Hot New Way to Avoid Talking to Your Constituents? Say They’re Acting Like Zombies
The ZRC has some trustworthy allies in the United Kingdom who monitor the sad state of Zombie-Living relations in that country for the Movement, and they have relayed this latest disturbing development to us.
@chriszombieblog @Zombie_Rights Shocking denials and use ofthe word ‘zombie’ as a slur in parliament 38degrees.org.uk/page/s/open-le…
The background: the Conservative government in the UK is moving to privatize the NHS, more or less, via backdoor maneuvering. This represents a political risk ranging somewhere between Catastrophic and Suicidal if done openly, because the NHS is really, really popular with a broad swath of the population.
(From an American perspective, think if Social Security and Medicare had a mutant baby that was twice as popular as either of its parents.)
So, naturally, when these plans started to leak, people started to complain. And since this is 2011, they used social media tools to bombard their representatives with messages expressing their discontent.
Also naturally, politicians dislike actually dealing with the complaints of their constituents. Which leads us to the current Health Minister in the UK, one Simon Burns, exasperatedly complaining that one such social media tool, an online petition/social activism site called ’38 Degrees’, was making people ‘Zombie-like’, in that they were presumably sending him a lot of angry emails.
Yes, the new stereotype for Zombies in the United Kingdom is apparently that of engaged citizens contacting their government on a matter of urgent public concern.
Wait; actually, that’s not so bad, is it?
Kind of makes being ‘Zombie-like’ a good thing. Civic-minded, articulate, obviously literate. Knows how to use a computer, send an email.
Hmm.
But if being ‘Zombie-like’ is a good thing (and we believe it is), then why doesn’t Mr. Burns want to hear from his Zombie-like constituency?
Food for thought.
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[...] being a loudmouth with zombie links – I thought I’d troll the slimey sod. (BTW the Zombie Rights Campaign in the ‘States has also put in their two cents’ worth.) My email to Simon Burns [...]