I was thinking about the last election, and my own take, which I posted, and how there was no real standard requirement that the politician had to pass through to determine his or her experience and ability for the job. In the very old days it was a sort of gentlemen’s club where people of the same ilk were virtually brought up together. Today people go to university to get a degree in political science, but how much experience they have other than the theoretical is something the committee of a constituency needs to know if they wish to adopt a particular person. Over these last few years we have seen some incredible mistakes being made, improper decisions, and self-aggrandizement at any cost. So I went right back to childhood as the basis of discovering experience and the way that this has changed over generations.
I have been fortunate enough, through marrying early, to have had the pleasure of seeing three generations growing up, and it is interesting that each generation has shown different responses to stimuli, than the others. Some time ago I wrote that the relative sophistication of generation upon generation was probably due to information being carried down collectively, through the genes. Thinking upon the statement further, and realizing that in my generation, married couples had their children early, and each subsequent generation, possibly through increased opportunities of leisure and pleasure, have had their children at a later age, I realized that the amount of information and the quality of it, passed on to the next generation, has increased generation by generation. I can only speak about those children that I have had considerable contact with, and I find that each generation has appeared to be more self-reliant at a very early age, and in general so interested in what they’re doing, that they are not bored enough to make nuisances of themselves.
Today, there is a demand by employers for people to have some sort of diploma. A diploma is only a certificate to say that a certain level of education has been reached, not necessarily at a very high level, and has no reference to experience. Whereas experience in his or her particular field, which is the vital element in an individual’s use to an employer, seems to be totally ignored except in the case of professional qualifications related to institutions, and were once also jealously guard by the trades, but now with people learning trades in colleges, rather than on the workbench, standards have fallen. So how does a constituency determine whether an individual is competent to carry out the complex work of the House of Commons? Today so many jobs require some form of diploma or degree, and yet people in the House, who are handling extremely vital, complex and in some cases shatteringly expensive decisions as mandatory, have no similar yardstick. From reading the handbills of the little band that I was offered in this constituency in the last election, there was obviously only one contender, and if that one had not been available, I shudder to think what we would’ve been getting.