The furore over MPs' expenses might be regarded by many in authority as a storm in a tea cup. They hope it will blow over, and business will go on as before.
I have to disappoint them, because I believe that we are in a very dangerous position in our democratic system. Our elected representatives have been criticised for their venality and greed. With certain notable exceptions (Hilary Benn, Alan Johnson, Ed Miliband) there have been few people in power who have not been exposed as selfish and self-motivated - from the Geoff Hoon property empire, through Kitty Ussher's dislike of Artex through to John Prescott's two toilet seats. All is up for scrutiny, and remember the MPs tried to block this by exempting themselves from scrutiny.
Jobbing Doctor feels completely disenfranchised. I cannot vote for a party that has caused such damage as New Labour, and will not vote for the Tories (more of the same), or Liberal Democrats (who have completely lost their way).
I do not respect politicians any more. Yet it is essential that we have a proper political system in our country.
Over the last few years we have seen constant political interference in our public services, waste of public (taxpayers') money to a gargantuan extent, and a complete lack of engagement with the electorate. It is a very dangerous period in our democracy.
When I feel glum, I resort to some of my favourite pleasures - listening to chamber music, drinking wine (but not too much) and reading poetry.
One of the greatest sonnets ever written was by Percy Shelley: it is called Ozymandias.
It is a moral tale for our currently morally-challenged legislators.
From the hubristic:
'Look on my works, Ye Mighty, and despair'
to the nemesis of the ending:
'The lone and level sands stretch far away'
This should be a reflective piece for all our leaders.
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The furore over MPs' expenses might be regarded by many in authority as a storm in a tea cup. They hope it will blow over, and business will go on as before.
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11 comments:
This is one of my favourites:
Contagion
Elephants are contagious!
Be careful how you tread.
An Elephant that's been trodden on
Should be confined to bed!
Leopards are contagious too.
Be careful tiny tots.
They don't give you a temperature
But lots and lots - of spots.
The Herring is a lucky fish
From all disease inured.
Should he be ill when caught at sea;
Immediately - he's cured!
Spike Milligan
Such hardship for those poor souls :)
RP
Those who milk the system fail to grasp that when our patients need us we will give our time whether we are paid or not. This is part of our ethos. Dr Grumble regularly has to force his junior staff to go home. Going home and walking away from work is one of the things you have to learn to do as a doctor. There is always a clinical need if you work with really sick patients but you do need to have a life to survive yourself.
The likes of Alan Maynard and Julian Le Grand seem to have no concept of the clinical demands that drive us. This is why when new contracts were forced on GPs and consultants it ended up costing the taxpayer more and not less. GPs being well organised and (unlike hospitals) well computerised were easily able to jump through the hoops to provide an income for their practice while tending to the real clinical needs of their patients. Hospital consultants (mostly) turned out to be doing much more than they were being paid for. GPs ,of course, were providing 24/7 care that the government was oblivious to because it cost them so little. In worlds away from medicine some people are unable to understand the sense of vocation and duty that still, thankfully, makes many of us tick despite the damaging efforts of the government and the likes of Alan Maynard and Julian Le Grand. Many other attacks have been made on our professional values.
Of course, we should not forget that there used to be MPs with values, political conviction and a similar sense of duty to their constituents that doctors have for their patients. Not everybody in parliament is a money-grubbing career politician with no sense genuine party values.http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/05/06/watch-out-world/ Apparently doctors rarely claim their full set of allowances such as for travel between hospitals. Perhaps that says something about us. Perhaps the fact that Alan Johnson didn’t milk the system for as much as he could get says something about him.
Dr Grumble met Alan Johnson a few months ago. Before shaking his hand he looked up his wikipedia entry. His humble background and the difficulties he had in his early life brought tears to Grumble’s eyes. Alan Johnson knows hardship and what the world is really like for the ordinary person. Perhaps he is a politician of the old school with a sense of the true values that his party should stand for but has long abandoned. The parliamentary rot started with the sycophantic Blair babes. The days of the MP motivated by high ideals are gone. We must do our best to stop our profession being similarly damaged.
Oh come on. The whole world is posting this poem. Have you looked at the UK libertarian party?
Like JD Dr Grumble has more or less decided not to vote next time. When the time comes he might vote for the lesser of two evils but he might just not vote at all to reflect the disenfranchisement he shares with JD.
The beliefs of the UK Libertarian Party may seem superficially attractive but do not stand up to scrutiny. The piece about you being the best person to make decisions about how to care for your elderly relatives is particularly out of touch with reality. Many elderly people get abandoned by their relatives and many have no relatives to look after their interests. Superficially seductive policies are dangerous and not the way forward. The fact that these ideas are being peddled at all is a reflection of how the main parties have let us down by abandoning their convictions.
A cartoon a few months back in Private Eye featured a very very glum guy saying to another something like "You think I'm looking down in the mouth because I've loss faith in the present Government? No it's worse than that - the fact is I've already loss faith in the next lot too!"
I suspect many of us are saddened in a similar way by the manner in which the present generation of career politicians have lost touch with reality and think that they are above the law. (moral if not legal). Well they should be investigated quickly before the next general election and if found guilty of fraud removed from office and barred from standing for re-election as well as being surcharged for the amounts that they have "stolen" from taxpayers by following their own so called "rules".
Anon,
A great poem does not stop being a great poem because the whole world reads it: it is because the whole world reads it.
JD.
Quite a drasticand fatalist poem, isn't it JD? .. The end is neigh sort of thing .. and it ain't!
:-)
Self-destructing in 60 seconds .. 59 .. 58 .. 57 ....
1-0
like JD and DG I will not be voting.
I really don't think it matters which party gets in, it seems that nowadays a politician is a politician, you would have difficulty getting a fag paper between any of them and their party policies.
It seems Politics has become a business with the "management" taking all the perks and the "workers" (us) paying all the bills.
And let's not forget that who ever is in power we will still have to repay the £600 billion or so that the Government has landed us with.
Agreed, Angus. Politics is no longer about something you believe it. It is a job you decide to do to earn a living. The people who go in to it no longer have experience of real life yet think they know better than those of us who have had experience. It makes no difference who is in power. As you say their policies are the same. When the present lot were clearly heading in the wrong direction the opposition said nothing.
'things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst,
Are full of passionate intensity..
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Just thought I'd join in the general gloom; nobody does it better than Yeats.
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