Breezeblog

Given all the fuss over Jetgate, Wetgate, Gardengate or whatever Gate is in vogue this week, I think our politicians need some help. Maybe they should start their own 12-step programme, although being the self-important, self-serving, egotists that most of them are, I imagine it would probably go something like this …

1. We admitted we were powerless over the media – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that no power greater than Ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Ourselves.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of other people.
5. Admitted to the Party, to the media, to the voters, and to any other dumb human being who will listen, the exact nature of our rights.
6. Were entirely ready to have Spin Doctors remove any apparent defects of character.
7. Humbly asked them to cover up our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons who had slighted us, and became willing to settle scores with them all.
9. Made direct verbal attacks on such people wherever possible, except when there was no chance of media coverage.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly lied about it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Ourselves, praying only for the knowledge needed to win the next election and the power to carry that out.
12. Having achieved spiritual and moral bankruptcy and a complete loss of trust and credibility as the result of these steps, we still insisted on carrying this message to the voters and to impose these principles in all their affairs.

(With apologies to 12-step recovery programmes everywhere. You can find the real powerful stuff here.)