Our great nation is going through some kind of
collective mental and moral breakdown and we need to shake ourselves out of negative
attitudes and of what our French friends call Nostalgie de la Boue, the
attraction to low-life culture, experience and degradation. How else can we
have actually honoured or promoted the careers of such flawed
characters as Prince Andrew, Boris Johnson (alas!), Jimmy Savile, Russell Brand
or Ghislaine Maxwell – none of them role-models, for sure.
Russell
Brand
Behind the personalities, there are serious issues
and leadership challenges which need sorting and I list 5 – others will have
much longer lists.
(1) Political Behaviour. Westminster is an undignified
bear-garden – far too many MPs (radical boundary changes required) and respect
for the neutrality of The Speaker has been greatly damaged by Bercow’s tenure. The
adversarial tradition should be modified with different seating arrangements
and stronger cross-party committees. The unwritten UK constitution should be
respected – prorogation of parliament, for example, to suit the party in power
cannot be tolerated. PM’s Question Time needs to be remodelled, as it is uninformative
in content and artificial in concept. Government must always be accountable to
parliament, but it does not need a bogusly dramatic accompaniment. Perhaps the
worst legacy of Boris is that the veracity and integrity of the Prime Minister
is no longer a given assumption. Some of the time-honoured flummery of parliament,
including The Lords, deserves the too long-delayed dustbin.
(2) The National Health Service. Said to be the 5th
largest employer in the world with a payroll of 1.7m people, the NHS is a
revered institution, once hardly ever criticized. When Covid struck we were
encouraged to give it a clap every week and clang pots and pans in appreciation.
But the obvious waste and incompetence displayed eroded confidence and the
retreat of GPs from the front line and opportunistic strikes by nurses, junior
doctors and senior consultants did not impress the public. The use of unqualified
receptionists as gate-keepers, shielding the doctors, was scandalous and the
whole edifice is too expensive and bureaucratic to survive without urgent
reform. The staff union leaders, mostly extreme Lefties, have destroyed public
goodwill. Tales of mis-diagnoses, appallingly bad care in certain hospitals, the
Lucy Letby scandal and the past calamity of polluted blood administered to
patients (£26bn compensation estimated) further undermines the NHS’s reputation.
Vigorous management and focused financial plans would reignite public affection
for the NHS.
(3) The Media. Britain has always suffered from her
“gutter press”, but now with a Woke-rampant BBC / ITV and rancid social media,
the smell from the media drains is overpowering. The lowest common denominator holds
sway, with a deeply moronic output and opinions expressed as facts, to which only
a tiny minority subscribe. Toxic cancel-culture is everywhere and bias partout.
The current Russell Brand imbroglio is a case in point. Brand may well be
an insufferable twit and was given too much latitude, but he is not yet a criminal.
There must be at this stage a presumption of innocence and still the laws of
defamation and contempt of court probably need strengthening (and enforcing, by
our abject Police and Judiciary.)
Rupert Murdoch (92), ruthless arch-agitator Piers Morgan, his cheerleader
(4) Devolution and Local Government. If the last 20 years have shown us
anything, it is evident that if you give a politician an inch, he will take a
mile. The well-meaning devolution experiment has been a disaster and somehow
the political clock will have to be put back and devolved powers and privileges
drastically reduced. In Scotland, a once proud nation has seen its home reduced
to a crime-ridden, drug-guzzling, squalid slum by fanatical leaders obsessed
with absurd dreams of “Independence”, when it is one of the most neighbour-dependent
states in the world. Wales is another political slum, where nothing works well,
while the obtuseness and ignorance of Northern Ireland’s crew are legendary.
England itself is not much better with Birmingham going bust and cosmopolitan London
rocked by its ill-conceived but woke ULEZ scheme. When local authorities are
charged with real responsibility, like the regulation of care homes, they make
a spectacular mess of it, employing low-lives who abuse vulnerable patients. Let’s
face it, the UK talent pool of competent managers and administrators is
alarmingly shallow.
(5) The Watchdogs. A classic solution for the control
of powerful institutions is the appointment of an overseeing watchdog, who has
the ability to rectify abuses and omissions, and has the power to challenge and
monitor those institutions. But these watchdogs are fallible and the question
is soon asked: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?).
Such watchdogs hover over the City, Education, the Health Service and many
other government departments. Their effectiveness is questionable, and while
they provide well-paid billets for experienced old hands, they are often far
too close to their erstwhile friends and colleagues. Thus recently, charged
with investigating whether “de-banking” banking customers for political reasons
was widespread, the City watchdog, the FCA, pronounced that they had asked 34
banks and found no evidence that anyone had been “primarily” de-banked for
political reasons. This flies in the face of widespread publicity given to the
struggle of Brexiteer Nigel Farage to retain his Coutts Bank account and the
subsequent resignation of the CEO of NatWest, the owner of Coutts, when clear
evidence emerged. Another mess – as we Scotsmen say, “There’s none so deaf as
those who do not want to hear!”
A heavy agenda of Reform is suggested in this
piece, unlikely to be completed in my lifetime. But I suggest that the
powers-that-be start down the hard and treacherous road now!
SMD
21.09.23
Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2023
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