Politicians are people?

I'm a fresher, born and bread in a place that the Liberals forgot (Accrington). I came to Aberystwyth fully knowing that it was a LD seat with a sizable number of LD councillors placed all over Ceredigion. I am admit, however, that I hadn't quite grasped the concept in the title. To me, pre-Aber, politicians and especially elected officials were some form of superhero, held aloft on great wings made from ballot papers - a copy of On Liberty in one hand and their latest speech in the other.

The nice thing is, they're actually not.

I've met Mark Williams, MP for Ceredigion. He's a really enthusiastic guy with a lot of convictions and a really good speaker as well. On the Lib Dem social night on Wednesday I got to talk to, at great length, the mayor of Cardigan, Mark Cole (who has basically convinced me to go to Welsh Conference...) and discovered that he too is actually a human being. Looking back, I really wonder why, in over a year of talking on LDV to people from across the party, I hadn't grasped this concept earlier. I think I have one or two theories, and one of them is quite an important thought.

Firstly, you have the simple fact that I'm an idealist, and the fact that being in Accrington isolates you from politics all together like some black hole absorbing light means that that was exacerbated. But the most important theory is that it's to do with the media. We see politicians of all shapes and sizes - some writing articles, some on Question Time or Any Questions?, some talking to some random journalist about the latest scandal or development. You don't see on a regular basis, though, them going with a few friends for a pint, or talking about the latest football results or doing a whole manner of other things. That's why when we see, for example, Lembit Opik doing Bargain Hunt, we immediatly comment, despite the fact that hundreds of other well known faces and thousands of people have gone on the show.

What is the impact of this view that we appear to have grown that politicians are seperate, better, than the rest of us? Obviously, it is bad for candidate selection, but is it more than that? Perhaps as media coverage of politicians increase, people become switched off whilst jokes are made about politics being showbiz for ugly people. Perhaps we need to have a serious look at how we portray our representatives as a whole and convince society that these people are not superheros from another planet but actually just teachers or students who just decided to have a go.

PS: Apologies to the two Marks for singling you out!

There are many things I do not like in the world. Slavery is one. Violence is another. The thing I cannot stand the most though, out of all the various faults I find, is hypocricy. And, thanks to the leaking of what is supposed to be Clegg's opinion on 4 of his shadow cabinet, we get to see this in bucketloads in LDV's comments. Here's some extracts:

This is disastrous for the party - Nick Clegg should offer a public apology to his shadow cabinet colleagues and in view of the unbelievable stupidity of this gaffe the Party should consider if he is still fit to lead it!

It is clear that Clegg is a disaster for the party. The problem is it would look very bad if we pushed him out on these grounds just a year after electing him.

So here we have the ideal situation - he admits he has made a very stupid mistake, a mistake of such rank stupidity, discussing serious confidential matters in full hearing of the public, that he would undoubtedly be calling for the resignation of a government minister had a government minister done something similar. And he says “On those grounds, I have no choice to resign”.

We all say “boo-hoo, how sad our leader had had to resign, but what a jolly decent chap he is to resign on such a matter of principle”. And we think “Oh thank God, he has gone”.

As I commented, it's frankly disgusting that people are deciding to use the opporunity as some sort of grounds to try and force him to resign. As I also commented, the fact that these same people are making angry sounds over Green's arrest is, to be frank, complete and utter hypocricy. Why? Because the arguement that Green shouldn't have been arrested is because he, as an Opposition minister, is obliged to hold the government to account. Similarly, Clegg is obliged to hold opinions on the effectiveness of his team. Just because somebody that sat behind him on a plane decided to make the news public, doesn't mean that he isn't allowed to hold an opinion. Or would the leader-haters rather we had a party where every word spoken by our MPs is closely vetted, to make sure there can be no possible gaffs?

This is not a public issue. This is a private issue within the party, about a small number of angry individuals who simply have no desire to move with the times. It is, to be frank, shocking.