Britain is not broken

Originally published @ 5:11 pm, Sun 27th Dec 2009

Talking politics on the doorstep in the run-up to the local and European elections was dominated by talk of MPs’ expenses.

Many people work and are aware of how and for what they can claim expenses, and it doesn’t reflect the allowances system that was created for MPs in the eighties.

The recent round of declarations has prompted much less controversy and many local papers have reacted by saying that solace can be taken from the system to declare expenses now existing.

So doorstep conversation have more recently been characterised by concerns over crime, ASB and immigrations cases reported in the tabloids.

One morning in November, 3 households expressed their concern over a Bolivian who had been allowed to stay in the country cos he owned a cat – not true, but reported to me by people highly distressed by a notion that they were prepared to believe, promulgated by 3 opinion formers from 3 different newspapers.

It says something of the struggle for Labour that where we’ve made progress – better schools and results, longer life and faster operations, more uniformed officers and crime down by a third – is hard to discuss in the noise generated by a media with no sense of ambition for the country.

On Wednesday, I met a man full of praise for the way the NHS had treated and I think cured his prostate cancer, but alarmed by news on regional TV the night before, of a man having to pay for his own cancer drugs.

Fear of teenagers is also high. Same day, I caught Tony Robinson promoting his latest book, “Bad Kids”, when he explained that fear of teenagers goes back to at least the times of ancient Greece, when teenagers would wear hats that made it harder for them to be recognised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0EyM-nhFmc

Britain is not broken. It will take more than tabloid talk to break it.

...