"Brookmyre, Christopher - Boiling A Frog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brookmyre Christopher)

holding a minority view, you respected the democratic
process. The Party, in turn, respected that there were times
when your beliefs meant you could not support them, and
they did not hold it against you.
Well, that was the theory. Maybe it had been true in her
father's time, but things had changed since then. These
days, in New Labour, it seemed Catholicism was the faith
that dare not speak its name.
Having lived most of her life in the West of Scotland,
Elspeth was wise enough to know that it was electoral
poison to make a lot of noise about which foot you kicked
with. She had never worn her Tim colours on her sleeve,
and certainly not around her neck, which was more than
could be said for others in the Party - there were Saturdays
when you could probably convene a PLP meeting at Celtic
Park. But then, that was a Guy Thing, and the irritating
truth was that for every bigoted Hun they might be alienating, there were
plenty of other Rangers fans who didn't care
about religion and would be impressed with their laddish
fitba credentials.
So being a Saturday Tim was all right, and being a Sunday
Tim was fine too: Cherie was a left-footer, after all, and
unlike that Godless Kinnock, Tony did like his minions
to be identified with a wee bit of head-bowed Christian
solemnity. Being a Tim twenty-four/seven, however, was
not on.
It gave off the wrong signals. It had connotations of
prudisfiness, austerity, servility and being 'behind the
times'; connotations which were, in the marketing-speak
that increasingly substituted for political strategy, 'not
sexy'. Sex, of course, being the metaphor's panacea as the
most marketable commodity known to man.
Elspeth would be the last person to hold up the USA as
an exemplary society, but at least in politics over the pond,
you could still wear your religion with a bit of pride. Here
in the UK, with the phrase 'family values' so degraded
by the Tories' abuses of it, being readily identifiable as a
Christian was to be singled out as a would-be spoilsport
in the materialist classes' sexual playground. For Catholic,
double the dose.
She wasn't some bloody Opus Dei fundamentalist nutter,
though sometimes she thought she might as well have been.
No. Her thought-crime had been to repeatedly question a
culture in which the values of consumerism were being
extended to the bedroom, and in which the perceived 'right'
to sexual gratification took precedence over consequence or
responsibility.
Nothing was supposed to stand in the way of this so-
called 'personal freedom', a freedom that society seemed
determined to extend to its subjects at a younger and