Handing on the baton

The art of politics, so different to the art of business, is hugely effected by sentiment and emotion.
The Scottish Referendum has come and gone. The excitement and the fears are now behind us as we relax back into the status quo. Like the proverbial rabbit back in its familiar burrow we look at the family portraits and seeing them in place we assume that nothing has changed.
Firstly the individuals that rose to the hour to make a difference. Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown exuded that important characteristic, 'commitment' to the particular belief which they were advocating. Its a feature of parliamentary politics that the advocacy of a view-point when stated from the benches in Westminster or the more modern arrangements in the Parliaments of Edinburgh and Cardiff is seen as pedestrian and without real commitment.
Both Brown and Salmond came onto our screens, much as the old politicians in the pre and post war era were projected in meetings held throughout the country they were excited to right wrongs, they struck a cord with the people that they really cared. 
Political pontification, sometimes read from a script, usually by a man in a suit seemed to be purely an act of theatre, but with Salmond and Brown you got conviction in spades.
Of course the issues, those of handing power to others is a difficult problem both to any parent or authority. As the son or daughter demand more scope to make their own decisions, the inherent parental belief is that not only do they (the parent) know best but that their offspring have things to learn.
Of course there is truth in this, one doesn't want them to experience the hardship, but life and the optimism for reinvention lies with the youth, lies with new people and new concepts,  which values will make the new generation different from the old.             

http://twocents2012.blogspot.com.au/