Retrospective rulings are not the answer Britain

Come on now Britain. Retrospective law is not cool. It’s not the way we do things. Not even for politicians. Honestly.

What became abundantly clear during the expenses row over the summer was that the system of MP’s allowances was badly out-of-date and in need of reforms to make it more transparent and acceptable to the electorate. These changes are coming. In fact, many have already come. However, changing the rules and then applying them backwards to MP’s claims over the last five years is not the answer.

Yes they had a jammy system; yes they were claiming lots; yes Alan Duncan boasted of their ‘great system’ on Have I Got News For You, but whether we like it or not most of them were claiming for expenses legitimately and with the sanction of the Commons authorities. They weren’t breaking the rules as they stood. I know the whole ‘I acted within the rules’ line has become a cliché trotted out but it’s actually mainly true. There are a few very shady characters who’ve been exposed as fraudsters or liars, but most were simply making the most of the ‘great’ system. Lucky sods, but not criminals.

And so punishing them retrospectively really is unfair. Perhaps they should’ve reformed the system, but come on! There’s a lot of things they ‘perhaps’ should’ve done and we’ll punish them for that at the polls, but to change the rules and then say they should’ve stuck to the future rules rather than the present ones is totally unfair. I think that it’s pretty jammy that you don’t have to have a TV licence to watch BBC iPlayer and am cashing in as much as I can. If the BBC were to change the rules and then charge me for the last year because I’d been making the most of the old (jammy) rules I’d tell them to stick it. And anyway they couldn’t enforce it – it’s retrospective rule and it’s arbitrary and unfair. The same is true for Legg’s new rules. Stick them. Many MPs have already been punished and there is a lot more to come as we enter the run up to the Election – we don’t need to use unconstitutional, arbitrary decrees to pay back £710 to achieve this.

It's my party and I'll have a nice time because you say so

It was my 26th birthday last week. Hurray for me. I was at work as per normal and yet plagued by family and friends asking me if I had a ‘nice day’ which, I’ve realised, is the social convention for birthday greetings – i.e. ‘Happy Birthday Alice, did you have a nice day?’ Did I have a ‘nice day’? Well, my flatmate made me breakfast, I had an average day at work followed by my usual Wednesday night routine of drinks in my local. I supposed it would’ve been a nice day bar two features peculiar to birthdays which almost invariably ruin birthdays.

First is that post-21 all birthdays simply reinforce that in society’s eyes you are on the inevitable march towards death and being reminded of this all day long can often turn an otherwise ‘nice day’ sour. This may sound melodramatic, but it is true. When you are under 21 you have ‘big birthdays’ to look forward to which make you cooler – 10 (double figures), 13 (a teenager), 16 (legal sex), 18 (legal alcohol, can be an MP), 21 (the pinnacle) – but after that nothing but jokes about middle-age, getting old, being over-the-hill, pensions, zimmer-frames, and death. Check out the greetings card section in your local gift shop if you don’t believe me. Society simply does not value age. It values youth. And so for the last week I’ve had to endure jokes about how old I am and reminders of all the things I haven’t yet achieved despite being so old (marriage, children, a mortgage). And to top it all off I went away at the weekend on the train and couldn’t use my young person’s railcard because I am officially no longer young as the X Factor reminds me weekly with it’s ‘older people’ category of over 25s.

The second birthday-ruining feature is the pressure to be having a ‘nice day’ because it just so happens that 26 years ago you were being born. Incidentally I’d like to point out here that I’m not sure I was having a particularly ‘nice time’ as I was squeezed out into the world. I can’t say that for sure, but I wouldn’t want to have to do it again. Anyway this pressure is two-fold: firstly that you must ‘do something’ to celebrate and secondly that you must enjoy the thing that you do.

So, feeling the typical pressure whenever friends remembered I was the next birthday and asked me what I was doing I organised a small get together in London the following day after work for colleagues and friends. I normally like drinking in quirky pubs in East London, but time spent worrying about whether my guests were having a good time whilst at the same time worrying about whether I was having the obligatory ‘nice time’ due to constant asking of that question sucked dry any enjoyment the evening might otherwise have held. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” is a lie – once during the evening I tried answering the ‘are you having a nice day’ questions with ‘not really’ and the whole conversation got very awkward and I had to do lots of back-tracking and qualifying to get it back on track. I do admit that I might suffer from a more heightened form of this problem due to my recently diagnosed Peep-Show-itis*, but I still think that unless you’re blind drunk at a party you’ve organised (which I’m not into) then it’s very difficult to actually enjoy it and this is even more true on your birthday when you’re supposed to be having such a nice time.

Until we start valuing those who are older than us rather than rubbishing them and until we stop caving to the pressure that we must do something to celebrate our birthdays (but only a pre-defined set of things – try telling your friends that you’re staying in to watch Friends repeats on E4 and you will be met with eye-rolling or sympathetic nods depending on the type of friend) then I will continue to slightly dread October 7 each year.

*Peep-Show-itis is a condition whereby I have taken to analysing what the show would be like if it was based around my life and coming to the worrying conclusion that in many respects it would be the same. This is, probably, why I think it’s one of the best shows on TV, but also why it has kind of ruined my life. Thanks boys.

It simply doesn’t matter who wins Strictly

If there’s one thing I cannot stand it’s people taking themselves too seriously. And for that very reason I cannot stand the craze that is Strictly Come Dancing. It’s just so unbelievably smug and engenders in its fans the same kind of irritating smugness which makes my blood boil. Let’s be real for a moment – it’s a show in which semi-celebrities dance in front of four ‘judges’ and are slowly eliminated until one is crowned the winner. The celebrities are not dancing to try and win a dancing contract. They’re paid to appear and mostly do so to revive their careers by entertaining the licence-paying public. I’m pretty sure that Darren Gough did not secretly harbour desires as a teenager to be a ballroom dancer, but all the cricket got in the way and that Rachel Stevens wasn’t devastated that her frantic popstar life meant she couldn’t pursue her real ambition to dance the Argentinean Tango in front of Len Goodman. It just does not matter who wins. Just as it doesn’t matter who wins I’m a Celebrity or Celebrity Big Brother. All that matters is that the viewer is entertained and keeps watching and voting.

Already I will have split my readers. True Strictly fans will be balking at my suggestion that Strictly has greater purpose than to entertain because to you Strictly means more than entertainment – it’s dancing and it matters a great deal.

I really do want to be in the club. I want to believe in the greater purpose of dancing, but the problem is that I simply do not. I might think one celebrity looks nicer in sequins than another, but that’s as far as I can stretch it. And it seems that to be part of the Strictly club you have to care; you have to be offended at the idea that it doesn’t actually matter who wins the show.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that the format isn’t a good and fun idea for a TV show nor something that I couldn’t quite happily eat my chips in front of on a Saturday night, but the problem is that Strictly and its fans think that it is more than this. This is not just a TV show. No, this is serious stuff. This is dancing.

And it was John-Sergeant-gate which showed up the Strictly club for what it was. Here was a political commentator who couldn’t dance, but who was undoubtedly entertaining the nation. Was the Strictly machine happy that the show was being talked about and written about more than ever? Were they happy that more people were tuning in to be entertained by Sergeant’s dancing – no, they were outraged. The judges could not keep the acidity out of their comments and Strictly fans up and down the country were saying that people who voted for him, like me, were ruining the show.

Ruining the show? I was being entertained by Sergeant and wanted to continue to be entertained by him – a premise upon which I assumed the show worked. But alas no, I was wrong. This was about dancing. And because Sergeant couldn’t actually dance he had to go. ‘You wouldn’t vote for a crap singer on the X Factor would you Alice?’ Well, I might do if they were fun enough, but that’s not the point. The X Factor’s premise is trying to find the next big popstar. Strictly is not trying to find the next big dancer. It’s entertainment with the by-product of reviving flagging (non-dancing) careers and making money.

Strictly is meant to be entertaining – whether or not you, or the judges, like it it has no greater purpose than that. Those hideously smug judges and their equally smug fans are ruining it for the rest of us. I, for one, will be keeping my television firmly off until they chill out a bit and stop taking the whole thing so seriously.