My Wee Pal,"Me", the BBC, Democracy, the "Most Powerful Man" in Britain, and a Gable End in Leith

   I was watching the TV last night and a BBC reporter on the six o'clock news,  while commenting about a new investment programme to create even more nuclear based energy, referred to David Cameron as "the most powerful man in Britain,"   and here was I not thinking that along with every person who has the right to vote in this country, I was the most powerful person in Britain? I mean that's what the politicians and the media like to tell me to think when they are talking about free speech and letting me know what a great privilege it is to live in a "democracy" like ours. Up to now I've always really tried to believe this last noble bit of their message.

Sunshine on Leith : pictures of some of the people whose labour made Britain powerful.

   Perhaps you'll say that in accepting this vision I was just being too much of an unweaned bairn not to see that the world of media and politics is busy being fed by and feeding off the members of its own small clique, while they give each other bigger and bigger helpings of power and wealth. You'll tell me I can hardly expect them to have time to be concerned about being of service to my fellow citizens and me, even though, according to the romantic myth of democracy they dole out to us,  each one of us has equal rights. True of course until that is we turn up with tuppence and they turn up with a tenner.  Well I just can't swallow their fake food any more.