Sisyphus Us
Sisyphus (and this is true) was sentenced by the gods to roll a huge rock up a steep hill for eternity. Each time he would bring the boulder just about to the summit, and then something would cause the blasted stone to roll right down to the bottom again. The ancient Sisyphus was punished for his cleverness, but we modern Sisypheans are condemned by our stupidity to have the same debate about how to alter the behaviour of our fellows, over and over and over again.
The issue might be a health scare, an environmental scare, a crime scare or a combination of all of these. Whatever - the inevitable rubric is as follows.
One: dreadful case or cases, headlines, news stories, moral panic, bishops (optional), MPs, voluntary organisations, something must be done.
Two: government consultation, strong words, determination, much already done - much remaining to be done.
Three: proposals involving tougher sentencing, banning of something in public, strengthening police powers.
Four: proposals involving education, a publicity campaign, special lessons in schools.
Five: vested interests (brewers, head teachers, lawyers) on why measures are impractical or reek of the nanny state; Opposition on why measures are impractical and don’t go far enough.
Six: Institute of Ideas or similar contrarians on why murder or smoking or devil dogs were never a problem in the first place.
Seven: fail to evaluate last set of measures, begin again with something else.
I thought that was pretty funny.
June 4th, 2008 at 5:21 am
I now no longer need to explain how politics works in Scotland. The trick is to keep forgeting every previous failure.