Second Chances

[DanaC]

Sounds to me like you're in that tiny, tiny percentage -- even if it's a tiny, tiny percentage of the wielding that you're doing.

You are mistaking 'office' for power and influence, and 'establishment' for government. This is Britain, we still have people sitting in our Upper House by tradition and patronage, rather than by ballot.

We are also, like America, Anglo-Saxon in many of our cultural assumptions and so our big-business class is extremely powerful.

Every part of our country is divided into little blocks ('wards') of about 6,000 people. Each ward elects 3 councillors, to represent them in the local council. My council has 51 councillors. Sounds very ...democratic and accountable, except most areas of real local power have been removed from the Councils (or sold by Councils) and placed into unaccountable hands ('Trusts', 'Academies', 'Primary Care Trusts', Housing Associations').

The Ruling Establishment in Britain, has always kept Englishmen convinced of the superiority of their freedoms by allowing them such local, small, expressions of community power.