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A sense of resolution
Peter Mandelson is the closest thing there is in the New Labour inner circle to One of Us. I can't understand why he didn't join the Conservative Party in the first place.
It is very wearisome, at this sad and dark time of year, to have to make resolutions for myself that I will almost certainly break. This year, instead, I have decided to make resolutions for other people. No doubt they will be broken, too, or not taken seriously in the first place, as is the way with resolutions, but that will hardly be my fault. Here they are:
For everybody, and especially for the Cabinet: To read more poetry.
People are reading less and less, as the scrapping of the OUP poetry list this year demonstrates only too clearly. Schools no longer introduce children to the habit of reading poetry, but, given the slightest encouragement, people quickly realise they love it, as was shown by the mass sales of Auden after one of his poems was used in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. Poetry is beautiful, funny and sustaining, and soothes the savage breast. It is, therefore, healthy.
Instead of his ghastly, misguided campaign on healthy eating, I resolve that Frank Dobson, the Health Secretary, shall set up - since what is he for if not to set up irrational public health education initiatives? - a healthy reading campaign. He has been set a good example by the Poems on the Tube and by Ted Hughes's recent book By Heart: 101 Poems To Remember.
Poetry also offers a wider perspective and is instructive; I therefore also resolve that the New Labour Cabinet - past and present - shall read a great deal of Alexander Pope on manners, morals and cronyism and also this little quatrain by Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), On A General Election: "The accursed power which stands on Privilege/ (And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge)/ Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign:/ (Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne)."
For Conservatives: To support Peter Mandelson.
Apart from, or quite possibly including, his enthusiasm for the good things of life - if not precisely bridge, women and champagne, then at least designer chic and salon society - Mr Mandelson is the closest thing there is in the New Labour inner circle to One of Us. I can't understand why he didn't join the Conservative Party in the first place. Without him, there might well be the terrible lurch to the Left that we have all been dreading. Help keep the Labour Government Conservative!
For journalists: To stop being so sanctimonious about cronyism and conflicts of interest.
What about the motes in our own eyes? We, too, most of us, keep quiet about all kinds of things and are as corrupted by friendship and hospitality as anyone else. Some journalists actually belong to political parties - I think that's very Hoffman. It is friendship above all that corrupts. I think there should be a register for all those in public life not simply of financial interests but also of friends.
For Europhiles, especially including Peter Mandelson: To explain in clear, plain, well-spun English the advantages of greater harmonisation with Europe (but not at public expense).
Euro-sceptics are always explaining their views with passion and eloquence, and the arguments themselves are easy enough to understand. Euro-enthusiasts, by contrast, seem either unwilling or unable to make their case. I keep meeting clever, honourable and reasonably patriotic men who believe strongly that we have everything to gain from embracing Europe, and that tax harmonisation will be very good for us, but when I try to repeat their arguments later, I find that I cannot remember a single word. Are the arguments so very difficult? Is it really necessary to put them forward in obscure jargon, with a patronising smile? I understand that for innumerates, and for those with little knowledge of economics or business, it may all be a little hard to follow, but I'm not sure that Euro-enthusiasts feel obliged to try to help us. They share an alarming sense of superiority that feels undemocratic and supranational. They are living in a world of fait accompli.
For the Secretaries of Health and Social Services: To stop congratulating yourselves about what you've promised for the mentally ill, and do something about the mentally handicapped.
The problem is pretty much the same for both; the difference is that the mentally handicapped don't murder people, and thereby draw attention to themselves. Their suffering goes unnoticed. You've admitted at last that care in the community doesn't work. Stop throwing the mentally handicapped out into it. Stop shutting the hospitals down, where parents' groups support them and where they can be adapted into friendly communities. Stop letting bigoted local authorities deprive people of the choice of care that is theirs by statutory right. Stop local authorities telling people what is best for them. Stop local authorities silencing the families. Stop listening to the so-called experts - have you learnt nothing from what happened to the mentally ill? I resolve that you shall listen - isn't this supposed to be your thing? - to the people concerned. It might even save money.
For columnists, government ministers, politicians and religious leaders generally: To stop lamenting the demise of the family.
No amount of wise words, or foolish words for that matter, seem to make the slightest difference; people no longer want to live in traditional families. We've all thought long and hard about the reasons for this, chief among them the facts that divorce is now financially possible and that women either wish to work or have to work, or both. Another reason, not often mentioned but all too clear at this time of year, is that family life for most people is awful. It is noisy, intrusive, demanding, boring, unrewarding and sexually frustrating.
For most people it is not much fun, and the alternative is not bad enough. A few tax concessions won't change any of this. Nor will moralising. Only some very major material benefits would make any real change. I mean huge tax breaks and jumps up the housing queue for married couples; generous payment for stay-at-home married mothers; inferior treatment for children of second marriages; mother and baby homes only for never-married mothers. Since no one is resolved to do any of this, I resolve that everyone shall stop talking about it and concentrate instead on what to do about this country's neglected children.
For all NHS supporters: To stop blaming every woe on nurses' pay.
Of course nurses must be paid more, but more money won't solve the real problem - abysmal training and the bogus professionalisation of nursing. It needs revolutionary reform.
For everybody, including me: To Count Your Blessings.
Happy New Year.
The Daily Telegraph | Thursday, December 31, 1998
