Jim Meenaghan

31ST March 2010

The Editor.

Letters Page.

The Catholic Times.

　

Dear Sir

I wonder if, through your pages, someone may help me out with this conundrum?

Whom shall I vote for?

Let me see…… The person who gets my vote will need to be…..honest, hard working and approachable, intelligent, with a sense of duty and high moral standards.

The next question is; where will I find such a person? My choices will obviously be limited to a candidate proffered by a political party. Which brings up yet another question; which political party can I trust?

And there’s the rub! Trust! There is no more trust, because trust is something to be earned, and the present state of Westminster shows that trust went out of the window quite some time ago, as selfishness and greed crept in by the back door.

Recently I read an interesting article, by a Canadian, Edwin Muller, written in the early 1950’s about, ‘our wonderful British Parliament’, as it was understood to be. The article said, ‘parliamentarians were hard working, badly paid dedicated men and women. They spent many long hours in the House thrashing out the problems of the country. They had to finance their own offices, (if they could find one), and staff ’. “Although they have little spare time……most Members somehow earn a living on the side…… Yet the House of Commons has a vast prestige and importance with the people of Great Britain…… Perhaps no government in the world is conducted so much in the open….” How can things have gone so wrong in such a short time?

So, back to the question, can I find a hard working, dedicated person to represent me? I am pretty sure there must be some! But my problem is, that with all the publicity about the current scandals of corruption and dishonesty affecting so many politicians, it is going to be difficult to find one. It seems that most of us have always been aware that Parliament has been tainted, but now we cannot ignore it anymore. It is too blatant! Our fraudulent, cheating Members of Parliament are throwing their deviousness right in our faces and smugly pointing out that they have ‘Parliamentary Privilege’ to defend them and, there’s not a dammed thing we can do about it! They are calling on out-of-date legislation to protect themselves from their mass of corruption. They tell us, with winning smiles, that they are totally innocent of any such transgressions, when any sane person can see they are lying through their teeth. (The Parliamentary rules state, ‘Be it known that no Member of the House may call another Member a liar!’) And yet, these are the very people we have been trusting with our daily lives, our hard earned wages, our safety and our security.

Perhaps our Party leaders, who seem to have escaped the taint of corruption, at present, will be the people to turn to for some degree of honesty and integrity! But even they do not seem to be able to engender trust. The more they parade their ‘other halves’; the more they make whistle-stop tours to ‘our brave boys abroad’; the more they deliver their ‘clever’ unscripted speeches to various youth groups and schools; the more we understand that it is personal ambition rather than the good of the country they have at heart. None have made robust efforts to clean out the corruption within their own Parties. There is not a one of them I can look at and feel confident, that if I voted for them, things would be any different.

If we need a measure of the present level of confidence in our parliamentary system today, we need only compare the voting statistics. Earlier I mentioned the state of government in the early 50’s. One interesting statistic was the size of the turn-out at general elections back then. It was around 75% to 83%. Just compare those figures with recent elections. I don’t think the reason for today’s low turnout’s can be put down solely to apathy, so much as, the voter finally giving up hope of a just, moral and honest House of Parliament.

We have heard a lot about the corrupt members of parliament, perhaps we should hear more about the honest members. If, as anticipated, there will be an influx of new Members to the House, I hope and pray that they will be influenced by the honest members, rather than by the shady characters who have perpetuated the same old circle of dishonesty, mistrust and greed for so many years. So, let’s clear out the corrupt ‘old guard’. Let justice be done and, (most importantly at this time), let it be seen to be done! We, the voters, need to be confident that we are voting for good men and women.

If there’s a prospective Member of Parliament out there who can answer yes to these requirements, then you may well have my vote!

Is there anyone out there……………..?

So. Whom shall I vote for?

Is there a Prospective Member of Parliament who, in addition to the requirements stated in the first paragraph of this letter, will promise me to; reinstate parents as the right people to take responsibility for their children’s welfare; to stop feeding school children the notion that a condom will solve all their problems, to take a stand against the massacre of innocents in the womb? Is there any Prospective Member who, (presuming they still consider this country a Christian country), will fight for the rights of Christians to be free to educate their children in their faith and; to be allowed to uphold Christian and moral values when placing adopted Christian children into Christian families? Is there a prospective Member out there, who will wipe the smirk off the faces of the Fat Cats in industry and banking, and listen to the majority of good people crying out for justice, whilst struggling to survive in this greedy world!

I could go on asking for many other things such as, care for the elderly, reining in the appalling waste in the NHS, etc, but, because of the state of our country after a decade of our present inept, immoral and careless government, I’ll settle for these few to start with.

If there is a prospective Member of Parliament out there who can you answer yes to these requirements, then you may well have my vote!

Is there anyone out there……………..?

　

Mr J Meenaghan.