Welcome To The Party

I hear there's a general election around the corner. They always confuse the hell out of me because all parties promise something 'better', but they never mean 'better for everybody', no matter what side of the fence you may be standing on.

What baffles me most is just how many people there are in the ball pool and what they all hope to gain from it. One would suspect money, kudos and power for the most part.

I'd like to propose a little something. I have no idea if it would work or not but I'll float it anyway.

What if, there were just three people in 'power'. For the sake of argument, let's say Mrs May, Mr Corbyn and er... another one (you choose - their names escape me). Surely three intelligent people - and we must assume they all are intelligent no matter what your fingers tell you to type on social media - could fix things quickly and easily?

Three people around a table.

"We have a problem with the NHS..."

Cue whiteboard. Somebody is handed a whiteboard marker and stands next to it.

"What are these problems?"

Between the three, they list all of these items on the whiteboard... and between the three, they come up with the answer that some of the solution is more money, some of the solution is to change things and some of the solution is to let the public know that fixing this is going to cost money.

And between the three, they decide where that money will come from, what those changes will be and in a very short amount of time, together they come up with a plan to fix things and put it into operation. 

All of those donations to party politics, all that driving around of buses, all of that time spent on TV (or not)... that's all time those few people could spend doing things instead of telling people what they're going to do and inevitably not end up doing because they didn't 'win'. Maybe all of the other people milling about could be useful in collating figures and making charts of where attention is most needed. I don't know... there's most likely lots of work to do behind the scenes. 

I know it's not the same thing at all, but if I spent as much (comparative) time editing the mag as they do on all those things, I would produce a single issue a year if I was lucky. 

Is this such a dumb idea? I've seen Conservative governments and Labour governments in my lifetime and all that ever happens is this: those in power at the time make things happen and the other people say they're wrong - regardless of which side you're on, that's exactly what happens year in, year out. Later, when the roles are reversed, they just blame each other for the mistakes.

But all of these people can't be wrong all the time.

If they are, why are they running the country? 

The NHS is good example because everybody can relate to it. How come every single person in the country can't afford an extra £1 a month/a week when we can all afford Netflix, phone contracts and coffee at £4 a go? An extra £1 a month/£12 a year from the entire adult population would be er..... £753,114,000 which is a lot of cash from such a small amount. This is based on a loose population search which is currently 62,759,500 - I think my maths are solid. 

If you went for it and called in an extra £1 a week (the price of a fat-boy Snickers bar at the moment) you could crank that up to umm... 32,634,94000 ... I can't get my commas in the right place for this one, but I think it's around £32 billion... or is it £3 billion? You could fix a lot of things in that year regardless of which answer is correct... and that's on top of whatever is going on now.

It could just be 'fixing money'.

I am no politician - as is probably obvious to anybody reading this who does have a clue - but a small country such as ours shouldn't be hard to run in the civilised world. A few people - of varying sex, age and ethnicity - can make things work. Of this I'm convinced. Put your ego away, look at the facts, agree on them and stop fucking fighting just to prove you have a place at the table. People would love you... and you would have all the kudos, money and power you ever wanted.

...or is that the script from the last couple of weeks of Doctor Who?

Maybe it's not a fix for everything and some things, like the Trident question would be difficult, I don't get why it costs whatever it costs - do we rent it? It would however get most things done quickly, smartly and sounds like a 'step in the right direction'.

Let's face it though, most people don't care about the reality of the world. Just their own little corner of it. If you never take a train, you could care less about train politics. If you don't have kids, you don't care about childcare problems. The list is endless. 

Hmmm. The more I write, the more I see how little I know and when I don't know anything about something I tend to shut my mouth. Maybe I should just move to Copenhagen or somewhere in Switzerland....

Back to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.