Insufficient respect?
There’s a new Labour–Tory pact. Seriously. No, I’m not suffering from some bizarre mental aberration, and I haven’t been out in the forest eating suspicious mushrooms. This is reported in today’s Guardian:
Labour and the Conservatives are to embark on an unprecedented partnership after the two party chairmen agreed a pact to restore respect for parliament and for politicians.
In an interview in today’s Guardian, the Labour chairman, Charles Clarke, reveals that he and his Tory counterpart, David Davis … have decided that politics has sunk so low in national esteem that they have no option but to work together. The two men, both the biggest bruisers in their respective parties, are to hold regular meetings aimed at improving MPs’ relations with the media, the civil service and the academic community…
The first salvo in their campaign was a joint letter last week to the chairman of the BBC, Gavyn Davies, warning that coverage of politics should not be “dumbed down”. But the pair feel there is “a whole series of issues” they can now agree on. Mr Clarke says that at present, “there is not sufficient respect given by the system to members of parliament”.
He blames the media and the civil service for this: “I think there are elements of the media which are actually about promotion of cynicism.”
Does he really? Well, there’s a surprise. Sufficient respect? Sufficient respect? If most (not all, I grant you) MPs were treated with “sufficient respect” they would be sprayed with the excrement of cows which had been force-fed vindaloo.
It isn’t the fault of the media and the civil service that politicians have all the respect of a leprotic, syphilitic whore, it’s the fault of the politicians.
You want to be respected more? Here’s how to do it in a nutshell: HAVE SOME FUCKING PRINCIPLES!
Here’s a few examples which might make the matter clear to the most brain-dead of our nation’s elected scum (that is what you call the stuff that floats at the top, isn’t it?):
- If, before an election, you give prominent support to a local campaign, getting your photograph in the local papers with the campaigners, the principled response when they come along after the election for some more support is not: “Fuck off, the election’s over.” (Fortunately, the seat of this particular pustule on the body politic is vanishing with the redrawing of electoral boundaries.)
- If an MP — or MSP or AM for that matter — owns his constituency office and yet is claiming his rent on that office, he should be prosecuted for fraud, not let off with the comment that this is not actually against parliamentary rules (and if it isn’t, it should be; if you can’t see that, you shouldn’t be standing for any sort of office).
- If in opposition you state quite clearly that you will never privatise the nation’s air traffic control system, you do not immediately set about trying to privatise it once you are in office.
- If you say ATP is essential for the safety of railway passengers and that no expense will be spared in ensuring passengers’ safety, don’t then try to backpeddle on the grounds of expense.
- Stop charging hundreds of pounds for businessmen to have dinner with you!
- If you take a million pounds from some businessman and then make a policy change which favours his business interests, giving the money back doesn’t make you look clean and principled, it makes you look corrupt and stupid.
© DC 2002. All rights reserved.