Water Quality seems to be measured as to whether our rivers can support fish that have not mutated into monsters. But what does this have to do with the water I drink and how much I have to pay for it?Air Pollution looks a sensible indicator. Then I read that the number of days when pollution was recorded as moderate or worse fell from 62 in 1993 to 40 in 1997. Obviously this must be different air than that being taken in by my daughter whose asthma gives her an in-built air pollution indicator.
On some of the rest of the 13, I simply have the wrong attitude. Climate change? Yes, I know greenhouse gases are vitally important to global environmental policy but perhaps it is a little less so to my daily life. Wildlife sounded exciting at first, before I discovered this was a reference to birds, animals and mother nature. Here’s a suggestion: why go to all the trouble of measuring the number of living skylarks when you can count the number of road-kill foxes so much more easily?Perhaps the most obvious thing about the Quality of Life index is that it seems so divorced from, well, Life.
Where is crime, childcare, equality? Where is a measurement of companies that are willing to deliver at a time when you might be home? Where are the number of men who actually know how to clean a toilet? Where are sex, food, the arts and the number of Frasier episodes to be shown per annum?And where are dog turds? Surely our taxes would be well spent measuring the number of dog turds on pavements. While we are at it, let’s find out the quality of brown water dispensed by tea machines and monitor swimming pools for how many slow swimmers are in the fast lane.This is what life is about. But politicians who breathe in the rarefied air of Westminster and perhaps all swim in the same lane, may not realise this. Perhaps they actually think that our happiness is inextricably linked to brownfield houses, unhealthy years and estimated tons of waste. They probably even think that everyone goes to the same dinner parties.
But even they must know that all conversations eventually lead to the subject of dog turds Now that’s quality for you.. LAST WEEK’S humiliating defeat for the Government in the French courts on the extradition of David Shayler reopens all the old worries and suspicions about the unaccountable activities of MI5 and MI6. Contrary to the James Bond image of intelligent and ruthless efficiency, our security services are in reality a collection of sad second-rate inadequates in need of a life. Anyone harbouring fears about the ruthless and predatory nature of MI5 need only have turned to the Sunday papers two weeks ago, where it was reported that following his election as Prime Minister, Tony Blair was given a top secret dossier compiled by MI5 which warned him that I was a dangerous subversive who had had meetings with the leadership of Sinn Fein. Given that my meetings with Sinn Fein were a pretty big news item in 1983, Tony Blair must have wondered whether MI5 was worth the money.
The disturbing thing about the Shayler cock-up is that we had all been assured that MI5 and MI6 had learned their lessons after the Peter Wright affair 10 years ago. I never believed that at the time, but then I have never believed any of the subsequent denials that came from MI5’s director, Stella Rimington, as she sought to assure us that the days of MI5 paranoia about ordinary British citizens were a thing of the past.Although the forged Zinoviev letter, which cost Labour the 1924 general election, has long been acknowledged as an MI5 forgery, Labour’s relationship with MI5 and MI6 has not been simply adversarial. It was the Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who agreed in 1948 to a vast expansion of MI6 and the creation of the Information Research Department, a black propaganda unit aimed at destabilising Communists at home and abroad.
