They are not all political, but unfortunately the greatest of them is a person in the government. I take strong exception to Lord Mandelson being part of the government. Firstly because he is unelected, secondly because he has had to resign on two occasions for the sort of thing the current fuss is about. Thirdly because now he has become once again a power to be reckoned with as he was previously, when he was a spin doctor. I am firmly convinced that he has had a strong influence over Gordon Brown, is a stronger character than Brown, and is now being talked about as the deputy leader in fact if not in name, that I translate as leader, and a reason why Brown feels confident that he can remain in office. To extend this objection I believe that so-called spin doctors should be prohibited from being a permanent part of a government machine. Advisers are another matter entirely, they are brought in for a specific job, especially as no one is omniscient. If however, a speechwriter also becomes a speech composer, which I believe is currently the case, when certain MPs speaking off-the-cuff are so poor, while their written speeches are of an exceedingly high standard, this should be curbed. If the country has voted the government in, then the government should govern, not be a tool for other people who influence them, possibly with their own agenda.
Do you object very strongly to finding yourself talking to somebody halfway across the world, with a very strong accent that can be difficult to understand, when all you want is a telephone number of a friend in the next street, or maybe help with the problem of a new gadget that you bought? This of course is part of a wider objection, the transference of a lot of our work and much of manufacture abroad. These again are cases where the government seems totally oblivious of the long-term effects of these cost-cutting exercises, which only advantage those doing the cost-cutting, not the country as a whole.
I am so often disappointed these days, when I have been persuaded to buy a boxed meal, or a meal in a tin, and when I start to eat it and discover it is absolutely objectionable. The fact that there are so many on the shelves, implies that a high proportion of those buying them are happy with them. I can’t believe that I am alone in finding both the quality and the tastes of these substitutes for an old-fashioned meal, to be substandard. Periodically pictures, as part of advertisements, show presumably highly educated dieticians designing and testing new meals. I just wonder whether my taste buds are singular, or whether those of the testers are more to do with profit than culinary excellence.
One last gripe. I have always found it ludicrous, that people can fly large quantities of produce halfway round the world for a price at point of delivery less than it costs to produce it in a field 3 miles away. People are making our lives ever more complicated because they want us to take pains in ensuring that we have recycling, we are careful with our electricity usage, we buy cars that have low carbon emission, and yet we can feed the atmosphere with waste gases from all this transportation. Perhaps this credit crunch will bring a bit of sanity back into our lives.