The Museings issue 8 – by Deep Thought

Well once again I am bouncing my way across the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man, least said about that the better. I have for once a few moments to muse, however the realities of my life mean that if I don’t get this completed by the end of the flight I won’t get it done for another 6 months.

I think that I will muse on the nature of home. I have lead an itinerant life for the last 2 years and to be honest I am getting bored without somewhere I can call home. Home, I have found, is the place you want to be rather than the place you find yourself in. I have been living in places that I have not chosen and I have not decided to be and do not plan to be for long, consequently I haven’t put any emotional capital into the place and so I get little back. It is time to get a place I can call home and get a bit of value back into life.

The last year has taught me a lesson, Life is tenuous, the assumption that we are bullet proof and will last forever is a delusion. The biggest sin one can do is waste time, so either do something that gives value now or do something that will give greater value in the future. Doing nothing is a waste of life. Resting is something that gives value in the future and it is different to doing nothing. You only get so many minutes in your life, don’t waste them.

London is an interesting place, firstly it is a plague pit, any cold goes around like wild fire as the Tube is a perfect viral distribution system, everything you touch has been touched by someone with something infectious! But it is also an amazing jumble of people, cultures and perspectives on life. Whatever you want it is here in some form or another. Only a lot more expensive than anywhere else!

Well politics are in the news again, we are going to have an election and I am really quite depressed about the people who are putting themselves forward to run the country. They are all time served politicians. What is it that makes people think that being a good politician qualifies you for running a country? So here is the Musings manifesto for how to get us out of the mess we have got ourselves in. Incidentally, we got ourselves in this mess, every one of us, we borrowed too much, spent too much (particularly on property) and saved too little. We took those 100% mortgages, the impossible returns from Icelandic banks. We elected a high spending government. This is our fault, so fess up and stop whinging.

1. You cannot hold elected office unless you have worked in a non-political job for 10 years, you might then have some skills to offer your country.

2. I would halve the number of MP’s and double their salary. The fact that no one from the professions can go into politics because they couldn’t afford it is a major embarrassment to this country, if you pay peanuts your monkeys fiddle their expenses.

3. I would close the Civil services final salary pension scheme. I would use the money saved to increase their salary so they can sort their own pension like the rest of us.

4. We have to raise Taxes to pay for the huge debt we have accumulated. It is that simple, we have to face up to our responsibilities and pay it off. We all have to work to save money for the public purse, we have 60 million brains in this country, it is time we started to use them to dig us out of this mess.

5. When a contractor digs up a road they can’t just fill the hole in, they have to re-lay the whole carriage way for 100 feet. I am tired of going over potholes because utilities can’t repair the holes they dig properly.

6. I would reopen the mental institutions that Maggie closed and go back to the old ways of handling mental health, it wasn’t perfect but by goodness it was a lot better than what we have now. Care in the community….........

7. Let’s get on and properly insulate every domestic and industrial property in the UK, jack up the costs of energy for non industrial processes, and where there are industrial processes that do not recycle energy then tax the lights out of them. We have more than enough power in this country we are just profligate in the way we use it. (And it will help the debt a bit).

8. Get the lawyers out of claims handling and go to the New Zealand system of no blame compensation. Even if you just do it for the NHS it would save a massive amount of money.

9. Lets stop running the NHS like a small business. It should be run as a National Health Service, centrally organised with a single head who is accountable for delivering a defined service to everyone. Oh and lets get a professor of medical efficiency established at Cambridge. We need to work out how to do the simple things cheaper so we can pay for more of the complicated things.

10. Pensions Companies should not provide pensions. It distorts the labour market. It’s obvious that the interests of a company and that of a pension fund are not going to be paralleled for the time it takes from.

11. Every school should have a PE teacher and every child must do physical education at least once a week. All children should take classes on financial management, basic diet, first aid and health.

12. Let’s get back to streaming children, we are losing all our practical skills because we force too many kids to stay too long in class rooms, the academic kids need other academic kids to push them, the practical ones need to work with their hands. The old system wasn’t perfect but it was a lot better than the cuddlefest we have today.

13. Let’s go back to grading results on percentages (top 10% get an A), and let’s have more exams and less continuous assessment. Continuous assessment should be for skill based qualifications, exams for academic ones. Particularly as the internet makes CA meaningless.

14. Red Tape – we have too much red tape for my liking so we should have an appeals process. Any information required by government can be challenged by a petition of 2500 citizens, the challenge can be on the grounds of repetition (i.e government already has this information but can’t be bothered to dig it out), value (i.e. the task does not deliver any value in relation to the legislation it is enacted under), inappropriateness (what’s this got to do with anything?), inefficiency (just ask me one question rather than 50).

15. Reciprocity – any legislation enacted to enforce an EU directive can only become effective once all other EU states have enacted similar enforcing legislation. Why should the UK be disadvantaged because other states are “slow” at enacting legislation?

16. Separate Retail and Investment Banking. If you want to take massive risks, fine, but don’t do it with my money. Limit all mortgages to 75% by law.

17. Reduce the number of university places by ¼ and make the rest free, add 1p to upper rate tax for all graduates that had (like me) their education free, to pay for it. I am seeing the benefits of my education, I see no reason not to contribute to the next generation.

The problem we have is a bunch of politicians who haven’t worked out that grand plans are not the answer, we have a hugely inefficient country. It is time we did something about it.

Ok the Rant is over, but I feel a lot better! These are the museings of Deep Thought, not TRC or any of its members.

Oh God, having read this through I realise I have turned into my father!