Jonathan Dodd: Welcome to Earth!

Jonathan Dodd’s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed

It’s probably time for a proper crisis. We haven’t had a Great War for over 70 years. We haven’t had a Great Depression since the 1930s. That thing that happened a few years ago with the banks felt a bit scary and we lost some things that we thought were precious, but nowadays you can just borrow billions and carry on, almost as if it was just a bad dream.

No matter how much we complain, in a world where terrible things only happen to other people in faraway countries, it’s difficult to work up a passion. Where there were breadlines, we now have zero-hour contracts. Instead of dying from unspeakable diseases, we have slightly longer queues for medical miracles. Instead of evil empires whose distance can be measured from us on a map, we have shadowy fanatics threatening unpredictable chaos.

There are always those medical miracles
I often hear it said that people used to be healthier when there was no central heating and fitted carpets, and you had to have heavy curtains because of the draughts that whistled in through the badly-fitting windows. I remember that. I remember the frost making beautiful designs on the inside of my bedroom windows at night. But we all know that we’re living much longer, and even if we make ourselves unhealthy through our lifestyles, there are always those medical miracles.

frost patterns

We even have new problems to face when we get old, now that we don’t all die from industrial disease or those illnesses that used to be commonplace. We’re not so terrified of heart attacks and cancer, but now it’s dementia that haunts us, where we stay perfectly healthy but our minds cease to function in a recognisable way.

Before toodling off to dinner at the House
We’re actually in a state of transition, because technology has transformed our lives so much, but our habits and our ways of thinking haven’t caught up. I remember hearing about how the House of Commons developed as a sort of Gentlemen’s’ Club, when most MPs either being independently wealthy or working as barristers or businessmen in London.

House_of_Commons_

Our democratic representatives used to get up late or do their daily work in the morning and early afternoons, before toodling off to dinner at the House. Then they would settle to an evening session where they would conduct the business of Government. It took many decades of struggle to get them to change their hours and think of it as a job, mainly because MPs who are also parents want to live a more normal life and spend time with their children, rather than queueing up all hours of the night waiting to vote.

Like a bunch of schoolboys catching sight of a football
That attitude is showing signs of changing, but the whole government thing is lagging so far behind the way everyone lives now that it’s really no longer fit for purpose. Everything takes so long, and the information and plans are always out of date by the time the decisions are made. I suspect because they aren’t using modern techniques, and they’re simply out of touch, insulated in their little village in Westminster. I think it’s quite probable that councils behave in similar ways too.

Kids playing football

Politicians also have their own agendas. The business of politics is to gain and hang on to power at all costs. Much of what is done results from deals to ensure loyalty or gain more popularity or embarrass the opposition, rather than for the benefit of the country, and sometimes a reckless course is embarked on despite all reason or common sense, for some personal mission. Then they get caught up in the game, like a bunch of schoolboys catching sight of a football in a playground.

My favourite teeth-grinding moments
We can all remember our favourite stories of government waste or ineptitude. My favourite teeth-grinding moments are usually because of the sheer wrongness of something, such as the Iraq War and the 45-minute fiasco. Even complete idiots knew that Saddam Hussain couldn’t, even under the most fantastic circumstances, unleash bombs upon us within 45 minutes, and yet we had to witness Parliament solemnly debating this and voting to invade on that basis.

gaddafi

I remember most painfully the failures caused by starting something with much pomp and trumpeting, and a subsequent watering-down or complete collapse of support. We bombed Libya and took down Gaddafi, and we walked away with great celebration, leaving a power vacuum after decades of fierce political repression.

My anger only begins with that obvious mistake
Only an idiot would have been able to pretend that wasn’t a recipe for immediate and bloody civil war. And we had allowed that very same thing to happen only a few years before in Iraq. And it’s plain to see that Iraq spawned IS, which was able to thrive in the ruins of Libya, and the consequent flood of displaced refugees drowning in the Mediterranean or arriving on the shores of Europe are a direct consequence of that.

syrians_and_iraq_refugees

But we continue to think only of what we might do right now, rather than what we need to do if we’re going to make a real difference. We need to plan our actions in the light of what we want to see twenty years later, rather than just in front of our noses. I recently heard that our so-called Intelligence Service advised Cameron that tribal influences weren’t likely to be a factor in Libya. My anger only begins with that obvious mistake, it’s made much greater when I only hear about it now, rather than at the time.

This sort of political tombstoning
The real problem with this sort of political tombstoning is that it risks, for the sake of short-term gain, losing the support of the majority. If I was a politician I would fear above all losing the trust and confidence of the people. Governments don’t work if the people don’t trust them, and democracies don’t work if people stop voting. But governments only make changes when they have to. It’s rather too late when someone like Trump is seen as a possible candidate.

Donald Trump

I remember reading a magazine back in 1970, looking ahead to the future. It got so many things wrong, but I was impressed by an article that suggested a change of venue for the government. Out of London, in a fresh site, with plenty of room to build on if necessary, and equipped with the best and latest communications and accessibility.

It’s necessary to keep up with what’s happening
The article suggested that the current Houses of Parliament were old and unsuitable for the business of government, because it’s necessary to keep up with what’s happening in the world. 55 years later, they’re about to embark on a huge update of the same tired old building, which is going to cost billions and not solve most of the current needs, let alone the needs of the future.

teliris_vl_modular

I don’t understand why it’s necessary to bray at each other on a Wednesday lunchtime in Parliament, or why MPs need to be in the Chamber to take part in debates, or why they need to be there in Westminster to vote. There’s no reason why we should all have to appear at a Polling Station to vote either. There’s no need even to spend so much money on referenda, because we could vote for those too, from home, with very little actual expense.

Governments that seem remote and aloof to their concerns
I accept that we voted to leave the European bloc this summer. I do ask how much the Leave vote were complaining about feeling that they were never listened to by governments that seem remote and aloof to their concerns. I suspect that was a factor, and that many of the more strident voices were really addressing that issue. I think this is the thing we need to address if we’re going to be successful in the future on our own.

Graffiti-ed poster

I’m not talking about a revolution here, just a readjustment towards the reality and demands of this world we’re actually living in, rather than a longing for it to all go back to those days when we nearly lost two World Wars that could have been prevented had we addressed the issues that appeared at the time. And we bankrupted ourselves into the bargain.

What about the United Nations?
I would love to be able to say that wars are always unnecessary, but I can’t. Not yet. We have an all-too-human inability to do the right thing, properly, at the right time, and we tend to set up institutions to prevent war and then ignore them. Can anyone remember the League of Nations? Well then, what about the United Nations? People only seem to sneer about that nowadays, even though we don’t do anything to allow it to do its work.

non violence sculpture

The only scenarios I see nowadays where countries put away their petty bickering is in those science fiction films about aliens invading the Earth. Suddenly everyone is everyone else’s best friend and everyone is a hero. Why is it that we can see ourselves doing this when our backs are against some wall, but we can’t do anything properly when there’s no immediate threat of annihilation?

woman-smoking-cigar