Thanks to Wikileaks, the power of the internet and the Guardian, we now have some kind of truth about the war in Afghanistan.

A truth that, if we had ever given it more than a moment’s thought in our busy lives, we probably could have guessed for ourselves.  A truth that says more about the state of British democracy than what goes on behind the stories and lies we are fed about a shabby and ill-conceived military campaign.

The expectation of openness or honesty from our elected politicians – and the secret army of faceless, civil servants and Whitehall mandarins who manipulate them -  clearly still has a long way to go before it becomes a reality, if it ever will.     A considerable amount of wool has been pulled over our eyes by introducing a Freedom of Information Act that is simply window dressing and – despite a policy of Open Government – very little has changed in real terms.

We, or rather the politicians, are just going through the motions.  Paying lip service to the notion of a democratic government which is accountable to the people it is supposed to serve.  Theirs remains a world of lies and deceit, of smoke and mirrors, of spin and outright propaganda: not aimed at a terrorist ‘enemy’, but at the ordinary citizens of Britain and America.

The lack of truth is ‘in the interests of national security’, we are told.   However, national security is unlikely to be compromised by information which is months or even years old, and which is already history.    Nor is anyone suggesting that the armed forces’ detailed strategy against our Taliban foes should be given to the newspapers in advance. There is, in any case, enough reportage and hypothesis on Allied tactics in the broadsheets every week. Any Afghan warlord who cares to stump up two quid at his local newsagent can read it for himself.

The politicans miss the point, as usual.  Why do they think we need to know?

It is because our sons and daughters are being killed and our money is being spent by the billion to fight this questionable cause.   We are entitled to more honesty and transparency from our politicians about the reasons for war and the mistakes they have made in waging it – without having to wait to get it from whistleblowers.

Whether it’s good or bad news, we must have the truth.  Only then can we make proper choices about who to elect and who to sack; about what we are prepared to let them to do in the name of our country and what we are not; about whether we want them to build more schools and hospitals for our society, or go to war.

Just give us the truth and let us – the people – decide, through the ballot box, by referendum, gathering a petition or by whatever other means we have at our disposal in order to make our voice heard.

…but of course, that’s what they are afraid of.

As usual, our so-called democratic leaders deal in death in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘homeland security’ without our proper consent as citizens and without telling us the truth. That’s one issue…

But now we are where we are… when it comes to IEDs killing our young men and women every day, why don’t we just end it one way or the other?

Either pull out and let the Afghans get on with doing what they want to do to each other (probably not feasible), or put enough men and equipment in there to finish the Taliban off once and for all.

This has ‘Vietnam’ written all over it… a long, pointless war which we finally lose and live to regret for generations, creating thousands of dead and maimed young people in the process.

1984 arrives in 2009: the State knows best, not its citizens

The world gone mad: No. 2378…

As if politicians and monarchy weren’t bonkers enough, what are we doing to parents and children these days?

This week a dinner lady at a village primary school was sacked for telling parents she was sorry their daughter had been attacked in the playground.  It turns out that four of the little darlings (boys, of course) had trussed up the poor girl like a turkey and whipped her legs with a skipping rope.  Charming…

Even worse, the school had covered up the incident and then sacked the dinner lady for telling Mum and Dad about it. What?!

Yes, this is a new world in which schools lie to parents about traumatic events affecting their children, and yet the only offence committed is by a person who breaks that official secrecy.  The chief executive of the National Association of Headteachers was asked what he thought the dinner lady should have done:  “…she should have refused to comment, and then followed proper procedures and processes”.      WHAT??!!

Parents are also caught out by these ‘proper procedures and processes’. In London a mother was banned from her 5-year-old’s classroom for politely asking another child to stop continually hitting her son.   Repeated requests to the school had had no effect, but she was evidently breaking the unwritten rule that says that no unauthorised adult – not even a parent – can remonstrate with a child.   WHAT???!!!

In Tyne and Wear, a mother asked a group of bullies to stop attacking her young daughter and was promptly ARRESTED IN FRONT OF HER CHILDREN and held in a cell for five hours.   The bullies had retaliated by falsely claiming that it was she who had attacked them.     Once again, the adult was punished for attempting to uphold the rules of civilised behaviour. Nothing in the system supported her.    Just for talking to the children she had been made a ‘legitimate object of suspicion’.

You couldn’t make all this up.

You should read the full Guardian article on what is happening to our society.

It is truly chilling, yet somehow we can’t seem to stop it happening.

Despite the touchy-feely ‘green tree’ image he’s trying to project, the Eton toff Cameron was never going to change the basic Tory animal from being a sleazy, moneygrabbing, self-seeking con-man.

Citizen readers are no doubt as shocked as we are by this revelation.  Who’da thought it?!   After months of revelations over sleazy upper-class Tory MPs defrauding the taxpayer over their expenses, you’d have been forgiven for assuming that all MPs would be whiter-than-white from now on, albeit with a few brown stains around the edges.

Nevertheless, it seems that well over a fifth of prospective Tory candidates who think they have a good chance of becoming MPs at the next election, are already working as lobbyists or public relations consultants on behalf of businesses and other interests.  Would that be in exchange for money, do you think?

“Several acknowledged that they had set up meetings for clients with Shadow ministers, MPs and officials. More said that they had been asked to provide advice on the party’s direction. A few admitted to having pressed clients’ cases to Tory frontbenchers”, says the Times.

So much for Cameron’s promise to usher in a “new politics”.   Once a party of sleaze, always a party of sleaze…

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