Alan Sugar? Politics? You're Fired!!!

I was watching BBC news this morning and I became quite excited when they announced that they would be talking with Sir Alan Sugar about his views on "Broken Britain". Now the reason I was interested was because I know that this old boy from Hackney is hugely successful in making money. He is also a credible celebrity who has maintained a colourful "no nonsense" image in the media from his early days to present. He is a man that knows how to get things done and profit from them. This should have meant that he would be going to have some hard hitting and revolutionary ideas about how to change things and fix the country.....It should have meant!!!

Now I don't know if it was because the time he was given was to short to say anything meaningful, but for the five minutes or so in which he also managed to heavily plug his TV show, he managed to commence the interview doing an impersonation of Alf Garnett, coming across like a whingeing old git, moaning about the youth of today, how they don't respect anyone and how when he grew up in 'ackney, people could leave their doors unlocked. In fact I began to get a bit angry at this waste of time because it seemed like his big idea to change the world was going to be to watch the Apprentice this evening at 9 o clock or whenever.

Then something happened. Something quite unexpected. He dropped a bit of a bomb. This bomb was unexpected because I always assumed that old "working class background" Alan with his special relationship with New Labour had been politically neutered and therefore uncontroversial. Ok so it is public knowledge that recently he has been swinging to the left and I think he has also been asked his opinion on stuff before, but he has never really rocked any cradles. But here he was on TV this morning and the big problem as he could see it was that the government had wasted all their money on the war on Iraq and couldn't therefore spend it on vital facilities for youngsters.

This was open criticism of the government over the war and in fact he wasn't mincing his words. I think I actually agree with him...to a certain point. I do think that the war in Iraq is a waste of time, money and human life. I absolutely agree with him on that. I think the Labour government lied about the reasons we went to war and the only justification to our continuing presence now is that the country if not the region would erupt into civil war faster that you can say "WMD" if we were to pull out. It is costing us a lot of money and resources which we could do well with at home. We are feeling the effects of the "credit crunch", the NHS is wobbling as always, we need more police on the streets, we need better schools and facilities for children, we need to provide pensions for the increasing number of pensioners who have not previously owned premier league football clubs and we need to reduce our national carbon footprint amongst other things. On top of this, we are expected to keep Africa and the rest of the developing world afloat and send money to whomever is unfortunate enough to suffer a national catastrophe.

I also agreed with him that government statistics on crime reduction were nothing more than propaganda. It was actually quite refreshing to hear someone actually pointing this out as quickly and convincingly as he did when questioned on the matter.

What I didn't agree with was the fact that he seemed to be blaming everything that is wrong with society on kids and the failure of the government to provide the kids with a viable distraction in the form of youth clubs or sporting facilities. The fact is that there are facilities for kids to use and they are provided by both public and private sector. I would challenge anyone to ask me to find any activity in any area because I guarantee I will find it. Kids can do any countless number of activities anywhere in the country from football to ballet, cadets to horse riding and particularly with the 2012 Olympics only four years away, there is a definite rise in the visibility of organisations providing facilities. The problem is that a significant number of kids are not supported by their parents and this is another important piece of the puzzle because if we have the kids and we have the facilities, the only thing that can be missing is the physical, moral and financial support of parents.

The problem with our broken society is that it is not just our kids that are broken, it is that their parents and their grand parents are broken too. We live in a society where binge drinking and drunken anti social behaviour in our city centres has become accepted as the norm. Hard drug use, heroin and cocaine is widespread and conveniently ignored in society. It is glamorised by the media who seem to associate its use with rebellion and success depending on whatever celebrity is photographed openly using them. Gang culture is glamorised and normalised by Hollywood and our own rickety film industry as well as the video games industry. Pornography is on tap and regarded as a fundamental human right (freedom of expression enshrined in law by the Human Rights Act 1998). We allow all and any minority that can shout loud enough to abuse our legal and welfare system and we never shout back. This being so, we have to ask what kind of moral example we are setting for our kids in general.

Our kids didn't create this mess and I think that it is totally wrong to blame them. The generations before them created the mess, including mine and Sir Alan's although what is clear is that it is not our generation who will be responsible or in fact capable I think of clearing it up. I think Sir Alan is guilty of doing what he seems to despise so much on his own TV show and he is trying to pass the blame onto someone else for the trouble he has been partially responsible for. In that case Sir Alan, you stick to making money old boy because when it comes to fixing the country....You're fired!!!