Politics, then and now

There used to be an apocryphal story concerning the visit of the Queen to the Chelsea Pensioners’ barracks. She had been talking to several of the elderly gentleman in their red coats, and she asked one how he passed his day, he replied,’ Your Majesty, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits’. That basically is my situation these days, and today I was just sitting and thinking about the way the populace thought of their MPs and government in the past and how they do today. In the 30s and 40s they were almost revered. Radio was the only communication link, apart from newspapers. Every house practically had at least one newspaper delivered every day of the week, the head of the house would read the headlines before rushing to work, and the rest of the house would have all day if they needed it, but politics only became really of interest at the time of the election, not as today, the daily diet of several programmes devoted to it. The BBC prided itself on its accuracy and is probity, with the result that there was not a spate of four letter words in filmed dialogue, nor were politicians harangued while they were trying to justify themselves. People have often question whether the Royals were right in meeting the populace on its own level. I believe the same thing applies to the politicians. In the old days everything was kept under wraps, there no wholesale examinations of ways and means by so-called pundits, who have an agenda of their own. Through the repetitive political interviews, with contrary approaches to a given subject, the public is getting weary, disillusioned and thoroughly apathetic. Matters are discussed that for the man in the street are beyond his ken and the subject that he is really worried about, such as the source of the money that we need to get us out of the difficulties, is never mentioned

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