Scepticism can be Justified

Does anyone trust politicians? Of course not! But is our distrust being directed at the wrong people? Possibly. Not only do I distrust politicians, I now distrust the political process.

My reasons have nothing to do with duck islands in clean moats or about ‘flipping’ a second home or two. It’s something more basic: something to do with the fact that politicians are responsible for the business of good government, a ‘something’ that they increasingly forget.
But before I go any further I want you bear in mind that the Dutch have just made Geert Wilders an important man in Dutch politics, and sometimes it’s all about who gets elected.

Do you remember why ‘we’ were sent to make war on the Iraqis? Well, Bush ‘The Idiot’, Dick ‘The Cheney’ and Blair ‘The Christian’ wrongly believed, but couldn’t prove, that Sadam ‘The Retard’ had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Neither could they prove that he had any links to Osama ‘Slayer of Infidels’ Bin Laden, and anyone else who happened to be in the way.

Let loose in Afghanistan to avenge the horror and ignominy of 9/11, the Americans captured an important freedom fighter called Abu Zubaydah. ‘Abu’ they asked. ‘Can you help us with the truth of the situation as we see it?’ and proceeded to interrogate him about the whereabouts of Sadam’s WMD, and about his links with Bin Laden. He shook his head twice. Those two shakes meant ‘No, he hasn’t got any WMDs’ and ‘No. He does not have links to Bin Laden, God forbid’, which truthfully answered both questions.

But then he made a mistake. An unnecessary third shake of his head – brought on by incredulity at the ignorance of his interrogators, probably - suggested he wasn’t cooperating fully. So they water-boarded him 83 times. Guess what? As he came up for air for the 82rd time he spluttered ‘yes, yes’, or something similar, which confirmed everything they didn’t need to know, and then they did it one more time, for luck.

Well-pleased with the result for completely the wrong reasons, Bush and Cheney legalised the use of torture by secretly suspending the Geneva conventions for the treatment of prisoners, as it affected America, and we set about invading Iraq with clear consciences.

In spite of all this being known and provable, neither Bush, Cheney or Tony Blair, is in gaol. Nor is there any sign that they will ever go to gaol. Having abandoned the business of good government, Bush and Cheney followed an ego-driven path by trying to make history-on-the-hoof, which is a rather Satanic way of making it. America’s reputation went into free-fall, closely followed by the economy.

Plus, less we forget, in spite of their lamentable records and failures, Bush and Blair were both re-elected. In the end, Blair, still unable to admit that the invasion of Iraq was a dreadful error, had to be prised out of Britain’s parliament by his colleagues carrying crowbars. Meanwhile Britain’s reputation for being mere pawns of the Americans had gone global. Interestingly, in a fit of pique or contrition, Blair changed his religion to the one that allows you to apologise officially to God. Who knows, he might become the next pope!

And my distrust of politicians has got nothing to do with the husband of a British minister putting two rented porn videos on her expenses sheet. When you get older it’s nice to spice up your love life and silly to row about who’s going to pay for the necessary stimuli. But speaking of politicians and stimuli, and especially about electorates re-electing unprincipled and untrustworthy politicians, let’s now focus on Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi.

What on earth drives this man and why isn’t he in gaol? I don’t believe that the concept of good government ever crossed Berlusconi’s mind. This three-time Prime Minister of Italy, less we forget, has been convicted three times for corruption and has been sentenced to two years in the slammer. He’s been found guilty of making illegal payments to Italy’s Socialist Party, including giving $12 million to Bettino Craxi to pay his expenses. Craxi was found guilty of receiving and in spite of having fled to Tunisia, was sentenced to four years in absentia.

Silvio’s two-year sentence was his third prison sentence in seven months, none of which are likely to be served. Tax fraud was one offence; bribing tax inspectors the other. Since he came back to power – one assumes the Italians keep re-electing him in the fond hope that, like Mussolini, he’s going to make the trains run on time - he’s steered laws through the Italian parliament that make the four most senior office holders in Italy immune from prosecution, which includes the office of Prime Minister, obviously.

This is helpful because a judge has recently had the temerity to suggest that Prime Minister Berlusconi’s lawyer had lied in court to protect him. This isn’t about silly porn film flimflam. There’s real meat to this story, and once again it involves the husband of Tessa Jowell, a former, fully-fledged British minister. (Where do these high-powered women find these guys? I must be using the wrong wine bars.) David Mills, he’s a, er, tax lawyer and now the former minister’s estranged husband, has been found guilty of taking a £400.000 bribe from Berlusconi, who denies having paid it.

Personally, I don’t understand why he’s bothering to deny it. He’s immune from prosecution. He’s an old man, and a spell in prison ought to be a nice break from the hassle of trying to make sense out of running Italy. Meanwhile, his wife has gone ape-shit. She seems to think that her ability to stimulate him has been out-sourced to an eighteen-year old blond. None of this seems to concern the majority of the Italian electorate. In the meantime, Italy’s reputation…Let’s not even go there.

The question I would like to pose is, do the majority of Italians even want their politicians to be interested in the business of good government?’ Did the Americans when they re-elected Bush? Did the British when they re-elected Blair? If the answer is no, no and no, then there’s something wrong with the political process.

I know it’s heresy but not only do I distrust politicians, I am sceptical about electorates and the choices they make. Geert Wilders? The British National Party? Who or whatever is next?

De Avond 4-Daagse

As mentioned in this blog entry and my comment underneath it, and in this article, the Dutch have some weird and wonderful traditions which seem totally normal to them, but which to foreigners are just plain wacky. (One that suddenly springs to mind is when shop employees say 'veel plezier ermee' when you buy something mundane like a new bin. 'Enjoy your bin'. Thanks, I'll do my best.)

This week I'm about to 'enjoy' another tradition - de avond vierdaagse. Over a thousand children and their parents from all the schools in the district go for a 5 km walk on a different route every evening for four evenings in a row. The first time I explained this to a Brit, they immediately asked "what, like a sponsored walk". Yes, just like a sponsored walk, except NOBODY IS SPONSORED. That's right, it's just for the joy of healthy exercise in the open air.

Well in fact it's just because. Because that's what we do every year. I mean it's not like children don't get enough exercise in Holland in the first place, what with 2x gym per week at school, swimming lessons (almost mandatory), other extracurricular sports (most boys seem to belong to a football club, our kids do judo and basketball) and clambering around the millions of playgrounds peppering suburbia.

Being in June, it's either pouring down with rain or the sun is baking down. The kids generally start out full of enthusiasm, but by day 2 a lot of them are fading half way round the course, and you can see a lot of sweaty dads with 6 yr olds on their shoulders, wishing they'd managed to arrange for 'essential' overtime at work...

Meanwhile what would seem to me to be a perfect opportunity to raise some serious money for charity is allowed to slip past noiselessly. Weird.

Then there are the peripheral traditions that accompany the avond 4-daagse. Last year I saw loads of children sucking on bunched up handkerchiefs. What the...? Turns out they had half an orange inside, with 3 peppermints on top of it, sealed off with a rubber band at the bottom. Ewwww. I was then told that this was an ideal 'thirst-quencher'. Yes, like leeches are the ideal treatment for disease. (The double whammy of glucose and citric acid makes me wonder if these kids have any teeth left after 4 days, not to mention all the germs they ingest after they've dropped the rags on the ground for the umpteenth time.)

Finally, on the last evening, as the group approaches the finishing point, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends line the route, as if it were a marathon, and hand the children they have come to cheer on ... what do you think? Bottles of water or sport drinks? Bananas or biscuits for that last burst of energy? A toy as a reward for their efforts? No. They hand them something every child dreams of receiving - a bunch of flowers. You might be forgiven for thinking this was something some post-war civil servant dreamed up to give the Dutch flower industry a boost.

PS I got talked into volunteering to be a steward on this year's event, and I've just realised the significance of that in terms of the 'pouring down with rain' scenario. No option of staying at home and saying 'f*** it'. Looks like my integration into Dutch society will be coming one small step closer. Watch this space for updates.