The bicycles of alienation

I'm very much in favour of a budget of 12.5 million pounds sterling to lay out tea and scones, and even a slice of chocolate cake, for individuals who have strayed over towards the idea that they might like to have a go at blowing up their fellow citizens, and who can be lured back from feeling 'alienated and disempowered' to feeling 'more valued' instead. I can't think of a better way of spending the money. There is, however, a small wrinkle on the countenance of this benign plan. Alienation is a thing of elusive shape and provenance, and there appear to be critics of the move who say that it risks causing alienation itself and 'feeding extremism'. Well, you can see their point, what with the scones and the chocolate cake.

Let us call primary alienation the alienation caused by such things as nostalgia for Taliban rule in Afghanistan, the loose morals of sections of the British public, and the poodle-like fidelity of this country's foreign policy to the foreign policy of a certain other country. This alienation we try to assuage with the tea, the scones and the chocolate cake. But what, now, are we to do about secondary alienation - the alienation (as you will have cottoned on) caused by the provision of those very delicacies of a typical mid-afternoon get-together, and the names of which I won't tax your patience by repeating? And then what are we to do about third-order alienation, caused by whatever is judged to be the best response to secondary alienation - the sending out, perhaps, of a team of dedicated soothers, each with a fern in his or her hair and the wherewithal to do generous homage at the palace of the Zarb of Plumwarner? And how to respond to alienation of a higher order still, the just and righteous alienation of the twelfth dodecathlon, its origins lying in the soft provocation of the Ministry of the Blessed Soufflé? These are questions only answerable in the affirmative.