Politicians

[NormanH]

Si, dans toutes les démocraties occidentales, on tend à ne plus respecter
le politicien professionnel, voire l'homme de parti en tant que
tel, ce n'est plus seulement à cause de telle insuffisance per-
sonnelle, de telle faute ou de telle incompétence, de tel scandale
désormais mieux connu, amplifié, en vérité souvent produit,

sinon prémédité par un pouvoir médiatique. C'est que le

politicien devient de plus en plus, voire seulement, un per-

sonnage de représentation médiatique au moment même où

la transformation de l'espace public, justement par les médias,

lui fait perdre l'essentiel du pouvoir et même de la compétence

qu'il détenait auparavant des structures de la représentation

parlementaire, des appareils de parti qui s'y liaient, etc. Quelle

que soit sa compétence personnelle, le politicien professionnel

conforme à l'ancien modèle tend aujourd'hui à devenir struc-

turellement incompétent. Le même pouvoir médiatique accuse,

produit et amplifie a la fois cette incompétence du politicien

traditionnel : d'une part, il lui soustrait le pouvoir légitime

qu'il tenait de l'ancien espace politique (parti, parlement, etc.),

mais, d'autre part, il l'oblige à devenir une simple silhouette,

sinon une marionnette sur le théâtre de la rhétorique télévi-

suelle. On le croyait acteur de la politique, il risque souvent,

c'est trop connu, de n'être plus qu'acteur de télévision

This is from my Sunday reading Spectres de Marx (Jacques Derrida)

http://www.jacquesderrida.com.ar/frances/spectres_de_marx.pdf

[Quillan]

I hope that I understood this properly as it is not well written. Are we saying that the press keep demonising politicians even when they have done nothing wrong?

[woolybanana]

Politicians have lost the respect of the public because they have mediatized themselves, losing any power they ever had in the process.

Frankly, I am amazed that the words 'professional' and 'politician' should ever be bracketed together. The phrase is an insult to the people as politicians are no more than pimps these days, if they were ever anything else.

[Quillan]

I do quite like watching The Daily Politics show and of course the Sunday version, I also quite like, to a degree, PMQ's. I am quite convinced that many MP's like the sound of their own voice when on the TV. When you watch PMQ's it is rather like watching a badly run school debating society full of repetitive questions of little interest to the public, full of cheap one-upmanship’s and of course the obligatory self gratification comments "would the prime mister agree with me on what a wonderful job we are doing" etc. However it is a completely different story when you watch BBC Parliament, MP's from both sides asleep for instance should they bother to actually turn up that is. I guess there is no 'glamour' to be had when it isn't PMQ's. I suspect parliaments in other countries is not that much different.

That aside and a point well raised, the only point well raised actually, by Farrage is that PM's have lost their way and hence their connection with the people. However he is not the first or only person to say that. Tony Benn who I saw at the FairField hall some years back when he did his 'one man' tour said that politicians had lost their connection with the people and did not listen to their wants, needs and aspirations. Whilst I never liked the man’s politics he was a fare better orator than Farrage will ever be and his comment then are sadly as true today as they were back then.

One question however is do we really need them, look at Belgium? When the government failed there many said Belgium would fall to pieces, possibly have to be divided with half going to France and the other to Holland but it carried on for nearly two years and the country managed quite well without them.

 

[Pickles]

There is a certain element of "chicken and egg" going on here. Although I agree with Derrida that (assuming that I have understood him) "old-style" politicians can find that modern media are baulking and undermining them at every turn, I think that we are now well past the point at which many (most?) politicians are deliberately the product of their media campaigns rather than being the committed people of conviction that we might wish to see. And I put Farridge (I've written it as it should be pronounced if he's so much of an ordinary honest-to-goodness man of he people) firmly in this camp.

In the UK we seem to have a generation of "career politicians" (to avoid labelling them as professionals, with the accompanying inference of competence), who have never really worked in "proper jobs" (however you may wish to define such jobs!). Many of them have no real connection with the places that they have been elected to represent, having been imposed on the local constituency party. To add insult to injury, it seems quite evident that when they arrive in Westminster, many of them "go native" to the extent that they seem to identify more with their fellow politicians than with their electorate. As an example of the culture that pervades Westminster, one need look no further than the expenses scandal, where the overall tenor of the defence was outraged entitlement to declaring things as "expenses" which the taxman would not allow for mere members of the public. Similarly, the quite cynical system in which MPs could make capital gains on properties bought with taxpayer's money could never have been justified, yet when it was revealed, the number of times that the phrase "But everything I did was within the rules" was sickening.

The media is certainly a problem: the focus on the "sound-bite"; the need to feed the 24-hour news machine; to fill columns with cheap and rapidly-obtained uninformed speculation rather than considered analysis; the need to fill "dead air" all militate against the need for considered decision-making on the part of our politicians (and course by the general public). Remember: for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, glaringly obvious, easy ... and dead wrong. The level of knee-jerk reactions which are served up by the more stupid politicians makes me want to grab them by the throat (in a caring and philanthropic way, naturally), shake them gently and say "Don't just DO something, SIT there and think a bit"

Western societies have seen enormous increases in the speed of communication and the proliferation of sources of data and information, and we haven't adapted to this. Society in general (at all levels) does not seem to understand the difference between data and information - and the media doesn't help in this respect.

So what's the answer?

[woolybanana]

"One question however is do we really need them, look at Belgium? When the government failed there many said Belgium would fall to pieces, possibly have to be divided with half going to France and the other to Holland but it carried on for nearly two years and the country managed quite well without them."

There are more politicians in Belgium that there are dung beetles round a pile of elephant manure, and thay all smell about as fresh. They are a byword for corruption, old boy help and even managing to pass their seats on to their sons.(no daughters as far as I know). They are all in the honey pot up to their necks and slurping away like pigs on heat. And, in Wallonia, those are the Socialists!

And the French deputes are just as bad.

I think we need semi-professional politicians who have to work in proper jobs for part of their living, who are watched like hawks. Unfortunately making them more directly accountable does mean that extreme elements can get their way, as when left wing elements try to deselect sitting MPs to get their nasty friends into the seat ( that includes trade unions, by the way).

And I dont think Benn was any use either; crup as a minister, just a left wing poser who never, never worked and who took a sort of self-defined moral high ground, gaining an audience by the use of voice and a pipe, later, mugs of tea. Typical of the Miliband tendency, London establishment members Guardian readers who think they have a divine right to try their half-baked ideas out on the population.

[Quillan]

Pickles - I wonder if the citizens of Chester should still take to walls at sunset and shoot any hapless Welsh person that passes by as it is in the rules.

I often thought that perhaps there should be a "common sense party" and to my amazement there is, both in the UK and France. Trouble is when you start reading their manifestoes and realise that it’s not quite the type of 'common sense' most normal people think about.

http://www.commonsenseparty.org.uk/

http://partidubonsens.fr/

I still think there should be a basic requirement for some form of compulsory intelligence testing for politicians before they become MP's. Wow I just realised that’s an oxymoron, Politicians + intelligence. [:D]

[idun]

As wooly commented that there was no female comment on here, well I shall now make one.

My vocabulary about these

people could really really end up being a lot of these stars on here

******, but I'll contain myself.

Personally if I could I

would bring back the stocks and if politicians are caught out lying or

even being stupid and wasting 'our' money, they would have to face the

wrath of the voters. Each transgression having it's own time to be

actually pilloried.

Are the newspapers to blame or 24 hour tv. No, I believe that they are not.

 Are

we the voters to blame, I don't know, we are given so little choice,

bit like being given the choice of eating durian or

andouillettes........ ofcourse some will like these options, but when

they are the only choice, it is very hard for most of us.  We can only

hope that their affiliated party gives some indication of their general

direction, but let's face it, who could have been more conservative than

Blair?

I feel that we are all constantly conned and used by

these people and my do I wish I could speak in public, because I get so

annoyed these days that I feel like I should do more than just

write..... because write I do. Trouble is that I really cannot speak in

public. Feels like someone has put a huge ladle of mashed potato in my

mouth and my eyes cloud too, so I cannot even read any notes I have

made, even if I manage to get some sound out of my mouth, which comes

out as if I am profoundly deaf and very confused.

And I do believe that those who go in for politics and really started out as good and decent, honest people end up suffering some sort of stockholm syndrome once they get to the seat of power, they may initially fight it, but it is like an infection or contagion and they lose their grip with the real world.

[YCCMB]

Surely there is no differentiation in the original statement between ministers and backbench politicians, though?

I followed quite assiduously the doings of my previous MP, who isn't famous, did a reasonable job, and claimed sod all in expenses. I think he only ever made it onto the telly on Question Time when we were all up to our armpits in the Thames.

There are, after all some six hundred-odd MPs in Westminster. Most people would be hard pressed to name more than a couple of dozen, so not all are touched by the reality TV curse.

I probably get more annoyed when random "celebrities" suddenly get thrust into becoming political pundits, as if their very fame makes them competent to pontificate.

[Thibault]

There is an element of 'Caesar's Wife must be above suspicion' here. Do we want a set of politicians who are holier than thou? Who hold such a high moral ground that they cannot understand the lives of the voters?

I say we need a cross-section of people who represent all elements of society, warts and all. They are our representatives, not some impossibly pure individuals who never tell a lie, nor put a foot wrong, in anything they do.

[idun]

I don't want holier than thou.  I want, nay expect them to make an effort to be honest and have integrity and some empathy and a bucket load of common sense.

My expectations should be not unrealistic, but apparently they are. I have recently been preached to by someone who has IMO no moral compass at all.... and yet he apparently is fine to do what he wants, as politicians make sure that their own trough fill to brimming so they are alright Jack, and the rest of us are an inconvenience and basically a  nuisance.

[Quillan]

My father was a Labour supporter for all of his life. He lived in a time when Labour MP's came up from the 'shop floor' through the trade union movement and into politics. Many Labour MP's at that time came therefore from the working classes.

I often wonder what he would make of the Labour Party these days and I fear not a lot. They talk about the Tories and their 'clubs' but most of the Labour MP's whilst coming from a working class background have been through university. I can hear my Father saying something like "they have done a proper days work nor got their hands dirty".

I remember sometime this year when another 'socialist' M. Hollande said in an interview that he came from a working class background, I think he said his mother was a social worker and his father a doctor. When he said where he lived with his parents in Paris and I looked at the price of houses there and I was looking at Mayfair prices in London. Very few if any working class people could ever afford a garage there let alone a house.

When I listen to these modern socialists I often feel they behave in a condescending manner, it is almost like they are playing at being a socialist. If you ask them about the working class, as Tony Blair famously said once, "I read about them at university".

I don't know much, in fact very little, about French socialism but I do think that Labour in the UK need to go back to their roots and we should see more real working class people who understand better what it is like to be working class standing for election.

 

[YCCMB]

The thing is, Quillan, that the "working class" these days are allowed to go to university, just as women are allowed to vote. And there are many who have been to University who have many honest days' work under their belts and even the odd pair of dirty hands. Why, even Thatcher and Major, and I picked Tories on purpose, were from working class backgrounds. I think it would be a pity if your background had to define your politics, and I'm guessing that many of the French socialists who are products of the Grandes Ecoles would agree. You can't deny someone a chance of a tertiary education just in case it destroys their working class credentials, any more than you can deny someone a crack at a political career on the basis that they have a degree. And NOT having a degree doesn't make you more of an Old Labour prospect than someone who does. Any more than "class". As Tony Benn would probably agree.

[Quillan]

I don't have a problem with people, women even [;-)], going to university. One of the things the UK offers is the ability for people to better themselves. Indeed many working class families work very hard to get their children to university to offer them a better chance at life than they had. Until we 'over cooked' the pot with so many going to university graduates traditionally moving into middle class jobs like accountants, architects, solicitors, surveyors, social workers, managers, specialist IT workers, engineers, doctors or civil servants to name but a few. The only example of working class they have to go by is that of their parents. I guess I am lucky because in a way I became part of this social group thanks to my parents. Going away to university leaves you with a much shorter experience of working class society which once you leave and start work for many is left behind. Therefore representatives of the working class should come from the working class. Blair for instance complained biterly about the Tory 'attacks' on the working class yet when he got into power did little or nothing to reverse/repair the damage. I think he didn't understand the direct result on the working class that some of the Tory policies had made. There are not many French politicians who came from the working classes that went through the Grande Ecoles particularly socialist ones although some like Hollande may try and tell people they did (come from athe working class), as an example that is.

[YCCMB]

I think you may have been overdoing it on the Downton Abbey, Quillan.