It is said that the quality which patients look for, above all else, in a doctor is that he appear to like them.
Our politicians are currently grappling with the realisation that the voters really, really, really, do not like them. In spite of all their hard work & all the money they have showered upon us.
Gordon Brown has started to behave like a failed candidate for Britain’s Got Talent, a magician who pulls things out of hats. Oh please, Simon, let me try again, you’ll really like this one.
Mrs Thatcher & Tony Blair won elections by appearing to like groups of people who were disapproved of by the incumbent government, while clearly remaining a member of their own, different tribe. Thatcher by promising to let the working classes become property owners & get out from under the council as landlord of the collective who would not allow them the freedom to choose even the colour of their front door or the fittings in their kitchen. Tony Blair really, really liked those who loathed Thatcher & were in turn despised by the garagiste tendency who thought selling yourself was all that was required, if you can’t get a job its because you’re just not pedalling hard enough on your bike. Tony understood cool.
But we are all a sad disappointment to our politicians today. We don’t like doing our homework (all those forms to fill in), our exam results continue to be less than the best & we won’t help reduce the call on the family budget by living the right kind of lifestyle eating our 5 pieces of fruit a day. Some of us wear hoods & have babies too young. We smoke, drink alcohol, take Class A drugs. Some of us even murder our own children while useless social workers look the other way. We have broken our society.
And a lot of us are too old – old enough to be their parents, for heavens sake.
They are like husbands who just can’t understand why their wife seems so dissatisfied.
What does she want? Why doesn’t she like me spending time with my mates, playing our games of yah-boo, I can beat you, I’ll win the next one.
It is after all very simple. People like best the people who like them. Who are not necessarily the people who are like them.
