Members of Parliament under stress: Stress as the rule

We read headlines about Members of Parliament i.e. Ministers that fail to keep their tax affairs in order, sexual misconduct, harassment, vacations abroad when they should be delivering on their promises, et cetera, and we tend to treat Members of Parliament as a class apart. There are in theory 650 Members of Parliament, although in fact elected Sinn Fein MPs fail to attend the House of Commons because of their stances on Ireland and Northern Ireland. Some are very wealthy because of their own professional and business careers outside Parliament and others simply have to make do with what they get from salaries, privileges ande exemptions.

For those who represent London constituencies or nearby constituenties, life should not be that bad or any different from many other jobs in the capital city. For others who represent constituencies far away from London, life is constant travel to and from their constituencies and London. In recent times, given even of public notoriety, on top of the workload comes a series of reasons to be stressed. We are not far from another General Election. This means the fears of not being re-elected and of the consequences of not being re-elected. After very public tragedies, there is also the fear of being harassed, attacked or killed.

For whatever reason, apart from the obvious political reasons, your life could be on public display and this includes unwanted attention or attention for all the wrong reasons. This is something that is bound to have an impact on you personally and on the lives of all those close to you and especially on members of your own close family.

Once you stand for public office, you are a marked man or a marked woman. Whatever you said or didn't say, whatever you did or didn't do will be on record for all to see and you will be constantly reminded about it. So, yes, there is a lot of stress involved and especially if you are trying to do what you are supposed to be doing. You might lose your job not because of being doing a bad job, but simply because of public perception, because of what something else has done or is believed to have done.

Would you like stand for Member of Parliament? Well, although in some cases there is no shortage of candidates, in certain constituencies local associations struggle to find suitable candidates. Some are genuinely afraid of facing the stigma of being associated with a given political party. Family relationships will change. Friends might no longer be friend. Working prospects might change. You could become unemployable. If you are single or looking for a relationship, you will no longer be yourself. You will be so and so of a certain political party. People who have never met you will talk about you, write about you, invent things about you and some will despise you merely because you are associated with a given political party.

So, yes, being a Member of Parliament or being identified with a given political party can be a certain source of stress for all  kinds of reasons.

People who pay more taxes must have a greater say in public affairs very much like a shareholder in a private company

Our Democracy is imperfect because the votes of those who contribute very little have the same weight of the votes of those who contribute a lot. The votes of those who pay more in taxes should count more than the votes of those who pay little or nothing. 

If you are a shaholder in a private company, your decision power depends on the number of shares that you have got and Democracy shouldn't be any different. You put more money in the pot then you should have more power to decide what to do and what not to do.

Therefore, people would be encouraged to contribute to more to have a greater say in public affairs. In Britain, it was necessary to have something to lose to be able to have a vote. Nowadays, everybody votes regardless of their contributions and this is wrong. The rule should be: 'Do you want to have a greater say? Contribute more.' The vote of a vagrant has the same power of the vote of a captain of industry. This wrong. The reason our Democracy is falling apart is that the idle are awarded the same rights that are awarded to those who work hard.

The importance of language learning

Not knowing a language and not making an effort to learn a language is a form of disability. Some people cannot hear - this is called deafness. Some people cannot talk and this means that they are mute. If you hear and talk, but cannot communicate then you are disabled.

Not learning a language can also be the consequence of negative attitudes. The usual comment I hear as justification for not making an effort to learn a certain language is 'It is too difficult'. Another common excuse is 'I don't like it'. People who have such attitudes often deprive themselves of the opportunity of having a normal life and/or a successful life.

By not learning a language you are deprived of first hand knowledge and first hand experiences and constantly depending on other people to know what is actually going on.  You only have access to somebody else's interpretation or understanding of what is going on.

When it comes to sciences and especially to mathematics, we encounter similar kinds of attitudes. People want to have a better job, more work opportunities, but they are not willing to do what needs to be done to have a better job and more work opportunities.

Learning sciences is also about communication. Without acquiring certain skills, your understanding will be limited and you will always be prey of those who want you to believe what they want you to believe. How can you be able to make informed decisions if what you precisely lack is the capacity to understand and evalue the data and views you are faced with?

To be able to make an informed decision, you must know what everything is about. 

Going Underground: not just numbers, but actual families

 

We are used to hear about layoffs, so used to hear about layoffs that layoffs happen all the time and we are none the wiser about how they happen or even where they happen. What is even more odd is that we are not even aware of the real repercussions of the fact that people being laid off. We are not really aware of what is going Underground, under the ground of numbers and percentages we are being flooded with.

I guess that when you enter a bank branch - of the few that remain open compared to the numbers we had just a few years ago, or when you enter a local supermarket, you don't think about how many people have simply vanished from workplaces having been replaced by automation. You might think about how difficult it is to get a job or about how little people are being paid with salaries that will never allow them to climb the housing ladder, but you don't make the connection between automation and rising dispossesion. Somebody might talk about isolation, depression, anxiety, and so forth, but we seldom see the link between employment and many of the social illnesses, mental illnesses and physical illnesses. 

Most of us build our present and think about our futures taking into account how much we earn doing what we are doing. You make plans and suddenly you get the news that you no longer have a job. You no longer have what it takes to support yourself, to pay your bills, to save for that ever elusive future that you might never have.

Like an economics teacher of mine said 'don't forget that all those numbers, those figures, those percentages, those equations and formulae are real people'.