Categories: uncategorized
Date: 04 September 2006 16:50:17
Pre-rant bit:
Yay, you are more than welcome to comeover for a visit. We'd be only too happy too put you up and show you round. Offer applies to all Ozzie Wibloggers.
Rant:
I told you I'd have a rant lined up.
Near Oldrum is pretty village called Usk. It is a quiet little place, picturesque and attractive. It is also home to an open prison.
On its own that's not too depressing is it. I mean you have o put these places somewhere. You presume that, as these are minimum security places, then its low grade prisoners that stay there. Well that's what people believed until a month ago.
On 28th July 2 men escaped amd were on the run for a few days before being arrested. They just happened to be sex offenders, both of whom were imprisoned for life. It then turned out that another sex offender had escaped 2 years earlier. In total 35 people have walked out over the last 5 years.
This was uproar. People felt that their families were threatened by such people being held in their community. They wanted to know why such people were allowed in a place so close to families and children. Why was there no real security? Why were such people allowed in such a minimum security environment?
This all caused uproar in the local and national newspaper. The fact that we only discovered later that 35 people had escaped, without the public's knowledge, just made things worse.
The local officials wrote to the Home Office requesting a meeting with the Minister responsible for Prisons. They were told that there was no point in a minister, or other government official, meeting them. Nothing constructive would come out of the meeting and the government felt no requirement to listen to the local officials.
There was I thinking that we lived in a democracy. Our elected leaders are supposed to be answerable to the electorate, in who's name they rule. Yet, just like other 2-3 term government, our present leaders show that arrogance towards people that shows how out of touch they are with the public. We saw it with Mrs Thatcher and now Tony & his cronies are going the same way.
Personally I'm only too happy. I never liked him, or his party, but feel that politicians should nor be surprised that the voters no longer feel engaged in politics. They won't listen because they know better. How do the know this? Because that's what they tell each other and hear from their politically appointed underlings. They have forgotten what democracy means.
I believe that it is time that we made it impossible for a PM to serve 3 terms. They should stay for 2 and leave. In my life I've learnt that governments, of all parties, lose focus the longer they are in power. They run out of vision and ideas. What they planned to do is lost, mainly in political infighting.
Maybe its time to let the people take back the democratic process. If only the electorate could focus itself long enough to do something. Maybe we would then see some real democratic and responsible governance. Let's outlaw political parties and let elected representatives fulfill the desires of their local electorate.