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Political Correctness

My politically correct credentials (such as they were) may have been dealt a further blow by three –on the face of it – politically incorrect speeches in one week. I proposed the toast “To the Lassies” at the Rotary Club Burns Supper in Chippenham on Friday, and again in the House of Commons on Monday, and then spoke at the Oxford Union against a motion praising ‘all-women shortlists’ for candidate selections. A toast to “a person or persons of undeclared gender and ignoring their sexual tendencies’ might have been more modern. It would also have been less fun. And I like to think that that great egalitarian and lover as well as respecter of women, Robert Burns would without doubt have disapproved of all-women shortlists! 

It is easy to parody people like me – and the bard himself – who start from the realisation that men and women, people of varying creeds, religions, races and habits are different. Of course they are. ‘Vive la difference’, as or French brothers and sisters would put it. But people being different should not lead to any presumption that they are at any kind of disadvantage because of those differences. White, black, male, female, gay or straight: it is my passionately held view that all were born equal; and all must be treated equally.  ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ declaimed Burns famously. We are all humans, and we all have equal rights. Discrimination of any kind must not be allowed.

But discrimination cannot be corrected by positive discrimination – all women shortlists and the like – which in my view are almost as obnoxious. I do not know how the Black and Ethnic Minorities Housing Association (which exists) is any more justifiable than, for example “The white male middle class housing association” (which of course does not) would be. Positive discrimination of that sort actually implies unfair discrimination against the grouping which may well be the majority. (White, straight, middle class.) Why should they be put at a disadvantage merely because of their age, class, sexuality or race any more than a black gay or disabled person. A man’s a man for a’that.

What’s more women (like the excellent new Conservative candidate for Devizes, Claire Perry), or black people (Like Wilfred Emmanuel Jones, the candidate in Chippenham) would not appreciate the patronising approach which suggests that they have got where they have got because they are respectively a woman and a black person. They have succeeded because of their own abilities, which positive discrimination in their favour would tend condescendingly to diminish.

So let us enjoy and relish differences and diversity. Let us be happy to treat people differently. I am not ashamed that I open a door for a lady or stand up when she comes into a room. I have no shame about being as ribald and straightforward with my gay and black friends as I am with my white and straight ones. Walking on egg-shells to avoid upsetting someone who is different to oneself is of itself patronising.

So call me old-fashioned if you will. But I passionately respect the differences between people. I hate discrimination and snobbery. But I hate inverted snobbery and positive discrimination as well. Good manners, respect, politeness. These are the things which bind a society together. Or in the famous old motto of Rotary International “Service before self.”

Campaign Medals For Air Med Evacuation Teams

There are some people who go into politics hoping to change the world. I guess a few are successful- Churchill, Thatcher, Obama, Roosevelt, Disraeli…. But if that’s your political motivation, then most of we political mortals are likely to be frustrated and disappointed. It is surely better to accept that at most we can try to make a few things better here and there - “round the edges” as it were.

When I visited our troops in Afghanistan last weekend, I was lucky enough to see the RAF Air Medical evacuation teams in action – both on a converted C-17 returning wounded soldiers to hospital in Birmingham, and working in the state of the art hospital in Camp Bastion. What a brilliant job they do. Soldiers injured on the very front line are whisked by Chinook to Bastion Hospital, then by Hercules or C-17 either direct or via Kandahar to Selly Oak Hospital. It often takes 24 hours from wounding to operating table, all thanks to the teams which, I am proud to say, are based in RAF Lyneham.

But you can imagine my horror both when I met them all last year, and again when they came to a reception in Speaker’s House in London in the autumn to hear that because of the technicality that their presence in Afghanistan is not constant (how can it be – they are bringing their patients home), they are not eligible for the Afghan Campaign medal. They are not, of course, doing it for the medal.  But the task which they are carrying out is just as – often very much more – dangerous than the jobs done by many soldiers who are in theatre without a break. So I lobbied quite hard on this one. Spoke to ministers on several occasions, wrote to the Secretary of State and generally made myself a bit of a nuisance.

Well I was very glad when I saw some of them at the weekend to be able to tell them that in an informal chat with an MOD Minister just before I had left, he was hinting that he had listened to their complaint, and that he was hopeful of righting what is by any standards a demonstrable wrong. No guarantees yet, but I am hopeful that the MOD may decide to offer the campaign medal not on the strength of continuous service in theatre of war, but on the basis of the total number of days served in a certain period, thereby making the Air Evacuation teams from Lyneham eligible for it. If so, it cannot come too soon.

Trips to visit the troops such as that last weekend are hard work- and hard work for our hosts who lay on such interesting visits. But they are well worth it in terms of finding out the problems and triumphs of conducting a high intensity war in as distant and inhospitable land as Afghanistan. Only by being out there on the ground can politicians hope to gain some kind of an idea about what it is actually like for our brave soldiers, sailors and airmen and women.

And if on return I can help sort out a few details –like medals for Lyneham’s RAF medics – I may not change the course of the war, nor make history, but maybe I can be personally satisfied that I have helped just a little bit around the edges.

Trivial or Great

There is a very narrow gap between trivia and great and important matters of State. The snowy weather is fun for lots of people. It’s pretty, sledgable, seasonal, and lets children have a few buckshee days off school. Yippee! (Although I guess that most of us are getting pretty tired of it now, and spare more than a thought for the cold and elderly, the essential services working under difficult conditions, and those suffering from assorted injuries as a result of snow-bound over-exuberance.) Yet if the grit or the strategic gas supply runs out, it could have terrible consequences for our already miserable economy. And therefore for our even more miserable Prime Minister.

The plot to remove him, apparently hatched in a curry house by Messrs Hoon and Hewitt, and the possibility of others like Bob Ainsworth potentially joining them, truly looks like Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Yet it could have a real and lasting effect on the outcome of the General Election, and therefore on all of our fortunes.

It was a welcome relief from political shenanigans to experience some real life in Malmesbury on Friday. I spent a shift with the Ambulance there, and as you would expect was immensely impressed by the sheer professionalism, determination, caring yet unselfconsciously cheerful approach of all of the people I met. They do a great job on the ground. Yet I remain deeply worried that the amalgamation of the Wiltshire Ambulance Service with all of those from neighbouring counties into the so-called Great Western Ambulance Service will not only do nothing to improve the service (it is now much worse performing in many way than the old and much abused Wilts Ambulance Service), but would also have the effect of sucking our ambulances from rural Wiltshire into neighbouring urban centres.

And so it was. Clinical team leader Philip Green and Emergency Care Assistant, Gina Magor and I were summoned to pick up a sick gentleman in Bath and take him to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. It took us four hours all told, during which time Malmesbury’s sole ambulance was not available for local jobs. And I am told that this happens all the time. The local ambulance takes people into hospital in Swindon, Bath or Bristol, and then gets a local job in those areas, often meaning that they do not return to Malmesbury for the entire day. I spoke up against the amalgamation at the time, my objections being pooh-poohed as out of date parochialism. But I have to say that my experience on Friday precisely confirmed my worse fears. Like so much of our public services I saw brilliantly professional workers hampered by absurd, time-wasting and expensive bureaucratic practices. Bring back the old Wiltshire Ambulance Service, I say. The amalgamation was another apparently harmless piece of management re-organisation which has real and lasting effects on the lives of the people of North Wiltshire.

Lyneham and Wootton Bassett

Lyneham and Wootton Bassett have certainly been in the eye of the storm this week.

I strongly support the great British respect for free speech and the right to protest - after all that’s one of the things our soldiers have fought and died for in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is essential that Anjem Choudary should be allowed to express his views - even if they seem to me, and I think to most people, including much of the moderate Islamic community, to be almost as eccentric and obnoxious as those of Nick Griffin and the BNP at the opposite end of the spectrum. He must be allowed to speak if he wants to.

But he must not be allowed to do so in Wootton Bassett. Our repatriation ceremonies - and I have attended perhaps to thirds of them - are absolutely apolitical. No comment is made about the war, either in favour or against. We simply turn out in all weathers, and often twice a week, to pay our respects to soldiers who have fallen in service of Queen and country. That’s why we are so opposed to the proposed Islam4UK march - it would be hijacking out quiet and simple ceremonies for political purposes.

I have always advised David Cameron, for example, against coming to repatriations, as his presence might be thought to be ‘political.’ A number of MPs have attended alongside me on various occasions, but always incognito, in the crowds alongside the Mayor and the Royal British Legion. Mr Choudary and his like can say whatever they want on the media - and perhaps the threat of the march alone has achieved that through wall-to-wall media coverage without the march itself having to take place. They can have their protests wherever they want to, and I strongly recommend Parliament Square to them. But they must not be allowed to sully the purity of the quietly respectful ceremonies of the good people of Wootton Bassett.

How ironic to have had all the fuss about the Islamic march on Monday, yet another sad repatriation on Tuesday and by strange coincidence a debate in Parliament on Wednesday on the future of RAF Lyneham. I was able to raise a raft of arguments against the new cargo plane, the A400M, without which there is even less logic in the move to Brize Norton. I’d like to see the Hercules fleet stay at Lyneham, supplemented by C17s. That solution would also save the taxpayer a great deal of money. And above all it would avoid “putting all of our eggs in one basket.” I put together a weighty dossier detailing all of this and handed it over both to the Minister and his Shadow - who after all may well be the one making the decision in the end. As with all debate, we can but see what effect it all has.

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