Notes and Comments: 12/04/2007

[Admin note: I’ve changed from numbering these Notes & Comment pieces to dating them.]

NOTES:

It seems that for as long as I can remember – or as long as I’ve been interested in politics and current affairs – the various government departments: Health, Defence, Education and so on and so forth (whatever governments of the day call them or however they arrange them) seem to stumble from cock-up to crisis to disaster with – seemingly – unfailing regularity. I have recently come to the –tentative – conclusion that it is democratic control itself that is the problem. Take for example, John Reid (currently cocking up at the Home Office) and his predecessor Charles Clarke, either of which would be over-promoted if they were tea-boy in an ordinary office. I think it is the very mediocrity that makes it possible for such people to become MPs that makes them unsuitable for the jobs they are given in government. I suppose what I’m saying is that Government is too important to be left to mere politicians. I don’t have a solution though, apart from what would have been an anathema to me only a few years ago – get government out of as much of our individual - and national – lives as possible.

Several people have argued that the NuLaborg Collective see Orwell’s 1984 not as a dire warning about totalitarianism, but as a blueprint for their perfect society.

In Orwell’s fictional world, adults become subservient to irresponsible, ill-informed, not-yet-developed, gullible and nasty children. Is New Labour in danger of creating similar kinds of kids in Britain 2007?

Tessa Mayes at Spiked! ‘on how the British government is recruiting children to spy on and ‘re-educate’ the adult population.’

COMMENTS:

Max Hastings: Blair's iron grip on his party's loyalty invites the electorate's derision

My comment:

I have always voted Labour, all through the Thatcher and Major - and Labour's wilderness - years. I voted for Labour in the Blair era despite Blair - never for him. I always regarded Blair as an intellectual pygmy, duplicitous and smarmy - events seem to have proved my instincts right for once.

However, I will never - ever - vote Labour again. It is not the Iraq war - Massive cock-up though it has been - that has so turned me against the whole 'left-wing' enterprise. No, it is the attempts at social engineering, the contempt for individual freedom, the cynical use of spin as a replacement for substance and well... the list goes on past PFI, ID cards and so on.

In fact, as far as I'm personally concerned the only positive legacy that Blair has left has been this fundamental examination of so many assumptions that I took for granted that made me a creature of the left and my - sometimes painful ultimate rejection of all of them. If there are - as I suspect many more people once of the left like me who have gone through a similar bit of soul searching as a direct result of the Blair's government's actions then the Labour party's next period in the wilderness is going to be a very, very long one indeed.

Come on readers - do your worst

My comment:

We've had articles about the 15 sailors acting like wimps in Iran, articles about teachers being 'bullied' by their pupils and now we have an article about people being a bit rude on the internet.

Why are people these days so desperate to be so feeble? So desperate to be a 'victim'? So keen to find something so 'offensive' they have to run away with their hands over their ears in case their delicate little sensibilities are slightly bruised?

What happened to 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words...'?

This has to be one of the most pernicious and - ultimately - pathetically defeatist cultural changes of recent years. I would look to something like the Daily Telegraph to begin a campaign to reverse this trend, if I did not fear it was already too late.