We are all worried about something these days, but I have found one or two specifics strange enough to be worrying.
It seems that to some extent we are joined at the hip with America and what happens there affects what happens here. The credit crunch has born this theory out. Therefore when you read that Obama, who could one day have serious influence in the world’s politics, is able at a time of colossal financial down turn, to spend an estimated $6 million on what is nothing more than one half hour’s political advertising across the US, and is part of over $150 million+ spent on electioneering, one can wonder whether he has anything worth selling. If he had, surely it would sell itself, with only a little persuasion. The USA really worries me, they have already marched us into two wars without sufficient planning, and, as a nation, they certainly don’t really warm to the Brits..
We are constantly hearing how the government is making a total mess of budgeting, meeting its financial obligations in such areas as the Child Support Agency, legislating and then changing its mind, and failures in information technology, causing a wide ranging number of problems. We are now discovering that they have totally miscalculated the finances necessary to carry forward their theories on university training. Their solution is going to cause a wide amount of disruption over the next four years, irrespective of how it is handled. The grant system up to now, I am told by some students, is a shambles, with student debt rising. If they suddenly in midstream, start changing the rules, no one will know where they are. When on the one hand they are talking in trillions, and as the budget shortfall is alleged to be about 2 million, my own logic would suggest that no changes are made by cutbacks, but proposals be made for the future, so that individuals, can at least budget accurately, even if the government can’t.
I am going to write from hindsight, and I hope with logical foresight. We are forever hearing about saving energy, road accidents, and the cost to the environment of driving of every sort. What I find incredible is that now we can find money in trillions not even billions, in spite of the fact that this has occurred because of blatant criminality and the lack of respect for others. Looking to the future, before we are out of the so-called down turn, I believe we should be seriously examining a total rethink of transport. I suspect that there will be a number of civil servants who will be relatively unemployed, in the logistics and engineering fields, through the downturn, and these people should be marshalled in such a way that information can be exchanged from every part of the land, correlated, new theories evolved, fed back into the areas to find the weaknesses, and finally produce a plan that may take years to implement, in stages, but will get us back to where we were before we lost all our railways. We must not continue with this one-man one-car business, the mummy run, and vast lorries hammering roads that were never designed for them. It is since I have been retired that I have discovered the relief of travelling by public transport, but once you’ have actually found the flaming thing, the problem is either you want to go where there is no route, or the service is so poor you are forced back on to the road as a driver..