i tried to resist writing this blog post. But I could not.
Dominic Raab has admitted he only realised that the Dover - Calais trade route was fundamental to UK economic well being after being appointed Brexit Secretary.
I'm not going to doubt his sincerity.
Nor am I going to question his timing.
I am just going to ask how anyone with such a lack of curiosity that they cannot appreciate something so basic made it to selection as an MP, let alone got to have Cabinet rank on an issue where this mattered.
I spend my life watching, observing and questioning. I do not go anywhere without asking what the trade of that place might be, and how it makes a living. Isn't that the very life blood of political economic thinking? And when I say place, by the way, I mean country, city, town or village. I still ask the question. And if I have time I seek an answer. And that's precisely why I became interested in infrastructure as well.
This not only matters in macro terms. If Raab is interested in markets - by which I mean real markets and not financial ones - then that question is one anyone has to ask, continually. Which makes me look for the unseen as well as the seen.
But Raab lacks that basic curiousity about how those that he seeks to represent make their livelihoods,
I despair. It seems like the least we should expect of a politician. But he hasn't even wondered how goods get in and out of this place he calls home. Talk about being removed from reality.......
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In response, I have just looked Raab up on Wikipedia.
He is a typical middle class modern day Brit really. That is to say that although he is very good at his profession (law), like many of his hinterland he seems to be too narrowly focused on that which furthers his personal income potential at a loss to having wider understanding of the world. I see a lot of this I’m afraid from people who have been to very good universities but are not rooted in the real world.
We tend to think that naive consciousness is a blight on the working class but I’m afraid it is a classless phenomenon these days.
Raab is a typical young arrogant middle-class Tory boy.
He should have stayed on the back bench, where he couldn’t have exposed and activated so much of his arrogance and ignorance.
You can go to the best schools and Universities and remain very ignorant.
Facts ingurgitated for the sake of a First Class degree in Law don’t make you a curious and flexible intellectual, but a competent Lawyer.
I can imagine him at school, confident, sports clubs, boy banter with the lads…Nothing wrong with all of that, but then Uni, not just Red Brick, no, a top one, so gift of the gab must have played its part as well as a clever well filled brain…and there…the debating societies, the clubs and bars and friends in the right places…not looking at the real world in case it bites him on the conscience…that’s distracting when one has ambition to lead.
One has to get tough…immune…no distractions allowed from one’s goal.
Just a typical bred-to-lead Tory boy.
I’ve seen them, taught them, they don’t allow themselves any deep curiosity. Curiosity leads to compassion in politics. That’s dangerous…may make you an intellectual, a Socialist even! Heaven forbid! …no future in that these days.
Look at Esther McVey, Johnson, and before she left for greener pastures, Priti Patel.
Their self-imposed education mould is tight, fixed. Blinkers applied as soon as you get out of it to work in politics. And they do.
Somehow people vote them in! Somehow they get promoted to the Front Bench, the Cabinet, the PM job with any luck.
We get the wrong people in the top jobs most of the time. Again and again.
We need to start asking why.
Why do we love confident, arrogant, articulate and ignorant liars so much.
We can fixate on the Raab of the moment, but the pattern is so clear, so fixed, there’ll be plenty more Raabs if we don’t wake up and change the way we choose our leaders, if we don’t change our education system, and with it, core values.
I am becoming increasingly concerned with respect to the ability of Oxford or Cambridge Universities to produce people who are worthy of the degrees that their alumni receive. Cameron, Osborn, Johnson, Raab, Gove and the throwback to the eighteenth century Rees-Mogg plus a host of other complete incompetents are leading the UK to a complete and utter disaster as well as making the UK the laughing stock of the world.
Surely OFSTED should be looking closely at the criteria for the award of their degrees and especially the parameters on which they are judged.
🙂
I’m afraid he is typical of those who rise in a politics which is based on ‘beliefs’ (aka ‘prejudices’ and/or delusions) and seeks only to preserve the illusions of their own class or blinkered coterie. This impervious inability to be interested in, or even perceive, the real world is exactly what produces the addiction to “magical thinking” which has so astonished the EU and its negotiators. He is, to be fair, merely a classic example of the Tory government; and the delusions of Corbyn are little better, for he is almost as impervious to the realities of the EU. A final footnote; Raab talks as though he believes the UK – rather than Britain – is an island; small wonder his government can’t work out what to do about Ireland.
The last point is so true
It’s always a good idea to consult Marcus Tullius Cicero when looking for a phrase to describe the likes of Raab
“Politicians are not born; they are excreted”
Ouch!
Next weekend the M20 will be closed for four days. As well as this one this stretch is facing a great deal of work over the next decade. The M2 also has similar problems as well as being two lanes on some stretches. Where the M25 crosses the Thames there are invariably tailbacks and long delays. Who needs Brexit?
Our Dom is my MP 🙁 I’m in Surrey. We have also inflicted upon the nation Gove, Hunt and Grayling. I’m amazed we’re not a pariah county. I know many like to feel they’re surrounded by idiots, but in my case, it’s transparently true 🙁 Sadly, these are the kind of idiots who vote, and they vote against Labour taking away their hard-earned and gifting it to disabled unemployed immigrant lesbians. They’re so busy congratulating themselves over this they entirely fail to grasp the consequences of electing the likes of our Dom. Chickens, one feels may well soon be coming home to roost, in Surrey, and everywhere else.
Bill Kruse says:
“I’m in Surrey. We have also inflicted upon the nation Gove, Hunt and Grayling. I’m amazed we’re not a pariah county.”
Well, Bill…I don’t know quite how to put this, but…… 🙂
The other week I was walking along the White Cliffs. Looking down upon the port of Dover I was mesmerized by the activity. I sat and watched for a good hour, hundreds of trucks coming and going like a ants. Ferries in, ferries out, trucks off, trucks on,….non stop. Further, just down the road at Folkestone is the railhead, again with a non stop flow of trucks in and out (of Europe that is). It is unbelievable that any Government minister should be ignorant of this.
Apparently not…..
Even so, but Felixstowe is said to have the largest volume of goods traffic, bigger even than Dover
But that’s not the point: Felixstowe is not RoRo. I know. I will be looking at it at 2pm as we scatter my father’s ashes off Harwich lifeboat
So Felixstowe is no alternative to Dover
Nor is Goole, which is about heavy minerals in the main
Only Harwich is, and it has 10% of Dover’s capacity
Agreed Felixstowe is not Ro Ro but it is incoming and outgoing goods which need work done by Customs people. This work is likely to increase with Brexit. Are they in a state of readiness?
There are NO Customs officers now
The nearest office will be Nottingham or Stratford soon
“I am just going to ask how anyone with such a lack of curiosity that they cannot appreciate something so basic made it”
There’s a lot of this about, these days.
I can’t improve on this!
Michael Rosen tweeted:
Dear Santa I Hop yoU are Ok. I am butt I am verry bisy with sum big stuff to do with forreigners. I hav bean thinking about what I would Like 4 xmas. Can i please pritty please hav an atlas? Lots of love Dominic Raab. Love to Rudolph.
🙂
Raab is depressingly typical of the general quality of those who govern us.
Which rather begs the question of why anyone would advocate increased power to the State.
Politicians who actually believe in what they are doing might be rather more convincing
You ask how Dominic Raab made it to be an MP and cabinet minister without realising that the Dover-Calais trade route was fundamental to UK Economic well being. Following your posting of “Money for Nothing” why are you not also asking why 650-30 = 620 MPs are ignorant of, and disinterested in, the basic way that the economy works? Should there be an exam for potential MPs to ascertain if they have the basic knowledge of the country’s working before being allowed to represent their constituencies?
There’s an obvious research project in a content analysis of Hansard and conversational analysis on what politicians discuss. I remember one from years ago by Halfpenny focusing on Thatcher’s use of “we”. Public bodies take no notice of deep critique generally treating it as uppity and with cruelty. 90% of the debate would not pass at degree-level pre-1980. Watching such as PMQs students react in disdain but struggle in the main to grasp the performance beyond it being a waste of their time. Raab is fairly typical. Politicians remind me of poor students flogging not much textbook out over 10 minutes for a grade. I think we’ve been teaching the degeneracy and mediocrity. Pilgrim used middle class, but maybe middling class is appropriate. in the main the Scots at least look better,
See my blog this morning
“Dominic Raab has admitted he only realised that the Dover – Calais trade route was fundamental to UK economic well being after being appointed Brexit Secretary.”
Where has he been living ?
I wonder what Theresa May thought someone with that level of ignorance had to offer…sabotage ?
Where has he been living? Surrey 🙁
Funnily enough Surrey voted Remain overall. Lincolnshire perhaps? Cumberland – my original home? Oh well nothing like a bit of stereotyping…!
Has he never wondered where his Lego blocks come from? And how they get here?
Perhaps he thinks Father Christmas brings them?