On the Naughty Step, Mr Brown…

This week’s political headlines in the UK have been dominated by the emergence on Sunday of reports that a number of staff working at No.10 Downing Street in the office of the Prime Minister had contacted the National Bullying Helpline in response to treatment by their employer. Alongside these reports, the media has widely covered stories recounted in the book of political commentator Andrew Rawnsley, who describes a number of incidents involving Mr Brown, his staff, and apparently toys being thrown out of prams.

Despite Gordon Brown’s temper already being well-known, political debate has, quite predictably in an election year, focussed on the potential for character assassination of the PM.

If you don’t vote for one, you vote for all!

The election campaign here in Britain has started and the battle between the parties is fierce. The problems of the last decade, but especially of the last year are immense. In the next couple of weeks and month it will be looked closely at how the NHS has coped with Swine flu and how the Government has coped with the financial crisis. Those who will do the close looking are the so-called political analysts, and they will try to explain why the one or the other party is better. Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg will try to explain why they are the best choice for the country at the present state. But whom are they explaining all this to? It seems as if the media is the only addressee of all the information. But actually the addressee are WE.

What is to be understood about war!?

In a times on- line article from today, General Sir Richard Dannat claims that Prime Minister Gordon Brown has not understood until fairly recently the significance of the war in Afghanistan. The article states that the General was critical of how the Government had handled war-related questions, like equipment-shortages and other failed forms of financial backing. As irritating as this criticism might seem, it is not as unflattering for Gordon Brown as it migth sound. I can understand that Gordon Brown cannot understand the war. Who ever really does? Theoretically, it is sensible to free Afghanistan of the Taliban. But for many people it is not really logical that so many soldiers are killed. And it is not clear why? For democracy? A greater good? A humanitarian ideal of freedom? Since the war started in 2001, the “why?” question has become manifold and more and more complicated to answer. The wikipedia definition of war is that it is a “reciprocated, armed conflict between two or more non-congruous entities, aimed at reorganizing a subjectively designed, geo-politically desired result.” A definition that probably helps neither Gordon  Brown nor us. War is not a logical behaviour. As much as war historians are trying to argue its logic. Plato’s ideal state was based on the Good. And the beautiful. Not on war and conflict. No wonder Gordon Brown does not understand the sense in war. Neither do most of us. In Antiquity or today.

Related Articles:

Are Human Rights Essentially Triggers For Intervention
By John Tasioulas, University of Oxford
(Vol. 4, December 2009)
Philosophy Compass