There was a time, in the middle of the last century, when most Labour politicians's vison of a modern Great Britain was of a meritocracy, driven forward by the brightest and best to a future fuelled, in Harold Wilson's words, by "white hot technology".
The 21st century version espoused by Nu Labour is a mediocracy driven, but not necessarily forward, by the un-elected and State empowered into a future of unorecedented energy dependency and technological poverty.
In Nu labour's ideal universe, the cream no longer rises to the top but is driven to the bottom of the bottle by the sheer weight of mediocrity. The latest manifestation of this approach is the promotion of Alan Johnson to the position of Home Secretary. Now, granted that Jack Straw has split the former Ministry into two and siphoned off the most interesting bits - as he sees it - into a new and Orwellian sounding Ministry of Justice. But, the rump is of sufficient importance to the current and future welfare of the country to demand that the Home Secretary be someone with talent, strength and, above all, a real sense of duty to the British people.
Gordon Brown's first appointee, the remarkably talentless and charmless Jacqui Smith, should have given us a clue to his thinking. She used the post mainly as a way of funding her domestic living arrangements but, importantly from Gordon Brown's point of view, did nothing that went against her master's wishes. When Johnson's appointment was announced there were quite a few pundits who regarded it as a positive step, principally because he satisfied the main criterion, i.e. not being Jacqui Smith.
Prior to his recent appointment, Johnson's performance as a Minister has been ordinary in the extreme. The only time he was faced with a big decision - to bring Pubic Servants' retirement age in line with the private sector - he caved in at the first hint of Union pressure. This lack of bottom did not seem to damage his prospects in the least. He managed to avoid breaking anything during his tenure as Minister for Health so, even though he signally failed to get to grips with major issues such as MRSA and the bloated NHS beaurocracy, he was regarded as a safe pair of hands. His reward has been to be asked to occupy one of the great seats of State. So far, his performance has failed to reach even the modest levels of mediocrity we have come to expect from incumbents of the Home Office.
He blithely informed the Home Affairs Committee that he " didn't lose any sleep over the prospect of the population of the UK growing to 70 million". Echoing most of his peers, he referred to the benefits of multi-culturalism and how it had transformed Britain into a "vibrant" culture. As he was saying this, other beaurocrats were preparing to publish figures that showed unemployment at its highest level for 14 years. Coupled with the recent disclosure that the bulk of the 1 million new jobs created since Labour came to power had gone to recent arrivals from overseas, it demonstrated either an unforgiveable lack of sensitivity to the plight of the British unemployed (whose interests he is supposed to champion) or, and marginally worse, a genuine ignorance or understanding of the bigger picture.
The latter is the more logical interpretation following Johnson's abject performance in the House of Commons yesterday. By all accounts, he was casual to the point of insolence, appeared ill-briefed and, at one point, admitted that his lack of legal training meant that he struggled to grasp many of the finer legal points. Here's bit of advice Mr Johnson; one that anyone who has ever worked in business either learns rapidly or falls by the wayside. Before you present anything, if there is something you don't fully understand , grab hold of someone who does and get them to explain it to you in words of one syllable. Do not go into any situation ill-prepared, poorly briefed and without a sure handle on the most important issues. Falling back on the "I am just a poor boy from a working-class background" defence , simply won't work at this level.
The fact that Johnson decided he could wing it suggests one of two things: Either he is so lacking in genuine intellectual ability that he simply doesn't realise the depth of his own ignorance. Or, he is so contemtuous of Parliament that, in common with most of his Labour peers, he feels no real need to prepare before he faces questions in the House. Either way, he has proven, once again that, in this administration, mediocrity is the only benchmark aspiring ministers need to aim for.
Thursday, 16 July 2009
Friday, 3 July 2009
Minority interests are un British
One of the defining characteristics of the British character has always been an innate sense of justice and fairness. We didn't much mind what happened in life or sport as long as everyone got a fair crack of the whip. Watch a TV documentary about British society in any era prior to the current one and you will find it littered with examples of this respect for fair play: queue-jumpers being chastised for not "waiting their turn"; people deferring to one another in bus or taxi queues; the majority instinctively supporting the underdog in any kind of sporting event and the acceptance that winning by cheating wasn't worth a light. Those were the days when a handshake was frequently all it took to cement a deal; the days when the expression "an Englishman's word is his bond" had some substance. These days, it would probably sound cliched to an audience brought up on The Apprentice or the Dragon's Den; but it was a truism long before it became a cliche.
Fair play wasn't something taught at home or school. You wouldn't have found it on any curriculum. It was never something much discussed or analysed; it was simply there, providing a framework for a reasonable life. People just knew, instinctively, what was right and fair. They did not jostle or push into queues, but quitely awaited their turn. From the playground onwards, fights were governed by unwritten - and immutable - rules; fists were OK; feet, heads and anything remotely resembling a weapon most certainly weren't. And fights were strictly for men and boys. Fighting was not a feminine past-time.
In cricket it was the norm for batsmen to walk when they knew they were out, or for fielders to own up if they hadn't quite managed to hold onto a clean catch. Footballers who dived and feigned injury were treated with contempt by referees, opponents and spectators alike.
So, how have we managed to descend from that innate sense of what is right and fair to our current state of affairs, where queuing is a lost art form - particularly in London - footballers who cheat and win penalties are regarded as the epitome of professionalism and a significant number of young men would not even consider fighting without some sort of edge; whether a real edge in the form of a knife or simply greater numbers than their opponent?
It would take several thick volumes to explore all of the underlying causes. And all I have at my disposal is a hastily-written blog. But, purely at random, here are a few things to consider:
1. Overcrowding. Experiments with rats have shown that colonies break when animals are confined in a small space and their numbers are allowed to grow unchecked. Regard England as a rat colony and you are already a long way to explaining the rapid breakdown in reasonable behaviour; especially in big cities like London. We are a small country that enjoys - probably not the right word - the most people per square mile in Europe. We have more and more people scrabbling for less space and rapidly dwindling resources. It is madness that we don't offically acknowledge the fact and put up the barriers before we all do ourselves a mischief.
2.Officially promoted inequality. Despite the findings, published today by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, that foreigners do not enjoy advantages when it comes to the allocation of social housing, the feeling persists that they do.
Sometimes, the anecdotal evidence looks stronger than any statistics. Take the awful fire that occurred in Camberwell last week. Look at the names of the people who died, those who survived and the people who witnessed the conflagration, all of whom lived in the tower block or one of its close neighbours. They all came originally from eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and points further east and west. How did they manage to get housed in an inner-London borough where the council housing waiting list runs to thousands of names? Whose places have they taken in the queue for council housing? How many elderly people have been left stranded in the area while their children and grandchildren have had to move out in search of affordable housing?
Ask these questions of any politician or local offical and you will immediately be labelled racist. Because, the simple answer is that, despite what the E&HRC says, foreigners who arrive homeless and with large families do seem to be given precedence over the indigenous population. This seemed to be confirmed by what John Healey, the Housing Minister, said on radio 4 this morning: "At present, those people with the most serious housing needs get priority. We are not changing that. " They are not changing it because they can't - at least not without infringing their own Human Rights Act. So, as long as the overarching selection criterion is immediate need rather than entitlement, the refugee family with four children must take precedence over the local couple with just one or two.
It might be the law, but it certainly isn't fair or just. Unfortunately, the only political party that has picked up on this point is the BNP; which is why they made gains at the recent elections which, in earlier, fairer times, they would never have had a hope in hell of achieving.
Harriet Harman will shortly add to this offically enshrined discrimination when she makes it illegal for institututions to discriminate against people from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds. Quite who will set the bar as far as a measurement of poverty or disadvantage is concerned is not yet clear. What is clear, based on the evidence of all prior discriminatory legislation, is that the rules will simply create yet another stratum in our society. Post this act, the poor will be further divided between those shrewd, crafty, well-informed and well-connected enough to exploit the legislation and the great mass who will never quite get the hang of it and go on being just as down-trodden as ever. Plus, of course, there will be another layer created above the other two made up solely of Quangocrats whose job is to monitor, review and enforce the regulations and pad out thei own pension schemes.
3. Much of the blame must, inevitably, attach itself to the people who have guided us for the last 30 years - not just in Westminster but in all the institutions charged with the care and mentoring of our children. They have created the curricula and agenda that have shaped our society. It is the educationalists, philosophers, teachers and other assorted care-givers who brick-by-painful-brick have dismantled a system that took around 200 years to perfect and have replaced it with something that fails in the most basic objective of any educational system; education, education, education.
Doubtless inspired by the noblest of egalitarian motives they are the ones, nonetheless, who have hollowed out our educational system from within. With their insistence on prizes for all - irrespective of talent, skills or effort- they have completely severed the link between effort and reward. Outside the classroom, they have achieved the same effect by eliminating competition from play and sport; awarding the feckless and lazy the same prizes as they do the strivers and achievers. When that hasn't had the desired effect and quashed children's natural competitive urges, they have simply sold off the playing fields. The results of this collective anti-competition activism can be seen in the obese, ill-educated under-class they have created whose opportunities for advancement or betterment are virtually nil.
Even black footballers and athletes from disadvantaged back-grounds rarely have the formal education system to thank for their success. In an earlier era, school sports were organised at all levels from Primary to Senior, with legions of teachers willing to devote time and energy to the running of school teams. Now, thanks to the everyone must win mentality, lack of facilities and Health and Safety issues competitive sport is dead or dying in many state schools. Children in such schools have to depend on external clubs to nurture their talent and provide the coaching and encouragement needed to see it bloom. If the Health & Safety tendency gets its way, of course, these same clubs will soon become so enmeshed in elfin safety regulations and paedo seeking legislation that no sane adult will want anything to do with them - but that's another story altogether.
By contrast, in the private and selective sectors, school sports are flourishing, just as they always have, alongside traditional academic excellence. English/British teams have enjoyed fantastic success in recent years. Probably 90% of the cyclists, rowers, sailors, swimmers, cricket and rugby players who have represented us so successfully on the world's playing fields hail from a middle class or otherwise educationally-privileged back-ground. They can all go on to greater professional achievement in their chosen sports. Alternatively, they could spend a few years getting paid handsomely for something they enjoy and then use their superior academic education to take up another career altogether. Their near-peers, meanwhile, consigned to life in an average sink comprehensive, will be left far behind with very little real prospect of ever catching up.
In other words, in pursuing their dream of unprecedented equality, the levellers have simply replaced a system that gave the majority a fair crack of the whip and allowed the best-equipped to advance, with one that condemns a large majority of its unfortunate participants to a life of unrelieved mediocrity.
Not very fair or just and, by definition therefore, not very British.
Fair play wasn't something taught at home or school. You wouldn't have found it on any curriculum. It was never something much discussed or analysed; it was simply there, providing a framework for a reasonable life. People just knew, instinctively, what was right and fair. They did not jostle or push into queues, but quitely awaited their turn. From the playground onwards, fights were governed by unwritten - and immutable - rules; fists were OK; feet, heads and anything remotely resembling a weapon most certainly weren't. And fights were strictly for men and boys. Fighting was not a feminine past-time.
In cricket it was the norm for batsmen to walk when they knew they were out, or for fielders to own up if they hadn't quite managed to hold onto a clean catch. Footballers who dived and feigned injury were treated with contempt by referees, opponents and spectators alike.
Cheating of any kind was considered beyond the pale. Even criminals embraced a rough and ready form of morality. They might not all have been the loveable rogues who worshipped their old mums beloved of popular fiction but, by and large, they didn't prey on females, the poor, the weak or the elderly. Any young man who attacked an elderly man or woman would,have been the object of scorn and, most likely, have found himself on the wrong side of a battering. That is why virtually any middle-aged housewife could disperse a group of rowdy teenagers with a few well-chosen words; something that most policemen wouldn't attempt on their own these days.
So, how have we managed to descend from that innate sense of what is right and fair to our current state of affairs, where queuing is a lost art form - particularly in London - footballers who cheat and win penalties are regarded as the epitome of professionalism and a significant number of young men would not even consider fighting without some sort of edge; whether a real edge in the form of a knife or simply greater numbers than their opponent?
It would take several thick volumes to explore all of the underlying causes. And all I have at my disposal is a hastily-written blog. But, purely at random, here are a few things to consider:
1. Overcrowding. Experiments with rats have shown that colonies break when animals are confined in a small space and their numbers are allowed to grow unchecked. Regard England as a rat colony and you are already a long way to explaining the rapid breakdown in reasonable behaviour; especially in big cities like London. We are a small country that enjoys - probably not the right word - the most people per square mile in Europe. We have more and more people scrabbling for less space and rapidly dwindling resources. It is madness that we don't offically acknowledge the fact and put up the barriers before we all do ourselves a mischief.
2.Officially promoted inequality. Despite the findings, published today by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, that foreigners do not enjoy advantages when it comes to the allocation of social housing, the feeling persists that they do.
Sometimes, the anecdotal evidence looks stronger than any statistics. Take the awful fire that occurred in Camberwell last week. Look at the names of the people who died, those who survived and the people who witnessed the conflagration, all of whom lived in the tower block or one of its close neighbours. They all came originally from eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and points further east and west. How did they manage to get housed in an inner-London borough where the council housing waiting list runs to thousands of names? Whose places have they taken in the queue for council housing? How many elderly people have been left stranded in the area while their children and grandchildren have had to move out in search of affordable housing?
Ask these questions of any politician or local offical and you will immediately be labelled racist. Because, the simple answer is that, despite what the E&HRC says, foreigners who arrive homeless and with large families do seem to be given precedence over the indigenous population. This seemed to be confirmed by what John Healey, the Housing Minister, said on radio 4 this morning: "At present, those people with the most serious housing needs get priority. We are not changing that. " They are not changing it because they can't - at least not without infringing their own Human Rights Act. So, as long as the overarching selection criterion is immediate need rather than entitlement, the refugee family with four children must take precedence over the local couple with just one or two.
It might be the law, but it certainly isn't fair or just. Unfortunately, the only political party that has picked up on this point is the BNP; which is why they made gains at the recent elections which, in earlier, fairer times, they would never have had a hope in hell of achieving.
Harriet Harman will shortly add to this offically enshrined discrimination when she makes it illegal for institututions to discriminate against people from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds. Quite who will set the bar as far as a measurement of poverty or disadvantage is concerned is not yet clear. What is clear, based on the evidence of all prior discriminatory legislation, is that the rules will simply create yet another stratum in our society. Post this act, the poor will be further divided between those shrewd, crafty, well-informed and well-connected enough to exploit the legislation and the great mass who will never quite get the hang of it and go on being just as down-trodden as ever. Plus, of course, there will be another layer created above the other two made up solely of Quangocrats whose job is to monitor, review and enforce the regulations and pad out thei own pension schemes.
3. Much of the blame must, inevitably, attach itself to the people who have guided us for the last 30 years - not just in Westminster but in all the institutions charged with the care and mentoring of our children. They have created the curricula and agenda that have shaped our society. It is the educationalists, philosophers, teachers and other assorted care-givers who brick-by-painful-brick have dismantled a system that took around 200 years to perfect and have replaced it with something that fails in the most basic objective of any educational system; education, education, education.
Doubtless inspired by the noblest of egalitarian motives they are the ones, nonetheless, who have hollowed out our educational system from within. With their insistence on prizes for all - irrespective of talent, skills or effort- they have completely severed the link between effort and reward. Outside the classroom, they have achieved the same effect by eliminating competition from play and sport; awarding the feckless and lazy the same prizes as they do the strivers and achievers. When that hasn't had the desired effect and quashed children's natural competitive urges, they have simply sold off the playing fields. The results of this collective anti-competition activism can be seen in the obese, ill-educated under-class they have created whose opportunities for advancement or betterment are virtually nil.
Even black footballers and athletes from disadvantaged back-grounds rarely have the formal education system to thank for their success. In an earlier era, school sports were organised at all levels from Primary to Senior, with legions of teachers willing to devote time and energy to the running of school teams. Now, thanks to the everyone must win mentality, lack of facilities and Health and Safety issues competitive sport is dead or dying in many state schools. Children in such schools have to depend on external clubs to nurture their talent and provide the coaching and encouragement needed to see it bloom. If the Health & Safety tendency gets its way, of course, these same clubs will soon become so enmeshed in elfin safety regulations and paedo seeking legislation that no sane adult will want anything to do with them - but that's another story altogether.
By contrast, in the private and selective sectors, school sports are flourishing, just as they always have, alongside traditional academic excellence. English/British teams have enjoyed fantastic success in recent years. Probably 90% of the cyclists, rowers, sailors, swimmers, cricket and rugby players who have represented us so successfully on the world's playing fields hail from a middle class or otherwise educationally-privileged back-ground. They can all go on to greater professional achievement in their chosen sports. Alternatively, they could spend a few years getting paid handsomely for something they enjoy and then use their superior academic education to take up another career altogether. Their near-peers, meanwhile, consigned to life in an average sink comprehensive, will be left far behind with very little real prospect of ever catching up.
In other words, in pursuing their dream of unprecedented equality, the levellers have simply replaced a system that gave the majority a fair crack of the whip and allowed the best-equipped to advance, with one that condemns a large majority of its unfortunate participants to a life of unrelieved mediocrity.
Not very fair or just and, by definition therefore, not very British.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
sounds, secrets and breathy aitches
I nearly crashed my car the other afternoon.
I was driving home from the West Country and listening to radio 2. The music stopped and a pleasant, female voice chimed out one of the many commercials that litter the BBC's airwaves these days.
I can't remember precisely what programme or presenter the commercial was plugging. I tend to tune out when these things are broadcast. But, I do remember that I almost swerved off the road when she added the strap line "..... the sound to your Sunday morning".
The sound TO your Sunday morning.
What the hell sort of language is that? Who wrote it? More to the point, who, charged with the job of editing it, allowed such meaningless drivel to be broadcast?
I wanted to call the Beeb - as I frequently do - to complain. I wanted to take the announcer - or preferably the writer/editor - gently by the throat and explain that there is no such construction in the English language as "the sound to". Unfortunately, I was driving, I was in a hurry and, truthfully, too apathetic to pull off the road and make the call on my mobile.
So, I let it go. And it has rankled ever since.
But really, how could anyone with English as a first language feel comfortable with such a construction. Imagine writing a diary entry that began: The day was fine and filled with the sound to the birds singing. UURGGH.
Why are people not only being allowed to mangle our language on a daily basis but, what's worse, being paid to do so? Is it out of some mis-guided sense of trendyness? Does it denote lack of interest or affection for the language?Or are they simply ignorant ? Whatever the reason, its effect is grating in the extreme.
It was probably around three or four years ago that I first noticed this trend. Like many linguistic horrors it seems to have originated in America.
The carrier of this particular virus was an ad for a shampoo or hair treatment which promised to provide " the secret TO glossy hair" or something equally specious. It made me grind my teeth then and, just writing it, makes me grind them even now. In any event, such is the power of the broadcast word, whether on TV, radio or the WWW, that "the secret TO" rapidly established itself. It infests evry form of the written word but seems to be particularly prevalent in women's magazines, which regularly promise to reveal the secret to bikini figures, workplace romances, perfect teeth, summer diets and buiness success. The people who write and edit these sections are only outdone in their air-headeness by the people who actually choose to read them.
Another hair-tearing construction that pops up all the time is Bored OF or Fed-Up OF. In fact, it's been around so long that, nowadays, when people find things or other people tedious they are just as likely to anoounce that they are Bored Of them as the rest of us are to be bored with them.
But, these prepositional aberrances pale in comparison with the modern insistence on inserting the letter aitch into the word aitch so that it ends up being pronounced as Haitch.
My bank is called HSBC. Or at least, that is how I have always thought of it. Not any more, though, if a young man that I talked to the other day is to be believed. No, according to him, the correct title of my bank is Haitch SBC with a very breathy emphasis on the H inserted at the beginning of the word.
I tried - and dismally failed - to explain to him that the company's name was HSBC with no aitch sound at the beginning. What I actually said was " There is no aitch in the aitch of HSBC". The surreal nature of that opening never really dissipated. The debate that followed progressed rapidly downhill. We might justt as well have been discussing some obscure grammatical construction in Serbo Croat for all the effect my argument had. Suffice to say that the young lad went away convinced that I was either some kind of nutter or that I was the unfortunate victim of a distinctly sub-standard education. For my part, I had to retire to a darkened room and rub myself down gently with a copy of Usage and Abusage.
I was driving home from the West Country and listening to radio 2. The music stopped and a pleasant, female voice chimed out one of the many commercials that litter the BBC's airwaves these days.
I can't remember precisely what programme or presenter the commercial was plugging. I tend to tune out when these things are broadcast. But, I do remember that I almost swerved off the road when she added the strap line "..... the sound to your Sunday morning".
The sound TO your Sunday morning.
What the hell sort of language is that? Who wrote it? More to the point, who, charged with the job of editing it, allowed such meaningless drivel to be broadcast?
I wanted to call the Beeb - as I frequently do - to complain. I wanted to take the announcer - or preferably the writer/editor - gently by the throat and explain that there is no such construction in the English language as "the sound to". Unfortunately, I was driving, I was in a hurry and, truthfully, too apathetic to pull off the road and make the call on my mobile.
So, I let it go. And it has rankled ever since.
But really, how could anyone with English as a first language feel comfortable with such a construction. Imagine writing a diary entry that began: The day was fine and filled with the sound to the birds singing. UURGGH.
Why are people not only being allowed to mangle our language on a daily basis but, what's worse, being paid to do so? Is it out of some mis-guided sense of trendyness? Does it denote lack of interest or affection for the language?Or are they simply ignorant ? Whatever the reason, its effect is grating in the extreme.
It was probably around three or four years ago that I first noticed this trend. Like many linguistic horrors it seems to have originated in America.
The carrier of this particular virus was an ad for a shampoo or hair treatment which promised to provide " the secret TO glossy hair" or something equally specious. It made me grind my teeth then and, just writing it, makes me grind them even now. In any event, such is the power of the broadcast word, whether on TV, radio or the WWW, that "the secret TO" rapidly established itself. It infests evry form of the written word but seems to be particularly prevalent in women's magazines, which regularly promise to reveal the secret to bikini figures, workplace romances, perfect teeth, summer diets and buiness success. The people who write and edit these sections are only outdone in their air-headeness by the people who actually choose to read them.
Another hair-tearing construction that pops up all the time is Bored OF or Fed-Up OF. In fact, it's been around so long that, nowadays, when people find things or other people tedious they are just as likely to anoounce that they are Bored Of them as the rest of us are to be bored with them.
But, these prepositional aberrances pale in comparison with the modern insistence on inserting the letter aitch into the word aitch so that it ends up being pronounced as Haitch.
My bank is called HSBC. Or at least, that is how I have always thought of it. Not any more, though, if a young man that I talked to the other day is to be believed. No, according to him, the correct title of my bank is Haitch SBC with a very breathy emphasis on the H inserted at the beginning of the word.
I tried - and dismally failed - to explain to him that the company's name was HSBC with no aitch sound at the beginning. What I actually said was " There is no aitch in the aitch of HSBC". The surreal nature of that opening never really dissipated. The debate that followed progressed rapidly downhill. We might justt as well have been discussing some obscure grammatical construction in Serbo Croat for all the effect my argument had. Suffice to say that the young lad went away convinced that I was either some kind of nutter or that I was the unfortunate victim of a distinctly sub-standard education. For my part, I had to retire to a darkened room and rub myself down gently with a copy of Usage and Abusage.
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