WITH the national, European and worldwide political picture changing almost as often and unpredictably as the British weather, is it any wonder that there is a sense of uncertainty and foreboding permeating through the national and international psyche? What strange and turbulent times we live in.

We, as individuals, feel unsafe due to the physical threat posed by those opposed to the short-sighted, ill-thought out and potentially calamitous foreign policies that were reluctantly brought to light following the much vaunted and eagerly awaited Chilcott report. Blair and Bush’s bitter legacy will be reverberating for decades to come.

Perhaps, as an initial peace offering, we should offer both up to an international war crimes commission and have them serve out their penance in Abu Ghraib prison or perhaps allow the Iraqi public to mete out the same justice as befell their own tyrannical despot, the west’s former puppet and pin up, Saddam Hussein.

I am totally opposed to all and any violence, however, it would be hard to convince the Iraqi public that the perpetrators of the infamous “shock and awe” brand of diplomacy should not be subject to the same justice that they visited on the Iraqi nation and the wider region, “They who live by the sword" etc.

Meanwhile, while political coups of one sort or another seem to be the flavour of the month, what are the parliamentary Labour party playing at? It cannot be that they are only prepared to accept democratic processes if voters agree with them? They seem to have lost all sense of reality and are totally out of touch with the people they are supposed to represent. Seduced by the process of the political game within parliament, they have become dislocated from real life.

They need to remember why the Labour party came into existence in the first place; to curb the excesses of the greed of the wealthy as represented by the Conservative party, to support the workers and work towards an equal society that would by degrees become more empathic and less conflicted.

I do wonder if the current parliamentary Labour party has become complacent and believes that, with the emergence of social media, the power of the established elites to control information will be diminished and that the job of informing the masses on how exploited they have been for centuries can be left to the world wide web.

However, within the virtual world, propaganda, social control, misinformation and monopolies also direct our access to information as much as voices that in the past have been repressed can now be heard and injustices highlighted. The masses remain compliant to the most immoral and insidious forms of abuse at the hands of capitalists and we are misled into illegal wars that only make our world more dangerous.

One would have thought that in a modern context of high levels of literacy and wide access to some form of information (in spite of the sad decline of libraries) that Conservative, self-serving, divisive politics would be consigned to the dark and regrettable history of yesteryear along with child labour and slavery.

Still, the thought manipulation employed by those that wish to exploit us is so powerful it has convinced people who are not part of a wealthy elite to vote Conservative, be life-long supporters and even be deluded enough to represent them. What is even more surprising is that some who profess to having religious susceptibility where doctrine states that all humanity is equal are prepared to go against that belief in their political affiliation and further the division between rich and poor. Surely, Jesus (even if he only existed in metaphor) was a socialist.