THERE is a group of people in our society whose full-time job is the seeking of public office. That is the real meaning of the phrase 'political class'.
Few seem to find anything strange about the existence of this group, despite the fact that the full-time, salaried career professional politician is a relatively recent phenomenon. Well within living memory, MPs and others had substantial interests away from politics, in the law, business, trade unionism and so forth.
Today, this is actively disapproved of, with politicians urged to stick to 'the job' in hand, i.e. professional politics.
It goes without saying that this hugely-expensive political class has to engage in activity of various sorts, lest members of the public start to wonder what it is they are paying for. And the simplest way to generate the need for this activity is to identify various 'burning issues' that are in urgent need of being 'tackled'.
We are, of course, here in the territory, as Kingsley Amis put it in Lucky Jim, of pseudo-light being thrown upon non-problems.
Last week, some sort of new record was set in this regard, with a 'progress report' from the Government's 'body confidence' campaign, which is apparently all about raising awareness of 'portrayals of bodies in the media', according to The Daily Telegraph, and finding ways of 'building self-esteem among young people'.
Simultaneously sinister and worthless, this is a prime slice of political-class activity: pointless, grossly intrusive and bound to fail.
But it highlights why, despite endless campaigns against 'red tape', official interference continues to proliferate. This is one of the economic consequences of our political class, another being the creation of an administrator class to implement professional politicians' 'initiatives', a class that continues to flourish despite talk of 'savage cuts'.
1) Losing one's balance
HERE was the line-up on Thursday night's item on PM on Radio Four concerning the European Commission's decision to take Britain to court over its policy on paying (or not) benefits to people from other European Union countries. For the Government: Iain Duncan Smith. Against the Government: a Euro-commissioner and a chap whose Dutch mother-in-law is living here. Then there followed an item about Brits living in Bulgaria, highlighting the warm and friendly nature of their hosts in contrast to the mean-minded UK types back home, all in a lather about the imminent arrival of Bulgarians and Romanians. Fair and balanced, eh?
2) Brr Brr Britain
IT'S official, as the papers used to say: that was the coldest spring in 50 years. Cue the climate-change people 'explaining' that this in no way detracts from the fact that the world is getting hotter and we need urgently to put the economy on a low-carbon diet.
I'd have rather more sympathy for the current line from the global-warming people - that 'weather' is short term whereas 'climate' is long-term - had they not exploited to the full that run of scorching summers at the end of the last century as 'evidence' of climate change.
From memory, the first of these was 1989, following an all-right summer in 1988. On one day, a newspaper reported that global warming was a done deal, given that London had been hotter than Madrid, suggesting said warming was somewhat less than global.
Thanks again for reading and enjoy the weekend.
dan.atkinson@live.co.uk
Going South: Why Britain Will Have A Third World Economy By 2014, by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson is published by Palgrave Macmillan