Well I've just fished a crumble out of the oven - plum and pear - which I'm taking over for Sunday lunch with the family tomorrow - it seemed to take forever to cook! And needless to say, considering I'm taking it on the bus for a considerable distance, I've made it in my heaviest cooking pot. I really don't know where my heads at sometimes. It's 'cos it's the only pot I've got left with the lid still intact!
So.. here we are on a Saturday night. Despite being off work, I've been busy today - listing stuff on Ebay, tidying up the end of the month lists, then rushing off to Sainsbury's, dashing back - sometimes I feel like I never stay still for more than ten minutes at a time. I've been doing more night shifts this week, and this afforded me the opportunity to watch the Vice Presidential Debate. Now contrary to expectations, this wasn't the car-crash tv that the presenters had been seeming to have expected - I have to say that I wasn't expecting to see a melt down performance by Palin either. Whatever you think about her, she must be a bright intelligent woman, and just because one doesn't agree with her views is no reason to trash the woman. And, above all, as a European, I don't expect to understand the full nuance of American politics. To use a culinary analogy, I may catch the scent of it, I may even taste the flavours, but it's never going to be the full Sunday roast. So when Mrs Palin says that she feels she can give a lead to a world on Environmental matters, I have to believe that's she's not up to speed on the state of environmental politics, because otherwise she wouldn't make such a statement in public. Unless, of course, what she means is she's going to lead the rest of the world into drilling into the Arctic Circle, no doubt expecting us to be merrily tripping along behind her. I really can't quite figure it out. And there's no doubt she was trying to hammer home the idea that Wall Street etc are actively corrupt. She had to have mentioned that at least three times.
Now it's very easy of me to sit here and abuse foreign politics, like some old style Anglo. But the truth of it is that our politics is just as weird - did you see Mandelson on the box after his comeback?? Third time lucky??? Is he serious???? It's almost exactly like the presentation given by Mrs Palin, it's doublespeak. For Brown, it's a very clever move. You're threatened by the gathering forces of Blairites, and the old style labour apparatchiks. What do you do? Divide and conquer. Strike a deal with one or the other, and you've bought yourself enough time for the financial crisis to have become a debacle and in six months time, it's unlikely anyone will be asking questions, they'll all be too busy falling over each other to stab someone else in the back. You can see it coming, check out the gleam in Cameron's eyes. Check out the pause before he speaks, gravitas, looming doom, unspecified promise for the future, gleam of deep unalloyed satisfaction. You know the truth of it is, it doesn't matter who's in number 10. At the end of the day, it really doesn't mean a thing. The world will go it's own sweet way, and nothing or no one can stop it. Remember Black Monday? Now there's a thing. Nigel Lawson was Chancellor back then, ever noticed him be reticent about his abilities? I watched one of the news programmes the other day and believe it or not, there was Lamont acting like some wise old man. Now I'm not saying he isn't, but look at his comeuppance. Yep, the day we crashed out of the ERM.
Essentially I believe it's all pretty pointless. It doesn't matter who you vote for, in the end they all fall apart. The Thatcherites believed that they were the Masters of the Universe, then they fell apart. Cameron will do exactly the same. It'll happen to him because it's destiny - it's the way of the world. He'll try and tell himself he's different, he'll try and tell you that he's different. But you know different, because you have the ability to look back and learn. He could win the next election, he could win the one after that, and even maybe scrape through the one after that. But at the end of the day, there'll be a young whippersnapper who will creep up behind him, metaphorical knife in hand. Just as the simpering boy wonder is doing now with Brown, just as Brown did with Blair, although I find it hard to believe that Brown could a) simper or b) sneak up behind anyone unheard. I guess that's part of the point, they don't have to sneak, it's politics. It's part of the job description. Personally, I feel it's time we re-wrote that job description because these people are more interested in their own ideas than the reality of any given situation. It's all me, me, me, my ideas, my party, my chance to be in the spotlight. I'd say the very fact that anyone wants to be in politics ought to be reason to bar them for life. Politics, government, it should be done by people who don't want to be doing it, who aren't interested in having their photograph in the papers. People who don't want to be top of the tree, who have to be wrenched away from their lifes' work in order to undertake it for a short period of time. People who are educated and know something about what they're talking about rather than because they happen to have an idea. And above all, no government should be allowed to serve for three terms. Now I agree that you may feel this is difficult under our system, but it's relatively simple - no MP should be elected for more than two terms. Cut the ground out from under their feet, bar them from any form of company directorship, or in fact, any form of corporate employment. Two terms as an MP max, and then they go into public service in an obscure position. If they want to run something, fine, give them a single hospital to run, a single prison. Limit any opportunity for further public prominence. Disallow anyone from being both the leader of their party and a member of the Cabinet. Automatically rotate top civil servants every 12 - 15 months, not within a department but out of departments, and move them to another city. 12 months in London? You're going to Leeds man. Or Norwich. Or Liverpool. Anywhere but an influential position in the upper echelons. And more than anything else, we need to find a way to inculcate the idea of the greater good back in to public life. We need to find a way to make kids understand and espouse self-sacrifice for that greater good. And we absolutely need to do it without the aid of religion. We need to absolutely split religious groups of all kinds out of public life, because these are more people who want to tell you what to do. I read this thing recently where someone was suggesting that everyone, but everyone starts off thinking they can make things better. They can't. In the end, all they can do is tell other people what to do. And when no one listens to them, they start shouting. And when still no one's listening to them, they start to force things. Therein is the road to dictatorship.
Ok, it's getting kind of late at night here, and I'm saying some daft things here. Blame it on the late cooking! But seriously, we do need to do something about all this. Not what I say, but something.
