I'm yawning as I write this, having not yet fully adjusted to my new lifestyle. I'm also entirely sober as the police are coming round later tonight to take a witness statement. Basically, one of my noisy neighbours apparently recently assaulted one of my friendly neighbours and I heard the ruck through the wall.

So, after spending a pleasant couple of hours chilling up at Elephant Books today, I came home and tidied up a bit, ie. removed bongs, skins and any other obvious evidence of my illegal lifestyle choices from the front room. Just another day pretending to be someone else.

Anyway, the first thing I thought of when I walked into the offices of my new job was the stunning resemblance, in decor and atmosphere, to 'The Office'. Subsequently my girlfriend thought it would be fitting for us to rewatch both series of this excellent sitcom, which we have this week.

Being a massive Ricky Gervaise fan I am continually impressed by his writing and performing prowess but it was one phrase from The Office in particular that set me off on a particularly topical train of thought.

Mr Brent is tangling himself in his usual bullshit when he mentions 'team individuality' as a management concept of his own devising. I've heard him utter these words a million times before but this time they sparked something in my mind.

The is a general consensus among most of the human race that people should be given the opportunity to be involved in the systems that run their societies. Democracy is usually vaunted as the perfect embodiment of this desire as it is, supposedly, a method by which every citizen of a nation(1) is involved in the decision making process.

Looking at the news media over the last few days however it is clear to me that far from us all sharing the burdens of running the world, individual characters are still at the heart of our political systems. Two such individuals are Charles Kennedy and Ariel Sharon. Both these men have, single handedly, changing the fortunes of their respective political parties, and we have all lost out from their respective exits from the political front lines.

Growing up I would have always thrown my cap in with Labour in the belief that they represented the working class majority of the population. New Labour, and then Iraq, shattered this image forever in my mind and the politicised I became the more convinced I was that the problem lay with politicians and political parties themselves.

How could I trust the words of a politician when I know they'll say the exact opposite next week if it serves their purposes? I could never vote Conservative and now Labour was out of the question too leaving the Lib Dems as the only option left.

Faced with such a choice I felt that opting out of the whole system was the only way I could really use my vote to accurately portray my feelings. Then Charles Kennedy became the Lib Dem leader and things changed.

It wasn't so much that I felt his leadership made the party or its policies more viable, but rather that here was someone working as a politician who I could relate to, who was saying the common sense things I said to myself.

His perpetual dismissal by the media and political insiders as, not being a good enough politician just ingratiated him even more with me. Here was a real person, a genuine guy and so, wanting to reward and encourage such an approach to politics, the Lib Dems got my vote.

Mr Kennedy's recent admission about his drinking problem did nothing other than re-enforce this image of him in my mind. We all battle our own personal demons every single day and here was someone doing a politician's job who wasn't trying to pretend to be perfect.

I mean think about it, if the guy's got the balls to admit to the nation he has a drink problem, telling us the truth about the basis for a war would be a no-brainer for him. Do we really believe that he is the only alcoholic in the Houses of Parliament? That all other members, elected or otherwise, live like nuns and monks?

Anyway, Charles Kennedy alone won my vote for the Lib Dems and now their disgraceful, and particularly un-liberal, un-democratic ousting of the man has lost it for them. An example of an individual personality having more significance than our complex political systems.

The departure of Ariel Sharon from the Middle East political scene is a cause for far greater concern. Serving many years as a complete right wing nutter earned him the opportunity to make a real difference in the area, who else could have sold the Gaza withdrawal to Israel?

For all his fascist thuggery he is not by any means a stupid man and it seems he had realised what many of his colleagues could not: lasting peace requires sacrifice, the only other option is perpetual suffering all round. The void created by his absence looks like it can only be filled with painful chaos but I’m keeping various things crossed that this will not be so.

Watching the coverage of Sharon’s struggle it occurred to me that Israel may be the only country in the world to have a worse media image than the US. I am determined to believe that a majority of people everywhere, including the US and Israel, just want to get on with their lives in peace but these are not the people I see on my TV.

The two Jews I saw interviewed were not, I am sure, your average Jews or Israelis. They were Crazy Jews, just another flavour of nutter like Crazy Christians or Crazy Muslims. The first guy said that Sharon had been struck down by the hand of god for letting Gaza go while the second claimed to have cursed Sharon by asking god to kill him.

The suggested solutions to the crisis of the Middle East are all political, suggesting systems within and through which peace can be found. Despite this the whole thing has hinged around one single man, a man who is now laying in a controlled coma.

Is this David Brent’s ‘team individuality’ in action? Maybe, the scary thing is that the Brent-Master-General himself probably couldn’t do a much worse job if we let him run things. I suppose what I’m really craving here is honesty. If we’re going to rely on simple popularity contests to run our world we should at least say so and not dress it up in grand ideas.

footnote

(1) unless of course you're too young, a criminal, or in some states of the US, black,