swin_lad, being a former politician, I find your comment deeply offensive, deranged and disturbing. The very vast majority of politicians are, in fact, hard-working, earnest, decent and honest people with ideals, ideas and compassion, but, unfortunately the, often bizarre and overwhelming media attention skews the picture; distorting it to an unrecognizable degree. Democracy is essentially the art of making the best possible compromises. But if people are going to demand the unconditional surrender of their opponents to pursue a purely ideological policy, then the democracy is in danger. Also, today's forced tempo, does not allow patience and perseverance to rule the behavior of the people. Instead it's Instant, Quick-Mart-like results that are expected;results that a functioning democracy cannot, and should not be able to deliver!
But, yes, it is the privilege for a kid in the Western, industrialized, rich world to deride what other people, such as the brave insurgents in Syria are shedding their blood for!
I, for my part, for all the shortcomings in a representative system, am glad and proud of having been a political activist/politician.
Sorry mate, I didn't mean to cause any offense and I am sincerely apologetic.
I think the main thing for me is the fact that someone I knew, Cpt Daniel Reed was killed by an IED whilst trying to defuse it. This was due to the fact that the Government didn't allow enough money to supply a good number of EOD robots. What I failed to keep in mind is that, to be honest the UK's political system uses the politicians as face for what goes on behind closed doors by Diplomats and Civil Servants. This is why I refuse to vote during general elections due to the fact that the politician might make some decisions but most of what they put forward (ie Budgets) are written up by people behind closed doors. It is of my opinion (and only my opinion) that we need to support our nations interests internationally and internally. If we were to support our own business we would infact have assisted getting us out of recession. I wrote about this in my recent economics paper I wrote for A-Level Business. I made the point that British business is not being supported very well by politicians within our nation (although as much as it pains me to say it I do really like some of our PMs recent announcements). I therefore support any politician who is pursing British first and foremost and although I do like our Special Relationship with the Yanks I think we are doing loads for them without getting enough back ourselves.
Kind Regards
Nick