Kenneth Roy
The students missed
their chance to bring down
the crumbling house
Bob Smith
Charles Kennedy
Walter Humes
How can you
tell when politicians
are lying?
The Cafe
Bill Heaney
Jill Stephenson
The spectre of shortage
that shaped my
post-war life
The Cafe
Alex Cox
Alan Fisher
Yemen and
America’s fear
of the franchise
Rear Window
Hydropathic holidays
Andrew Hook
In Barcelona, I was struck
by two presences and
one absence
The Last Word
John Brown
31.03.11
No. 386
31.03.11No. 386
Figure Skating
Housing stats
Scotland
2010
Number of local authority dwellings
323,100
Number of applications on local authority waiting lists
198,754
Number of new council houses built
343
Shettleston, Glasgow
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The Cafe
Two articles in SR this week (one by Katie Grant on Tuesday and the other by Paul Smith on Wednesday) referred to the importance of education as a cure for many, if not most, of the ills in Scottish society.
I was reminded of an interview I once did with a guru flown into Glasgow from New York by Scottish Enterprise to motivate this country’s budding entrepreneurs. Did our young people need to be better educated, I asked him. His memorable reply was: ‘Ignorance can be cured by education and information, but stupid is forever’.
Bill Heaney
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How can you tell
when politicians
are lying?
Walter Humes
Bob Smith at the starting line
www.bobsmithart.com
Question: ‘How can you tell when politicians are lying?’
Answer: ‘You can see their lips moving.’
This old joke is likely to be given a fresh airing in the run-up to the May elections. It is safe to predict that we will be presented with a fair amount of rather suspect labial activity by those seeking to convince us that they deserve a seat at Holyrood.
Experienced politicians will, of course, be careful to avoid anything as crude as a downright lie, but they will almost certainly have recourse to one or more of its many near relations – evasion, distortion, prevarication, obfuscation, misrepresentation. They will also seek to bamboozle us with an array of statistics, the provenance of which might not bear close inspection. In interviews, they will make sure that they include soundbites that have been rehearsed beforehand, regardless of the questions they are asked.
Election broadcasts on television, bereft of originality and imagination, but strong on propaganda techniques, will ensure that electricity consumption soars, as kettles are switched on in households across the land. A cup of tea is a welcome alternative to being bored to death.
Against this background, is it any wonder that the political class is among the least trusted and respected of all occupations? In successive opinion polls conducted by the market research organisation, Ipsos Mori, government ministers in particular and politicians in general come out worst in a question about whether various occupations can be trusted to tell the truth. Journalists are not far behind.
Wouldn’t it be a pleasant change if a few politicians decided to set aside the usual conventions of political discourse and said something that might provoke a degree of interest among the electorate? Perhaps Alex Salmond could switch off his self-satisfied smirk for a few moments and give us some straight answers on the decision to approve the Trump development in the north-east of Scotland. Maybe Iain Gray could be persuaded to comment frankly on the conduct of some Labour members on Glasgow City Council: at least it would ensure a raised personal profile for a few days. Annabel Goldie might dispense with her head girl endorsement of her lacklustre team and begin to confront the fundamental reasons for the Tories’ failure to make any headway in Scotland. And Tavish Scott might set aside his ritual support for the UK coalition government and say what he really thinks of Nick Clegg’s performance as deputy prime minister. Note the even-handedness of these criticisms: it should be regarded as a form of social inclusion.
If the quality of Scottish political life is judged to be disappointing, and if the calibre of too many politicians leaves a great deal to be desired, then we all bear some responsibility for this state of affairs.
However, instead of plain speaking we will have the usual photo opportunities with loyal supporters and smiling children, and endorsements for the main parties from entrepreneurs (perhaps hoping for recognition in the honours list) and from B-list celebrities desperate for a publicity fix. There will be television ‘debates’ where the ground rules are set in such a way that the scope for real challenge from members of the public is very limited and where there is unspoken complicity between the main speakers that the ‘integrity’ of the format will be respected.
It is almost enough to induce despair in our democratic system. Almost – but not quite. If the quality of Scottish political life is judged to be disappointing, and if the calibre of too many politicians leaves a great deal to be desired, then we all bear some responsibility for this state of affairs. There is an important sense in which we get the politicians we deserve. Through apathy, or unquestioning tribal loyalty, or a failure to conceive of alternatives, we have allowed a situation to develop in which political discourse is defined, limited and controlled by politicians themselves, rather than representing a genuine reflection of the concerns and aspirations of ordinary citizens.
To break out of this pattern will not be easy and will call for a much greater degree of political engagement by all of us, challenging the conventions, exposing the cosy networks, finding creative ways of getting new ideas into the public domain, and shifting the balance of power from the usual suspects who speak the language of empowerment but continue to protect their own privileges. It’s a tough agenda, but the alternative is simply to roll over and accept that the barrage of autodrivel we are likely to face over the next few weeks is all that can be expected from our political leaders.
Prior to his retirement Walter Humes held professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland. He is now a visiting professor of education at the University of Stirling
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