Our problem with control

All these protests in Egypt and even closer to home have got me thinking. We don’t like control do we. It doesn’t matter who the individual or entity is, we just simply hate anything controlling us. I suppose we all want our say and don’t want to be mindless puppets for our governments to control. But if we all take a step back for a moment, we’d realise that we need control to function.

Now before I go any further, I would like to say I am not criticising the people in Egypt making their point heard against Mubarak. They are fully justified and I am glad that they have finally today got what they were asking for. I was going to try and sound Mubarak’s side of the argument, although when I searched Google for ‘good things President Mubarak did) I found nothing, so I think they’re protest has been pretty justified!

Likewise I am not arguing against people in our country protesting against cuts. I strongly believe that our government have gone too far and I worry that I wont be able to find a toilet, library or even forest I can visit soon at this rate.

But what does annoy me is when people say of the people in charge ‘they don’t know what they’re doing’ or ‘they’re doing this to screw us’. Believe it or not, the powers at the top in a democracy (dictatorships are obviously a very different story) do want to run the country for the good of it’s people. You may not think this and believe that politicians lie all the time (and to be fair they don’t have a good track record) but most of the time, the reason they don’t keep their promises is because running the country is bloody hard!

And even if you don’t think that’s true, then think about what politicians want. They want to be in power and at the present time, in a democracy, the only way they can do that is with votes from the public (or by siding with the biggest party in the case of the Lib Dems!).

But rather than see this side, we always want to rage against those in charge.

A good example of the rage against control would be the journalist Johann Hari. Now Johann made some very good points when he was on ’10 O’Clock Live’ last night about the ‘Big Society con’, but he continued further than this and went as far as to say he thought Tony Blair should be in prison and Gordon Brown was an utter disgrace to his country. Now both of these former leaders made mistakes, there’s no doubt about that, but I found Johann’s comments to be nothing more than a simple attempt to blame someone.

And this is the thing, our leaders become scapegoats for everything that goes wrong in the country. And perhaps they should, they are after all the ones running the country. Maybe we should burn effigies of them every time something goes wrong, maybe we should destroy their offices and throw fire extinguishers from a roof.

Or maybe we should realise that it’s far too easy to criticise and a whole lot more difficult to do their job. I’d like to see how Johann Hari and many other journo’s who constantly criticise the government would handle running an entire country and keeping everyone happy. Not so easy.

The debate on 10 O’Clock Live’ raged on and ended with everyone on the panel claiming the government is simply a pile of … I know it’s a satirical show, but comments like this (although quite funny) just annoy me.

So next time you have a problem with control, say why, be constructive, explain the problem and the solution. post on a forum or blog to make your point *wink wink*! Perhaps then we can move a bit further on in life instead of just slagging each other off, or perhaps we’re doomed to fall into a world where all anyone does is just sling increasingly more creative insults at each other. I blame Simon Cowell!

Hmmm, I’ve just realised, I’ve spent the last 650 words defending the likes of Cameron and Clegg, what is wrong with me!