| I have many faults, but being wrong isn't one of them. |
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We went to the dry cleaners today in a town called Flers in Normandy. Having handed in the clothes to be cleaned, the lady at the counter naturally asked for our name. Heather gave it to her - Buckingham - and then, as the lady, unsurprisingly, looked uncertain, spelt it out in her best French accent. Everything was fine except that we could see that the first letter was a P and not a B. So we both pointed to it and said, in French, ‘no, the first letter is a B'. ‘Yes', she said, ‘a P'. ‘No', I said, ‘B as in', and I couldn't think of anything simple, and so I said ‘Baignoire' (bath). ‘Yes', she said, ‘P as in Peignoir' (dressing gown). Her younger colleague sitting a few metres away was muttering ‘no, its B, not P'. Eventually, we managed to convey to her what letter it was, but clearly she did not want to accept that we probably knew better how to spell our name than she did and was insisting that her spelling of it was correct. Politicians are completely unable to admit any kind of error. There is always some other explanation - that they were taken out of context, misquoted or misunderstood. Of course there does come a point at which a political leader can accept, not his own errors, but the errors of past leaders of his party. This though only happens after a decent interval. In the early 90's, we had Michael Howard's oft-repeated claim when he was home secretary - ‘Prison works!'. Just this week, it seems that the present shadow home secretary has finally accepted that, in view of the fact that we have a very high percentage of recidivism amongst guests of Her Majesty, prison probably doesn't work after all. It does not protect us in the way or to the extent that Michael Howard was implying. Compulsory identity cards were put forward by this government as the way to combat terrorism. When after a few months that was accepted as being untenable, other reasons were put forward for their introduction. Why? Presumably because much of the Prime Minister's reputation had been staked on their introduction and of course the opposition had said a loud ‘No'. To turn back and say ‘well perhaps we did not think it through clearly enough' was by then unthinkable. There is of course much in the view that it is not good simply to point out someone-else's error. For the benefit of all concerned it is best, where possible, to find a face-saving formula which will allow everyone to take a different and better path with the minimum of embarrassment. This is at the heart of conflict resolution and is at least some help in enabling the world to progress at a greater speed. Of course there are some people for whom conflict resolution will never work. I suspect for example that nothing will ever resolve the differences between Senors Belusconi and Prodi. |