Getting it

Back in December, the editor of the Independent wrote a leader entitled Our view of MPs has been tested to breaking point.

In it, he said:
Over the past few parliaments, the reputation of our MPs has taken a battering. The sleazy 1990s were followed by the Iraq War, launched on shoddy intelligence, and against which a million of us marched, to no avail. Then in quick succession came an expenses crisis which showed many politicians stealing from the public purse, and a financial crisis which wasn’t caused by the poor, but for which they picked up the bill. 

And in all that time this newspaper has resisted the caricature of our political class as a bunch of grubby apparatchiks on the take. We believe very strongly in democracy, and reckon that for all its failings, Britain’s democracy is relatively free of corruption. We’ve also argued that though Westminster has its share of crooks, many if not most MPs are decent, industrious, public-spirited types who could get paid better elsewhere.

And so he went on.

This week's news was that the former Head of Civil Service who might arguably have an axe to grind but equally might just know more about MPs than the rest of us, said: Ministers don't get reality of life. He went on: few politicians have any idea what life is like for people living on benefits and criticised those who argued We send our children to private schools, we have private healthcare, we travel by car or chauffeur, we don't go on public transport. 

He went on to suggest that ministers should have done jobs like the population they're serving.

Locally, activists who want to change the system argue that they will note vote as the whole system is rotten. Is it surprising when they feel their MPs are as far removed as this. Not that they have any idea what system they do want of course.

We continue to live in difficult and unpleasant times.

The stars have it

Astrology is a 'diagnostic tool' that may help the National Health Service and people who say otherwise are 'racist' an MP has claimed. So says an article in my newspaper.

Astrology could be used to 'take huge pressure off doctors' and that one day it would have a role in healthcare.

[The MP] was critical of people 'such as Professor Brian Cox'.

The opposition is based on ... the SIP formula - superstition, ignorance and prejudice. They are deeply prejudiced, and racially prejudiced, which is troubling.

As usual, one is lost for words. I assume his definition of 'racist' is rather different from the rest of the world's.

And as for ignorance: I wonder how good he is at special relativity and understanding spacetime. I know who I would trust to know about the cosmos.

This is not, as one might expect, the outpourings of a UKIP MP but of a Tory one. We must study their manifesto closely.  

Language

Janet Street-Porter - not someone I usually quote - on the subject of politicians:

... The problem for all political leaders is that they may have policies, and they may have conviction, but none of that is getting through to disenchanted voters, a large percentage of whom haven't decided whether to bother voting, and if they do, who will get their support.

The tragedy of talented people on the left or right is that they are trapped in a system which has lost the support of a big proportion of the electorate. Politicians speak, and we don't understand what language they are using. It's not one in common usage. It's antediluvian, peppered with platitudes about 'hard-working people'.

She goes on:

If only we could remove modern politics' false demarcation lines. They seem redundant to most of the population who can't understand why essential stuff like the NHS and education, care of the elderly and transport aren't run through cross-party consensus aided by impartial advisers. Instead, convention dictates that each new government imposes a new strategy from the top, and huge sums of money are wasted implementing what I call macho dick-on-table strategy: change for change's sake.

We've already heard how Andrew Lansley's re-organisation of the NHS has been dubbed a 'disaster'. Ditto Michael Gove's rewriting of the school curriculum and examinations, now being toned down by his successor.

I seem to recall that we once had an independent civil service who ran things under the watchful eye of Ministers. Now we have Ministers thinking they are Chief Executives without any knowledge, or grounding in the relevant subjects - although most did go to school, some may have used public transport and some even the NHS - and interested in their own short-term career enhancements. 

Oh yes, it was so good to hear that the Education Minister wrote to the school of the three girls who gone to join ISIS. Well done on another sterling letter (gets publicity; no cost; appears caring). 

Dealing with terrorists

The unmasking of Jihadi John is much in the news. Here is some advice from someone who has experienced capture and the prospect of imminent and completely illogical execution.

Penelope Tremayne was captured in January 1986 and held for five weeks by Tamil 'freedom fighters', hourly expecting to be shot as a spy. She ends her book Nor Bars an Iron Cage with the following advice:

Never trust anyone who kills and imprisons people while saying he is winning their freedom.
Never believe that the man is a victim who takes his neighbour's house by force and says it is self-defence.
Never take a bully at his own valuation as a hero.'

She goes on:

Don't over-estimate the intelligence of your captors. Terrorism is a moron's occupation: if the killers and bombers had good minds they would be doing better things. Almost every major mistake I made came from supposing that my interrogators had put two and two together and made four. Over and over again it came out that they had not even tried to, let alone succeeded.

And it is fatally easy to suppose that they know much more than they do. They say so all the time, and you slip into accepting the idea. Because in physical terms they have complete power over you, you tend (or I tended) to exaggerate their importance. It is necessary to remember all the time that they are driven by one engine only: the desire to dominate.

Intelligent men may succumb to this as well as stupid ones, but they find more intelligent methods than terrorism. And some of these involve making use of terrorists, of their blind vanity and contempt for others.

I cannot generalize about the the minds of the puppeteers. But it is not they whom you and I are likely to come face to face with, it is only their manikins, who jerk and dangle at the strings' ends, and lob a bomb into a crowd of strangers in the belief that they are reshaping society.

Let us not help to build up their illusions about themselves. The greatest of these is that they are fighters in a noble cause, to whom anything is therefore allowed. They see bullying as heroism, and in their eyes it is not they who are terrorists but those who stand against them. They see the murders that they or their superiors commit as the fault of the government which refuses to give them their way; and if they do not torture their prisoners, that proves to them that they are kind and generous.

At all costs I want to say, never accept the hand of friendship from such people. Do not be deluded by any cant about compassion; it is nether godlike nor humanly right to go along with indiscriminate murder, and that is what you are doing if you make friends with hostage-takers.

Are you tempted to say: Yes, but this man who actually stands talking to me in my cell: he is a human being too, he has not shot me so far, and I don't know if he has shot anyone else. Have I not a duty of compassion towards him? And is there not a chance that he might change his approach to life if I let him see I understand that he too has a point of view? Believe me, he is very much likelier to shoot the next victim he gets in your stead, if you have encouraged him to think that his point of view has attracted your sympathy.

I wonder how she would feel today. The actions of people prepared to do the one thing one never expected of a human being - cold-bloodedly to sacrifice one's life for a cause - was surely a game-changer.  

Looking for someone to blame

A great posting on the BBC website. A photographer called Raphael Schutzer-Weissman posted this picture and caption:

I took this photo in response to the anti-immigrant rhetoric increasingly noticeable in the UK and Europe recently. "At first it seemed to me that Romanians were the target, but the Charlie Hebdo atrocity took things to a new level.

It became a blame game. Blame the immigrants, blame the Muslims, blame the Jews, blame somebody, for something. To my mind inclusiveness and diversity are things to be celebrated, not demonised.