Last Night’s Da Bait.

In the same way adverts sell the generic impulse to buy something, anything, last night’s debate was a plea for a vote, any vote. And in the same way we know we don’t really need seven different varieties of shampoo we somehow know the seven varieties of political stance on offer amount to little more than a marketing attempt to expand a product line by making them different colours. It’s not that they aren’t justifiably politically different but that they’re all generically political. They’re marketing politics when what we need is product development. Cases in point. Austerity cuts vs NHS costs. NHS costs will rise astronomically if the populous is poorly fed, over stressed and demotivated. It makes economic sense to improve life quality than spending billions on medicating the walking wounded. Education. Real education is a question of ethos not funding. Cash will not stop falling standards and teachers leaving in droves. Economy. Productivity is lower than in 2007. Current wages would be 17% higher if the long-term average had been maintained. All these factors indicate a poorly educated under performing and increasingly stressed and dispirited society but the political debate studiously avoids the real consequences of its own failures and opts to discuss which is the best colour, apple green, blueberry blue or rose petal red. Our vote is reduced to marketing appeal rather than the research and development of a better political product. We have been fed the bait of considering the wrong question.