C'mon Eileen

It’s probably a throw back to their colonial past that the Brits can’t help their superior-than-thou attitude. Growing up in the south of England, I was almost immune (conditioned) to the pervasive racism. No, that’s not fair, it’s not racism. It’s just an unshakable believe that they are more sophisticated, intelligent and erudite than the rest of the world.

I vividly remember as a teenager watching the BBC News profile a forthcoming Irish general election. This was around the time of Garret Fitzgerald’s famous odd shoe gaff. I was subsequently informed that this incident showed the Fine Gael leader’s sensitive side (didn’t want to disturb Joan by turning on the light) but it wasn’t presented that way by the Beeb. They pointed to the ridiculousness of a country risking its Balance of Payments crisis with a man who couldn’t tell black from brown.

As I recall they also took a swipe at our Proportional Representation electoral system. “You could say it is very Irish,” the reporter intoned gravely, “but in Ireland, they don’t vote for the candidate that they want to elect. They vote for them all!” We Irish know that PR is a more sophisticated system than first passed the post. It allows people to vote tactically and provides a result more representative of electorate’s wishes. So what if it requires you to give a little thought to the process and (thanks to the anti-electronic Ludites) takes a few days to get a definitive result.

Last night, BBC Newsnight was still at it. Laughing at the Employment Law chaos in France, at the outcome of the Italian election and even the “corrupt nature of Peruvian elections”. Their hard hitting analysis included the observation that Silvio Berlusconi was a man who wasn’t ashamed of the fact that he has had hair transplant treatment.

They finished with a feature on the latest life peerages shortly to be elevated to the House of Lords and interviewed one appointee. The irascible Tony Benn did a brilliant job of ridiculing the whole charade of pretence and how despite all their talk, they’d a far from perfect democracy at home.

Mind you, would you trust a woman who sleeps with Ian Paisley with the job of keeping Tony Blair’s government in check?