I’m sure you’ve heard the line ‘we’re all in this together’ before. It came from Cameron in 2011 and has since (quite rightly) been used as a stick to beat him with as every new divisive and top-heavy policy has been introduced.

Well I think we’ve been getting our assessment of this statement wrong. I think we erroneously assumed that when he said ‘we’ he meant, you, me, them, everybody, everybody… (cue the music). However, I think it’s much more likely that when he said ‘we’ he meant, the conservatives, the liberal democrats, labour, large swathes of the media and the business community, plus a few billionaire types. ‘We’ are not part of the ‘we’.

I am what you could call a ‘disillusionist’ – that is, I am disillusioned by the whole framework of this country (and others) and believe that to be a legitimate position in itself. Unfortunately there is no place in this democracy for people like me to have our say, as we are by our very nature, not interested in engaging with the people who currently run it and the systems that prop it up. Also, by the fact that our position crosses over with that of anarchists, we are easily attacked and dismissed.

For example, I don’t really want to vote for any party. No-one is saying the things I want to hear, given that I want to see a truly radical overhaul of the way things are done. Therefore, if I don’t vote, I am ‘apathetic’. I’m not. I am very engaged with this country, just not the people and business interests running it.

I want to see true redistribution and an end to speculative and destructive financial practices that benefit a few at the expense of the many. I believe this world has enough resources to support this vision. For that, I am called an ‘idealist’, which apparently is a bad word (probably because it has the word ‘idea’ in it). It may have other definitions, but for me it means that we can and should be better. We have the capacity to be so  much better. But those who mock ‘idealism’ are usually the people running the show, who either can’t or won’t think past the structures and restrictions we have placed on ourselves, and incidentally, do very well out of keeping the status quo.

I don’t believe that most, if any, of the wars we have started or supported, at least during my lifetime, have been necessary, and I have a strong suspicion that they have been motivated for the greater part by the acquisition and security of foreign resources for our own needs (and when I say ‘our’ I mean the western central banks, arms and energy trade etc. We suffer for wars, they profit). For this I am called unpatriotic, even though I appreciate the bravery of the armed forces, I just don’t want to see them dying for unjust reasons (or any, ideally).

When I have my ‘1984’ moment and see the mainstream media gradually ‘flip’ the news so that a financial crisis, caused by speculating investors and dodgy hedge fund schemes, turn into a ‘public services structural deficit’ and my reasonable brain starts thinking, hang on, we didn’t cause this, and every major political party seems to be going along with it, and the banks keep on going, and the bonuses keep on flowing, and trillions of currency is taken out of our countries and given to private companies, and we suffer – I am called a conspiracy theorist.

I can’t win really. I don’t want to try and ‘change’ the system from within, and even if I did, I doubt I’m the only person who thinks and feels like this, and I guess there must be a lot of people who have these thoughts and have tried to do this in the past. Where are they? Where are the voices in the system that say, “it’s not about percentages and statistics and interest rates and GDP and immigrants and benefits, it’s about you, it’s about those people who ‘benefit’ phenomenally from the system you maintain and uphold. How is taking £50 quid a week from a family who needs it going to compare to the trillions of unpaid tax sitting in offshore accounts? One persons unpaid tax could be our NHS, our schools. This whole system is corrupt.” – Where are those voices? I hear them in the streets, on the internet, but not in the media, not in the commons. So they either a) Don’t exist (unlikely given the times we live in) or b) try and fail to enter the system or c) try and are prohibited/blocked/blackmailed or threatened out of the system.

Have you seen the party funding from donors? You can download them. I did. (http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/PEF-online-registers) Millions of pounds pumped into the parties by individuals and businesses/organisations. How can one person stand a chance unless they are the basically the mouthpiece for a vested interest? Even for the emerging parties, even for the old liberals, it is nigh impossible for them to ever get a majority because of the construct of our democracy. So one person, who has the answers, but doesn’t have the money, has no chance.

So, I just keep on watching, waiting for something I can get behind that doesn’t smack of compromise or appeasement, and actually seems to represent this view*. In the meantime, I continue in this country, this world, much as everyone else does. Yes, there is always someone worse off, but why should we aim for the lowest common denominator? Where is the evidence that this world won’t continue to work without people doing dead-end low paid jobs for their entire lives in order to satisfy some bond-holder or investor? But that’s what we are told needs to happen so that the little green arrow behind the newsreader can point up and we can ogle over some decimal points while all around us the services are being strangled, the poor are getting poorer, the sick are killing themselves to avoid the misery of enforced work or destitution. We are told by rich people to work in poor jobs (spiritually and financially) and live poorer lives than they do, and we take it.

If you are spiritual, then you should aim higher for yourself and others, if you are atheist, then you should live by your mantra that this in ‘one life to be used’ and not accept this one spark of existence to be subdued and dimmed by others. Because we are all in it together, we physically exist in this space and time, and those few people who cling to wealth and power need to be brought back into the fold with the rest of us so that we can move on from this ridiculous situation they have put us in and start looking after ourselves and each-other in a balanced and fair world. And if you say things like that, they call you a hippy. Good. I’d rather be a hippy than a greedy, power crazed bastard any day.

* A common response to this argument is ‘well, what’s the alternative?’ – Well, I honestly believe that it is enough in itself to simply express concern with how things are now, so that people can come together and start figuring out the alternative. Most people don’t have the time and resources to dedicate to writing manifesto’s and canvassing others opinions within the current system, so it is paradoxical to expect them to have done this. Let’s start with the ‘no suitable candidate’ box, or true power of recall for our MPs and see how quickly the system collapses anyway unless they make genuine changes. Let’s start dedicating some air time to the many groups who have devised alternative social models and hear what they have to say first. But to do this, we need first to know that it is us who are in control of our our future, and not the defenders of the old guard, even if the current system has to continue for some time in the interim.