3rd February 2012

The parish magazine was delivered the other day.

Al the usual stuff was there, the Vicar's letter, the Calender of events, notices about special services for Lent and Easter.

Additionally this month there was an item called simply Smile.

It included a number of jokes, some were in very poor taste and some were religious but there were no political jokes.

In some ways this is not surprising, after all what is there to laugh about.

According to what I read there is now so little substantive debate about policy matters in the House of Commons, that some MP's are wondering whether its worth turning up and Jack Straw wrote a piece which seemed to say, give us something useful to do. 

I recently read a report implying that there is not enough legislative material to last until the next recess (or should that be recession?).

I find this just a trifle shocking.

After all there is the big picture, Global Warming and the future of the planet Earth.

Then there is the economy stupid (or should that be the stupid economy?)

Then of course there is the NHS, Pensions, Benefits and Broadband.

It seems to me that the MP's we elect have some responsibility for continuing to hold the issues that face us as a society up to scrutiny in order that the general pace and direction of travel is consistent with ensuring that the well being of society is generally well served.

But what we get is a fairly crude attempt to draw attention away from the difficult and complex issues that don't respond to easy answers, with simplistic slogans, often populist in their appeal, a benefit cap, strip away a knighthood, demand an immediate response about the referendum for Scotland.

So we end up talking about Mr Goodwin instead of the financial chaos that engulfed both Europe and America towards the end of the last Parliament and which wasn't the fault of the Labour Party actually.

We end up talking about scroungers and benefit cheats instead of the many thousands of people who want to work but for whom jobs are simply not there to be found after public services have been shredded like Mr Goodwin's knighthood and the private sector has failed to take up the slack as promised.

We end up talking about Mr Salmond's expertise as a shrewd political operator rather than the benefits that an independant Scotland would bring to both nations, think Czech and Slovakia!

But more than all that we are facing issues that are complex and need careful assessment and balanced judgement instead we get crude and inflexible measures introduced such as the Child benefit proposals which are both grossly unfair and fly in the face of natural justice but which are introduced not for social or economic reasons but for political expediency.

A Government that governs with an eye on getting itself re-elected by definition cannot be governing in the interests of the country as a whole.

The joke that was, in what Kenny Everett might have called the worst possible taste, but which came closest to being a political joke, was Number 5:

My girlfriend thinks I'm stalker .... Well, she's not exactly my girlfriend yet ...........