They say you get the government you deserve...

Driving back from the choir AGM tonight I was listening to a report on the reaction to Gordon Brown's Labour Party Conference speech. Some enterprising BBC wag had obviously felt they needed a few days away and made the journey up to Fife (Glenrothes by-election coming up shortly), justifying their morning's St Andrews green fees by interviewing hapless ex-miners in a working mens' club in the area.

Gripping stuff. Not. I used to live in Fife in the dim and distant past, and believe me, it would take considerably more than the opportunity to freeze my butt off trogging round St Andrew's - even if I played golf, which I don't - to go back. I'm actually quite surprised the boys from the Beeb were let in to whichever hell-hole the interview was coming from, because in my experience Fifers are far more likely to throw the glasses at anybody they suspect might originate from a place south of Inverkeithing than they are to chatter happily into the mike. Things MIGHT have changed, although I doubt it.

Anyway, we had the usual ill-informed opinions from the usual ill-informed Members of Joe Public. Very routine, nomore-than-the-usual egocentric whinges about the price of fuel, coal, electricity, prescriptions, etc etc etc etc. UNTIL they got to one female who made me want to laugh and cry in equal measures. Now, pardon me if I'm being presumptious here, but I would have thought that the dire gloom-mongering and, it seems currently, virtually continuous bad news about the world economy would managed to have penetrated even the darkest, most isolated and cousin-rogering corner of Britain. Given that, you would think somebody being interviewed might actually take the opportunity to comment on this - ie. talk about the Big Picture. Ah, but I forget - this was FIFE; and in this instance all the pitiful creature could find to say was something along the lines of 'I will not vote Labour because they have taken away our freedom and our choice. A working man cannot go to the club and have a pint and a cigarette because they have stopped us smoking in public places'.

Give me strength. We have the US dragging the world into possibly the worst financial pit for almost a century. We have only recently avoided a potential US-Russia confrontation regarding the Georgia-South Ossetia problem (and I predict more trouble there, but that's another issue). There is the potential for endless problems - genocide, starvation, epidemic - in Africa. We are still involved in the mess that is Iraq and Afghanistan. George Bush has still another couple of months to royally cock-up somewhere else on the planet. I could go on. And yet, all this wee wifey can think of is the fact she and her family can't go and smoke themselves into an early grave down the club and give everybody else a dose of nicotine and tar whilst they're at it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - politicians these days are probably no better or worse than their predecessors in terms of taking a grand tour on the good ship gravy train. However, whereas past politicians did attempt, and sometimes succeed, to be statesmen first and personal-opportunists second the modern lot are ONLY motivated by self-interest. Unfortunately when people like Wee Wifey - narrow-minded selfish bigots, with almost zero education and even less social conscience - are allowed to vote we cannot expect anything else.