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Poor_Richard

Listed below are comments made by Poor_Richard between Saturday, 26th July 2008 and Tuesday, 6th January 2009.

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New year, new storm 11:22am on 06 Jan 2009 Internecine warfare already! And Christmas only now being packed away and the twinkly lights still disappearing from driveways and the facades of twee suburban residences not yet paid for.

Christmas was all about building bridges, unless I have misconstrued it. The message has obviously not got through, for here you are all bickering about the building of a bridge, no less, one that both sides want built, both unionists and non-unionists, that is.

There is clearly more to this than meets the eye, of course, as has been pointed out, but you might have waited for all the decorations to be taken down before lunging at one another with daggers drawn, kicking up such a dust that the complexity of the issue is reduced to little more than an expression of the Labour Party's well-known "visceral hatred" of the SNP and the response to this that may understandably be expected.

"How many observe Christ’s Birth-day! How few, his Precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1743)
Christmas cheer in the chamber 4:40pm on 24 Dec 2008 #137 aye_write

"The Sting of a Reproach, is the Truth of it."
(Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1746)

Sorry. Ben, God and I don't take questions. I am gratified by your response, however, while feeling somewhat sorry for the donkey that you have just talked the hind legs off.

You are quite right, of course: mixing politics and religion is questionable . . . even at Christmas. I don't know what came over me. The spirit of Christmas, perhaps.

Merry Christmas.
Christmas cheer in the chamber 10:46pm on 23 Dec 2008 "When there’s more Malice shown than Matter:
On the Writer falls the satyr."
(Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1747)

As we approach the holy time at the end of the old year, let those to whom the above applies resolve to mend their ways at the beginning of the new year.

"Observe the Mean, the Motive and the End;
Mending our selves, or striving still to mend.
Our Souls sincere, our Purpose fair and free,
Without Vain Glory or Hypocrisy:
Thankful if well; if ill, we kiss the Rod;
Resign with Hope, and put our Trust in GOD."
(idem, 1746)

A blessed Christmas to you all.
Piffle and tosh 11:10pm on 07 Oct 2008 "When the Well's dry, we know the Worth of Water." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1746)

Without liquidity a bank is as useful as a well run dry. What folly, then, to let the well run dry and bring the banking system to a standstill with all that that is already doing to the wider economy.

The UK government will be announcing action to restore liquidity tomorrow morning, but incalculable damage has been caused, and the economy is already blighted. As the former chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir George Matthewson, said today, the stock market has given its verdict on the UK government's response to the crisis, and it is not 9 out of 10. Let us hope that the damage caused to our economy by that Labour administration's consistent and persistent failure to respond promptly and appropriately to grave and exceptional events is not past mending.

The market having passed judgment on the London Labour government, the electors of Glenrothes will soon do so on behalf of us all.
Fine words, noble sentiments 10:48pm on 14 Sep 2008 "Would you persuade, speak of Interest, not of Reason." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1736) Discuss.

Wishing to adopt a positive approach towards the new opposition leader in the legislature and having noticed the word 'reason' being bandied about here, I am tempted to broach the delicate subject of honesty. How far would you get in politics if you expected every voter or many voters to respond to reason alone? Reasoning is a skill, and philosophers are few. If all you want are the votes of philosophers, you will not get far. That is why a practical politician in a democracy tempers reason with common sense and personal interest, the personal interest of the largest number of voters. You know this, of course.

Is that not what the First Minister does consummately well and the Labour opposition remarkably poorly? A discourse dense with tightly reasoned argument would be indigestible to the majority. So he does not give them that. What would be the point? At the same time the mind of every man and woman can be reasoned with at his or her own level. So he gives them that in so far as humanly possible or thereabouts. A difficult skill to acquire and to deploy with success. Few have it, and only few can have it.

On the other hand there is the politician who simply aims too low and narrow and so never engages with the mind of the majority without insulting its intelligence, especially if reading assiduously from a prepared text. Who might that be?

A further ingredient is required: passion. Unless what you say is infused with passion, your words will be as dead things and will fall on deaf ears. So reason simultaneously operating at several levels, accompanied by a degree of passion which does not detract from it, focuses upon the self-interest of the elector who is the most representative of the electorate as a whole while looking him or her directly in the eye and persuading that elector to gaze into your soul and share your vision so that his or her vision is enriched, transformed and melds with yours.

Can you do all of that, Mr Gray? I don't think so. But we shall see. Unfortunately for you, you have an appointment on Thursday with a man who has all these skills and is appreciated for them. Yesterday you sought to contrast yourself with Mr Salmond. You were right to do so but unwise, for the contrast is not favourable to you. The First Minister is a better man than you, and everybody knows it.
The Iron Laddie? 4:16pm on 22 Aug 2008 "Better slip with foot than tongue." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1734)

When Charles Dickens visited America in the early part of the 19th century (see American Notes), he travelled about observing the progress of the nation and engaging in countless exchanges with the numerous Americans that he encountered along the way. That was, of course, his purpose, and, whereas you or I might tread well-trodden paths where we would meet few challenges, he went out of his way to go out of that way and found himself in prison. Not just one prison but prison after prison and jail-house after jail-house and asylum after asylum and then institutions for those with learning difficulties, as we would say now, finishing up with the nearest doss-house and then back to the hotel for dinner with the wife, who must have thought this was a funny kind of holiday if she hadn't been through this kind of thing with Mr Dickens before.

What the Dickens has this got to do with anything? Well, how does a person of phenomenally considerable command of language express himself in the company of the poor wretches that the great man encountered in places of that type? With great care, as you may imagine. You soon find your usable vocabulary shrinking rapidly and disappearing to end up as very little in comparison with what it usually is. Sentence structure has to become very simple too, of course. Everything must be suited to a short attention span.

This is the problem which your present-day politician in the English-speaking world is faced with. Anything of greater length or complexity than a sound bite is too much for many in the audience or readership to cope with. Sad but true. The media will traduce it. Your opponents will turn it inside out and upside down and then blow it up like a balloon and burst it. You protest and try to explain what you meant, and what do you get? "Methinks he doth protest too much; guilty as charged."

Public discourse having thus been reduced to an exchange of simple notions simply expressed, politics becomes an arena for the simple-minded, which is why Scottish Labour were dominant for so long, presumably. A more sophisticated individual, like Mr Salmond, although very adept at expressing himself in such a way as to cater for all levels of intellect and educational attainment in the electorate, must inevitably sooner or later be caught saying something which, although clear enough, can be misconstrued if tampered with and taken out of context. Is this a slip of the tongue? Of course, it isn't, but it may be made to look like it.

Listen to this morning's radio interview with Mr Salmond. The interviewer, having had everything explained patiently and clearly, returns undaunted to get him to confirm that he did indeed say what he said in the Dale interview as if it were something which he was seeking to deny or should have any interest in denying. If one cannot say that Thatcherite economic policy was resented less than Thatcherite social policy without having it maintained that one must be meaning to say that Thatcherite economic policy was not resented, one must face the fact that public discourse has now descended to such a low level that nothing of even relatively little sophistication can any more be said and that our public figures find themselves now reduced to the vocabulary and syntax which Mr Dickens must have been reduced to when doing his tour of the institutional habitations of the unfortunates of his day. In such circumstances there is very little that one can say at all that would not be a slip of the tongue.

I pity our politicians, and I have no great admiration for our media. I found nothing in the Dale interview which Mr Salmond has any reason to apologize for or retract. However, no one is so near to perfection as to be perfectly on guard against leaving a little window of opportunity open for the malicious and the intellectually challenged. I would, therefore, have to agree that it might be better for the First Minister to accept that he could have expressed himself in a way which might have been even clearer than it was.
Out of the loop - into the noose 3:55pm on 04 Aug 2008 Mr McCabe is to be commended for his candour, belated though it is, but it is to be doubted whether the acknowledgment of fault by one or two dissidents in the Labour Party in Scotland can do it much if any good at this late stage even if they were to prove capable of converting that party to their view. Scottish Labour has had its chance. When the brothers and sisters thought they could not lose their core support, they did not trouble to reform themselves. That is when reform might have been sincere and therefore arguably worthy of respect. Now it would be merely an act of desperation.

Mr McCabe and any others who may now be adopting a critical approach to the constitution and practices of the Labour Party in Scotland can choose to leave the sinking ship or to go down with it and with all the other so-called comrades who are already beginning to denounce them rather than take their counsels to heart, for Scottish Labour's make-faults appear determined not to allow its new find-faults to become mend-faults.

"One Mend-fault is worth two Findfaults, but one Findfault is better than two Makefaults." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1735)
Let the battle begin 3:49pm on 01 Aug 2008 Having suffered grievously at the hands of the governing party, which is teaching the opposition how to govern within the constitutional framework within which Scotland is currently confined and also how elections can be fought and won, Scottish Labour's time has come to show us if they have learned any lessons, particularly as they are suspected, with reason, of being incapable of doing so.

If any of the Scottish Labour leadership candidates has sufficient character to lead in such a way as to restore the Labour Party's fortunes in Scotland by demonstrating that he or she has the wit and the humility to learn from the various drubbings which it has been subjected to by the independence movement for rather a long time now, we shall all have to confess that wonders never cease.

"The Things which hurt, instruct." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1744) If Scottish Labour's next leader does not become the leader of the whole of the Labour Party in Scotland (MPs included) and if he or she fails to demonstrate within a quite short period that the things which have hurt it in Scotland lately have instructed it to good effect, public support for that party must surely continue to decline.
On the tour bus 4:58pm on 30 Jul 2008 The Scottish Government is going out among the people whose welfare it is charged with. The people's welfare is served neither by remote government nor by government which does not labour night and day to work for the people and to show itself to be doing so.

The SNP Government is doing what it said it would do by holding cabinet meetings around the country and by having all of its MSPs make themselves conspicuously available, furthermore, for consultation with those whom they represent. A minority government cannot by definition do everything it wishes to do, but it must keep those promises which it is within its power to keep or come to the people to explain to them why in particular cases it should, on reflection, do otherwise. "Promises may get thee Friends, but Nonperformance will turn them into Enemies." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1740)

This may seem novel in this country, but government of the people by the people for the people is what democrats are supposed to believe in rather than merely taking the people's money and disappearing over the horizon. What the Scottish Cabinet is doing is no circus. This is democracy in action, and it has taken the Scottish National Party to show us how that should work. Keep paying attention, for the governing party has further lessons in store.
Business as usual? 11:22pm on 26 Jul 2008 The UK governing party does well to acknowledge the seriousness of the damage which the governing party here has inflicted on it. After many years of industrious effort a breakthrough has occurred which has the potential to sever the constitutional link that binds us to the dominant power in the inherited constitutional union that has seemed to be beyond the power of democracy to overcome.

Within the UK constitutional framework the core electoral support of the Labour Party is effectively the cable linking Scotland to England. The pro-independence party has been gnawing through this diligently and patiently little by little over the years but is now taking much bigger bites. If it can maintain this rate of progress, the cable will soon become weak enough to snap, and the SNP will become the dominant power in the land. From such a position of strength its capacity to persuade the people to become masters of their own fate will be greatly enhanced.

"By diligence and patience, the mouse bit in two the cable." (Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1735) At this stage it is probably too late for a change of UK Labour leader or any other stratagem to make much difference to the mouse, who has clearly got so far through the cable as to be capable of carrying on to the bitter end, come what may. As for whoever can be the new leader of Scottish Labour, have they got anyone whose election will amount to more than giving the mouse a piece of cheese that will increase his strength and redouble his efforts?

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