The Telegraph online is reporting comments from David Cameron made today about the need to call a spade a spade [my interpretation, I'm sure the PC brigade banned that phrase some while back]. He makes a great case for holding people to account and denounces moral neutrality [which like relativism is a self-negating concept]. Using the example of obesity he references the tendency to talk about people 'at-risk' of obesity as if it is some external event over which they have no control. This is refreshing stuff for this eye specialist who has had patients wring their nicotine-stained fingers in her face as they imply their loss of vision due to a self-inflicted blocked ophthalmic artery is my fault! DC says we have become too sensitive; well 'sensitive' is good I think no matter the cause of the problem, but sentimental is what has got us in this mess.
We have far too often been shoved onto the back foot as we have allowed our humanity and past mistakes to dull our aspirations both for ourselves and others. Sentimental feelings, nourished by the PC brigades campaign to obviate all stigma, have numbed our emotional intelligence and left our children without a moral compass. So is there any wonder when they lash out, desperate for certainties and security? Though of longer duration than the 11 years of hard Labour, this course of moral breakdown has been exacerbated by MPs like my very own Harriet Harman who refuses to hold up any ideal or aspirational model to her hard pressed constituents; in her Peckham base her banalities put the C back into Rap.
It is perfectly possible to stay sensitive to people's problems, but still cast the vision for what should be. DC is straight talking the politics of hope - founded on accountability and fuelled by aspiration - and long may that last.