PAUL ROUTLEDGE Democracy our strongest option A
I WENT to the reopening of Tadcaster’s iconic 18th century bridge over the River Wharfe.
It was a joyous occasion, celebrated by townsfolk and especially children from Taddy’s three primary schools who were the first to cross over.
After partial destruction by Storm Eva in December 2015, the bridge has been faithfully restored in a £4.4 million operation lasting 13 months.
Only one thing marred the occasion for me: bloody politicians stealing the limelight.
Local Tory MP Nigel Adams and Communities Secretary Sajid Javid MP hogged the front line and posed for the TV cameras helping a boy and girl cut the red tape.
They should have let the kids enjoy their 15 minutes of fame, instead of using the event as yet another photo-op. Dame Vera Lynn A REMASTERED version of Dame Vera Lynn’s greatest WWII hits like We’ll Meet Again and The White Cliffs of Dover will celebrate her 100th birthday next month. Will today’s rap-crap and self-pitying pop trash be remembered at the end of this century? Hardly likely. MAJORITY of Britons hanker after “a strong leader” to turn the country round.
That’s the verdict of a survey into public levels of trust in government.
An Ipsos Mori opinion poll found that two-thirds of those questioned agreed that the UK needs “a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”.
Half wanted “a strong leader willing to break the rules”.
Alarming, and wrong. Hitler was a strong leader, and so was Stalin. So were the Greek colonels, and Ceaucescu in Romania, and Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, before his sticky end.
So today are Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Vladimir Putin in Russia and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Recip Erdogan in Turkey, and General Sisi in Egypt.
Does anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together want to live in a country ruled by men (they’re all men, naturally) like them? No, I thought not.
The idea of a strong leader who is also a good man is a fantasy, born of fury at the way a rich and powerful elite treats the likes of you and me.
But all history shows that there is I’M writing before the drama about Shannon Matthews is broadcast, but I shall watch it.
Shannon’s mother Karen and her accomplice Michael Donovan were each jailed for eight years for the hoax kidnap of the nine-year-old schoolgirl in 2008.
She was found after an intense £3 million police operation, only a mile from her home on Dewsbury Moor at the end of a drug-induced ordeal lasting twenty-four days.
Shannon’s grandparents sharply criticised the BBC for making the programme, saying: “What happened to her was a trauma, a tragedy.
“It is sick and disgusting that it’s being turned into a TV show. It isn’t entertainment, it’s real life.” no such thing as a benevolent dictator. From Roman emperors to the tinpot despots of twentiethcentury South America, they create their own ruling class of wealthy cronies.
That’s precisely what Donald Trump is doing in the USA, where he rules by presidential decree – euphemistically called executive orders - from the Oval Office.
His Cabinet is stuffed with wealthy bankers, oilmen and yes-men from the Right-wing media. The notion that he is on the side of blue-collar workers is strictly for the birds.
I can see why voters are attracted to a political leader or party who “stands up for the common people
I understand the grandparents’ objections, but there is a valid public interest in trying to understand what happened, and how well the community of Dewsbury Moor against the elite” and why they prefer “outspoken politicians”.
They’re fed up with poverty wages, job insecurity, sky-high housing costs, immigration that has radically altered their towns and cities, and they just want it to stop. That resentment lay at the heart of the Brexit vote. Stick it to Them!
But it’s a long and disastrous way from Vote Leave EU to Vote No To Democracy, which is where the fuhrer-fantasy would take us.
As Winston Churchill said 70 years ago “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
Amen to that. responded.
The people of that estate endured an unwanted and undeserved public notoriety at the hands of David Cameron and London-based media.
If this film helps them – and perhaps Shannon, as well - come to terms with that experience, then I think on balance it was right to be made and broadcast.
That, too, is real life.