I paid a visit to my Grandparents the other day. Went with Jac and Murphy, and while I took my Gran & Jac to the supermarket, my Grandpa had all sorts of fun sharing the house with Murphy, a dark-haired retriever who's all kinds of soft. At times these days I wonder if in the year before he found himself in the dog shelter we found him in, he was raised by cats.
We had pie and chips, and I failed to convince the elders of my family of the benefits of green tea - mostly failing because after I convinced them to try it, it turned out very weak. Not used to making tea in a pot, but I wish it'd gone better. The pie was M&S's mince, which meant it reminded me of the many times I'd had similar meat and pastry over the years. Which is to say that I enjoyed the feeling, aswell as the pie. Finished off with a Victoria Sponge, which as historical a dessert as it is, is a much more recent experience for me, but nice too.
Shortly after, my Grandfather asked me a question, that by the looks of Jac and my Gran through my peripheral vision, they wished he hadn't.
"Chris, are you at all political?"
I couldn't tell you how my face looked at that moment, but I like to think it communicated what went through my head when he asked me:
"Hoboy."
What followed was to say the least, not pretty. I had to start from a point of speaking loudly, because he suffers from a chronic hearing problem, and combining the fact that I began by having to shout to talk to him, plus my own bull-headedness on issues, was a recipe for testiness. Especially when his first follow-up question was "So what do you think of Gordon Brown?". I sighed a little, and started to explain I was not a fan. First, there's the issue of succession. I'm not a fan of having a leader being bestowed upon us by the previous occupant, who despite his appalling cuddliness with the worst leader of the western world(Possibly ever, which is not just my opinion), and the pious use of his faith after leaving office, was the duly elected Prime Minister. To put it as I said to my Grandfather, "We don't have a Prime Minister right now, we have a Dauphin. A prince.". I'm well aware that the current system is what allows this, and the current system also means that an election to allow the people to decide if we really do want Gordon to stay in Downing St. is, and can only really be called by Gordon. I just don't have to agree with it, especially if(And I defer to my Grandfather on his knowledge on this subject), the succession part of this is enabled only by the rules of the Labour party, not law.
We went back and forth a few times, feeling the need to interrupt each other several times, where I explained that Gordon was one of the people to blame for the recession and recent world financial debacle, because he'd been one of the world leaders to strip out the barrier that protected customers from risky bank practices by preventing savings banks also being trading banks, meaning if moronic trading practices cost a trading bank a lot of money, the people who had money in a savings bank wouldn't be so badly affected. I was on finger one of a three-finger routine, when I was told that the situation had been caused by bankers, who had loaned money to people who shouldn't have been loaned the money(See: Sub-Prime mortgage market in the U.S.). I felt like I was correcting him by saying they were only able to offer loans and mortgages to such bad customers because of lax financial regulation, which had been stripped of it's teeth by late-term President Clinton and his fed chair Alan Greenspan, whole-term President Bush II, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for most of that period, whose name escapes me. He then felt apt to further defend my spurious suggestions about the PM, by pointing out to me the strengths of the Labour party, and that the Labour party was "working-class people".
Then I moved onto blaming other stuff such as short-selling, but it was becoming clear what the gist was. I was angry about a generation of political terms being spent making sacrifices of legislation to the altar of "The Free Market", in order to grease the wheels of said market to keep it running at an ever-more profitable rate. The free market concept is essentially one of "just leave it alone, it can take care of itself". The main idea behind it is that the market can decide what is good and bad for the market, and if followed wholeheartedly, bad practices would be punished by a lack of confidence and therefore a lack of profit - leading to said bad practicer going out of business or changing it's ways - whereas the best business practices would lead to a stronger business, and by osmosis/following the example, the market would be stronger. Thing is, "The Free Market" is an idea. And with ideas, they can be good ideas, they can be bad ideas - hell, write them out in enough detail, you can get your idea called a great theory - but the problem with ideas, is that they lack a key ingredient. People. Add people to the free market, and take away the lifeguards telling people not to run, you end up with swimmers holding people under the water while taking bets on how long the victim will hold their breath, and if someone can't pay that bet when they lose, they sell that debt to someone else so they can pay their losses, while the debt they sold gets sold some more, and some more, until no-one knows what it's actually worth or who owns it.
After reading the last paragraph, you'd be forgiven for thinking:
"The gist? What the hell, Chris?!?"
But trust me, that's the short form of it, with metaphors instead of shouting. My Grandfather, on the other hand - a long-term Labour member and supporter(They proudly told me a while ago they were known by name to their current MP and Foreign Secretary, Stephen Miliband) - posited the following observation to me:
"So, you're quite right-wing then. You believe that the Government should control what the banks do?"
I have to say, I couldn't help but laugh. While it's the second time in my life I've been described as "right-wing"(Evs got the cherry on that), I would never ever consider myself as from the right of....well, anybody. Maybe Karl Marx or Gandhi, perhaps. It was a bizarre moment for me, because I had to use my fading laughter as a cover while I tried to wrap my head around the notion that because I wanted the Government to protect me and the rest of the people from a tiny but powerful majority.....I was right-wing?
That ending of the discussion stuck in my head for the last twenty-four hours or so, and the reason why, hit me a few hours ago. For something to be right-wing, as my Grandfather proposed, would be to place faith and power in the authority of your rulers, and recommend that it would be best for all to accept the wisdom and authority of said overlords, and for them to choose what is best for us; with our views on the issue never a factor in what decision they made, or how it should be implemented. So, on that basis, I was being described as "right-wing", when I was suggesting(While shouting), that the people be protected from the nefarious ways of bankers and their worst mistakes, that the leader of the Government should be elected, not selected, and I resented the PM, for failing on both of those counts. Whereas I was being accused of this by someone extolling the virtues of the Labour Party as "working class", and in fact that they were virtuous because the party was "working class", and that the PM should be supported because of that.
My point is, I'm not really sure as to which of us in that discussion was more right-wing.
I don't know if I'm right-wing on any political or ethical issue. I know I probably come across that way because I can be stubborn to the point of people asking me "Do those ears work?", but that comes from an issue inside me where I always need to be right, and I read and listen to opinions from all sides, aswell as empirical data, before I make my mind up on anything. And when, as happens, I'm proven wrong, I thank the person who has, because they've given me the ability to go on, and be right again with this new information. But I have, and always will support the right of someone to voice a differing opinion. And I will always make sure people know that, just before I get into an argument with them about which of us is right. While I'm always going to think less of someone who has what I see as an ill-educated position, or is ignorant of the whole picture, or is just so WRONG.....I'll always hold them in high regard for discussing it with me, even if they never change their mind. The only people I hold in any low regard, is people who refuse to have an opinion, or hide it to avoid being confronted.
The reason why? Someone I hold in high regard once wrote the following.
And so, despite still being crippled in my life by the hits I've taken, I say this: Here's to getting hit. Cheers.
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Note: It's an hour later, I should have said that while I was referring to Aaron Sorkin writing that line in "The West Wing" episode "Two Cathedrals"(S02E22), he did not create the line - it was originally written by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451.
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