- Joined
- Apr 17, 2009
- Messages
- 43,132
- Likes
- 23,834
A very incisive and interesting commentary on Britain.A VALUABLE SITE
- Britain is too precious for mankind to be allowed to be destroyed
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
As it clambered to First World glory, Singapore found it necessary to forbid eating dog meat. As Britain sinks into Third World slovenliness, an English council thinks it necessary to ban public spitting. Similarly imposing compulsion when instinct fails, the 560 British athletes at the London Olympics have been ordered not to sell their team kit.
Sociologists trace Britain's decline to the First World War when the flower of its youth perished in the mud of France and Flanders. The old order was irretrievably destroyed, as John Masters describes brilliantly in his trilogy, Now, God Be Thanked, Heart of War and By The Green of the Spring. The downhill slide ever since recalls Nani A. Palkhivala lamenting over a late-night whisky that he feared a country that had peaked once would never rise again. Palkhivala was speaking of India's aspirations. But despite A.L. Basham's Wonder, India as such was never a world power while, unbelievable as it may seem amidst current confusion and mismanagement when it's rare for a London bus to complete its scheduled journey, Britain ruled an empire on which the sun never set.
The decline makes little difference if you have affection for the eccentricities of food and accent beyond the impressive panoply of political ritual, ancient institutions and stately architecture, and if you are convinced that despite abuses, Clement Attlee's social security net is one of the finest achievements of any government anywhere. A caring State and the resonance of history provide wonderful camouflage as Britain celebrates Queen Elizabeth's jubilee with the Olympics to come. But the creaks of disrepair and cracks under the peeling paint are unmistakeable. Far from being rogue institutions, banks and the media symbolize this disintegration.
A neighbour in London complains that NatWest Bank insisted he had spent £3,500 on the credit card they hadn't sent him. When forced to recognize that he did not get the card, NatWest demanded interest on what it called its "loan" of £3,500. Barclays is secretive about the bonus to be paid to its immensely rich chief executive, Bob Diamond, whose emoluments are assessed at £11 million. But the bank hopes to escape a storm by reducing the total bonus pool by 25 per cent and capping individual bonuses at £65,000, which still leaves about £2.15 billion to be distributed. As for NatWest's owner, the Royal Bank of Scotland, it deserves an article to itself and will soon no doubt be the subject of a thriller.
The media which bring all this to light are now under the pitiless glare of a judicial inquiry: the hearings of the last 50 or so days convey the impression that not just Rupert Murdoch's empire (accused of tapping telephone lines, bribing policemen and senior bureaucrats and cosying up to the political elite) but the entire newspaper industry is on trial. But, then, apart from the News of the World, the crisis's first casualty, Murdoch owns The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun. It's tempting to pin the blame on him as an Australian-born American citizen (another foreigner, the Egyptian billionaire, Mohammed al Fayed, is accused of hiring thugs to target the satirical magazine, Private Eye) but it must be remembered that what the News prints hasn't changed qualitatively since it was dubbed Screws of the World and proudly called "as English as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding".
No one knows what's afoot or where it will end. But hints of fierce infighting overlap witch-hunting charges. With several Sun journalists arrested and 170 policemen on the job, the State is suspected of attempting either a massive purge or a cover-up. Murdoch's overwhelming fear is said to be that the revelations in Britain might precipitate prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the United States of America.
Whatever happens to him and his empire, the inquiry has demolished the myth that the media rise in lily-white purity above the dirty currents of daily life and enjoy a special mandate as well as power to ensure public morality and governmental integrity. The evidence confirms again that all professions — media, politics and the bureaucracy — draw their manpower from the same pool and suffer from the same failings. The so-called Fourth Estate reflects all that is wrong in a society whose members of parliament and peers lie about where they live to cheat the exchequer, public figures claim domicile abroad to evade taxes, nearly three million people are without jobs, the longevity gap between rich and poor is widening, and special cells ("drunk tanks") are planned to tackle alcoholism which costs the National Health Service nearly £3 billion annually. More than 5.5 million households face a stark choice this winter between heating and eating because of the pricing strategy of energy suppliers whose profit margin shows a 733 per cent rise.
Manmohan Singh, who grumbles about extravagance at the top, would be interested to know that when a trade union official was asked about exorbitant remuneration, he replied, "How do you shame people who are shameless?" A sense of shame encompasses personal and public responsibility and a social conscience. It isn't easily reconciled with a prominent banker, Nathaniel Rothschild, being accused of arranging a 25-hour visit to Siberia by Lord Mandelson, the former European Union trade commissioner, as guest of the Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, to facilitate a £500 million business deal. Or with Christopher Huhne, David Cameron's energy secretary, facing the criminal charge of "perverting the course of justice" by lying that his wife was behind the wheel when he was caught speeding. At least, he quit. An East London councillor jailed for fraudulently claiming housing and council tax benefits, refused to give up her council seat. Shelina Akhtar is of Bangladeshi origin. Another ethnic Bangladeshi, Lutfur Rahman, mayor of a nearby borough that is one of London's poorest, pays a daily £1,000 to his "executive adviser".
Inevitably — and understandably — Britain's decline will be linked with this foreign presence. Lee Kuan Yew told Deng Xiaoping that China should race ahead of Singapore because the best people stayed back and only the riff-raff emigrated. Now, Britain says it wants only the "brightest and best" from abroad, but between an influential curry lobby, EU insistence on human rights, fake marriages, bent policemen and cost-cutting on security measures, I doubt if the authorities can do much. When we landed at Heathrow in early January, a faulty machine couldn't identify my wife's thumb impression; when we returned from Europe four weeks later, the machine at another counter had broken down altogether. Obliging immigration officers skipped the fingerprint test both times. It's the human factor that saves Britain, but for how long?
The haunting closing lines of Alan Bennett's Forty Years On, which I saw at a London theatre in 1968 or 1969, delivered in the head boy's (the play is set in the Albion House school) adolescent tones from a darkened stage, come to mind, "To let. A valuable site at the crossroads of the world. At present on offer to European clients. Outlying portions of the estate already disposed of to sitting tenants. Of some historical and period interest. Some alterations and improvements necessary."
I have never understood what happened to the European offer since no binding contract can have been sealed without Schengen visas and the euro. Perhaps The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, starring Judy Dench, about a retirement home in Bangalore, points to the future. More than 5,000 people in India draw British State pensions. Malaysia's "My Second Home" programme and "The British Village in the Philippines" may be even more popular.
They are fine advertisements for globalization but the vacuum at home causes concern. Will those who fill it appreciate and retain the "historical and period interest" of which the head boy spoke? Will they carry out the necessary "alterations and improvements"? Britain is too precious for mankind to be allowed to be destroyed.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120218/jsp/opinion/story_15147103.jsp
What do you say?