FraserWords

The trouble with most political systems is that they require an innate faith in the goodness of human nature.

Capitalism needs us to believe that those with cash will share it around, that goodwill will enable wealth to trickle into every corner of society, that striving for profit will create mutual benefit in all fields of life.

Socialism needs us to believe that once everything’s shared around equally, everybody will still work just as hard because it’s for the common good, everybody will be good and kind to each other, everybody will be happy to share.

All of this comes crashing to the ground quite easily, unfortunately.

Visit a supermarket the day before a Bank Holiday or pass a garage when there is the tiniest, most distant hint of a suggestion that there might be a shortage of fuel, and your faith in human nature is tested to its very limit.

Good grief, how much stuff do people need? I would personally gnaw off my own kneecaps rather than darken the door of a supermarket before a Bank Holiday, but I can report the horrific scenes described to me by others. Fat people pushing overloaded trolleys lest they run short of saturated junk for so much as a few hours. Cars sounding their horns as they queue to get into the car park. People shouting at each other over the frozen chips. Chocolate. Crisps. Panic!

As for the petrol business: what is wrong with people? Are they all stupid and selfish? Stupid, for there was no question of a strike. Selfish, because if there were we would all do best to sit quietly at home and enjoy some time off, letting essential users like doctors, nurses and emergency services fill up.

I cannot think of a single moment in my life where it has been imperative that I have fuel in my car. Medical emergency? Ambulance. Which has fuel because I stayed at home. I might have missed a few appointments, some aeroplane flights, a few good nights out. But imperative? Is my presence so vital to the affairs of the nation that I must be able to travel anywhere on a full tank of fuel at a moment’s notice? Of course not.

And the same for the rest of you, I venture.

My God, imagine the benefits to the nation if George ….. no, nearly…. if the Chancellor were unable to get to “work” for a few days. Obviously, it wouldn’t have any effect on the running of the Treasury, as he’s just shut in a nice padded office with his train set while the grown-ups get on with the ship of state, but it would do us all immeasurable good not to have to look at his smug face.

I rant about him merely to underline my point that it is very difficult to believe in the innate decency of humankind: in a world where he is Chancellor, who could argue with that? If you still have doubts, I have two words for you. Michael. Gove.

Which brings us to a crossroads where the great and good in human history have stood before us: one way is signposted ‘Believe’, passing through ‘Keep trying’ and ‘It’ll be worth it in the end because there are some decent folk out there, honest, what would happen if we all just gave up?’, while the other is simply indicated ‘Sod the lot of them’.

Which way would you go?

Today’s lesson

Talking of Michael Gove, a politician so blindly dogma-driven he believes anybody should walk off the streets to teach our children and we should buy the queen a new yacht for her jubilee, I see his faith in the academy system is beginning to bear the fruit we all knew it would.

Academies – the system whereby schools can opt out of the centralised state system so hated by Tories for dogmatic reasons and be funded straight from Government. Their money is topped up with a bribe to become an academy, paid for a limited time. All this money is then removed from the pot shared by remaining schools. So, exactly the sort of fairness and equality of opportunity we used to expect from Tories and with which somebody like Gove is content.

Academy staff become directly employed, without the safety net of existing agreements and therefore standards. The children of academy schools become pupils of an establishment where making money is as important as educating children, and will become much more so when the bribe runs out.

Unsurprisingly, teachers at these academies are very deeply concerned about their employment terms and conditions, their rights and protections, being handed into the care of a few unqualified governors rather than having the safeguard of nationally established systems, so strike action is beginning to be threatened.

Meanwhile, people will tell you that the pressure being brought to bear on schools with oustanding Ofsted reports to become academies is amounting to bullying.

And meanwhile, all the time, those who have decided to become academies sit there with little or no awareness of the storm to come when this government’s bribe money runs out, pensions have to be funded, insurances bought, repairs made. You can only strike so many sponsorship deals with Kentucky Fried Chicken. There aren’t enough rich parents to go round.

Who could have seen any of this coming, eh? I blame the teachers.

National distrust?

Is it wrong to feel ambivalent about the National Trust?

I mean, its mission is laudable and its achievements truly marvellous: the Trust has saved great swathes of our culture, from landscape to paintings, cooking pots to barns, stately homes to woodland.

Its money is ploughed back into its mission, not into profit, and it ensures access is open to all, freely in the case of the countryside and many gardens. And where would we be without it?

But blimey, does our history have to come straight from the pages of the Daily Mail?

The National Trust is so damned clean…. Stately homes are presented so condescendingly. The corporate image is immaculate. And if you do have to pay to get in somewhere, I’d argue the prices exclude a large portion of the hard-pressed public in these straitened times.

Meanwhile, other, non Daily Mail-ed areas of our shared heritage and culture have to fend for themselves. For example, parish churches, places of great beauty that are irreplaceable treasure houses of history, have to depend on the generosity of a few elderly members of the congregation and the dwindling wealth of a shrinking Church of England. And now, thanks to that unspeakable Os…. No, not even close… Chancellor dumbly repeating what his minders told him to say at the Budget, VAT must be paid on repairs to these priceless national assets. Even that little break is to be denied such places. English Heritage, meanwhile, which manages some of the tattier relics, has to survive cutbacks and lectures. It seems unfair.

Having said all that, on high days and holidays millions of us troop off into the National Trust’s welcoming arms: Cotehele yesterday was jammed to the medieval rafters. And the children doing the Easter egg trail didn’t just get treats – they had to think, look, write, work and therefore learn, which was great.

So I’m not really criticising – just, as I said, feeling ambivalent and rather wishing the National Trust would have a few free party days, tap into the Horrible Histories zeitgeist and throw some poo around with a sense of humour. Am I wrong?

And finally

Thank you to the good brothers and sisters who extended sympathies last week. Much appreciated. There’s a memorial service for John at Ringmore Parish Church in South Devon next Monday, April 16^th, at 2.30pm. I’ve been trying to think of more one-liners he liked and remembered that his favourite  came from Norm in Cheers: “Women. Can’t live with them. Pass the peanuts.”