Friday, May 05, 2006

Isn't salacious...

...a great word? Things Stars Wars has taught me #87576.

Han shoots first(Delighted to discover they're releasing the original versions of the original Star Wars trilogy later this year, with Han shooting first and the Ewoks' better song.)

Anyway, am thinking of salacious in particular following Labour's shuffling about. It's something of a shock to realise just how few of the brass have escaped some kind of muck on 'em recently.

On Saturday, the Dr had tried to explain to an Italian how it's all a bit like the mid-nineties, when every other day some high-up Tory was discovered up to things that if not illegal were at least a bit unsavoury. The Italian bloke asked what our ministers had done and, when we told him, he laughed. Yes, it could be a lot worse.

Politicians - like police officers, teachers and doctors - are as fallible as any other human beings. Mistakes get made, and sometimes priorities are a bit odd. I'd rather they had lofty ideals they couldn't always meet than that they didn't aspire to anything for fear of hypocrisy.

Yet they're also meant to be exemplars for the rest of us rough-necks to look up to. I think if you want just to be treated like any other ordinary bloke then you shouldn't lord it over other people. Dump the chauffeur for a bus pass, that sort of thing. You can't have it both ways.

Will some late substitions really changes things for the Labourers? Any timely response the Government makes to anything is going to be called knee-jerk by someone. It's also easy to snipe at whoever's in charge, without making any effort to do better.

(Discussed something similar in the pub last night about critics of new Dr Who. Just you try making something nearly as good. That's not to say you shouldn't find fault, but it's not all you should be looking for, and something isn't wrong just cos you'd have done it differently.)

Which is a rather liberal (small l), hand-wringing way of saying that I'm not sure what good will come of any of this. The various ministerial scandals recently seem more about point-scoring than making things right. Yeah, the abominably smug cabinet got a bloody nose yesterday, and so have to have a re-think. And yet East London has doubled its number of BNP local councillors, and criminals from abroard will now be shipped home automatically, even if that's effectively a death sentence.

It salacious politics: making for a good story, but with little to be proud of.

I eagerly look forward to Millennium's analysis of this week's politics, having enjoyed his crossness at Prescott's snobbery. Think it would also do the Dr good to have someone to rail about governance to, someone who knows more about the subject than just what ex-Queen Amidala says. I wonder if Millennium's daddies like curry?

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