Appearance blinds whereas words reveal.

When I was in my teens I had a boyfriend who sported gorgeous shoulder- length hair and whose normal mode of dress was scruffy jeans and a T shirt bearing the logo of his favourite rock band. This was his outfit, accessorised by a silver chain bearing his football team's crest, when he came to pick me up from home for a date. My father was appalled and opined that the scruffy article could do with a bath, haircut and a stint in National Service. I retaliated by pointing out that not only were his clothes and body clean, his hair was as well cared for as any girl's, and surely we should judge not by appearance but by the person, and as well as being kind, honest and loving Richard was currently studying for four A Levels and was expected to get an Oxbridge scholarship. Dad's rejoinder? "He'll never get a job in a bank looking like that".  That may have been true and if so, in my opinion it said far more about society than Richard. But then, my Dad was the last of the generation brought up in the shadow of the Victorians: he had fought in World War 2 - surely so that the next generation couel be free to live as they chose rather than be subjected to some kind of Nazi Boot-Camp which stamped out any flicker of individuality.  And this exchange took place when the comedian Russell Brand would have been a small child, so a generation on, in a very different society, surely attitudes have changed. You'd think so, wouldn't you? Yet the comments of many people after Russell appeared in front of the Select Committee of MPs this week displayed prejudices which I thought were outdated when my dad expressed them thirty years ago. How dare he not wear a suit, address MPs by their first names and make a joke at the Home Secretary's expense? Never mind that what he actually contributed to the debate on society's attitudes towards drug addiction was a reasoned, intelligent, eloquent plea for understanding and support for addicts - not, as he said, for some airy-fairy do-good reason but because pragmatically it would help the addict to overcome his problems, make him less likely to commit crimes therefore helping potential victims and society as a whole - and save money. Sounds like a rational argument to me. Yet the majority of media coverage is far more interested in his choice of clothes and flamboyant presentation. Perhaps if MPs stopped referring to each other as "My honourable friend" when we all know most of them are less than honourable or indeed friendly toward each other, and started presenting arguments based on their honest opinion and clear fact and logic rather than spouting the party line, the public might have a modicum of respect for them. Wouldn't you prefer your MP to speak from the heart and engage in honest debate about issues that matter rather than turn up to the House in a dark suit? As Duncan says in Macbeth: "There is no art/ To find a man's construction in the face". Nor, he could have added, in his choice of dress or hairstyle. Sadly, so many of our respectably suited and booted politicians are laughable, if not actually comedians. Perhaps it is time to let the comedians run the country - they seem to speak more sense that those who do, even if their mode of dress would not have been approved of by my father...