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Follow my resolutions for a new, improved future
Having broken my own resolutions for many years, I decided some time ago to make instead some new year resolutions for other people. No doubt they will be broken too, but that will hardly be my fault. Here they are.
For Dottie, the Princess Royal's bull terrier: to savage a few more overbred, overfed and exploited canine chums, royal or not. This country is plagued with neurotic, neglected pets that dump tons of excrement on pavements, parks and footpaths, spreading disgust and disease, before trotting home to an unnatural life in captivity.
For Patricia Hewitt, the trade secretary: to try to stop telling people how to run their lives, if only for a couple of weeks. This will be very hard for Patricia; she suffers from interference compulsive disorder, centring on other people's domestic lives, and the affliction has been particularly bad this year.
In June she told stay-at-home mothers they were a "persistent problem" and a drain on the economy, and should get out to work. However, therapy can, it seems, sometimes help. By October she was prepared to admit that the government should not dictate to women how to live their lives.
But Patricia must be careful. Relapses are almost inevitable with interference compulsive disorder and only last week she could not stop herself telling fathers to take six months' paternity leave (see G Brown below).
For Gordon Brown: to take six months' paternity leave to spend with baby John, as recommended by Patricia Hewitt (see above), starting immediately. Gordon is beginning to look scarier and scarier. He is quite capable of ruining this country. Even six months away would be useful damage limitation.
For Michael Howard: never to forget that conviction works. This is not a snide reference to his belief as home secretary -proved to be right, as far as recidivism goes -that prison works. It's a reminder that people do really prefer and vote for politicians with conviction; it is a mistake to jettison any. I've always suspected Howard of having real convictions -naive of me perhaps.
For Margaret Hodge: to resign immediately and stay out of public life. It is a complete mystery that her close friends the Blairs have not pushed her into doing the decent thing, if only out of self-interest.
Perhaps, like her, they truly cannot see what is wrong with her behaviour or why it was so wicked of her to accuse a former victim of child abuse in Hodge-led Islington of being "extremely disturbed" in a private letter to the BBC.
For Cherie Blair (multiple resolutions for a busy multi-tasker): to keep work life separate from No 10 life. To try to make it up to her daughter Kathryn for choosing and sending a family Christmas card photograph that was so ruthlessly unflattering to the poor girl. To pay full price for all designer clothes. To say as little as possible in public.
To all those trying to be "sensitive" about other faiths: try less hard. Daft examples from 2003 include the case of a head teacher of an infant school in Yorkshire, where two-thirds of the pupils are from Muslim families, who told staff not to read aloud to them any stories about pigs out of respect for ethnic sensitivities.
Recently, High Wycombe public library refused to allow a church to put up a notice advertising Advent carol services, for fear of giving offence yet held a party which, by contrast, was much advertised at the library, to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid. Muslims do not welcome this treatment. They realise it is counterproductive.
For almost all quangos: to self-destruct. Of course they won't. They seem to reproduce uncontrollably. So I resolve that all quangos should at least report themselves clearly and simply on a single quango website -why was that good idea recently dropped? -so we can all see in awestruck horror just how many, how expensive, how wasteful, how unrepresentative and how counterproductive they are.
The Cabinet Office has now disseminated the former quango website over two websites. This makes it very difficult to work out what's what. Transparency, new Labour style?
For the Archbishop of Canterbury: to spend a long ecumenical retreat at a Trappist monastery under the rule of total silence. The sad fact is that whenever Rowan Williams, our bearded prelate, speaks out against division and disorder he tends to contribute to it.
When he insists on the right of the Church of England to criticise the elected government he reminds us all of something it would be convenient to forget, which is that, strictly speaking, for quaint historical reasons, we live in a theocracy.
This is very awkward. It makes a nonsense of our liberal view that religion is a private matter and should not intrude on politics, a view for which thousands have died in agony.
Also, it encourages people of other faiths here to think that in justice their religious leaders should have political power as well. They are already asking for it. That would be a disaster. Since many people recognise that, Williams is leading his flock towards disestablishment.
For President George Bush: to keep God out of his speeches. (see above).
For American cattle farmers facing mad cow disease: to learn from the awful example of John Selwyn Gummer, his infant daughter Cordelia's hamburger and the burning cattle pyres -to tell the whole truth about BSE and start vaccinating at once.
For the agriculture ministers of the rich world: to stop subsidising domestic farming completely. It beggars farmers in the developing world.
For international trade organisations of all kinds: to remove the immoral and hypocritical trade barriers against developing countries. Then they could hope to support themselves, and might come to resent the rich world less.
For local education authorities and school governors: stop selling school playing fields or building over them, immediately. Children need exercise, especially the fat children we breed these days.
For English National Opera: to stop producing operas in English, now that everyone accepts subtitles, as at Covent Garden.
For all senior managers in all public services: to adopt a new uber-target to abandon at least one target every working day.
For inspectors of schools, hospitals, prison and the like: to insist on unannounced, unexpected inspections only.
For all television presenters and reporters: to watch the Brass Eye DVD repeatedly. This very funny show might cure them of their silliest and most vacuous habits.
For the BBC: make fewer programmes. The only way for the BBC to survive is to maintain the highest possible standards, and the only way to do that is to cut production hugely.
The BBC does not need to fill every unforgiving hour with cheap populist rubbish.
Let others do that. The BBC could remain world-beating and indispensable if it threw all its money into being the best at a few things. After all, the only advantage of being in the civil service is that you don't have to compete commercially.
Happy New Year!
The Sunday Times | Sunday, December 28, 2003
