We tried playing by their rules, now it’s time for something different

Yesterday I joined firefighters in their fight for pension justice as they descended upon Westminster and then Downing Street, demanding answers to the question on how MPs can mislead the House of Commons with impunity, but not everyone was happy with their actions.

I offered the police officer in these pictures a sponge to clean up politics. Cleaning up politics is not just about Ministers misleading the house over pension regulations, it is about MPs voting on debates that affect our lives without mandates from their constituents or voting how their party whip tells them too and not having even heard the arguments, it’s also about historical acts of lying such as when the Prime Minister lied to the House of Commons about weapons of mass destruction, resulting in almost 500 dead UK service personnel and hundreds more injured. We have serious problems with our political system, this can’t be as good as it gets.

The police officer here said he didn’t want the sponge, I told him that the government were after his pension too, which he agreed but he said that there were “ways of doing things and that this wasn’t it.” I informed him that firefighters had tried that and been sold out, so now they were taking to the streets.

With a political system that is designed to serve and protect itself, people are being left with no choice but to take things into their own hands and head to the streets. Civil disobedience and economic withdrawal have been pillars of change throughout our history, we are likely to see more of this if things continue on the path we are on.

To the man who said: “there are ways of doing things and this isn’t it.” I say this is the only way things have ever changed.