Why would you want David Cameron not to take a holiday? Perhaps you think that he should be chained to MI5 or MI6 24/7. Maybe you have some especial thing about him wanting to spend time with his wife or his family?
This “mean-mindedness”, about individuals feeling that it is their business to deprive David Cameron of a small break, beggars belief. More’s the point, it is even more astonishing that they inflict their views about this unimportant manner in such an impersonal public manner. It is a characteristic of all organisations that there is enough people in the team for operations to run smoothly. I am not saying that David Cameron, as Prime Minister, is simply a manager and we can run the country without him. But to think it is worth spending time writing about how he should not have a holiday, or even criticise him for his choice of destination, is petty, when you consider the real choices that this country faces. Should the UK government seek to crack down on aggressive tax avoidance unilaterally or is it simply an extension of shareholder primacy under the company law of many jurisdictions, not just ours? Should we seek to have more NHS services run by the private sector, so that they possibly can be run not at a loss, but to seek to deliver higher quality or value, even if returning a profit? Whatever your ideological viewpoint, these are more interesting questions that all parties need simply not to sit on. Labour didn’t do anything for years on tax avoidance, and contributed in introducing the private sector to the NHS. This may upset you: but David Cameron’s holiday is none of your business. That’s why you won’t find his holiday snaps in the newspapers, because it would be an unlawful invasion of his privacy.
A third of people will like you whatever you do. A third of people will dislike you whatever you do. A third of people will be completely indifferent whatever you do. The fact that people are concerned about David Cameron’s holidays, in the news, is more of an artefact that the media choose to report this, say, ahead of events in Syria. Or, even better, they have finally become exhausted by their own reportage on UKIP. The enthusiasm of scrutiny on this parallels the amount of disproportionate interest given to the Eton Entrance Scholarship examination past paper. The general paper is not testing the tenacity of bigoted right-wing beliefs, deeply engrained in the education system. Nor is it testing whether people are ‘fit to rule’ the country. Such paranoid beliefs simply serve to confirm what the Left hate being criticised about – the politics of envy. They also show deeply prejudiced opinions which reasonable people should find deeply worrying.
What, though, is weird about this entire thing is that people writing newspapers are generally not working class, not even in the Daily Mirror. And some of the people protesting the most loudly about class issues have graduated with good degrees from the University of Oxford in an arts based subject such as English. It is not long ago that black and ethic minority candidates, from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds, felt pressurised to study a vocational subject such as engineering, law or medicine, to maximise their chances of succeeding in life. But taking this argument to another extreme, nobody would wish for Oxford graduates in English to avoid deliberately discussing these topics on class or lifestyle which deeply interest them. Freedom of expression is extremely important as a qualified human right, and so long as listening to somebody exerting their freedom of expression is not automatically taken to mean ‘tolerance’ of those views, it should be a right to be defended strongly. It is clearly worrisome if professional politicians should wish to censor those people with views which are extreme, but not unlawful or illegal.
But then again this is not the first time that this country would get its knickers in a twist about the difference between the law and ethics. Tax avoidance is actively frowned upon by the professional bodies of accountancy, and everyone knows it’s complex. All sorts of people making tax decisions for entirely personal reasons, including ISAs. People’s tax affairs are none of your business. You can argue that the tax affairs of Google, Starbucks or Amazon impact upon society, but, so long as it is legal, it is strictly speaking, it is none of your business. If you have a serious gripe against the economy, tax, or the NHS, you can remedy your grievance by voting for a party which more represents your views on May 8th 2015. However, if you are interested in David Cameron’s holiday, or Eton scholarship exam questions, just realise it’s pontificating. Lazy journalism. “Entertainment”. It’s nothing interesting, or intelligent. It certainly doesn’t make this country a better place.
