The concept of reality in philosophy clashes with the concept of reality in psychiatry. Immanuel Kant proposed that:
“Everything intuited or perceived in space and time, and therefore all objects of a possible experience, are nothing but phenomenal appearances, that is, mere representations [and] have no independent, self-subsistent existence apart from our thoughts”.
Telling this to someone with paranoid schizophrenia would justify their misconceived perceptions as to what reality is. It means that reality is the figment of the individual, where with schizophrenics like me, and the Liberal Democrats, one cannot accept this for the benefit of yourself and society at large. For the delusional, reality can ONLY be the figment of the masses.
The Liberal Democrats alone believe that they have been a force in government. The Tories view them as the sort of itch you get between your butt cheeks on the motorway with no hope of scratching it for 15 long miles in rush hour. Those who voted for them prior to the Coalition have by and large watched as a Tory – lite government has pushed through measures such as planning restrictions on wind farms and tax breaks for fracking. Speaking to someone who is a WPBC councillor, she believes that welfare reform should be done in a nicer way. I’m not sure the Tories would stretch their budget to a box of tissues for evicting a Bedroom Tax victim somehow…
I joined, and even ran for election as a Liberal Democrat in the belief that they were the milk in the black Tory coffee that governs. Pure Tory government would give me the shits, or so I believed. After coming 4th behind the Greens in the WPBC Borough elections in 2012 I was elected to the South Dorset Lib Dem Executive.
At the same time, IDS bungled welfare reform. I am due a pay cut of around £15000 annually due to his rabid attack on disabled working scroungers, and fought hard with my conscience for a year as to why the hell I was supporting the party? The good members who still have consciences believe that they want to remain in the shadows for the civil war that breaks out in 2015. Many are closet Tories who believe that bankers should have tax cuts to keep them here, while the poor indeed are workshy and should be given a kick up the bum to get nonexistent jobs in the jobless recovery.
Come the County elections this year I was told not to criticise the weak willed power junkies in Westminster while helping fight to keep Ian Bruce out of County Hall. In the event that was simple enough – I just asked if voters wanted Ian Bruce in or someone who gave a monkey’s cuss about his constituents? No wonder he lost…
My issue was in talking to disaffected former Lib Dem voters. Lib Dems are not Tories, no matter what some would have you believe. Being told not to say that the power hungry slime in Downing Street and Whitehall are apologies for human beings? That there ARE people in the party who give a tinker’s cuss for the welfare of those who cannot help themselves in society? I wasn’t allowed to admit it.
I have been told time and again within the party not to ruffle feathers. Not to argue with anyone at the door. Giving tissues to welfare reform victims again. It is a nice party. By being nice within government they have had some nice policies accepted – where Tory policy with balls has got through. That is to say, only Lib Dem policy without gonads has got through. The party had the opportunity to make the Tories’ lives a bloody misery in government but I see no puce faces except when said Tory has drunk too much port at a cocktail party.
The Liberal Democrats are by their very name “democrats” which clashes somewhat with the Gagging Law. I am pleased to say that the most powerful Lib Dem in Dorset, Annette Brooke MP, has voted for the law at every stage so far. One would have thought that she would be taking her gloves off to give the odd democratic slap in the Tories’ faces as she heads toward retirement in 2015. No. Democracy applies to the party wherever fairer democracy would get them power. Why let people criticise them in the run up to 2015? OMG! They may lose seats as people like me remind you of their failings in government.
I didn’t leave the party for all that though. I’m nuts after all! I left the Executive after hearing people whinge not about how to raise £20 000 for the next election (they have 1/40th of that in the bank) but what voter monitoring system they should use. This battle went on for over a year, and continues to this day. I walked when once again I saw the EARS vs Connect issue on the agenda and not a whiff of how to get a fighting team together to fight to get that ogre Drax out in 2015. I don’t know why this is? Electoral pact? Or purely that they have completely lost the plot?
The party has lost the plot, totally and utterly. It won’t surprise me if the South Dorset Lib Dems come 5th behind UKIP and the Greens in 2015. Why? They have the delusion that the party has done well in government – a figment of reality held by the membership of one dwindling group of fanatics and that alone.
Richard Shrubb
