…over MPs is misplaced
Looks like some folks have really gotten their bucktas and drawers in knots over the MPs’ behaviour – from both sides of the House – in the opening Budget debate! Not many – from your Eyewitness’s informal survey – but enough of the chatterati who love to get their names in the papers via the letters’ pages to make untutored foreigners think our Republic’s about to collapse. O tempora! O mores!
They miss the point about “representative” democracy. “Representative” comes from “represent” which is what MPs are supposed to do for their constituencies. “Represent”, in turn, means to “re- present”; that is, the MP is picked by the people to re- present them. To “present” them as they are in Parliament – warts and all.
So, let’s be honest, didn’t the MPs express themselves exactly how their constituencies would’ve done? Isn’t that sorta behaviour the norm out there? Has anyone travelled in a bus recently? And don’t think your Eyewitness is putting down plebes who have to use buses. Heck, he’s one!! So, have you gone for a drive in (take your pick) car, SUV, or limo recently? That’s how we communicate! What exactly do these winging “behaviour Police” want? To bring back the nobility – who’re supposedly “better” than the rest of us – to govern us?
Does anyone remember why the MPs elected in England were sent to the House of COMMONS? If we didn’t want to have commoners represent us, we would’ve stuck with the House of Lords!
It’s this kind of elitist thinking that got Liberals in the developed societies of the US, UK, EU etc thrown out on their ears. The people don’t want to hear all that highfalutin language from some bygone age preceded by “Honourable” this or “Honourable” that! We’re in a brave new world with our new “people’s politics”.
Think of it like cricket. For the longest while, the purists insisted it was a “gentleman’s game” and we should clap genteelly when a six is hit. And God forbid we should get up and scream in delight!! Nah… The members stand at Lords was our model.
But no more! Look how T-20 has taken over cricket – with screaming, horns, and even skimpily-clad, nubile young women flaunting their assets and leaving nothing to the imagination! And we’ve even gotten Lords to serve jerk chicken rather than cucumber sandwiches!
Listen, if there’s one sub-species of humanity that knows what “the people” want, it’s politicians! That’s what gets them elected, ain’t it? They have to ensure that the term they aspire to – “man of the people” – is just that!
So, we better get used to the new normal in our Parliament.
The next step will see fistfights!
…over Burnham’s whitewashing
As the centenary of Burnham’s birth – 2023 – approaches, his acolytes are coming out of the woodwork to whitewash his record – and possibly have him beatified! But, in the words of Barrack Obama, you can put lipstick on a pig…but it’ll still remain a pig! This morning your Eyewitness was offered a context:
“There is a story that Clemenceau, the PM of France, was in conversation with some German representatives during the Paris peace negations in 1919 that led to the Treaty of Versailles. One of the Germans said something to the effect that, in a hundred years’ time, historians would wonder what had really been the cause of the Great War, and who had been really responsible. Clemenceau, so the story goes, retorted that one thing was certain: ‘the historians will not say that Belgium invaded Germany’.
With Burnham, his acolytes are hoping that, 35 years on, folks have forgotten his destruction of Guyana.
But after Mingo, no one can say he didn’t introduce electoral rigging in Guyana?!
…over the ERC’s mendacity
In his response to Haji Roshan Khan, Bishop John Smith, Chair of the ERC, used the pronoun “we” throughout his missive.
Was he sharing blame to the Commissioners, or was it the Royal “we” to accept responsibility?
