Politics.

I spent over an hour at lunchtime watching the Chancellor’s public spending cuts announcement on the TV.

The first thing that struck me was that if ever there was a place deserving of Shakespeare’s phrase ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,’ the House of Commons has to be it. All that yowling, roaring, stamping of feet and empty rhetoric. And it’s all pointless because Ministers sit around a table deciding what they want to do, and then do it anyway. It’s part of the illusion of democracy.

What disturbs me more, however, is the extent to which ministers fail to comprehend the realities of life at street level. They play the intellectual game of high economics, guided by intellectual experts like the Bank of England and the IMF; but they evidently have little understanding of the effect that game will have on the lives of ordinary people down here among the grass roots. I’m sure they see themselves as chess players, protecting the ‘important’ pieces while having no qualms about sacrificing the pawns. And it struck me yet again that there is no place for qualities like compassion and a broad social understanding, let alone wisdom, in politics. Politics concerns itself only with the shallowest end of life, and I think its practitioners are mostly the shallowest of people.

Maybe you think I’m being unduly cynical. Maybe I am; but I’ve spent a long time down at this level, and I spent three years working with an inner city charity. I’ve seen things that government ministers don’t even know exist. Or, if they do, they put an interpretation on them that is prejudiced, uninformed and horribly wrong.

I feel inclined to give this blog up. The game of life is so full of ignorance and hypocrisy that talking about it is becoming tedious. And who am I talking to anyway?

I probably won’t.