The Trouble With Role Models

Lord Taylor, the dodgy peer, is off to chokey for fiddling his expenses and good riddance to him and to all the other crooked politicians who are either in chokey or should be. I have no sympathy whatsoever for any of them, let them rot.

Two things particularly hit me about Taylor. The first being his plea that he fiddled his expenses because he didn't get a salary and that other peers told him to do it. What a clown! There are unemployed people living on a pittance, without the extremely generous alowances and expenses available to peers which are way beyond their out of pocket expenses, and the overwhelming majority of unemployed people don't resort to fiddling.

The second thing that struck me was that his defence barrister pleaded leniency, and no prison sentence, as Taylor was a role model for young black people. Oh really? I'll bet most young black kids, like most other kids, have never heard of him. And, if you assume that he was a role model for black kids, isn't that all the more reason to punish him, and punish him harshly for so badly letting them down?

I think that the old role model defence is trundled out by people who don't really know what's what. It is used, in this case as a cheap shot for leniency, or more usually to whip anybody who is rich and famous who slightly misbehaves, such as footballers and pop stars. It's codswallop. Whining about role models is a side effect of the modern obsession with fame and stardom.

What those who whine about role models are saying is that famous peoples' behaviour will be copied by kids . Or to put it another way they are saying that young people are incapable of thinking for themselves and merely impersonate the rich and famous. I don't believe that, I think most young people are more intelligent than that and can differentiate between right and wrong.

What concerns me much more than the behaviour of the rich and famous is the impact of real people on young people. The bad fathers, uncles, teachers, neighbours and others who young people meet on a daily basis. Now they really are role models and my money is on the worst of them being the first to jump to accusing poor famous 'role models' for their own inadequacies and kids' poor behaviour.

David Cameron's Big Society

Any authoritarian regime depends on the populace bullying itself. Look at the old DDR where, after the collapse of communism, some people discovered from the Stasi files that their spouses had only married them to spy on them for the state.

Things aren't that bad here yet, but in Consett, Co Durham locals are copping speeding drivers themselves and reporting them to the police. The police then send them a nasty letter.

I've always believed that Cameron's Big Society will just pass power to the small minded, local busybodies, rather than abolishing much of our ridiculous legisation. This proves the point.

Full story.

The Coalition's Big Society

There are two words that seem to be used in every political statement at the moment, and they fill me with dread. They are 'society' and 'community'. They are used, especially by politicians and interfering busybodies, to justify a very dangerous trend, namely passing power down from government.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that power should be as locally devolved as possible, a large part of the reason I see no point in European Union membershhip for example. But before any power is devolved they should look at what powers can be scrapped completely first. After all, dodgy forms of devolution produce disasters like the Scottish government.

The politically correct will attack you if you make generalisations, especially those such as all French people smell of garlic and all Chinamen wear flipflops, and rightly so, they obviously don't. But when they want to impose their wishes on us they justify their interfering ways by claiming that 'society' would be better for it or that 'communities' would benefit from it. Well I mustn't be part of either because this week I heard a harridan from the anti-motorist group Brake which, incidentally, enjoys the benefits of charitable status while hectoring you and me about how our cars kill children, and her views on improving 'communities' scared me. I do not believe that speed cameras make for 'more liveable communities'. If they did estate agents would pretty soon start putting speed camera locations on property details to attract buyers. No, she was talking bollocks frankly.

The whole problem with Cameron's 'Big Society' is that the state has far too much power and is far too intrusive. Cameron's plans sound to me like they will merely be delegating that power to other, more local people. The problem with that is that local goverment is crammed full of interfering busybodies just wanting to dabble and interfere in their 'communities', and believe me they are extremely dangerous, I saw them when I was a councillor for four years. Yes, there are many good people involved in local politics, but the mad, or plain insane, have an energy that drives them on to more and more activity when the sane are happy to leave people alone.

Like most people, I suspect, I just want to live my life without being constantly mithered by either civil servants or local commissars. Stick your 'Big Society'.