Yet more outrage in the UK as our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, apologises for attending a party but not realising it was a party. We seem to get all kinds of linguistic gymnastics with the excuses the Tory party come up with. ‘We followed all the rules but didn’t do any wrong’, ‘It was just a work meeting’. They are treating us all for fools.
There is some sort of thinking at the higher levels that the rules dont apply to them, that because they are working for the country they can do what they want. The apologies show this – we are sorry for the perception is a typical line. However it isnt the rule breaking as such that annoys – it is the lack of understanding and lack of empathy for everyone else. Trying to get out of the responsibility on a technicality is a weasel way out of admitting your guilt. Saying that you were technically correct within a correct interpretation is insulting to the nation, and goes against the ‘We are all in this together’ line that I recall being made on numerous occasions.
We are being led by a group of over promoted public school boys, people who have never had to worry about the rules as their money will get them out of any issues. Speeding ticket – pay your fine. Trash a restaurant – pay off the owner. Bored of your wife – pay her off and no one need know about your children ever again. It is a sickening thought that we have ‘leaders’ with so little moral fibre, and for whom the whole parliament process is a game. Sniggering when asked questions, not bothering to turn up to important meetings or even turning up to face the heat.
I doubt that the current crop of MPs will go willingly if they are in the wrong, unless they are a junior minister, and so we need a concerted effort from the voting public. If only people paid as much attention as they do when X Factor or Im A Celebrity are taking votes, then we would have the leaders we need, not the leaders we have.
Boris will now hide behind an investigation, pressuring the civil servant conducting it to give him the result he wants no doubt, and this is wrong. The whole affair smacks of dictatorship, and we have walked into it willingly.
One of my favourite authors growing up was George Orwell, and while I dont like the constant references to living in Orwellian times (usually made by people when talking about CCTV or vaccines, and not having read 1984), I cant help but think about Animal Farm – ‘The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, but already it was impossible to say which was which’