One of the most over-used and irritating words in the English language today is 'Inspirational'. Quite when this Bushism for 'inspiring' gained full currency in England is something I did not notice - a bit like a frog being boiled up. One day I just looked around and there I was, surrounded by Inspirational Speakers, Inspirational Role Models and a full-flown cult of Inspirationalism.
The latest example of its misuse comes in a piece in the local paper which may or may not be about Barrack Obama, telling young people in our locality that they have a chance to achieve elected high office whatever their skin and do not need the wherewithal to join the Bullingdon Club to get there. Quite whether this is true in reality is an interesting question. The leader of our local council actually is not a local boy made good, but a man on the make from Northampton, while our sitting MP, a somewhat nicer man, is a product nonetheless of Farnworth, Lancashire who was educated at the Manchester Grammar School and Wadham College, Oxford.
The local paper seems to see some parallel in the rise of Barrack Obama with the careerist success of the Baroness Scotland, a woman who has a local connection, though not one who ever faced the electorate in her life as far as I can see. She rose to power as an appointed New Labour Attorney-General by way of her association with the ill-performing Millenium Commission and a Life Peerage in an unelected House of Lords.
Her right to comment on affairs American is perhaps best established by her responsibility for the grossly unfair and one-sided extradition treaty with the United States of America which was signed on 31 March 2003. By this treaty the evidential burden on the Americans seeking British suspects to face trial and imprisonment in the States is markedly lower than that placed on the UK, were we for instance, to seek to extradite the torturers (albeit ones the good Baroness's government has been accused of colluding with) of some of the British residents and citizens who ended up, by fair means or foul, in Guantanamo. By such sacrifices of one's fellow citizens is an illustrious career advanced. Inspiring stuff, which Obama hopefully will put an end to.