Zimbabwe Iran.

No it fucking isn’t.

I’ve heard this line from the archetypal ‘man in the pub’ before. It started last year when Mugabe and his thugs rigged the election in Zimbabwe by brutalising those who might be prepared to vote against him. That was when I first heard it.

Generally from some relatively well-off person who can afford to feed their family: someone with a right to vote, someone who’s not suffering from a massive cholera outbreak, someone who will find that their vote actually counts for the person their vote for, someone not intimidated into voting for the incumbent, but someone who didn’t like Gordon Brown.

“It’s just like living in Zimbabwe. They Government just do what they want…”

It’s not like living in Zimbabwe. It’s not like living in Iran. We have comfortable lifestyles, we may be criticised for saying something inappropriate (as quite frequently the people who have expressed said belief have been complaining about “gippos” or “immigrunts”), but even the most racist bigot is not going to get tortured and “disappeared”. But those people that can “just do what they want” here are the ones with an elected parliamentary majority.

Gordon Brown may not have been elected as Prime Minister, but we don’t elect Prime Ministers. You elect an MP for your constituency. Gordon Brown represents the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, and theoretically even if everyone in the constituency voted for him, he’d only get around 72,000 votes. But Gordon Brown couldn’t be Prime Minister if Labour didn’t have a majority: that majority is because more labour MPs were returned to Westminster. That majority is what enables him to “do what he wants”. That majority which was elected.

Our democracy may not be perfect: we have a huge unelected chamber filled with cronies of current and past governments; we have MPs who have played the expenses fiddle too long to be playing violins when they get caught; we have a situation where smaller parties (greens, UKIP, BNP etc are not represented in our parliament because of the first past the post system) — but where we do try a PR / party list type thing and UKIP, BNP and greens get elected as MEPs, people point at that system for being flawed also. It’s not perfect, but we do have a democracy. A flawed one, but no less a democracy for that.

Witness Major swept from office by a surge in public opinion against the Tories in 1997. Witness the same happening to Brown (for much the same reason*) in 2010. Witness Mugabe and Ahmadinejad hanging on to power because the results mysteriously going their way despite a perceived surge in public opinion against them. Compare … and contrast.

*yes, I know. It’s satire.

So the next time anyone suggests to me that their pathetic little problems and gripes that they are whinging about is “just like living in Iran” (or Zimbabwe, or whichever country is in the news), I’m going to try to resist the temptation to smash them over the head with the nearest thing to hand (as technically, that’s a little bit on the brutality side itself), I’m simply going to ask them whether they are prepared to move to Iran, or Zimbabwe, or whatever.

And of course, if it really is just like living there, they’ll presumably be quite happy to do so. Well, it’s either that or admit that they’ve been talking bollocks, isn’t it? Besides, it’s a little politer to gently point out that they are talking bollocks than to say what I really feel under these circumstances.

Shut your whinging face, you pathetic whining little turd. You have not got the slightest idea what you are talking about. Comparing your own petty and miniscule little complaints with serious abuses and torture — you are a know-nothing nauseatingly self-important little wankstain. A crapulous excuse for a human being. And if you don’t fuck off right now, I’ll stop sugar-coating it and tell you what I really think…

Ah, that’s better. Blogging can be somewhat cathartic, don’t you think?