The Future Is Not Ours, Unless We Act Soon

The future is not ours, unless we act soon

The following is claimed to be from a letter, written by an official in the London metropolitan police.

-”though what the perpetrator has done may not be against the law, their reasons for doing it are. This means it may be possible to charge them with an offence.

This is a frightening concept. A police official decides you were thinking of committing a crime and so you can be charged with that crime. How do you prove that you were not thinking this way? No longer an offence only when you commit a crime but it is an offence to consider doing so.

We all need to be aware that there are officials, legal bureaucrats, with power over us, who think like this. The whole of democratic governance, by the people, for the people; is undermined by thoughts such as that expressed. In every “free” nation, where honest elections are held to determine who governs, there are unnamed and unelected officials who manage the running of the nation. They are supposed to be the people who ensure that whatever the elected politicians promised the electorate, is achieved. Some are believers in democracy and will try to do their best to ensure the expressed “will of the people” is carried out, but many have such self belief that they are sure that what ever the mandate given to an elected government, they, the bureaucracy, know better and it is their opinion of what should be done, that they work towards. Even more dangerous are the officials who have mind sets similar to the person who wrote the opening line. These people consider the majority of the population to be some sort of amorphous mass that has to be controlled and restricted, they consider that their own circle of elite contacts are a separate body, divorced from the general populace and in control of that populace. They are insulated from the effects of their own edicts and decisions, for example; in the UK the senior officials who directed government policy on pensions and pensionable age, caused the government, and succeeding governments, to hold back the increasing of levels of state pensions and increase the starting age when a pension could be claimed. These same officials have a very different pension arrangement from that which they have advocated for the rest of us.

This change in the real function of the administrative bureaucracy has been gradual. Initially they were servants of the people, directed by elected politicians to get democratically made decisions enacted. Now they are the controllers of the people, no longer the servants of the people. They wield power by stealth. Any politician who has the intellect and the strength of purpose to try an change this situation, will soon find that they are being undermined. Leaks to the press of wrongful behaviour are a favourite weapon. However strongly these suggestions are denied it lessons the creditability of the politician. Then there is the divide and conquer ploy, where suggestions of disagreement between government ministers are allowed to be whispered about and even if they do not result in political discord, they have distracted the ministers concerned from their efforts to control the officials. The network of these officials allows them to influence the choice of ministers, when the President or the Prime minister wishes to appoint a senior governing politician, they can be subverted by unsubstantiated advise from the officials, who do not want a holder of strong opinion, in charge of their department. The American system where a new president forms a new administration, is not immune from this manipulation since the political appointees still have the work with the legal staff and the non appointed people who enact the presidential decrees. The president may appoint the national security advisor but this person has to work though the existing hierarchy of such organisations as the CIA, the FBI and the department for homeland security, etc. The Military is still staffed by the same generals. The supreme court still has the same existing judges. The British system is even more controlled by the “civil servants” since the same staff serve the new government, even when a total change of political direction is indicated. The finances of the nation are still in the same hands regardless of who is nominally directing policy.

How can we prevent the elites from actually governing us, in defiance of democracy? There are a few options; choose better elected representatives, people with the intellectual capacity and the strength to overcome their “advisers,” This will mean changes to the political party structure since the existing elites are quite capable of influencing who is chosen as a candidate. Another possibility is reducing the power of the central government and devolving real power to much smaller and more local units of government. The selection and advancement of the senior bureaucrats must also be changed; at the moment they are selected and promoted by their own peers, their own cosy club which ensures only those supporting their control system get positions of power. They advertise vacant positions in ways that ensure that only like minded people become aware of the opportunity and then they use selection processes to make certain the appointed person will fit in with their arrangements. The law should be that all government vacancies are advertised on all social media outlets and that the selection and appointment, is taken out of the control of existing officials. Advancement within the administrative system, should also be taken out of the control of existing elitists.