Better or worse?

Ignoring the question can improve your eyesight

When I was five years of age, I had a lazy left eye, and it’s still pretty lazy today. But I can still see, even if I don’t always like what I see.

Back in the summer of ’67, my mother would take me six miles on the bus to Guiseley, to the West Riding County Council’s clinic, where I was tested for glasses. Sat upon one of those metal-framed, wood-seated stackable school chairs, a lady of severe appearance dressed in a white coat, hair in a bob, rested an industrial-looking contraption on my nose and ears, and proceeded to slot into and out of it a range of lenses encased in circular frames, to the accompaniment of her less-than-dulcet Irish tones of, “Better, or worse?”  The duly prescribed glasses were presented in a blue case, which is pretty much where they stayed. My own mother was convinced that wearing glasses from an early age had done her own eyesight no good whatsoever. She encouraged me not to wear mine.

Better or worse? Would ignoring the ophthalmologist improve my eyesight? The choice is always better or worse; achieving it is not always easy to see. It depends which of the two you’re aiming at.

Upon repeat tests, my eyesight would in fact be shown to have improved. “Good! You are wearing your glasses?” the Irish lady would bark at me, whilst looking expectantly at mother over the rims of her own half-moon specs. “Why, certainly, of course!” mother would answer, engaging the half moons through her own Varilux, and blushing only slightly beneath her face powder.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, made an emotive statement to cameras in the foyer of the European Union’s main offices following the weekend discussions with Israel, to which Israel had travelled in order to propose an offshore pop-up port and a railway to India, pretty much to the intrigued incomprehension of everyone else around the table. He said he’d be stopping talking about a peace process for Palestine, and start talking only of a two-state solution: he thinks it’s the only feasible peace process.

Benjamin Netanyahu thinks differently, obviously. For him the only feasible peace process is to carry on with his war. War and peace, in one neat package, to a bitter end, whatever that might be.

Lord Cameron, meanwhile, when he’s not fighting off accusations of scandal in connection with his Greenshill consultancy position, “will consider recognising a Palestinian state as part of concerted efforts to bring about an ‘irreversible’ peace settlement” according to The Guardian.

I happened recently upon the following cartoon in The New Yorker:

For which we have cartoonist Roz Chast to thank. Thank you, Roz. Today’s big decision is let’s think about it. Fact is, No! has a brutality to it that shocks even me. So, it’s always useful to be able to decipher its euphemisms. Hope the above helps.

Imtyaz Vakil is a Muslim and a 54-year-old accountant who lives in Ilford, east of London, and, like many in Ilford, including its Labour MP, Wes Streeting, was taken aback by the British Labour party’s stance on the Gaza conflict. Following the Iraq War, Vakil turned his back on the Labour Party and started to vote Conservative. Now he sees no point in voting for either mainstream party. Instead, he’ll be giving his support to a 23-year-old independent candidate put up by Redbridge Community Action Group, Ms Leanne Mohammed. Mr Streeting, taken aback and protesting as he was, did not join with other front-bench Labour MPs who resigned their posts at the stance assumed by their leader, Keir Starmer, on Gaza, which was to back Netanyahu to the full and endorse the withholding of vital life-support systems like water and power.

I say unequivocally what my stance was on Gaza, and that was horror at what the terrorists had done and horror at what the Israeli state was doing in return. I have suffered collective punishment for things I didn’t do my life long, so empathy may perhaps come lighter to me than to Sir Keir, who very much outed himself when he voiced a desire to out trans youth to their schools and parents in a damning interview he gave in April 2023. The mere idea that millions of people should be made to suffer for the sins of their brethren in cold, hunger, dirt and thirst, after the outpourings of sympathy for Ukrainians whose dams and power stations have been the subject of constant barrage for nearly two years somehow lacks proportion. When will those who draw such artificial distinctions between the peoples of the world realise that every life matters to them whose life it is? And, in a civilisation worthy of the name, or such as we would have it, every life matters to every other who lives. Punt uit.

The International Court of Justice leans to the notion that Israel is engaging in genocide in the Gaza Strip, enough so to order it to make sure nothing of the sort occurs. Mr Netanyahu seems to think that that means the assessment of what constitutes genocide lies exclusively in his own hands. Wrong, Mr Netanyahu. When a law proscribes murder and commands all to refrain from its commission, it does not leave to the murderer the interpretation of what constitutes his crime; instead, it engages a judiciary to construe the accused’s acts in terms of the prohibition. In all events, the crime of genocide certainly includes depriving children and pregnant women of water and electrical power and, if Sir Keir believes that Israel was right to deprive Gazans of those utilities, then Sir Keir has lent his voice in support of the commission of genocide. Shame on him.

British Muslims have turned their backs on Conservatism because it’s failed pretty much everyone, and are turning their backs on Labour because it has failed their sensitivities. Wes Streeting is adamant that the best choice is still Labour at the next election. Of course he would; after all, after raising his protests, he was not one of the eight front-bench opposition to resign his post. Mr Streeting is a man who will make opulent gestures, but not follow them up with principle. And nothing is more indicative of such politicking as his statement that he has consistently campaigned for the recognition of a Palestinian state and the end of human rights abuses: “The next election is a choice between five more years of Conservative failure or change for the better with Labour.”

Why is it, therefore, that with a clear opportunity to stake out his position of opposing human rights abuses, he prefers instead to cosset his own front-bench position, whilst eight of his comrades take a stand that speaks much more eloquent volumes?

For British Muslims, the choice is not between more failure and change for the better. It’s between a rock and a hard place and, in Britain as in the USA, the crowing that we’re better than the opposition is paling towards being naught but the lesser of two evils. Confidence in the parties to adhere stringently to democratic principle has been frayed at the edges, and the choices are now transmuting from better or worse more towards if the other guy can be that bad and still be popular, we can afford to be worse than our best.

Keir Starmer is unsure about supporting the Palestinian cause in case it loses him support. Some pundits are projecting a 174-seat majority for him come the next election, others are more cautious (between 154 ... and, ahem, 224 seats). With that in mind, that must be a mighty big wave of support he risks losing in standing by his human rights principles. If his they are, that is. I wonder who’s behind his stonewalling. Because it isn’t Muslim Britain.