"Manners Maketh the Man".......Unless you are a Tory

I can still remember writing lines as a punishment when I was at school as a thirteen or fourteen year old almost sixty years ago. I can also remember what it was that I had to write. In those far off days we had a young music teacher – I don’t remember his name – who, although a lovely man, had great difficulty in controlling us rowdy teenagers. We would change the words of songs that we learned so that they became rude or annoying and when listening to some piece of music that he played we were certainly less than attentive. He must have done a pretty good job, however, since I can still remember those far off songs (the correct words as well as our versions!) and whenever I hear one of the pieces of music that he played to us I am back in that classroom listening as I did then. The other morning as we lay in bed drinking our early morning cup of tea the Classic FM DJ played part of  Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite and I was immediately back in that classroom as the teacher told us the story of Peer Gynt and used the music to illustrate it. But, as I say, we played the teacher up quite mercilessly and so it was no surprise that we were punished and lost our playtimes, being made to copy out lines. The favoured line that we would have to write out a hundred or more times was: “Manners maketh the man”  and I suppose that was fair and reasonable given that so far as the teacher was concerned we clearly did  not show him any respect, courtesy or manners.

Cameron and  on the right Corbyn in his "improper suit" during
Prime Minister's Question Time

These lines of punishment came to my mind earlier this week when, like many others in the country, I was both dismayed and angry, on watching and listening to our Prime Minister, David Cameron, make an unacceptable personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn the Labour leader. It is undoubtedly a measure of the two men that Corbyn did not respond to Cameron’s verbal abuse – he acted instead with grace, courtesy and good manners by simply politely carrying on with his line of questioning despite Cameron’s mocking and derisory outburst.

Cameron is an upper class bully. He, like many of his Tory friends possess a huge sense of entitlement and like others of their kind expect to get their own way and  during the weekly Prime Minister’s Question Time Cameron, in response to a perfectly legitimate question embarked upon this unpleasant and unnecessary personal attack. Mocking Corbyn’s low key dress sense the PM sneeringly and sarcastically told the Labour leader to 'Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem'.  (Yes, to any blog readers in far off places of the globe and who still might revere the workings of “the mother of Parliaments” – this is what we are reduced to in the land of Magna Carta and the home of parliamentary democracy!).

Cameron with his bullying alter ego the
thoroughly despicable Flashman from the novel
"Tom Brown's Schooldays"

Prime Minister’s Question Time is a rowdy uncouth affair. When Corbyn came to the Labour leadership a few months ago he asked that it be made more courteous and positive where polite and sensible questions  by MPs received courteous and sensible answers from the PM. His plea has largely fallen on deaf ears and although he maintains his dignity the Tory party and Cameron do not. It is a issue that many in the UK frequently complain about; making the point that it would not be allowed to happen in a school or workplace. But it seems in Parliament and especially within the Tory party the normal rules of conversation and debate do not apply; sneering remarks of the Cameron type are common, braying laughter by Tory MPs is part of the normal backdrop and women especially are at a disadvantage – sexist comment and innuendo being common. Tory grandee Nicholas Soames (a grandson of Winston Churchill) is well known in the Commons for his  sexist gestures and remarks;  several female MPs stating that he makes vulgar comments to them. Soames has frequently been observed making repeated cupping gestures with his hands, suggestive of female breasts, when women MPs are trying to speak in Parliament, in order to distract them. This is Prime Minister’s Question Time – which is meant to be an opportunity for MPs of all persuasions to ask the PM courteous and sensible questions about government policy and to receive respectful and thoughtful answers. Instead it is a braying mob who, with the exception of Corbyn and other Labour MPs, largely show no respect for each other or the office which they hold. It becomes a verbal bullying match akin to that which one might well see on the playground – and Prime Minister Cameron is one of its cheer leaders. Indeed, he is a past master and lives up well to his nickname “Flashman” – recalling the unpleasant school bully of Rugby School in the novel ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ .

Nicholas Soames - a delightful man if you
like that sort of thing. Don't think I would
 like to be stuck in a lift with him, however -
 and especially so if I were a woman.

But, the mocking of Corbyn’s dress sense  was Cameron unscripted and showed perfectly the bully that, deep down, he is. It was also the Cameron that he would rather you didn’t see. This was  the Cameron of Eton and entitlement. All that hard work that he has done over the past 10 years of hugging hoodies and pretending to care about the little people was tossed aside when, as in the past the red mist descended, and he lost the carefully scripted and vetted plot This was the real Cameron; the Cameron  who actually does believe that people who don’t dress as smartly as him and don’t sing the national anthem are lesser beings who are letting themselves and their country down.

This was the Cameron  he had always tried to keep under wraps as he hypocritically talked of his beloved “hard working families” and his beloved “nation’s strivers”. This is what he really thinks of them.  Cameron, in reality, pines for a world where people brush their hair, polish their shoes and speak when they are spoken to by people like him – a world where people know their place. Without mentioning it Cameron spelled out loud and clear that his favourite hymn is “All things Bright and Beautiful” – especially the bit that says “The Rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate......” –  he will sing that with special gusto each Sunday morning. It was Cameron the toff who, deep in his psyche, believes that the ordinary men, women and children in the street - who are, unlike him and his Eton pals not quite “top drawer” - should be seen and not heard. They are simply there to be harangued, hectored  and bullied by people like him

Now they are real doctors not the scruffy individuals that staff
our hospitals today. You know where you stand with a
consultant like James Robertson Justice (left) in the Carry
On Doctor comedy.

Cameron and the Colonel Blimps of the Tory hierarchy long for a world of Empire and respect for the elite officer class. A world where hospital consultants wear bow-ties like  James Robertson Justice did in the early ‘Carry On Doctor’ films: Cameron and his cronies dream of and live in a time where  the ragamuffin doctors of the NHS or the scruffy teachers in the school staffrooms are not tolerated. In Cameron’s elitist world James Robertson Justice who played the part of the hospital consultant in the films would have sorted out those moaning junior doctors in next to no time. But in the real world which to his regret Cameron is forced to inhabit he has to spend  each working day with the dregs of society like Jeremy Corbyn or you and me. Cameron's world on the other hand is a world of Harrods or Fortnum & Mason, of tiffin, of polite society chat, of dinner parties, of games of croquet on the lawn, of Notting Hill and Cotswold society and of ‘people like us’ – but definitely not people like you and me.

I'm all for people looking smart and think that standards have slipped in the modern world but Cameron's uncalled for outburst says more about him than it does about Corbyn. And I wonder what Cameron thinks about me - I don't possess a suit of any kind let alone a 'proper suit' - whatever that is - and haven't done so for many years. Maybe our esteemed PM should explain to we, the sartorially challenged scruffy rabble, exactly what a 'proper suit' is - although I suspect that he might fall foul of the fashion industry when he tries. And what about the doctor who I saw at the hospital and who gave me a spinal injection last week - he wasn’t wearing a suit so was he remiss, inferior, not a real doctor?  I don’t think so since he kindly, professionally and almost magically relieved me of my pain. I frequently see many serious news reporters and commentators on TV without a tie – are all these recognised expert national figures somehow less reliable or incompetent because of their lack of neckwear? – I don’t think so. And when I go to listen to a concert, opera or see a ballet it is rare indeed now to see a man in a suit and tie. As it happens I always wear a tie to one of these events but feel distinctly overdressed. Am I somehow superior to these others – should I refuse to sit near these uncouth ragamuffins?

So far as singing the National Anthem is concerned why should I (or Corbyn) sing a song which is not in any way a mark of respect or praise for the virtues, beauty and goodness of our country and its people. Instead it can only be described as  a very silly song which bizarrely asks an entity that probably doesn't exist (God) to somehow preserve an another entity (an unelected monarch, who is there only by accident of birth) that certainly shouldn't exist?  Why, I wonder, is Cameron so keen for me and Corbyn to ask God to "save the Queen"? - is there a shortage of Queens at the moment? Might we or God run out of them, or is God, perhaps, playing a celestial game of cards with the Archangel Gabriel and St Peter and needs a few Kings & Queens to win the game?

The Bullingdon Club in all its glory. Cameron second left on
back row and his Tory crony Boris Johnson (now Mayor of
London and with aspirations to be the next PM when Cameron
goes)  sitting on the right.  They clearly know what a
well dressed chap wears - suits cost about £3500 each.
How did these Oxford students afford that sort of money! 

When this is the best that Cameron can do I question why we should take him seriously on important matters - the EU, the health service, education, the economy, Trident and the rest. If one needed any further evidence of how out of touch with the real world of ordinary people the Tory party and the government's "Eton old boys club" are, then look no further than Cameron's comment, it illustrates well what a thoroughly unpleasant and nasty person Cameron - and, by association - his cronies really are. It would have gone down well in Cameron and Boris Johnson’s Oxford days, when, as members of the infamous Bullingdon Club they undertook various initiation ceremonies and “larks” which in any other walk of life would be regarded as quite unacceptable. "Larks" such as approaching a homeless person with a £50 note in hand as if they are going to give it to him or her......but then they burn it in front of his or her eyes. (Yes, really, it is one of the Bullingdon Club’s initiation ceremonies!!!!!) Another well documented Bullingdon prank includes trashing pubs and restaurants (doing thousands of pounds worth of damage) and then paying for the damage in cash – which, like the burning of the £50 note, is a carefully calculated action with one clear motive:  to show the superiority, entitlement and power that these people believe that they have over the rest of us ordinary mortals. Or,  what about the  Bullingdon ceremony that caused Cameron some embarrassment a year or two ago – putting his penis into the mouth of a dead pig. Who in their right mind would want to do that I might ask? Its point and pleasures sadly escape a simple member of the human race like myself. But clearly Cameron got a kick out of it - if that is the right term to use - and now this man is in charge of our country. Maybe he did it while singing the National Anthem! Of course if young, well paid soccer stars did these things they would be vilified by people like Cameron. If a teenage girl texted to another teenage girl the sort of things that Cameron said to Corbyn about dress  then  Cameron would be the first to accuse her of cyber bullying. But no, it’s fine for him and his Tory friends – it is their right and entitlement.

The whole thing is an unacceptable nonsense – and Cameron knows it. The issue exposed the Tory party for what it is and the words of Cameron’s Education Minister Nicky Morgan later took it to a new level of awfulness – but she was so stupid she couldn’t see it. In a BBC interview after Cameron’s comments she defended the PM by saying: "What was really noticeable was that Jeremy Corbyn's top button was not done up, his tie wasn't straight". Well really! –is this the end of civilization as we know it, how underwhelming is that? I’m absolutely speechless!  So, one of our most senior politicians, the Education Secretary at a time of national importance, in the mother of Parliaments, and when a momentous piece of government policy  must be argued about and its detail dissected  can only think about whether someone’s tie is not straight! When I hear that a senior minister sits in the debating chamber and idly day dreams about the dress sense of other members I am more than a little worried. Mrs Morgan, however seems to have no qualms about displaying her shortcomings – or, maybe as I suggest, she is just too stupid to realise what she is saying.

I remember children that I have taught over the years sitting on the back row day dreaming and missing the whole point of my lesson. Well, that’s fine and part of the day to day life of the classroom; young, immature children have a short attention span and I may not have been the most inspiring teacher. And, indeed, that, in a way, was the reason why all those years ago I was rightly made to write out several hundred times “Manners maketh the man”  - I was not giving the lesson or the teacher the respect, courtesy and diligence that I should have done and that he deserved. But it’s a bit worrying when the person in charge of the nation’s classrooms behaves in the same way; and it’s even more concerning when our Prime Minister and his Tory followers display the sort of bullying and unacceptable behaviour that my old music teacher all those years ago would not tolerate and which we would today find totally unacceptable from any group of teenagers, soccer players, immigrants or any other group that you care to mention. He and his followers should be ashamed and apologise not only to Corbyn but to the rest of us; it is no small wonder that politicians are viewed so negatively and that increasingly the population is less engaged with politics and democracy.