Woman of the year
Sunday, December 27, 2009
2009 in review: MPs' expenses | World news | The Observer.
Heather Brooke gave us our only political hope of 2009. She is what all our journalists should be. She explains her motivations for researching MP's expenses succinctly (and rather sadly) in the linked article;
Britain's apathy is indeed terrible - and terribly dangerous. In my years in Russia I learned that voter expectations set a ceiling on political morality. If an honest man ran for office there, first people would laugh at his naiveté. Then they would disbelieve him, assuming he was laughing at theirs. Soon, given that everyone assumed he was a crook, he would decide he might as well become one.
This is the helter skelter of negative expectation down which Britain is careering. My elder daughter once told my wife "Dad is not a cynic. He's a frustrated idealist." Perhaps so. Certainly, I believe that once a nation truly lowers its sights, it is finished.
Russia is - and has always been - potentially far richer than Britain. It has vast resources, endless land and highly educated people. It has a truly magnificent culture and a strong patriotic spirit. It should be the richest nation on Earth, by quite a long way. But it is a cold version of Nigeria because its people expect too little of their political class. That, ladies and gentlemen, is true apathy. Corruption is its inevitable consequence. Left unchecked, it's terminal.
Next year will see a new government in Britain. Left or Right it will - sadly - be statist. Many politicians know full well that our state has already over-reached, but will continue to pretend. Why? Because they face - like every democratic government - a population clamouring childishly for simple solutions to life's problems. For a politician to maintain his idealism - even the frustrated variety - in such circumstances is tough. We really need them to try though. After a year in which they were caught with their hands in the till, we also need opportunities to catch them doing something right.
I have seen the alternative and it's not pretty.
Whilst I agree with your comments totally (and also have a reference point of several years spent working, if not living, in Russia to measure an alternative), I suspect you are not going far enough.
In addition to now getting the politicians we deserve, we are also getting the society we deserve; the corrupting influence of the welfare state and absence of a common morality that binds us as neighbours is destroying any sense of responsibility and community. I fear that until we re-learn that it does matter how we, and those in office, conduct themselves, and to raise our expectations for our own behaviour and of those in office, we are going to be mired in this sorry state for some time. This is not just a legal challenge (the absence of the rule of law, Russia's gravest problem, not being the core issue here), but one of manners and morals.
Posted by: Navigator | Monday, December 28, 2009 at 08:39 AM
Heather Brooke: a very worthy winner of any Woman of The Year award.
I wish she were more prominently featured in the many reviews of the year we face this week.
And I thank you for the rest of this post;we should expect and require much more of our politicians,not in how much they do because that is nearly always too much,but in how they think and how they conduct themselves.
As for the infantile population and their desire for simple solutions,I suspect this has not come about by accident.
And every time anyone says about a problem, 'The government should do something about it,' a statist is tempted to burst into song.
Happy New Year.
Posted by: Kevyn Bodman | Sunday, December 27, 2009 at 03:03 PM