Boss Radio

Short termism is a plague of democracy. Proof, if it were needed, that even the best of systems has its faults. Someone once said that the best form of government would be a benevolent dictatorship, which is probably true, but since it's about as likely as workable communism or perfect democracy we'll give that one the flick.

"But wait!" I hear you cry (Bloggetic licence ), "Surely there are workable examples of benevolent dictatorship? What about Cuba, or China?" Well let's forget for the moment that both of those are actually communist states and accept that they are in effect dictatorships, given that their leaders are there for the duration. This should give them the option of taking long term decisions.

So how come neither of them do?

I've decided that mankind is incapable of long term planning. If the figures coming out of China are correct then as a result of their surge into the capitalist arena one in five of their citizenry in the 'developed' zones are now clinically obese. It's taken them less than a decade to almost catch up with Britain and the USA (We're 1 in 4 in case you didn't know).

Why didn't they spot that one coming? I asked (And received no reply, how rude can a nation get?) in a previous blog why China couldn't learn from our mistakes as they industrialise their nation, and not do stupid things like polute their own people. Now this.

Obviously no one looked that far ahead.

So if they can't do it, what do our politicos with only a few years of guaranteed power do?

Well, not forsee that those pesky Chinese and their opposite numbers in India might want some of our food for a start. Now that some of them have money they inexplicably want to eat good food. The same good food that we already have dibs on, the swine. Our problem is that most of this food comes from overseas, and those unspeakable foreigners have the shear audacity to use our capitalist system against us and sell the stuff to the customer that doesn't keep making demands about how well they treat their employees and the environment and other awkward stuff like that.

And why are we buying all this stuff from abroad? Because many years ago some other short-termist idiots didn't realise that allowing our population to reach the point where we couldn't feed ourselves was not a good idea. As a result of this the Germans had loads of merry fun taking out our supply ships in an attempt to starve us out. They'd have succeeded too if it wasn't for the fact that... well... that they didn't (Note to self: Watch the next WWII documentary that comes up and learn something...).

Where's this short termism taking us next? Well Gordon Brown thinks building millions of homes in the south east of England would be a start. Apparently the idea that all these new homes would probably be snapped up by the idle rich who are already responsible for several towns and villages being less than 50% native hasn't struck him, nor has the simple logic that if everyone moves into the south there won't be anyone left in the north, which will not incite new businesses to set up shop up there.

What I'm never going to understand is why capitalist systems suddenly get all soft and squishy when it's their backsides in the blender. The roads aren't big enough for all the lorries. Fear not! We'll build new roads across our scarce countryside. People are using these new roads to come here and there's no houses. Not to worry, we'll build new houses all over our scarce countryside. There are people living here and they have no jobs. Fret ye not. We'll let industry run riot over out scarce countryside.

The laws of supply and demand say that if we've got it we'll supply it, if we've not you can't have it. So why not just tell the lorries that if the roads aren't good enough they can shift onto the railways, that if there are no homes people should go and live where there are houses, and extending this logic, if Heathrow is full then no more 'planes can land there, it's not some kind of God given right, and if that means that some people aren't going to get their holiday in the sun then they should have booked earlier then someone else wouldn't be getting their holiday in the sun. Holidays in the sun may be jolly nice things to take, but they're not a right either.

The list must be endless. Build cars that can't exceed the speed limit, renationalise the utilities, put buses under council control, make owning a house that isn't lived in for over 180 days a criminal offence, stick a legal limit on the number of kids being dragged screaming into a crappy future a family can have...

All unpleasant and unpopular, but all decisions that someone somewhere should be taking, for the sake of the future. But short termism won't allow it. People must be pleased right now so that they'll vote for us now, not 50 years into the future. Meanwhile, for some inexplicable reason, great swathes of the rest of the world want to be just like us, and the only thing that's holding them back is the fact that we want to be even more like us than they do...

Someone's gonna have to explain this to me.

In the big ballot battle between the Scottish Nationalists and New Labour the SNP won by just one. According to the radio this means that to draw level with Labour they need the support of the Liberal party who have around 60 seats, but in order to actually outnumber Labour they also need the two Greens to side with them. Labour, on the other hand, only needs the Greens to side with them to outmanouver the SNP.

No matter how hard I play around with those figures they make no sense to me...

On the other hand, the only reason it really bothers me is that if the Scots do go for seperate nation status they'll never have to put up with another Conservative government.

...And we'll never get rid of them...

Obviously time they made me boss of everything before it's too late then.