Letters / Nonsensical sideshow
LOOKING AT the Shetland News letters page comments this week (and also at a multitude of news articles in the national press) on the matter of the imminent Scottish Independence referendum, it’s beginning to strike me that we’ve all been ‘sold a pup’ once again, as the English used to say.
If we had a setup at Westminster that actually worked as it was supposed to – which in my terms would be ‘for the good of the people, and for the good of the country as a whole’ – we wouldn’t need to be thinking about nonsensical sideshows such as proposed referenda on Scottish devolution or our actual relationship with the EU.
Instead, we’d have a government whose members were ALL actively involved full-time in doing what they’re already paid very well indeed to do, and a country that functioned properly while being able to defend its borders effectively from would-be economic invaders. Instead of that, we have a set of overpaid people who (very largely) seem to do as they please, while taking no account at all of what they were supposedly elected to do; while also being allowed to indulge in what could rightly be described as legally-sanctioned thefts from the public purse.
We can also see the continued flourishing of extremely expensive, top-heavy bureaucracy, in the form of the devolved Welsh and Scottish assemblies, that under an effective Westminster should be completely unnecessary; and opaque and unwieldy tax, welfare and legal systems that have gradually been rendered easier to hot-wire (for personal gain, by a variety of chisellers of all political colours) than a very old car.
As far as I can see, the only way forward (initially) would be for the Scots to vote ‘No’ on Thursday next as a sort of holding action, to prevent the kind of economic meltdown that many social commentators (as well as big businesses and major employers in Scotland) are just beginning to declare that they see as being inevitable; followed by concerted action in 2015’s general election to unseat the latest version of the generations of cheap-trash-in-government chancers who’ve allowed the present state of affairs to have arisen. (I have to stress here that, in my honest opinion, we don’t need another military dictatorship, or a new Cromwell cracking the whip while inadvertently allowing a police state to develop in the holy name of political reform. At the same time, we certainly don’t need any more out-of-touch office-boys or jumped-up popinjay chancers – or thugs in suits – deliberately leading this country straight off a cliff’s edge with false hope, while gleefully filling their pockets at our expense.)
What we desperately need instead is proper, ‘blue-collar’-style (by which I mean ‘hands-on, practically- as well as theoretically-competent’) leadership from a brand-new (or acceptably-recycled) set of mature-minded politicians, who have already enjoyed observably successful and honest careers before deciding to get involved in the gritty business of trying to control, protect and serve their country.
In short, they need to be the kind of people who actually know what they’re doing; actually know how the world works; actually know how to dress and behave properly in public; can show proper gravitas at all times, and who can hold their own in an adult manner in reasoned debate against all attacks, whether those attacks are political or personal.
Once in place, their first order of business should be to sort out the government, tax, welfare and legal systems, and make them work efficiently, honestly, and above all fairly. After that, they can turn their attentions to whatever hasn’t fixed itself as a result of the reform of those four institutions being made to work as they were intended to do. They can also consider whether the existing devolved Assemblies have any valid reason for continued existence: and if they don’t, they should all be dissolved immediately. Once the country has been put back on a footing of rational governance, our elected leaders should then turn their attentions to considering what type(s) of industry should be encouraged to develop in the future, to replace the existing ‘casino culture’ of money-shuffling for profit for the few, and continuing penury for the rest of us.
In a world as dangerous as this one has (apparently deliberately been made to) become, gradually, during the past thirty years or so, the one thing we don’t need is any kind of new, distracting, whipped-up dispute that puts ‘ordinary’ people at each others’ throats over petty parochial issues, while at the same time allowing an unearned free ride for the demagogues and their adherents who have stirred it all up in the first place (apparently for their own gain). If we don’t start to get things right (politically, economically and socially) in a consistent way during the next twelve months or so, starting with Scottish Independence, my feeling is that the further shambles that the UK could quickly become as a result of failure will probably make the Middle East in its present state look like the Garden of Eden by comparison.
If we don’t vote consistently for the long-term survival of our country, in my opinion it won’t be very long now before we don’t have a country left to vote for. That’s always been true to some extent – especially in the 1970s – but now, it’s become a ‘sine qua non’.
Philip Andrews
Unst
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