Secure?

Parkland & Reggia di Caserta

This morning I found myself reading an article in this week's Radio Times, entitled "The night our democracy changed", about the Brighton bombing in 1984. It made me stop & think, even connecting together some very disjointed facts in my mind.

It had never occurred to me just how much greater the level of security around politicians had become since those days. I realise, of course, how much more surveillance generally there has been since the Twin Towers & the London bombings, how many more armed police there seems to be on the streets & in airports. It wasn't until I was reading this article that I found myself thinking of some of the deleterious effects of all this security, to question indeed if all this security wasn't in fact dangerous.

The article mentioned that these days, we, the electorate have to be scanned & photographed if we decide to venture into the Houses of Parliament to see our MP.

Suddenly something clicked in my mind. On our Italian holiday, we'd visited the Reggia di Caserta. This magnificent palace was built in the 18th century to rival Versailles. As we went round, faced with such opulence, we couldn't help thinking about the cost of building a place like this, not just in financial terms.

As with Versailles, the people living in this, almost, city must have got used to this environment, inevitably losing contact with the reality of the life of the general working population around them & who they ruled. The taxes to build & maintain the palace & its vast elaborate grounds, presumably gathered from the poor, must have been horrendous.

One of the causes of the French Revolution was undoubtedly the fact that the monarchy lost touch with the ordinary Frenchman. Marie-Antoinette's supposed comment of "Let them eat cake", missed the point. The average person just wanted not to starve, to be able to afford some bread, anything, for their stomach & to have a shelter over their heads. Her country idyll in the Petit Trianon did not reflect the life of the average farmer trying to eke out a living. The more the monarchy & aristocracy cut themselves off from the reality of most of the population's life, as they moved out of Paris into this golden cage, the more they ceased to understand the life & needs of that population. People can only be pushed so far before they rebel.

Also, connected in my mind is the present re-emergence of the current MP's expenses scandal in this country. You hear the MPs defending their expenditure as being normal, not excessive. Don't they realise that many people, not necessarily high earners, have to have 2 homes these days? These people don't get all their expenses, including mortgages paid by their employers. Nor can they claim them as work expenses on their income tax forms. That's why people are so up in arms.

I accept that a certain level of expense is incurred through the job of being an MP. You do have to attend an awfully large number of functions, dressed appropriately. The cost of living in London is high & sometimes you do have to entertain. If they represent constituencies far from London, they do need to be able to afford regular trips to those constituencies to keep in touch with the concerns of their electorate. They may need to travel abroad to discover the reality of how things are done elsewhere & bring back any better solutions in education, health services, prevention of crime etc. But they don't need huge TVs, duck houses, vast estates requiring cleaners & gardeners.

The idea of security is great, but it does bring problems. I admire the Queen for continuing to venture out to meet the people without being constantly behind a bulletproof screen. And she does that despite being shot at in the past. It's time the MPs showed similar courage & maybe meet their electorate, & not just the party faithful. You never know they may even begin to understand the concerns of you & me.