Our political system is quietly suffering its most profound crisis for a very long time. Whilst the protests against the Coalition government have dominated the press’ political coverage, it is another threat to our system which may in the long term prove most damaging. What is this political snake in the grass? It is the steady but seemingly inexorable breakdown in the relationship between Members of Parliament and their constituents.

Politicians have always ranked alongside estate agents as a profession which we do not particularly like but seem stuck with. Even a cursory glance at William Hogarth’s Eighteenth century satirical political illustrations will show you just how deeply these feelings run. MPs have, however, always been very useful: if your granny can’t find sheltered accommodation; your Thai “girlfriend” can’t get a Visa (true story, apparently) or if you simply want to rant about how your local traffic wardens have a personal vendetta against you – in the words of Ray Parker Jr., “Who you gonna call?” That’s right, your MP. In fact, ghost-busting is one of the few fields they are seemingly unable to act on. Aiding constituents is the side of the job that the majority of MPs, except those who single-mindedly seek a ministerial career, seem to take most pleasure in.
This system, whereby your parliamentary representative can assist you with almost any grievance, has been gradually eroded over recent years. This is because it is built on a relationship which relies purely on trust and reliability. Both qualities have been brought under question through recent journalistic investigations, as well as politicians’ own actions and statements. The political class’ relationship with the general population has always been one of mild distrust and contempt, however it has worsened dramatically over the last decade. Anecdotal evidence from ‘canvassers’ of any of the major political parties shows that the ratio of doors-slammed-in-face to welcoming-smiling-constituents has been particularly affected. The current onslaught on parliamentary credibility began with the Expenses Scandals of 2009. It implanted in the public consciousness the idea that all politicians are self-serving criminals. Whilst the ongoing High Court cases and imprisonment of politicians show this was the case for a minority, it has permanently impaired the work of the vast majority who were, and remain, good public servants. More recently the Daily Telegraph’s so-called ‘fishing expeditions’ aimed at outspoken, potentially disgruntled Liberal Democrat ministers who might embarrass the Coalition in the safe confines of their constituency surgeries has, less dramatically but more damagingly, rocked the relationship between MPs and their constituents.

The latter case has been particularly damaging because it is at their weekly or monthly surgeries that constituents can raise their concerns directly with their MP, exactly as one would in the medical equivalent from which they take their name. This means that, since Telegraph journalists posed as constituents, for the first time not only do constituents not fully trust their MPs but MPs cannot fully trust their constituents. Clearly it is here, from the Shetlands to Cornwall and in everything from a Scout hut, to Tory office, to Working Men’s club, that the true breakdown in our political system lies. The loss of such productive relationships would mean the loss of a vital cog in the British political system. It is a silent menace that is a long way from the high profile protests and industrial action seen in London and elsewhere around the country over the Coalition Government’s proposed policies. To use an analogy from the medical world, imagine visiting a doctor who has begun to question whether every patient is a hypochondriac because of a couple of dodgy insurance claims they fell for, and where every patient secretly believes their GP is, at worst, selling prescription drugs on eBay, or at the very least, having an affair with their receptionist. You can see why one of the greatest assets British democracy possesses is so under threat.

As with any relationship built on trust it will take years to recover, if it ever does. But it is one which, I would argue, British society would be much much poorer without.

When does stress become a medical issue?

When you are becoming unable to cope with it and can’t see how it could change. Symptoms like anxious thoughts together with physical symptoms such as palpitations, butterflies in the stomach and insomnia, if they have gone on for more than a week, all indicate that the stress has caused an anxiety disorder.

What can be done before an anxiety problem occurs, and to deal with it if it goes too far?

Step back from the stress if you can and take a break for a defined period of say a couple of days or a week to get your equilibrium back. Stay physically healthy but don’t obsess about fitness. A lot of people at high pressure institutions feel they have to be perfect all the time. Remember that such an ambition is impossible for anyone to achieve. If it does go further, we can help you with symptom control, with judicious use of medication, and help you address the underlying causes of the anxiety with cognitive and other therapies. Priory is able to see most people very quickly, within a day or two, while the NHS concentrates on those with severe mental illness and has a waiting list.

What is drug dependency and what should be done to take the first steps to tackle it?

Basically it’s an addiction to a drug. An addiction occurs when you can’t stop doing it. You also notice that you need to take more of it to get the same level of high and that you get withdrawal symptoms when you stop doing it. It takes over your life and becomes more important than family and friends, work and social life. That all applies to behavioural addictions like gambling and sex as well as to chemical addiction.Seek help as soon as someone tells you that you have a problem. Accept it for what it is and listen to friends when they tell you that you have a problem. Then get help from a professional. This will normally involve some form of therapy but the kind of treatment will depend on the nature and severity of the addiction.

What should be done in the wider world to prevent drug dependency occurring?

There needs to be a wider availability of education and treatment programmes. But even before that the most common and damaging drugs of addiction need to be harder to obtain. The most effective way to do that is to put up the price of alcohol, as that’s still our favourite drug and the one that does most social harm.

There have been few years in modern African history not described at some point as ‘decisive’ or ‘crucial’. 2011 though, has started particularly dramatically and shows no signs of slowing down. Is the forecast set to brighten? Or is it overcast, with a few blustery winds capable of upending an old tree or two?

North Africa has seen a longstanding, autocratic president removed in Tunisia and talk of unrest in neighbouring countries. The apparent cause? Economic woes coupled with a rapidly growing population dominated by ageing autocrats. The conditions are replicated throughout North Africa and whilst the developments are not all positive there is hope that true democracy could develop in a region so recently viewed by the West as stable but undemocratic. Elsewhere in the north a Sudanese referendum on dividing the country between the dominant Muslim North and the Christian and Animist South appears to have passed relatively peacefully. Whether the world’s newest nation can survive remains to be seen.

West Africa is a region so unpredictable that it resembles the British weather or Blackpool in the Premiership. Signs from Cote d’Ivoire are particularly mixed, with the disputed presidential election still hanging in the balance and the defeated incumbent, President Gbagbo, refusing to leave office. There are positives: UN peacekeepers seem to be maintaining peace where Civil War only officially ended in 2007 whilst the French, so willing over the last fifty years to meddle in their former colonies, have resisted the temptation. Most promisingly, other regional powers have for once refused to legitimise a defeated incumbent president and have used the economic grouping, ECOWAS, to put Gbagbo under intense pressure. In Southern Africa however, Zimbabwe could re-escalate tensions. President Mugabe, strengthened by an unprecedented diamond discovery, is pushing for an election to end the coalition forced upon him in 2009.

Whilst it is certainly not the place of an Africa-obsessed student to comment on the intricacies of African politics there are undoubtedly reasons to be hopeful, but as so often before, it could all prove to be a mirage of optimism.

Didn’t the Korean War end in 1953?

The Korean War is not over. There is no peace, only a cease-fire, and 2010 saw tensions rise to levels not reached since the early 1990s. Two violent incidents occurred: the 26 March sinking of the ROK corvette Chŏn’an (Cheonan) with the loss of 46 sailors and the 23 November shelling of Yŏngpyŏng (Yeonpyeong) island killing two soldiers and two civilians.

When did the current status quo begin?

In June 2000, President Kim Dae Jung flew to Pyŏngyang, met with Chairman Kim Jong Il, and inaugurated the Sunshine Policy of southern detente towards the north. In October, General Jo

Myong Rok (d. 6 Nov. 2010), number two in the DPRK, met Bill Clinton in Washington, agreed to limit DPRK missile exports, and invited Clinton to Pyŏngyang. Madeleine Albright visited Pyŏngyang two weeks later and met Kim Jong Il. Denouncing these opportunities, the Bush administration shifted from engagement to containment with obvious failure: the DPRK conducted nuclear tests in October 2006 and May 2009. Although the Sunshine Policy ended official demonization of the north and led to northern, non-belligerent attention focused on the south, by 2008, southerners felt triumphalist, had tired of accommodating the north, and elected President Lee Myung-bak to ‘get tough’.

What does the north want?

The north wants normalization with the US and Japan, but US diplomacy is stuck on nuclear issues and Japanese on abductees. The status quo favours the south: the north talks to the south, while the US and Japan promote containment via the six-party talks. The north uses nuclear tests and disputations of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) to draw attention in hopes of changing the status quo. Nuclear weapons also provide deterrence, and the NLL was a UN creation.

What is the NLL?

In 1953, the north relinquished certain islands but contested surrounding seas. Since 1999, Pyŏngyang has openly contested the NLL. The north ‘probably’ torpedoed the Chŏn’an, ‘probably’ in retaliation for previous NLL incidents that killed northern sailors. The DPRK denies responsibility, so we do not know. The north gave its reason for the November shelling: southern live-fire drills from Yŏnpyŏng (even southwards) throw shells into northern waters and violate northern sovereignty. But the DPRK crossed a tacit line when it killed two civilians. Pyŏngyang expressed ‘regret’, while accusing the south of using human shields. In December, the south again held live-fire drills, but the north did not respond.

Over 2010, the north has extracted revenge, grabbed US, Japanese, and southern attention, and developed a ‘revolutionary pedigree’ for the new leader. Now, they want to revive the six-party talks, probably to obtain food aid, but this could be an opportune moment to address normalisation issues and move towards comprehensive peace.

What’s happening in Tunisia?

Since 17 December 2010, Tunisia has been going through a popular uprising, which resulted in toppling the head of state, Zine al-Abidin Ben Ali who ruled from 7 November 1987 to 14 January 2011. The revolt started when Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, immolated himself after being denied permission to sell vegetables in the central city of Sidi Bouzid. He was a graduate with no other job to support his family. The city reacted with angry, spontaneous demonstrations, which soon spread to other parts of Zidi Bouzid governorate, and four people were killed by the police. In neighbouring Kasserine and Thala,

protests turned more deadly when police killed at least 50 people there. Nationwide demonstrations followed, led by lawyers, trade unions as well as legal and illegal opposition parties, calling for “Jobs, freedom and national dignity”. The Government responded with dismissal at first, then promises of free speech and regional development. People persisted in peaceful but more vocal demonstrations until Ben Ali, who failed to bring the army on board, was forced to flee the country.

What are the main grievances?

Unemployment, particularly of university graduates; uneven regional development; repression of descent and corruption of top officials and Ben Ali’s family are the main grievances. Tunisia, known as popular tourist destination, stable country and relatively prosperous economy, maintained a repressive political regime and an economic development model, which disadvantaged the interior parts of the country. The president’s family amassed great wealth, largely through favourable contracts. High unemployment affected a highly educated young population. Free speech, including bans on YouTube and critical websites and individuals were the norm. Yet, Western governments hailed the “Tunisia miracle” and propped Ben Ali for keeping Islamists at bay.

Has anything like this happened before?

Tunisia has had various revolts and unrest since its independence from France in 1956, notably serious unions-led protests in 1978 and the “Bread Riots” of 1984, but the scale of the current revolt, some have called it a revolution, is unprecedented. The scope of the protest, the speed with which it grew and the clearly politically radical content it developed are new. Like 1984, it was spontaneous and triggered by economic factors; but this time, concessions did not stop people from elaborating radical demands and seeing them through thanks to sustained popular protest.

What are the implications for the wider Arab world?

Most observers were surprised that a revolt would emerge from Tunisia, that it would not be Islamist in content and that it would bring about the collapse of an authoritarian government. Popular support has been expressed in Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria; countries whose people share similar grievances. Already copycat protest suicides have been noted in Algeria and Egypt. This successful revolt has shown that it was possible to dislodge authoritarian states without resorting to violence or the army. Social media have been key to bypassing news restrictions and organizing protest. (About 2 million Tunisians are on Facebook). Arab cyber activism has been emboldened by the Tunisian example. Breaking free from fear is now a reality, and neighbouring people are closely watching Tunisia. Arab governments have already began lowering prices of essential goods and appeasing their dissatisfied citizens to pre-empt any emulation of a completely homegrown revolt.

“Let’s be clear about this much – however the police threaten us, something real is brewing here,”
The room of impassioned and dedicated young things murmurs as the activists shake their hands in approval.
“When it comes to kettles, we must stay strong”
More murmurs. A few jazz hands. Another point is taken from the front.
“But things get heated and could boil over. People have to think about their health. They could get anxious or panicked, and it could keep people awake at night…”

The debate goes on. Meanwhile, at the back of the room, a casual observer is confused.
“I don’t understand” he whispers to his friend Ignatius.
“What is there to not understand?” He was quickly running out of patience with Rupert’s lack of revolutionary nous.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I thought we, this organisation…”
“Collective”
“Ok, ‘collective’, were against the cuts?”
“Of course”
“But this flyer says that “\\\\\P.R.O.T.E.S.T\\\\\ plans to slash education funding, raise tuition fees and further marketise higher education”. I don’t want anything to do with an organisation like that!”
“\\\\\P.R.O.T.E.S.T\\\\\ isn’t the name, it means the verb, dipshit. It’s a call to arms.”
“Ahh, they could have made that clea…”
“And it’s not an organisation!”

Back in the actual meeting, an agreement seems to be near at hand. The affable, quietly-spoken chairperson starts to talk:
“Ok, I think we have consensus. The beverage should be of moderate strength, and contain no caffeine, alcohol, dairy products, or ingredients either taken from or derived from animals in any degree, however humanely handled, and should be approved by the Ethical Tea Partnership; it is therefore proposed that tonight we should all have Tetley’s ‘Peppermint Punch’, with soy milk provided for those who might want it.”
“Soy milk?” Rupert asks incredulously, “Who the fuck has soy milk in peppermint tea?”
A silence falls across the room. The chair clears her throat.
“Respectfully, had you been listening, this point was already made in a Stand Aside by Comrade Guinevere, and we decided that while such conduct was unusual, we could not deny the right to soy milk to anyone who wanted it”
“But you could deny the right to normal milk, or normal coffee, or a beefburger?”
An air of discord begins ripple through the room. There are even tentative jive motions and activists begin to shout out:
“Come to think of it, I think I’d have preferred ‘Camomile Smile'”
“What’s actually wrong with Haribo anyway?”
“Fucking hell, I could do with a Domino’s Meateor”
Rupert gains confidence. “See, these people don’t want this! What sort of anarchy doesn’t let people do whatever the hell they want?”
The chairperson retains her conciliatory tone, but is clearly flustered. “Well firstly, not that it matters, but Kropotkin writes very clearly on the issue of voluntary co-operation and mutual aid… never mind. The point is that everything happens with everyone’s consent. If you strongly disagree, if ANYONE strongly disagrees, then under Consensus decision-making you can place a Block”
“What’s that?”
“It’s for use in extreme situations, when you feel the pursuit of a policy by the group will have catastrophic consequences for the cause”
“Your policy won’t be catastrophic “for the cause”, I just want a coffee, with milk, probably from Starbucks, without feeling the judging gaze of a roomful of moral high-grounds.”
“Then if you’d Stand Aside and let the meeting continue…”
“So either you have to veto everything or else you register your disapproval while getting ignored? Who came up with this decision making process in the first place? I suppose you got a consensus, eh? Yeah, that’s right, I said it! Who’s with me?”
The room is silent. There’s a cough. No-one moves.
“I think you’d better leave”
“You can’t throw me out! I’ve got every right to be here! You can’t take away my rights!”
“All those who think Comrade Rupert should leave?”
Vigourous jazz-hands all around.
“…I don’t suppose I could place a Block on this motion…?”
“Go”
Awkwardly, Rupert shuffles out of the room. The chairperson continues.
“Right, now to decide who’s going to make the tea…”

I opened the Sunday Times books section, glanced at the list of bestsellers, and had a heart attack. The cause was hardback non-fiction. This realm was previously populated by Gibbon, Keynes and Jean-Paul Sartre. It was now home to a meerkat which hadn’t even the temerity to exist. A Simples Life had topped, yo-yoed and Power Rangered the chart. Of every non-fiction writer since the dawn of time, none, it seems, could compete with the wisdom of Aleksander Orlov.

An advertising agency had thought of a bad pun- market, meerkat, ha ha ha. This was extrapolated into an entire fictional universe. Once becatchphrased a book was written- based on a catchphrase based on a non-existent bad pun in an advert- which then became reality. Tony Blair was third in the chart. A hundred thousand Iraqi children clearly died in vain.

I recovered Pulp Fiction-style and winced. How could such cartridged stupidity be rammed into the breech of the Martini-Henry of the British public with such brutal, simplistic sagacity? And how (so cartridged) could the nascent cannonade be bazookaed so fast and unpenitently into the yodelling hordes of rabid Zulus that is the Sunday Times bestseller list?

Obviously the country had gone mad. It was hardly surprising. After all, most people are stupid most of the time. This is less true, but emphatically still true, for me. As a vulture would say, I am above the common herd. However, a scientist, architect, or sportsman would put me firmly in my place as a worm of commonality, as would anyone with any understanding of pop culture, or a moral code. I am useless at such hobbies. But at least I can make rational decisions. That divine autonomy was not bequested to all the human race, nor was it meant to be. We are emotional creatures who like a laugh. What else could explain the rise of Lembit Opik?

You’d have thought Oxford would stamp it out of us. That’s its job. But no. Undergraduates are cocooned in their own worlds. They know about their own subject and maybe, just maybe, about a bit of someone else’s. But beyond that their ignorance is boundless. How can somebody not know (as I have encountered Oxonians not knowing) the date of the Queen’s accession, or the age of the Earth, or what animal Mrs Tiggywinkle was? But they fanny around without even vital knowledge like that. The scale of our ignorance is matched only by the strength of our opinions, and is typically in proportion to them.

A fusilladinous fact-shitter like myself can’t begin to reprehend such ignorance enough. It takes very little time for a person to read random stuff on the internet. They do, in fact. They read sport and celebrity tittle-tattle, and then proceed to belch it out in lewd, pisspoor accusations of snobbery. They are inarticulate but actually right: it is snobbish to hate this sort of culture. One piece of knowledge is as valuable as any other. Katona has just as much a right to be philosophised as Kripke, and has the advantage that we can actually know what we’re talking about. So knowledge can’t be knullified. It’s all about perspective.

Music is the demesene of quite the most abominable race of backside-starers yet bequeathed to Albion. Everyone who’s anyone is a musical snob, and society through breach of moral righteousness has declared this A-OK. It isn’t. I like Rameau a lot, but I also like the Beach Boys. Who am I to put the one above the other? In the same way, whilst I consider the Black Eyed Peas’ lamentable bawling of I Gotta Feeling to be the musical equivalent of a scotch egg, I do not feel it right of me to place myself on a higher moral plane than those who, oafs as they are, consider it tolerable.

Liking one sort of art more than another is a personal not a moral taste. Though some people are small-minded and crass in their artistic choices, that does not make them objectively worse than the rest of us. They are merely ignorant. And as Alan Davies so famously said, if ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people in the world?

A lot of what Giles Coren says is unprintable. Listening to him talk I imagine myself spraying asterisks at the screen of my laptop like rubber bullets into a crowd of angry protesters. “I’ll say any old s*** in an interview just so they can write it down and f*** off”, he tells me toward the beginning of our conversation. He laughs at this. Coren says things with a sort of ironic sneer, including you in a private joke of which you may or may not be the butt. He seems to be an expert at making people think he doesn’t really mean it when he’s insulting you – you laugh when he does it. It’s a gift: charming and offensive. It reminds me of the way the upper sixth-formers would talk to the younger boys at school: you could tell there was no real malice because they had a smile on their face. With Giles Coren I’m less sure.

Coren is unapologetic about most things, though he confesses to a slight embarrassment about telling people where he studied: “You have to conceal your education. People ask where you went to university, and you sigh and say Oxford, and sort of mumble. Like you, though, I had the back-up of saying that I was at a s*** college [Keble], and I use ‘s***’ guardedly. But let’s face it, St Hugh’s is never going to bring anyone out in a sweat.”

I ask him about his degree, which he has described as “eye-wateringly impressive”. He is initially dismissive: “getting a first from Oxford doesn’t really mean very much. Practically everybody gets one.” He goes on to say how top degrees have been – to use his word – devalued: “You meet Oxford firsts now who are as thick as two short planks, and have never read anything. I meet them all the time, they do work experience at the Times. Twenty years ago it still carried a bit of cache, it was still quite hard to get the top first. Although you can’t really talk about it to other people, you can’t show off about it, deep down you know that you’re smarter than they are, and you feel quite relaxed about pissing your life away not doing very much. Although I have a job where I dress up in silly clothes and write a load of old bollocks, I know that when push comes to shove, they put the brightest and the best together in one year at Oxford and I beat them all in the exams, so they can all f*** off. I don’t really care if they do have jobs in banks.”

I read out a quote from an Interview Coren did for the Guardian: “I don’t really read magazines now that I can get porn online.” I was interested to know whether he thought he had bad taste: “I have excellent taste. My study is painted in three shades of green.” Defending the comment, he said he only did that interview because he was trying to sell his book (Anger Management for Beginners). He then said some things that I won’t record about redtube and youporn, and socks. Coren says he always agrees to give interviews to Oxford and Cambridge newspapers, “because they’re basically the only literate people left in England. There’s no one else. My girlfriend – I mean my wife, sorry – my wife and the mother of my child, was at Bristol. It’s meant to be the next rung down, and it’s just shocking. It’s shocking when you meet them. They’re like bus conductors, it’s scary.”

At this point I asked Coren whether he genuinely thinks some of the things he says, or is it all just a carefully constructed media persona. “I made a slight mistake – not a mistake” Coren is quick to correct himself: “I made a decision. I decided to call my book ‘Anger Management for Beginners’ and to make the unifying theme anger and ranting, and outbursts, In a slightly half-arsed imitation of Clarkson. Now, I’m a much better writer than Clarkson, I’m a much more educated, reasonable, and liberal human being than Clarkson. He’s a far more brilliant media personality than I am: he’s very funny, very accessible, he has all sorts of exciting opinions that the common man is likely to be terribly interested in. I don’t. I’m just an over-educated snob. I thought that if I could persuade people I’m a bit like Clarkson then maybe they’d buy my book. It worked up to a point.”

Coren says he had never written anything particularly controversial until about three years ago, when his father Alan died. He thinks that rudeness and controversy would have pained his father, who, as a hugely popular columnist, was famous for his charming wit and warm style. “I think it’s all harmless,” says Coren. “One of the reasons I like to swear is that all through my life people have said swearing just shows that you have a weak vocabulary. Sorry, but I have a stronger vocabulary than anyone I’ve ever met, and I say ‘f***ing c***’ all the time. Deliberately. I know every word, in every language that there possibly is on any planet in the solar system, and ‘f***’ is still probably the best one. There are thousands of ways of describing things, but in the end most people only understand f***. If people continue to find f*** funny, I’ll continue to use it. The lowest common denominator needs pandering to.”
I move the topic of conversation on to class, reading a quote by Giles’ sister Victoria taken from an interview she did for the Jewish Chronicle: “My brother is very comfortable spending an afternoon playing cricket on the private pitch at a stately home, then staying the weekend with the titled owners.” I suggest that Coren looked rather at home when dressing up as an 18th century aristocrat for his series ‘the Supersizers’. “If I know my sister, and if it’s the Jewish Chronicle, she will have gone on from saying that to tell the world how humble and modest she is, and how there’s nothing more pleasant to her than eating a salt-beef sandwich and drinking a cup of tea. That’s the dichotomy that exists in her mind. It’s partly true. I’m just sociable; I know loads of toffs because I went to Oxford. I went to Keble and was miserable because it was full of pikey rugby players from the north of England, so I made my friends at New College and hung out with posh people because the girls are prettier. My sister went to St John’s where she worked incredibly hard and met only nerds in the library. Actually, she’s wrong. I’ve never stayed the night at a stately home. I don’t know any really posh people. Class is a bit of a dead thing. I’m the Jew grandson of eastern European immigrants, my grandparents were hairdressers or something. I’m not posh, I just went to Westminster and Oxford. I’m a cringing middle-class twat like the next man.”

I can’t resist bringing up nosh-gate, the infamous episode where Coren sent a 1000-word email rant to Times sub-editors who had dared to remove a single indefinite article from the last sentence of one of his reviews. “When I meet useless cretins who f*** up the things I write it just makes me furious, because there are so many people out there who could do the job better.” Coren’s email contained the immortal phrase: “I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and I have never ended on an unstressed syllable. F***, f***. F***, f***.” I mention that this probably counts as one of the most public defences of prosody in recent years, if not ever. This provokes a laugh from Coren: “I’d get in terrible trouble if I said anything like that. Prosody is important. I learned that from my dad.”