Party games

A fine & muddy woodland run. There is great joy to be had in splashing through puddles.

In Britain there is a children’s party game called Pass the Parcel, in which a parcel is handed from one child to another, with a layer of wrapping being removed by each child. Western governments seem to be engaged in a variation called Pass the Blame Parcel with regard to their financial difficulties. In this game the parcel is transferred from the Lehman brothers to the wider US financial markets to the European banks, to the Euro, to Iceland, Spain, Greece, Germany, Britain, China, etc etc. All the while it seems that the real issue is being overlooked – that, by aggressive policies of privatisation, successive governments have acceded the real power to market-driven corporations who represent their shareholders, not the electorate. In the space of about 25 years, Western democracy has become a farce, with even more politicians reduced to the level of ventriloquist’s dummies.  Which is precisely why the Occupy protests are so important and mustn’t be allowed to evaporate.

PS The UK faction of Blame Game is nicely described in today's Observer (ref).