Time for the Wilderness

The Labour party spent eighteen years in the political wilderness. At the end of that time it appeared that they had learned some lessons from this; that “old” Labour and its socialist values were too far from the centre ground to be electable. Hence “new” Labour, business friendly Labour, electable Labour. In half that time again, those lessons appear to have been forgotten. The sleaze that plagued the Tories has returned to haunt Labour. But, worse, far, far worse, is the sheer arrogance of a party so used to power that it has forgotten the eighteen years watching from the sidelines.

Via Devil’s Kitchen comes the story of the selling a copy of the Hutton Report in order to raise funds for the party. I’d been meaning to comment on this, but time slips by so quickly…

I find it difficult to comprehend just what was going on in their minds. Really, just what were they thinking? The Hutton report was the outcome of a sordid chapter in the party’s history, where they effectively drove a man to his death. Something they are not averse to repeating. Having driven Kelly to an early grave, Simon Davies proved to be a thorn in their side, so they thought they would try again. Then there are the Paddington survivors…

All of which tends to suggest a level of contempt by the ruling elite for those outside the favoured group. We, the proles, are treated with derision, brushed off with a degree of arrogance that is difficult to appreciate unless one has tried to communicate with these people. Repeated lobbying of my MP and recent discussions with the department of health make it clear that my views are unwelcome, inconvenient and, most of all, unimportant. They have what they want; power for the next four years. As I cannot influence that, they just don’t give a damn. A veneer of appearing to care what the electorate thinks will appear during the run-up to the next election, when a flutter of tabloid headlines will be donned like Venetian masks, but it’s a façade, a means to an end, nothing more, they don’t really care what we think.

So, I guess, it comes as no surprise to see Libby Purves’ article about errors in the criminal records bureau in the Times the other day.

The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) has erroneously bad-mouthed a large number of innocent citizens. One publicised case is of Emma Budd, who lost her chance of working for a children’s charity when the bureau wrongly identified her as a convicted shoplifter. It admitted that this has happened around 2,700 times but dismisses it as “a tiny proportion” of its work; the Education Secretary speaks sententiously of being on the safe side. It was the Home Office who made the remark about CRB customer satisfaction being at an “all-time high”.

Given government departments’ and their agencies’ propensity for incompetence – and an inability to fully understand that they are incompetent – I can accept, understand even, that these things happen. But the response is unbelievable – even for this bunch of wretched, incompetent, shameless, arrogant, pig-headed, obscene little shits.

And — here’s the significant bit — nobody is sorry. The Home Office feels within its rights to abuse some citizens because others might be wicked. There is a right of challenge, but the procedure is that the “disclosure” goes simultaneously to the individual and the employer. Thus Miss Budd’s job “went out of the window”, and so did her next application. Government agencies merely boast that 25,000 unsuitables were barred last year from positions of trust, which makes it all right to screw up the prospects of 2,700 innocents.

No, they are not sorry. It is all in a day’s work – and if innocent people get hurt, well, that’s just too bad. Somewhere along the line, these imperious charlatans have forgotten the relationship that is supposed to exist between us. We, the electorate, employ them, the public servants – yes, servants. And when servants get things wrong, they are supposed to apologise. In this instance, there should be a process of compensation where loss has occurred. Certainly there should be resignations, discipline and sackings. But, no, these arrogant, bumptious, self-righteous arseholes don’t give a shit.

The tone amounts to a national Disrespect Agenda: sanctimonious, scolding, applying standards only to little people. Tessa Jowell’s husband can be thick with Silvio Berlusconi and dodgy fake loans prop up politics, but down in the everyday world cumbersome new “money-laundering” regulations force pensioners to identify themselves three different ways to a bank manager they’ve known for years, and make it illegal for an estate agent to market your house without taking your national insurance number.

John Prescott can with impunity assault people and demand sex in his office, but a harassed teacher who lays a restraining hand on a child’s shoulder risks ruin. The Home Office can mismanage dangerous prisoners, yet roll its eyes up in pious self-justification as it libels the innocent. Health and police posters can berate us as malodorous wife beaters while actual police ignore burglaries and NHS Direct takes four hours to ring back.

We deserve more respect.

Quite. Respect. We hear a lot about that. They talk the talk well enough. Yes, we do deserve more respect from the buffoons we elect to high office. So why doesn’t the electorate display self respect at the ballot box?  If they did, these hateful people would be cast back into the political wilderness from whence they came and where they so deservedly belong. :dry: