Idel Beggars

(Sic there and throughout – what was the date yesterday?)

The chances of anything coming from Mars! What are the chances of that happening?

Steve Bell has surpassed himself though it seems such a simple comparison. I must dig out my copy. I find myself thinking of nineteen-eighty-four more and more these days. With reference to the assertion that to grow up you have to stop reading Private Eye I sometimes feel very childish because of these comparisons of Orwell’s books with the continual chipping away at common sense and decency that seems to be all around these days. I feel like a conspiracy theorist though I comfort myself with the view that most things that come into this category are the product of incompetence and lack of will rather than any concerted effort to get one over on the people. I suspect that this is more comforting than it first appears simply because incompetence in one thing generally leads to incompetence in covering it up. I see stock phrases and standard ripostes everywhere.

While not a fan of excessive development in the countryside, I was interested to see the response of planning officials to the request by Jimmy (of Jimmy’s Farm) for an expansion of his buildings. It seemed as if the officials had picked up a particular point in Government guidance and simply applied it in the way that suited them best. I realise that I only saw a snippet of the letter but they said that Jimmy’s plan “.. flies on (sic) the face .. “ of this guidance. Without further comment on the incorrect word in the phrase, surely the phrase itself is just too emotive to use in what should be a measured response. I can also not comment further on the rightness of the decision in full, but it seems that although we sometimes appear to be struggling in the face of an attitude which breeds mediocrity, we also find that many people simply do not know how they should behave in public dealings. I don’t just mean the rudeness apparently more evident in society according to Lynn Truss in “Talk to the Hand”, but a general willingness to do things which, although not illegal are certainly unethical. How many true socialists in the Labour Party (if there actually are any save for the likes of Peter Kilfoyle and Dennis Skinner) are horrified that so many members of this cabinet, (who campaigned against sleaze) are carrying out deals either personally or for the party, that would have seemed unacceptable in a libertarian Conservative government? It is just not the way to behave. Maybe we have always had our petty upholders of minor statutes, but sometimes I long for some pre-that’s-life-jobsworth-award consistency and simplicity from all levels of officialdom.

Do you sometimes think that all these BBC programmes that seem to concentrate of bad behaviour in society are part of a general Government information programme? Miscreant motorists, those in debt, drunks – they all seem to be designed to either shame us or to make us feel better that we don’t do such things. I liked A Life of Grime I suppose, though maybe that was because John Peel narrated it, but it still was a this-is-what’ll-happen-to-you piece of propaganda. It could have nothing to do with the Government; possibly the non-existent BBC governors just think that this is the way we should behave and the Government wants us all to be unthinking chavs. Aha! That’s it.