I have not been following the election campaign
closely. This is partly because I no longer watch television. You should try
it. Like giving up sugar in tea after a while you no longer miss it. But mainly
it is hard to get interested in a contest that is over before it starts. Also,
I have more important things to do.
At the beginning of May I returned to my house after
more than a year’s absence. Everything was new except there was no furniture,
just a mattress on the floor, a desk and a chair. Some furniture has arrived back
from storage since then and everything else is in boxes. Some things work other
things don’t and it all has to be assessed and a spreadsheet sent to the insurance
company.
The moral of the story is that the personal is always
more important than the political. Our lives are changed most by the education
we obtain, the job we do, the people we meet and the events that happen in our
lives. Our lives are changed least by the actions or the inactions of
politicians.
If a Labour supporter loses his job or gets divorced
or has a serious illness this will change him far more than anything Keir
Starmer might do. A Scottish independence supporter’s life would be changed far
less by independence than by his house being flooded.
It does not mean that politics is unimportant. It is
right for us to care about issues of political importance and sometimes
politicians can bring about major change, but it is worth putting the result of
the election in some sort of perspective. Whatever disasters happen because of
a Labour government, they will be nothing compared to a family member dying or
a diagnosis of a serious illness.
Even the big issue of bringing back national service
would be trivial for most people and the issue is still more trivial because it
is not going to happen because there is not going to be a Conservative
government.
It makes sense to spend more on the armed forces because
for the past decades we have spent too little. It would be better by far
however if the armed forces were given the funding to pay for 30,000 long term
recruits rather than having eighteen-year-olds for a year.
National service almost caused me not to exist as my
father chose to fight in Malaya rather paint coal white during his national
service. It was a nasty little war and at various points he almost did not
survive.
This is another lesson. Our armed forces must focus
primarily on defending Britain. From the 1940s to the 1960s we fought in Singapore,
Malaya, Burma, India and Kenya, but lost them all anyway. What was the point of
fighting in places where soon we would depart?
So too what was the point of fighting in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya and Syria? The only danger to Britain from any of these places comes
from the people from these countries moving to Britain. If there was no one
from the whole of the Middle East in Britain we could safely ignore all of the
issues that concern them and all of the wars that involve them. We could focus
instead on defending Britain. But what is the point of increasing the armed
forces if we cannot defend our own borders from the people who threaten us?
Forcing young people to perform some sort of community
service is not especially onerous as it would involve a mere 24 days. It might even
turn out to be good fun and give eighteen-year-olds the opportunity to meet members
of the opposite sex while making friends generally.
But I would not like to be forced to do this now and I
would not like to have been forced to do it when I was eighteen. It all rather
too closely resembles that alternative to a prison sentence of having to wear a
yellow bib while clearing the weeds or picking up the litter.
The problem as always in Britain is that everything
must be done by everybody lest it be called unequal. But if a young person
leaves school and has a job it makes no sense that he has to give up one
weekend a month when he is already paying taxes. If a young person is studying
or in training, it likewise makes no sense that he should do these things.
It would however make sense for the unemployed of all
ages, plus those on sickness/disability benefits to be forced to give up some
days each week to benefitting the community that pays their benefits.
There would be howls of outrage however if the
unemployed or the sick were asked to do what they could to help in their locality.
It might even benefit them by getting them out of the house doing something
useful. But while it would be considered disgraceful to ask the unemployed to
do even one day a week of unpaid work, it would be just fine to ask everyone
who was eighteen to give up 12 weekends for a year. That is neither Conservative
nor sensible nor remotely reasonable.
In Scotland we started as usual with a grievance. Scotland
has different school holidays, and it is unfair to have an election during
them. But everywhere in the UK has somewhat different school holidays in the
summer, in the autumn and in the spring and it is certain that elections
previously have clashed with a holiday somewhere.
But I think Scotland is moving on from grievance as it
is rather childish and anyway nothing that John Swinney or anyone else for that
matter will make much difference compared to what might or might not be
revealed during the campaign about a former First Minister.
My guess is that nothing will be revealed for the same
reason that the whole investigation has been going on for so long. Pressure and
influence have been used rather stupidly because it all might have been over
long ago and forgotten. But this is the problem with corruption.
If I had stolen from the bank I would have been
convicted quickly because I had no influence. The corrupt person or friends of
the same may delay the end point, but that looks rather foolish if the bomb is
going to go off eventually and might just go bang during the next month or so. Of
course we can continue to put pressure on to delay it, but that merely
demonstrates our corruption. It provides still further evidence that there is a
bomb.
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