Audience of One

Don't worry, be happy

I promise, shortly after the election I will revert to old habits about mentioning politics. For now though, there’s just too much about in the air to not pass comment occasionally (or frequently). Take the Jeremy Paxman interview with Michael Howard, for example. It’s not often I’ll sit down to listen to a Conservative talk for long (generally the Conservatives I know are raving right-wingers who’d stop taxation if they were in power because “Daddy’ll pay for me to have a nice life, and it’s his money not the government’s anyway”), but last night was an exception and I was almost taken in for a second. Michael Howard, it seemed, was being sensible.

You all know my general opinion of Michael Howard (check out the last paragraph of my entry Google Maps if you don’t), so I was quite surprised to find myself thinking him rational and honest. He admitted to mistakes in the past, and pointed out that “unlike Labour, we’ve learned from our mistakes”. He mentioned his policy on the role of the private sector in the health service (they plan to pay half the fee for an operation out of the NHS budget if people can afford the rest, in order to take off the strain on the NHS). The way he explained it, it seemed rational.

Then he spoilt it all by making me realise the flaw in the idea. He mentioned that the Conservatives plan to do it for private education as well. And I suddenly saw that the policy was creating a two-tier health service and preventing those poor people from getting the care they need as quickly as the rich. It would come close to providing care for the rich before those who are poor, rather than those who need the care the most first. Surely a better idea is to train more doctors and build more hospitals? Labour aren’t much better; they came into power promising less regulation, and then created a huge NHS beaurocracy even worse than before. This beaurocracy forces doctors to treat the less ill first just to meet targets.

With my eyes opened, I suddenly saw that, unlike Howard emphasises, it was a matter of ideology, and the Conservatives still wanted those rich enough to pay for things better off. Some of the policies seemed reasonable, until you compared them with other parties’ policies and thought about how they would affect those worst off financially. Then I remembered Thatcherism, and John Major’s government. Then I saw the grin on Howard’s face – a smirk, as if saying “you fools! I can’t believe you’re accepting this!” You can almost imagine him saying in a falsely nice voice (just as a Tory MP’s son is reported to be saying whenever seeing Howard on TV) “I’m not going to hurt you, children”. Well, not if your parents earn enough anyway.

Currently listening to Always – Note for a Child

Matthew @ 17:52, April 23, 2005 to Politics | Comments (7)