Easy to criticise – not so easy to find alternatives
10:00am Friday 29th February 2008
J Smith (Feb7) produces a long list of wrongs from our New Labour government eg hospital acquired diseases; serious reduction in education standards; poor control of immigration destroying our democracy.
The points about education and immigration are surely contestable eg education has always been very mixed in Britain and continues to be; is it immigration or other factors which are weakening our democracy?
The list of wrongs needs to be put into context. An important part of that, and for decades, has been the quality of our national press.
The furore over the Archbishop of Cantebury's remarks on Sharia law provides a prime example. Any attempt at serious debate is rubbished and lampooned in a crude way. "What a Burkha" is just the latest in a long line of memorable tabloid headlines.
The result of this is that serious reflection on important issues is difficult to achieve. People are cowed into silence. Politics is changed to an important extent, the result of vicious tabloid headlines in the 1980s and early 90s.
The Sun's famous headline after the Conservatives won the 1992 election was: "It was the Sun wot won it".
It is one thing to produce a list of wrongs in the country. It is quite another to say how it could be different.
If J Smith is hoping for a Conservative victory at the next election, is he going to claim that things will get better under them?
John Payne, Dudley Respect, Halesowen