ELECTION RESULT : THE SAME OLD CRAP WINS

You want real progressive change? You're out of luck.

In these last few hours before 'the big day', the commentators and the bloggers have been amusing themselves - and boring everyone else - with their endless speculations and hypothetical scenarios about the election result. Will John Key be able to rule alone or will Labour - with the help of Winston Peters, apparently - be able to stop him. Can a combination of parties lead to a Labour-led government. What needs to happen for that to occur? And so it goes on. And on. And on.

The implication of all this hot air from the 'chattering classes' is that we are being presented with real political alternatives . According to The Press we are facing our 'starkest choice between the two major parties in a decade.'

The Fairfax-owned newspaper defines this 'stark choice' this way: 'Labour's prescription centres on a capital gains tax and compulsory savings scheme, and National's on partial asset sales and fiscal austerity.'

This is isn't a choice between competing ideologies - this is simply a choice to decide on neoliberal economic policy. This is not democracy - this is the Pepsi - Coke challenge. You can have Mars bar or a Moro bar - but its the same damn chocolate bar.

Labour's so-called 'alternative ' is simply ‘more of the same only less so’. Labour is offering us austerity lite - but with no guarantee it won't revert to austerity heavy if the global economy collapses - which now looks increasingly likely . If there is a major European banking collapse, the extent of austerity we see now will be a picnic compared with what is to come.

We have effectively been disenfranchised. Representative democracy has failed.

While I have nothing but contempt for John Key I think Goff's attempt to paint himself as a friend of the working class has also been nauseating.

What we can expect from Parliament, whoever is the Government, is more sustained attacks on living standards, more job cuts, more attacks on beneficiaries.

The question is - what are we going to do about it?