their tie as they approach the ballot box.
Big words ? Impossible dreams ? Maybe … but in the next few weeks I want to put all the cards I have on the table, and you can decide.
Here’s to a new beginning in 2015.
Bri
Wanna be a revolutionary ? Want further reading? My recommendation ? Whether you like him or not, read Russell Brand, and watch his Trews vids. Read Owen Jones. Read George Montbiot. Read Lesley Docksey. Read And look at that Charlie Brooker review about deliberately induced confusion that I tweeted today. Check out Marcus Chown’s tweets. And join me on … Brian Talks.
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