There is a glass celling, we all know it.
See, as you know i am not the most brightest nor most intelligent person in the world, But i tend to judge people on merit not status. But i have a weakness of seeing good in everyone and want to help wherever i can.
However in the world of politics it seems you only get anywhere by being nasty, this type of politics is a turn off, its not what i want to see, but alas its what feeds our media and our politicians. We are so in a fucked up world where we rely on fear and hate to further our own means.
The class celling i am talking about is damaged goods (people like me), we are to quick to write them off, dismiss them as useless! Well i disagree, we are a divided society, we have breed class hatred (and most have fallen for it), One group one more of our money while one wants slightly less.
The celling is there but its not class nor racial nor even homophobic. The celling is between the political class and the taxpayers.
But whatever class, manners still matter :)
And by the way, i am going to keep trying to break that glass celling. They may laugh at me but hell, i am going to give it everything i have.
This country deserves better.
About 30 years ago, when there was still a reasonable number of decent people in politics, I had a friend who was a Conservative candidate, trying to be elected as an MP in an unwinnable seat. That's the way you climb the greasy pole: you don't get a bite at a winnable seat until you prove yourself in one where you have no chance. She said to me that, even to get to where she was, she had had to trample on a lot of good people; and that, in her opinion, to make the next step to a winnable seat with the smell of the House of Commons in your nostrils, you had to behave so vilely that there was no merit left in you. When, predictably, she lost, she was relieved and happily went back to her job as managing director of a small firm making real things.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid that's what power is. You may start trying to influence society with the purest of intentions, and many do, and most of them fail with their character still intact. But those who gain power are inevitably corrupted by the process of gaining it, and that is why the House of Commons is inhabited by a bunch of bastards; and the House of Lords, since most of the harmless hereditaries were thrown out, is full of the burnt-out shells of bastards who are no use any more.
And it's not just Parliament, of course: climb to a position of power in any organisation and you lose your way morally, becoming uncaring, smug and greedy. I've said this before: stay low, stay happy.
Give us grace to accept with serenity
Deletethe things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Let me make clear that I do not regard myself as a good person. Neither do I believe that am I especially bad. Others can judge me. But Tachy's point about susceptibility is valid.
However, we live in a real world where someone has to be prepared to show leadership. The world of politics is not for me as I tend to speak my mind too easily. But I have been at the pinnacle of one very specialised form of business and I am glad that I have been there - even though I eventually walked away from it.
There was a need to develop a thick skin as one could never please everyone all the time. This is where my recent remark that it is better to be right than nice was formed. There is a danger that too many people fall for of doing the wrong thing in order to be loved. It takes courage to say the opposite of what everyone thinks and stick to it. Winston Churchill had this courage.
I would rather people did not like me but respected me for doing what I consider needs to be done for the best. It is the point at which people misinterpret one's motive's that troubles me. In politics, this is often done as an opening gambit rather than a reflection of the truth.
And truth is another whole subject - as stated before.
Billy
ReplyDeleteYour heart is in the right place. I said this to Paul Staines on the one occasion that I met him over a year ago.
You are also courteous, a long forgotten custom, it sometimes appear. You are also clearly tenacious and honest. BTW - I am not saying this to scrounge a pint off you!
Stop talking about yourself as damaged goods and thinking about nebulous glass ceilings. You can and have learned - look at what you were two years ago and compare that person with yourself now.
But I want to ask you one practical question. Every so often I pass you something and ask you to Google it. I even suggested you read a book (I know that can't be done in five minutes.)
I don't want to be a bore - so tell me if you still want me to continue to make suggestions regarding study, when appropriate, or not. I would do so in the hope that you would follow them up.
Although my education was not as truncated as yours, I left school at 16 and my learning, such as it is, has largely come from decades of reading and discussion with people much brighter than me. I see you trying and instinctively feel the need to help. I identify with you in that respect. But I would not want to be condescending in any way.
Billy, in some ways you are the UK equivalent of a Frank Capra story from the 1930's films-- a good decent man who nonetheless has become somewhat embittered by the way things are but tries to overcome both the bitterness in his own life and the causes for it. Everyone knows the film It's A Wonderful Life, which is not one of my favourites, even of Capra's; I was thinking of the more obscure film, Meet John Doe, in which a basically good-hearted tramp, played by Gary Cooper, goes along with a cynical ruse by a Rupert Murdoch-style press baron in which Cooper plays the eponymous ("named for him"-- it's one of those fifty-quid words everyone should know) symbol of a movement to extol the virtues of the Common Man versus the Elites (sort of like the Occupy Movement of the Left or the Tea Party Movement of the Right). Cooper says that if things don't get better by the end of the year, he'll kill himself and have done with it all. (Of course, he'll do no such thing, as SOME "progress" will be noted.) The trouble starts when Cooper gets turned inside out and starts believing in the pablum he's been given to preach, once he sees that people really want to believe in SOMETHING (sort of like the film Pay It Forward); and the Murdoch-type character, who has presidential aspirations, can't allow John Doe to "get off the reservation," and so discredits John Doe first, before John Doe can tell the whole story of how this burgeoning movement is actually less idealistic than it would appear at first.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you fit into this? You're a proto-John Doe. In your zeal to see decency triumph, it would be so easy to go along with anyone who claims to have the interests of the "People" at heart-- Labour's been pulling that scam for a century, FFS!-- but you have to see through all that. Just keep crying "foul!" at how the political elites of all stripes seek to use you and everyone else; and sure, everyone will write you off as a crank. But what is it Mohandas K. Gandhi said about first they ignore you, then they persecute you, then you win? (On the other hand, Gandhi got himself murdered, so figure out just how far you're willing to go; wouldn't want to lose YOU!)
Bill - Shrodingers Cat is so right! Read about Winston Churchill, his blighted childhood, his hated father who thought winston was useless and how winston became the hero of our Nation when he was in his sixties.
ReplyDeleteWe all have a purpose, sometimes we don't know what it is until we are well through life.
You are a great voice, expressing things the rest of us can't. Keep going because you are doing a Great Job!
True, Nell, but just don't expect that whatever your purpose is in life will come to you eventually; if you've never read a short story by Henry James called The Beast In The Jungle, at least Wikipedia it to find out what the story is. You can be so sure that all will come out right in the end, when you will have finally found whatever it is you are meant to do and be, that you may never actively seek it at a time early enough to have made all the difference in your life had you done so. (Also, Nell, listen to Crosby Stills Nash and Young's "Wasted On The Way" to get a more modern and more upbeat treatment of the same phenomenon.)
DeleteNo Neil Young on that song; "my bad," as the kids say.
Delete