The Mirror poses the vital question:
Is It Mine?
Reading this makes me realise what a snob I am. This is a typical chav dilemma round here. However, when it concerns middle-class professionals, I am all sympathy, even empathy, thinking 'what a difficult situation to be in'.
Analyse and discuss...
Just for the record, I am posting this post from my home PC...
The Guardian comments on the coverage. I half heard on the radio yesterday some refernce to a comment from Anne Atkins that his situation was - I don't quote - a resigning matter.
I repeat what I, and many people wiser than me, have said before - most people have some mess in their life. It seems, however, that we expect our politicians to be without mess, to have chosen a life partner when barely out of adolescence and to stick with same til death they do part, breeding perfect children, and magically owning perfect siblings, parents, in-laws, friends etc. Apart from being an unrealistic expectation, and one likely to deter real people from entering the public arena, it has a more fundamental flaw.
If by chance we had this 'perfect' politician, with no history, and no emotions, we would have a politician with no understanding of the reality of most people's lives, and no understanding of why ordinary people do not comply with statutory or societal edicts and expectations.
On the voyeurism aspect, I think we have to accept that it is a normal part of the human condition. If we have less handwringing, and more acceptance that all lives are messy, we can move on, and perhaps a more generalised acceptance will lead to less appetite for it. I'm not even saying that people should change their personality moral code.
In the past it, in some cases in my lifetime, the following have been considered scandulous: a young unmarried woman being in the company of a man without a chaperone; co-habiting; platonically housesharing with the opposite sex; birth or even conception outside of wedlock; divorce. Can you imagine the scandal sheets even beginning to sell on an exclusive that some male politician houseshared with a woman when they were students, or that some unmarried female politician was seen with a male colleague without a chaperone. Things are only scandulous because we want them to be! Can you imagine the scandal even in the 1950s if someone had foretold that within thirty years there would be a woman Prime Minister - a woman! - who was married to a divorcé Even by the mid-Seventies, it was clearly not regarded as an issue.
