Those of you who live in foreign parts won’t relate to this, but there was a controversy not long ago about whether the train robber Biggs should have been released from jail as it looked as though he would die of cancer.
The Home Secretary, a person called Jack Straw, overruled the decision of the parole board, whose chairman has just said that he was wrong, and “allowed politics to cloud his judgement.”
This is among the funnier things I have read recently. Jack Straw has never done a proper day’s work in his life but politics from the day he became head of the National Students Union. He has no way of making judgments other than politics. He has never had a real job.
Talking of which, the ability of those who run things to get things wrong never ceases to amaze and astound. On the one hand it is decided that a little boy who has spent all his life here and speaks nothing but English is to be sent to the Congo where they spend most of their time killing each other and speak French. The reasoning behind this heartless decision is almost certainly that he is black and “they” thought nobody would kick up a fuss.
On the other – as I commented the other day – a baby killer is sent home with £4,500 pocket money as some kind of thank you. Does anyone in charge ever apply commonsense?
I am currently reading Dickens’ Little Dorrit – and am ashamed I never did before. In it a government department called the Circumlocution Office features heavily. Its purpose – which it pursues with prodigious skill – is “not to get things done” and to perpetuate injustice. How little Britain has changed since 1856! Remove the rest of the plot and you’ve got The Toad’s Playground.
The world's gone, I tell ya, mad, mad, mad.
At least it has if we only look at what politicians and the politically correct idiots are doing.
Unfortunately, all the PC idiots seems to weild all the power through politics and the media.
The man who never had a proper job
“The simple fact is that our ministers have very limited experience prior to Westminster and none of them have actually managed in a proper work setting. In fact not a single one of them has run so much as a market stall yet alone a business.
Lets have a look at our cabinet:
Gordon Brown – College lecturer
Alistair Darling – solicitor with 9 years practise experience before becoming an MP
Jack Straw – 3 years legal experience before political adviser and TV researcher
Geoff Hoon – 8 years legal experience (known as Buff to his friends)
Harriet Harman – 4 years legal experience
Andy Burnham – career politician
Des Browne – 23 years legal experience
Douglas Alexander – career politician
Ed Milliband – career politician
Ed Balls – 4 years at Financial Times
John Denham – a hotch potch of campaigner stuff
Hiliary Benn – Trade Union post
David Milliband – Researcher
Alan Johnson – postman then union official
Jacqui Smith – Economics lecturer in a sixth form
John Hutton – Law lecturer
Hazel Blears – 6 years legal experience
Shaun Woodward – 8 years TV researcher
Ruth Kelly – economics writer for Guardian then civil servant (a reporting division)
While I'm no big supporter of Jack Straw, the criticism that 'He has never had a real job' seems a bit rich coming from a guy, who has spent his life in advertising and is on record as saying, to no less a Hero-Personage as Ogilvy, that his job is 'entertainment'.
Kind Regards
Shannon O'Hara
Goodness me, Shannon, you of all people should know how hard it is to succeed in the business I have worked in for the last few decades – which is not advertising. To start with, your results are measured. Or as David O put it, we sell – or else.
Oh No! Not so easy!
My failure in advertising does not rebut or begin to refute the basic point I am making.
How can you justify castigating 'Politics' as 'not a real job'?
If Your Copy, paid for by your clients, is not advertising, what is it?
'Weasel' definitions required, I suspect.
Kind Regards
Shannon O'Hara
A proper job is very difficult to define when as a country we have a very small manufacturing base.
Making things is a proper job, digging things up is a proper job and so is selling things, as without sales there would be no reason to do anything else.
Back to the OP: what prior experience should policiticans have? I'd like to think that they would have had a role which gave them an understanding of the needs and wants of those they are meant to serve, but I'm afraid that for the most part, policiticans are the kids that everyone at school hated and to get their own back, they're ruining the country.
The problem with these career politicians is that they've never been in a position where promotion came from delivering measurable results.
Instead, they come from a world where progress comes from “loyalty”.
(i.e. sucking up to the right people)
Think about it this way: imagine you were Gordon Brown, what sort of people would you want on your back benches?
Would you like intelligent, thoughtful, hard-working people with integrity?
No fucking way!
Those people would be a nightmare.
They'd rigorously examine your policies and, often, decide they disagree and vote against the government.
And, on the occasions when they do agree, they probably wouldn't agree 100%. No, instead they'd suggest improvements or want modifications.
Now, imagine you had 250 of these sorts of fuckers that you have to keep on board in order to get your laws passed. You wouldn't be able to get your job done.
No, what you'd want is a bunch of lazy, half-witted loyalists who'll do what they're told as long as you look the other way when they're fiddling their expenses.
And that's what we've got. We have a few politicians with lots of ambition, but limited intelligence.
(Jack Straw being a fine example)
But mainly we've got politicians with limited intelligence and no real ambition beyond getting paid and ending up with a peerage.
Steve you are far too kind to our political wonderlings “We have a few politicians with lots of ambition, but limited intelligence”
We have limited ambition politicians otherwise these cunts would be exiting stage left as fast as fucking possible into the EU better pay, far less fucking work.
These are just mediocre runts by comparison to the true masters.
R