19th July 2011

You should always be careful what you wish for.

I wonder whether Mr Cameron has had that thought whispered into his ear in the last few days?

From slease amongst MP's resulting in some MP's jailed, to downright criminality and law breaking by the press and subsequent resignations of Senior Police Officers the News has not been made comfortable reading for anyone in public life.

Generally society has been organised into or described as having five 'estates' with the Crown above and independant of all five.

The first estate was the church and the clergy.

The church was followed by the nobility although more recently parliament has been defined as the second estate, the third estate was very loosely defined as the commoners, the fourth estate was the media .

Now three of the great estates of society, parliament, police and the media are caught in a web of conspiracy and what Boris Johnson called the 'concatenation' of issues which had been thrown up by the phone hacking scandal.

Clearly the Archbishop has weighed into the debate with his own opinions and has been both criticised and seen his views dismissed, but then the first estate has all but lost its influence.

On the whole public opinion finds the first estate somewhat mildly amusing and generally smiles benignly at the idea that all clergy, men and women, are essentially Vicars of Dibley, unthreatening, vaguely amusing and worthy of a chuckle or two and certainly not to be taken seriously.

The most powerful estate it seems is public opinion sometimes called the fifth estate.

Public Opinion has been focussed by the campaigns made possible by the new technologies to challenge the sale of forests, the wholesale reorganisation of the NHS and in its clearest expression of revulsion and distaste the hacking of the mobile 'phone of the murdered teenage Millie Dowler.

When I had Cable TV installed in my house in Birmingham, we had a special offer as compensation for the fact that in our street that all the pavements had been dug up for months whilst the cable was laid, I noticed that the remote control had a voting button.

This struck me as a great democratic idea.

Government by the fifth estate.

New laws, public policy, (lower) taxes, the NHS, the sale of forests, (increased) benefits for the elderly, (lower) fuel taxes , (better) care in the community, whatever it was, we could all sit in the comfort of our homes and give expression to our feelings our thoughts or our prejudices and vote a huge and expansive development in the democratisation of society, indeed the creation of a big society in which all were emancipated and enfranchised.

But sadly it didn't happen, instead we settled for Big Brother (who stays, who goes), the Apprentice (you're fired), Pop Idol and Britain's Got Talent and whatever else and more scarily more people voted in these vox pop excercises than did in general elections.

As I say it could have been the next great step in democracy which just goes to show you should always be careful what you wish for ..........