This episode’s vocabulary
Offence
noun — an illegal act; a crime.
Deliberately
adverb — intentionally.
To mislead
verb — to cause someone to believe something that is not true.
To elect
verb — to decide on or choose, especially to choose a person for a particular job, by voting.
To deliver on something
collocation — to keep a promise, or achieve or produce something that was promised.
To cater to someone/something
phrasal verb — to satisfy a need or to provide what is wanted or needed by a particular person or group.
To lobby
verb — to try to persuade a politician, the government, or an official group that a particular thing should or should not happen, or that a law should be changed.
To enact
verb — to put something into action, especially to make something law.
To restore
verb — to bring back into use something that has been absent for a period of time.
Sick (and tired) of someone/something
idiom — to have experienced too much of someone or something with the result that you are annoyed.
Deceit
noun — (an act of) keeping the truth hidden, especially to get an advantage.
Vested interests
plural noun — people or organizations who have a financial or personal interest in a business, company, or existing system.
Disempowered
adj. — having no control over your life and no power to change things.
Disproportionate
adj. — too large or too small in comparison to something else, or not deserving its importance or influence.
To enforce
verb — to make people obey a law, or to make a particular situation happen or be accepted.
Willfully
adverb — in a way that is willful (= intentional, or determined to do as you want).
Deceitful
adj. — dishonest or hiding the truth.
Questions and answers
Well, if I had my way, I'd make it a punishable offence for politicians to lie and not keep their promises. I think it's quite a common issue where people seeking power deliberately mislead the public in order to get elected and then completely fail to deliver on what they said they would. And I think this, like having such a law, would prevent that from happening, or at least it would prevent it from happening as much as it does. It would also probably help reduce the level of corruption, at least in my country, since the reasons politicians lie is not only so they can gain power, or are not only due to this need to gain power. But also they do it in order to cater to whatever powerful interest they are courting or which have been lobbying them. By enacting such a law, it would make it easier for people to trust in their elected leaders, and hopefully restore a bit of faith in the political process. If we were able to do that, I imagine it would prove to be pretty popular with most people. I think we're all rather sick and tired of the same old lies and deceit from people in power or people seeking it. It might even be a fresh start of sorts, though I doubt whether certain vested interests will be terribly enthused about the whole thing, but that really is their problem. And I am talking about the majority of people who are disempowered, not the majority of people who have a disproportionate amount of it. And when it comes to my own feelings about this, to be honest, I doubt such a law would ever come into effect for fairly obvious reasons. I mean, the most obvious being that powerful interest would stop that from happening. The other thing is, it would probably be quite difficult to enforce since you can't really rationally prove when someone is being willfully deceitful and when they simply make a mistake. It is nice to dream of it, though, and maybe hope that one day, the people in charge will behave in the manner they expect us to behave.
And have you talked to your friends about introducing this law?
I used to. I haven't talked about it for a while, but since this topic came up, I decided to go with it.