This Blasted Life Confidential

Added on 04 May 2012

This week’s THIS BLASTED LIFE is entitled The Parable Of The Land Rover On The Beach. The first line reads:

Personally I don’t mind being governed by an entitled, wealthy elite. I’d just prefer that they weren’t so demonstrably shit at it.

Some might say that the entitled, wealthy elite can bugger off and go and get a proper job. But consider this…

This is what it means to be an MP in Westminster.

• No matter how good you are at your job, it is someone else’s job to stand up in the Commons and tell you that everything you’ve done is wrong and that you’re an idiot.

• No matter how good you are at your job, at least five newspapers, and possibly all newspapers, will tell the public that everything you’ve done is wrong and that you’re an idiot.

• Every word you say will be manipulated and twisted and taken out of context as much as possible to make you look like an idiot.

• If you’re a minister, every time one of the many thousands of people in your department makes a mistake, it will be presented as you personally making the mistake, so that you look like an idiot.

• Every move you make, every breath you take, will be open to public scrutiny, which might be fine if you’re a movie star, but you’ll be held accountable in a way that movie stars are not, and consequently held up to the opprobrium of the nation.

• The hours are rubbish.

• Despite how the tabloids might present it, the wages are rubbish.

• Everyone will hate you until you’re an old backbencher with an acerbic turn of phrase.

• Plain and simple, it’s just a rubbish job.

Why would anyone actually want to do that, and can it possibly be the kind of life that attracts the best people and the finest minds? No. Therefore, if there is some kind of freak X-Men style inbred political elite fostered in the corridors of Eton and Oxford, I say let them govern.

It would just be nice if they weren’t so demonstrably shit at it.

Read THE PARABLE OF THE LAND ROVER ON THE BEACH here.