OH GOOD GRIEF!

Sunday Express 14 August 2011

Yesterday, I pulled into the petrol station on a typical Sunday afternoon and was rather dismayed to see the headline “Bring back national service” screaming out at me from the piles of newspapers on the forecourt. My first reaction was “Oh, good grief!” at seeing the almost knee-jerk clichéd response of the “hang ’em, shoot ’em, flog ’em!” brigade writ large before having a shudder of fear at the number of people probably nodding in agreement that morning as they read their newspaper over their breakfast table.

We are now living in an era where we want the “quick fix”, the one “sound bite” idea to answer to our society’s problems, where the pronouncement of the average Westminster taxi driver is more likely than ever before to influence immediate policy change, which is not necessarily the wisest course of action, but does lead to the kind of short and pithy headlines designed to keep the masses happy enough that we won’t spot that our lords and masters really don’t have much of a clue how to solve any of our problems and calms us down just enough that we won’t demand their immediate resignation so that the other bunch of jokers can have a go.

Notwithstanding the basic sense of madness at training a load of hooligans in guerrilla tactics and how to use assault weapons properly, there’s the more fundamental sense of where would you draw the line anyway? Whilst I accept that two years of an aimless life given a bit of shape and discipline, a sense of duty and a moral compass sounds a very tempting idea, the basic problems that lead to last week’s rioting would not go away simply because you took two years out of anyone’s own future plans, however limited those plans might actually be.

Not only that, but the people currently being dragged through the courts to face whatever limited punishments we may eke out upon them are from a whole spectrum of society, male and female, employed and unemployed, and a whole age range according to reports from eleven to forty-seven at least. How are you going to choose which of these groups are the ones to be dragged into a life of military service? Is everyone under fifty, even those already on some kind of career path, to be made eligible? Or is it just anyone unlucky enough to be unemployed? Is it merely anyone leaving school at sixteen, or anyone at all who is claiming benefits? Instead of dragging the youngsters off into a life in service, perhaps we should consider making the parents who are shirking their parental duties do a bit of  National Service themselves? But then, of course, who would be left at home to provide an “example” and keep their “feral” children under control?

The devil, as they say, is always in the detail when you want a “one size fits all” solution to your country’s problems. In this era of mass instant opinion it was very encouraging to see the number of people prepared to stand up and say how unacceptable the situation was and then go out and get on with trying to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Equally, it was noticeable how many were prepared to trot out some angry remark from the safety of their keyboards without really trying to understand that using expressions like “scum” and “animals” really isn’t going to make any difference, apart from to make them feel just a little bit better, but might just have ignited an even worse response from the people they were criticising.

Some people really will wear that “scum” badge with pride.

I believe that the problems that lead up to last week’s troubles are much more fundamental and will take a lot longer to solve than this rather excessive “quick fix” and it will require time and money and hard work to undo the damage done to large sections of the community which might take decades to put right.

Meanwhile, I’m not even sure that an organisation that prides itself upon being the best trained army in the world would want a load of sociopathic layabouts who really didn’t want to be there anyway being added to its numbers. They are not the country’s babysitters. National Service was never the mysterious “cure all” that people claim it was, and neither is a life in the armed forces. Far too many ex-servicemen already find adjusting to civilian life a great difficulty, which is why far too many of them are living amongst the ranks of our homeless.

No solution is perfect, no matter how many journalists and politicians may think they can persuade us it is, and when you pick up such a heavy hammer to crack that tiny nut, you tend to find yourself having to swing it for far longer than you thought you might have to, at a bigger cost than you ever imagined and end up carrying it around with you for a very long time.

These so-called “simple” solutions can be both very complicated and very, very difficult to get rid of once you’ve crossed the line into putting them in place. It’s much like any of the basic freedoms we enjoy. If you give them away too easily, once you’ve lost them you really miss them, and it can be tricky as hell to get them back again.

Whilst we should all be doing our level best to work together to solve the problems that are obviously running so deeply through our culture at the moment, we really must resist the simple, easy and lazy “quick fix” solution, now matter how hard they try to sell it to us. We should remain aware that there are years of real hard work ahead of us, and resolve ourselves to that instead of just nodding over our Corn Flakes on a Sunday morning. These politicians really need to earn the money we pay them to work on our behalf, not just throw us a few phrases that they think will keep us quiet. Me must continue to test them and ask for proper answers to the really hard questions we are asking if we aren’t to find ourselves knee deep in the rubble of our own society.