The peasants are revolting

There is a real mood to tackle the dissonance with the Westminster/media bubble and a desire to sort out – the peasants are revolting.   I now think UKIP could get 30% next May – and I can see 100+ defections after Reckless romps home.

I also think people are also going to vote for candidates more than parties for the first time ever – and well loved MPs will sense this and gain confidence. There is a lot to be said for standing away from tribal party politics this time.

But there remains the concern that the “vote UKIP wake up with Ed” threat will intervene at the last moment, so maybe stalwart tories sick of Dave’s pseudo Blairism can fend off the traitor overtones of switching parties, but would vote for those stalwart local MPs who have the confidence to stand as an independent conservative/ labour  candidate, representing their voters, and reserving the right to use their judgement on any post election “alignments”. 

And they could also ask the electors to endorse that decision in an instant local referendum. Leading on to also offering their constituents ongoing regular local polling, to keep in sync with their mood – within reason.

Dare we treat the electorate like grown ups? Plenty of our perilously isolated political class will hate the idea, but we are we are now largely because those politicians have failed in so many ways to notice that world is a very different place to their familiar one of expense fiddles, establishment cover ups, and utterly futile foreign adventures that cost billions of pounds and hundreds of lives. 

How is my support?

The process of voting is very different from the days when it took a rider 3 days to go fro London to York. But the current UK parliamentary voting process is pretty much unchanged since that time. The absurdities in order:-

1. Once every five years
2. Can be won "outright" with way less than 50% support
3. Crass (corrupt, even) boundary fixing

Moreover, we now live in a world where if you ever do manage to reach a human in a support role in a company that is looking for any old excuse to pester you, you will be bombarded by email and text to rate the encounter.

Our politicians don't have to go the whole ludicrous CRM hog, just allow us to vote on key issues more than once every 5 years, please. And they do not need to use the usual costly ballot box process - which in its self is all too easily perverted anyway.
Meanwhile, this just in..

Hi, BT Business Complaints here. We'd like to ask 3 questions about your recent call with us. Text your reply at your normal text rate. Text STOP to opt out.

Note the replies are my expense!  
Three are equally keen to waste my time at no cost to themselves;

I could go on and find many more examples - we probably all could. At least the nagging to rate eBay and Amazon transactions results in a useful consumer satisfaction index and rating - most of these "internal surveys" do not see the light of day as they would be too awkward and embarrassing.
All this is just the latest manifestation of the "passing the buck" culture that has overtaken just about every aspect of our lives, and means that modern businesses are managed by a combination of process, statistics and automata, not human beings. It will all have to end in tears eventually, with a return to common sense.

Britain's next Prime Minister?

In a way I hope he is, because it will be universally accepted as such a sham that it must then force a review of the electoral system that was avoided after the AV debacle (although the libdem contrivance of AV is crap). The world is a different place and the representation of the people needs to reflect it.

If our mostly dimwit politicians knew that their smug, dissolute bubble-dwelling follies would be examined and voted on more than once every 5 years, a lot would change.

Exiting the EU in order to return power to the people in the form of a proper democracy - ie much like the form of government almost every other Commonwealth country enjoys, as a result of their very well managed graduation from the Empire - rather than continue to suffer the indignity of being lumped together with the remnants of a defeated Europe after the ambitions of Germany had worked it over in two world wars.

The present political trajectory of posturing and petulance with a theme of "screw-you-frogs/spics/krauts/micks" is not only unedifying, it is wholly unnecessary, and we can command the moral high ground and make the increasing oppressed inmates of Germany's EU empire jealous at the same time. Result.

At the risk of...

..being controversial, I have to question the way that business (and society) has been manoeuvred to adopt various practises that fly in the face of nature in order to pacify vociferous pressure groups and politicians who famously have almost no experience of running a business outside the media/political bubble that keeps them safely away from any trace of common sense.

The politically correct controllers of the various nanny states (rarely elected) have a wide range of impositions that all cost businesses money to implement, but one of the most perverse examples of the law of unintended consequences surrounds parenthood.

Of course employers are less likely to want to employ women of child bearing age in the wake of the flood of legislation and political social engineering that means guaranteed disruption and cost. So the answer is apparently to hand the same disruptive "rights" to fathers. Then these naive nanny-folk wonder why "proper" jobs (outside the shelter of public employment) are scarce in an economy awash with zero hour contracts, "minimum wage" half jobs, and endless internships.

Let's not forget that countless jobs in these nanny societies have been exported to lands where none of these complications and constraints apply. Also let's not dare get anywhere near the inconvenient conclusions of studies of the behaviour of latch key kids, and the overreactions of the guilt tripped absent parents.

What was so wrong with enabling (and expecting) one parent to remain mostly at home, minding the kids? What's more, it's not as if this planet needs any more inhabitants. The one guaranteed factor affecting all the downside issues facing the environment is overpopulation - especially in the over-consuming societies. When asked to suggest the one thing that would best reduce their environmental footprint for posting on a "thought wall" at an exhibition, the wag who wrote "eat the person standing next to you"was easily the most accurate.

The justification most often heard these days for "population enhancement" is that we need more kids to pay for the growing legions of the elderly! Maybe that's why the Daily Mail has an insatiable fascination for medical "advances" that assist the process as artificially as possible, and keep fertility going until after retirement?

Have we all lost the plot?