Posted on 11/04/2009 10:16:09 PM PST by Steelfish
Would Britain Really Be Any Worse Off If The Commons Was Blown Up Tomorrow?
DOMINIC SANDBROOK 05th November 2009
Spool forward to Bonfire Night, 2019. Picture a typical, quiet English town where hundreds have gathered. Children's excited faces glow in the darkness.
In a scene repeated in communities across the nation, the bonfire's flames reach the top of the pile of wood and begin to lick at the self-satisfied smile of the effigy of former Commons Speaker John Bercow. The crowds let out a roar of delight.
These celebrations are not the traditional ones marking the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, when Guy Fawkes and his fellow religious fanatics set out to destroy our national church and murder hundreds of people.
Fresh start: If a new-age Gunpowder Plot were to succeed, could we rebuild our Parliament without the corruption? Instead, they are an opportunity to remember the success of another conspiracy four centuries later in 2009: one that helped sweep away the rot and corruption in Britain's body politic and offer the nation a fresh start.
Of course, this is just a fantasy. But it is hard to resist the thought that what we need today is a modern Guy Fawkes to put a metaphorical bomb underneath Westminster, to blow the political system sky-high and to allow us to start again.
For as the MPs' grubby, greedy and utterly self-deluding reaction today to the report of Sir Christopher Kelly, chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, amply proves, they still haven't got the message. It is deeply ironic that this week, when most of us would happily see our current political system consigned to the scrapheap, we are, instead, commemorating the moment when it was actually saved from destruction.
The parallels between 1605 and 2009 are....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Paging all MI-5 personnel...Mother is calling!
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