Navel gazing

Impressions can be misleading, and I spend less time gazing at my own navel than might be apparent or seem probable from reading this blog.

I spend more time looking outside than in, and a lot of what I see either I don't like or I'm worried by.

Things that don't worry me include:

• bird flu (yet)
• gay marriage
• British doctors' pay levels being the highest in Europe
• inherited wealth
• women bishops
• the purchase of 'honours'
• the wrongfully convicted being compensated
• BBC staff being paid market rates

Things that do wind me up include:

• hysteria about bird flu
• gay 'marriage'
• British doctors not earning their pay
• inheritance tax
• Home Secretary Charles Clarke
• the influence of the archdiocesan and diocesan authorities of Nigeria in Sydney over the Anglican Church
• privately owned media parading individual salaries out of spite

Bird flu might well become a major health issue; we have the wherewithal to deal with that threat and investigative journalism has a role to play in keeping public health authorities and medical science focused on developing strategies and solutions. Instead we get hand flapping when a handful of birds die in quarantine and emotive photographs of a decomposing swan on a remote Scottish beach. Great journalism.

I resent that my taxes are being squandered on establishing a parallel system so that gays and lesbians can be civilly partnered without a whiff of 'marriage'. This is how we promote family? This is how we encourage people to settle down and partner up? I'm no fan, but if we must have social engineering could it not be fiscally responsible and grounded in common sense?

The National Health System of this country is a decrepit relict, a haven of Victorian sensibilities, practices, architecture and plumbing. I've lost count of the number of times I've been patronised or insulted or ignored by a doctor. These people are paid by me. Courtesy costs nothing.

Charles Clarke is an pig-ignorant buffoon. He was a pig-ignorant buffoon when he was Education Secretary and he'll almost certainly now die a pig-ignorant buffoon. Take the following, the first of which is an illustrative paraphrasing and the second a direct quotation:

[I] would not give a toss if Classics teaching fell into desuetude, what
with it being no earthly use in the workplace...

'I don't mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but
there is no reason for the state to pay for them'

Google "Charles Clarke Education Secretary Teaching Medieval History" for further reading.

Of the two the latter was delivered in an interview given to The Times Higher Education Supplement in May 2003 and caused the greater furore, possibly because most young hacks had no idea what he was getting at with the first comment. The combined impact of the two should have terminated his ministerial career.

Charles Clarke is now Secretary of State for the Home Office. The move from Education to Home Office constituted a promotion. Both are cabinet level posts but the HO gig is regarded as one of the Big Four.

I consulted the Home Office web site for details of its current remit. The Home Office has been done over by zealous management consultants as evidenced by the statement under the heading Our purpose, aims and values which reads "Building a safe, just and tolerant society is our main purpose." Great, but what are your responsibilities? Or to put it more simply, what do you do?

Beneath the main heading (above) there are two sub-headings; one 'Our aims', the other 'Our values'. This page recommends reading the Annual Report for further information about Our purpose, aims and values. Thanks, but I'll pass. The url for this drivel is http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/purpose-and-aims/ if you feel inclined to see for yourself.

The bar down the left hand side of the page invites you to explore further delights headed Crime and victims, Security, Passports and immigration, Anti-social behaviour, Drugs, Communities, Equality and Diversity, The police, Justice and prisons, Science, research and statistics.

Of these aspects of the Home Office remit the one that scares me the most is actually the last. It conjures up for me a vision of windowless rooms in 1960s tower blocks filled with earnest bearded sandal-wearing sociology PhDs churning out rainforests of mutually contradictory research papers setting out proposals for improving Security by cracking down on Communities, while at the same time expanding Anti-social behaviour at the expense of Equality and diversity. And even the most casual student of UK miscarriages of justice knows the words justice and prison should only be placed in proximity with one another after the most careful consideration of the consequences of sounding like a complete fool.

The pig-ignoramus presides over this lot. The tragedy is that the man is all too evidently intelligent and well educated and potentially a ministerial giant. Unlike the Deputy Prime Minister he really doesn't have an excuse.

Charles Clarke presumes to be an agent of change within the framework of parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch while dismissing the branch of scholarship which bears its weight on the forces that brought us through from the dark ages to the early modern era and during which were built the foundation on which every key element of our society rests.

The high and late Middle Ages date (roughly) from the Great Schism [1054] to the middle of the fifteenth century. In England around the middle of this period Geoffrey Chaucer was making it socially acceptable to read works written in the language of the lower orders if not the actual peasantry, John Wycliffe was failing to play by the rules and publicly debating those contentious questions of theology and doctrine which the church considered only its most senior prelates capable of tackling [and with all due respect to the Church for the counter-reformation and Vatican II it really hasn't grown up much since] while secular princes were learning, albeit of necessity, to wield diplomacy when once the sword would have been employed. The first national pay award was struck (and immediately ignored) during this period and House of Commons became established and began to flex its muscles. These were formative years.

Through the study of this period we learn of and understand the forces at work to establish those things which have become archaic convention and these range from the silly (such as referring to the House of Lords in the House of Commons as 'the other place' and vice versa) to the serious (a couple of well established features of the practice of justice such as trial by jury and habeas corpus, for example). It is all very well to say that those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them, but the worst that might, just might befall Charles Clarke is that he loses his job.

The real penalty will be paid by those who are wrongfully convicted who on release find the state unprepared to pay much if any compensation. The real penalty will be paid by those who are never tried, but who are incarcerated indefinitely without the evidence to support this incarceration ever being brought before an open court.

The numbers of those who have paid dearly down through the years for the rights and privileges we enjoy (or did enjoy until very recently) are numberless and largely nameless. Charles Clarke blithely sweeps away these rights and privileges with a dismissive waft of a piece of secondary legislation.

Be careful what you say and be careful who you say it to. This man is armed and dangerous.

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I haven't dealt with the Mad Mullahs in Mitres who run the Anglican Church in Nigeria and Sydney (and yes one or two other places). Nor have I dealt with the tempest in a tea cup over BBC salaries. If the latter story continues to take up acres of newsprint and miles of bandwidth over the next couple of days I'll stick my oar in - always assuming the Fat Bastard doesn't do something to aggravate me in the meantime.

As for the Mad Mullahs - sadly they're not going away anytime soon.