Ook ook

With all due reference to Terry Pratchett for the title.

Or to put it another way pay peanuts and get monkeys.

Now I would ask you to bear with me and read this to the end
- because I suspect on face value you aren't gonna like it.

This is about our members of parliament.

The mother of parliaments etc etc

Now - are you proud of them? Ah no I thought not.

So we have 650 or so of the people who CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
particularly in this era of no one having control of the commons etc etc

So - do we have the best possible minds there - well in some senses we do.

We have a number of M.P.s (and P.M.s) who are of independent means - and fair play
to them - I have no problem with them working in public life - but - does that mean we
have a HOUSE full of the best minds - of course not.

I don't know where you are but it seems to me that 65K plus expenses in London in 2010
is NOT going to get you the best - good yes - the best - NO!!!

And for fucks sake we need the best - there are only 600+ of them - given that the GDP of the UK
is 1.whatever Trillion pounds what we pay them is of zero significance to the country in reality.

So - here is the bit you are not going to like.

I propose that from AFTER the next election we pay all M.P.s 10 times average salary.

So at the moment that would be around 220K as far as I can tell.

Yes that's a lot of money - but -
1) It would get the BEST minds going for it because there would be no finanacial reason for almost anyone to to work elsewhere.

2) It would give them a cracking incentive to get the average salary up.

So - please - think for a minute before you rip my head off.

Is it SUCH a stupid idea?

Oy vey

Now I must declare an interest here
I am Jewish, although by no means a committed Zionist

Please read on.

Oh my dear deity what a fuck up - and just to confuse, in international waters
(apparently allowed if you are running a legitimate blockade).

Right - Israel needs to try to stop the rockets - so they need to blockade Gaza -
but why oh why oh why did they shut the border - take a look - all ok - let it through.

What's so hard about that?

Sometimes I do wonder if they have the brains they were born with.
And I have met one or two Israeli politicians and they can be fearsomely bright.

Now Turkey is threatening to send it's Navy with the next convoy

My crystal ball says it's gonna end in tears.

What's 2 plus 2

Now this is a pet hate of mine - the media's view of (in this case) maths but it also at some level applies to science.

I was listening to 'You and yours' on Radio 4 today and they had a piece about the sub-prime problem and a study that had (apparently) shown that those who are mathematically challenged were more likely to default on their mortgage.

Now I have no problem with the idea that some people are bad at maths - hey I'm crap at languages - but WHAT REALLY FUCKS ME OFF is the way that most of the media, but in particular the BBC, find it funny if you can't add 2 and 2 and 'really weird' if you can.

At lease ten minutes of the program including teasing trailers was around how difficult it might be to calculate 20% of 2M dollars - do what?

Ok - if you can't do it I am sorry for you but it's not something to be proud of - conversely don't 'dis' people who can do it.

Hip Hop

So we are a week or so in and already the MFs are house trained by the civil service.

I'm sure there are other examples but this one came past me today.

HIPS.

Yes I know - on the scale of things not hugely important, but I think it may show an early trend.

The ONLY people who thought HIPS were a good idea were New Labour.

The industry didn't - the Cons didn't, and correct me if I'm wrong but neither did the LDems.

In the manifesto it said - cancel HIPS - hooray (sorry).

And as it turns out they don't need legislation to suspend HIPS - could be done by the Minister.
Legislation could be done later to permanently remove them.

But instead they announce consultation

ConsulFuckingTation on what - a bad idea that nobody important ever wanted.

Just get rid of them - but 'no Minister, that would be rash/brave/precipitous/stupid' - lets pay a few people to tell us what we already know'.

Less than 2 weeks - house trained.

Makes you want to cry.

I never thought I'd say these words

I admire the Russians.

There you go - said it.

We are talking pirates here - Somalian Pirates - evil fuckers who are really really only in it to win it.

So what do we do - we send Da Royal Navee - and with orders to say boo very loudly but not to do anything else.

Sigh - it's the Human Rights you see - the pirates have Human Rights under
article whatsit of the European Convention of Giving in to Everything

DO THEY FUCKING BOLLOCKS

ahem - sorry - got carried away.

The Ruskies on the other hand shoot a couple of them - sink their boat - and take the survivors for trial in Russia

Hmnnn .

So far so good?

Well here we go - the great ConLib government is here. Rejoice rejoice as someone once said. And - both parties have been able to ditch ahem 'extremist policies' - perhaps not a bad thing. And we have all signed up to the cuts.

Problem is when you - the public - get taken roughly from behind you tend to blame the perp - as they both know.

So undoubtably the plan is - do it fast in the honeymoon period and blame the other lot.

And there is the rub (it seems to me).

The are gonna blame Gordon and his sock puppet AlistairD with a sprinkling of Tony B Liar.

But in three months there's going be David Balls or whatever his name
is leading the New New Labour Party - which of course has nothing to
do with what went before.

Beware of Teflon Socialists Dave.