At last night's Council meeting I was struggling with political double speak. Protecting local interests and trying to ensure local jobs were retained was a definite good thing said one "independent" councillor, a sentiment I had already expressed and with which she was agreeing with me. She then went on to say that protecting British Interests and trying to ensure UK Jobs were retained in the UK made me a "Little Englander"
So protecting Hartlepool is good but protecting the UK is bad? How can we do one without the other? The Councillor in question trotted out the good things about the European Union in her opinion, including much better health and safety regulation and keeping the peace in Europe. Well no-one could argue about health and safety being a good thing, I wouldn't want to go back to the bad old days of people regularly being killed at work, however most reasonable people now accept that health and safety has swung so far into risk adverse that we are in danger of not being able to do anything! The old chestnut about keeping the peace of course ignores a little organisation called NATO which has done more for peace in Europe than the EU has ever done.
But back to double speak, protecting local interests good, protecting British interests bad! How can she, and others like her, be so blinkered as not to be able to see the basic contradiction in that stance. You have to protect British interests to be able to retain the ability to protect local interests. It's bad enough being micro managed by Westminster but even that is preferable to centralist control from Brussels!
Council chambers do seem to attract particularly dim local mitherers don't they? Councillor Allison being the exception obviously, as I was when I was a councillor.
ReplyDeleteThere was one councillor in our group on Lancaster City Council who, about 2 months after the election, complained that he had put in his election expenses but had not yet been refunded. He is now in the cabinet. And I don't mean the drinks cabinet!