Jonathan Aitken to head conservative think tank on Prison reform!

And now, from Viewpoint, an extra special commentary on Johnathan Aitken and the insanity that is modern politics.

Would you put a convicted criminal in charge of the criminal justice system? Would you task a fare evader with catching fare evaders on our transport system? Would you trust a proven liar to actually come clean and tell you the truth? Would you buy a used car from Arthur Daley or an item from DelBoy's market stall?

So why would David Cameron ask Jonathan Aitken to lead a conservative think tank to look into prison reform?

Cameron has made some gaffes in his time, but this has to rank as the biggest gaffe of the lot so far. This is like putting a tax evader in charge of the Inland Revenue. You've put a convicted criminal, a perjurer, and someone who actually spent time in prison, in charge of reforming them? There is a kind of logic to it, but unfortuantely, it is the logic of the madman. You'd have made the idea more popular if you had put a victim of crime in charge, not a convicted criminal.

Unfortunately, this situation is a symptom of a situation that exists not just in the UK, but around the world. Politics is becoming insane. It has become about trying to prove your opponents are wrong, and you are right, at any cost. Truth no longer seems to matter to politicians, who seem ready to lie, spin, and promote propoganda, rather than tell the truth.

And unfortunately, more and more people, like myself, are getting fed up of it.

Politics is NOT about proving yourself right, by lying and spouting political propoganda. It IS about finding REAL solutions to REAL problems. It is about serving the public, not helping yourself.

It is about making a positive difference to people's lives, not about petty political point scoring, or shameless self promotion.

Unfortunately we've had too little of the problem solving, public helping politics, and far too much of the shameless, propogandist, petty, point scoring politics, which just deepens people's cynicism in a dying political system. Political parties are not helping politics, but hindering it, hindering it so much that it is making politics very unpopular.

And it's not just the big name politicians that are doing this.

Around the world, the political "netroots", those who post on blogs, just like I do, are putting their opinions on the web for all to read, but unlike me, they do not think about what they write, other than just how well they are pushing their political points.

What they do not consider, are the realities of their opinions. What would happen as a result of their ideas. The "netroots" can and do get their political parties who they support into a lot of trouble. Take the Republican netroots, who not long ago were promoting the idea of sending all 12 million plus illegal immigrants back where they came from. Like so many ideas, it sounded great in theory, but unfortunately it would have so spectacularly backfired on them, that if they had followed it through as a policy, the Republican Party would have gone straight over the cliff, like a multitude of lemmings, hurtling off the cliff of political reason, into the abyss of political destruction. The Republican party would have commited political suicide, and there would have been nothing that the netroots or anyone else could have done to prevent that.

Fortunately for political discourse, cooler heads did prevail, but it was a close run thing.

But even though the "netroots" must also take some blame, there are still others who must also take their share.

And this time, it's not the "new" media I am looking at, but rather the "old" media.

I'm looking straight at the people, who I refer to as the "politicos", the talking heads, who appear on 24 hour news channels, and host talk radio shows, the ones who believe their point of view is the only one that matters and that others need to be "educated" into their way of thinking.

I'm looking at you, Bill O'Reilly. I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity. I'm looking at you, Rush Limbaugh. I'm looking at you, Michael Savage, Laura Ingrahm, Glenn Beck, Don Imus, Pat Buchanan, Tony Blankley, Eleanor Clift, Michelle Malkin, Kirsten Powers, Mort Kondracke, Fred Barnes, Chales Krauthammer, and all the other "talking heads", "columnists" and "contributors", who waste more time in pointless political discussions that, like a lot of Enterprise set pipes from the original Star Trek TV series which were lablled GNDN, Go Nowhere, Do Nothing.

All you guys do, is promote your own party's talking points, rather than trying to find real solutions. You contribute NOTHING to the political discourse, and only reinforce the political divide, and in some cases, make the divide wider.

As Sherlock Holmes used to say, It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has enough data to do so. One ostensibly twists facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts. Perhaps the political world should remember to twist theories to suit facts, rather than facts to suit their own politcal agendas.