Late night rambling
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009Late, late Friday night, I found myself in a poncey pub with an architect, a civil servant, the marketing manager for a particularly evil-bastard multinational and a councillor for a local authority. The cynicism about our respective professions was palpable, with endless complaints ensuing throughout the night about building regulations, various lobby groups, NGOs and quangos, the media, local councils, politicians generally, voters, the general public, everyone in the world ever etc. etc.
To an extent this is par for the course with late night drunken, disillusioned and stress-relieving conversation, but I think we were almost all most shocked by the vitriol that came from the mouth of the local councillor. Cynicism about the political system, disillusionment with the party, scorn for national politicians and disdain for the disinterested voters in his constituency – all poured out with the provocation of a few drinks. And because of his day-job and because of our general resentment towards expense-claiming politicians (local or otherwise) we took him to task in a way that we didn’t each other. ‘How can you possibly say that? You’re a politician – show some respect!’ we shouted across the table, confident in our self-righteousness.
But since then, I’ve been wondering why. Why were we surprised by his attitude? Why don’t we expect our elected representatives to feel the same negativity, cynicism and despair that we do about our own jobs, and indeed, the political system? Why would we expect them to keep up the pretence when we don’t?
I think that part of the answer to this lays in the question I wish I’d asked him: ‘Why exactly are you doing this job and if you really feel that way, why are you still doing it?’ Sometimes we all probably need to ask ourselves this.














