I really don’t know why I bother with this. I’m not interested in selling anything and I doubt if anyone is being entertained by it. I suppose I am just hoping that there are at least some people out there who share my feelings and might be glad to know that they are not alone.

Dredging through the contents of my PC I chanced upon some stuff that I wrote ages ago and just left lying there. The fact that one item was written just after the Australian Democrats committed ritual suicide shows you how long ago. But with another predictably pointless election looming I thought I would post it all here, just as it is, with no polishing.

My thoughts can be said to boil down to complete dissatisfaction with both our legal and political systems, indissolubly interlocked – and with those members of the ‘media’ self-appointed to comment on them. Given the striking absence of both commonsense and honesty, clearly displayed by their words and behaviour I am baffled that so few people seem to feel as I do about them.

There are hordes of people ready to prance about the streets, squalling slogans and waving banners in support of or objection to the most trivial or mindless causes. Yet none of these seem to take any concerted action to bring about obviously necessary changes for the benefit of the vast majority of citizens.

My happiest days, in terms of politics, were in the first two years after my arrival in Australia. Australian politics and Australian politicians were absolutely meaningless to me. And as I firmly believe that anyone migrating to another country should have no say in the running of that country until they have contributed substantially to its fabric, I was content for it to stay that way.

In time, of course, the political complexion of the country came into focus – and it was not a pretty sight. And it is not improving; in fact, apart from a few interesting features provided by the welcome exit of Paul Keating, the rise and implosion of Pauline Hanson (now apparently rising again) and the ritual suicide of the Democrats, it is deteriorating at a rapidly increasing rate.

The body politic is so diseased that it is difficult to decide where treatment might best be attempted first. Burdened by a constitution that mandates eight governments to control the affairs of an electorate smaller than the population of any of the world’s major cities, and an electoral system of such Byzantine complexity that nobody but a mathematical genius could trace the effect of any individual’s vote, there is no way for the majority of Australian citizens to sensibly influence the conduct of affairs.

Since the vast array of redundant State and Federal politicians are unlikely to vote themselves out of a job, perhaps we should look first at improving the electoral system. At the moment, when considering the competing claims of the main contenders one can only say, as did Macbeth:

It would be nice if we could further echo Macbeth and say of any Prime Minister:

‘A poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.’

Unfortunately we seem doomed to continually hear more, even from those who have buggered off to New York – thus making clear their love of, and commitment to, Australia.

Anyway, here is what I wrote. I have been voting for 65 years and in that time nothing significant has changed, so I doubt that anything will in my remaining years.

(The Democrats are no more. Perhaps had they heeded this they might still be around. Much of what I said then applies to all alternative parties though. Just substitute the appropriate name.)

Just a Thought.

Hey Democrats, can I have something to vote for – please?

It’s a shame about the Democrats. It’s a shame about the Greens too, but in an election, particularly a Federal election, I want to vote for somebody who has a programme which addresses a whole range of major issues, not just a single one, however important I believe it to be.

For the Greens, to address only one issue is inherent in their makeup. The Democrats don’t have that excuse. And I always thought that ‘keeping the bastards honest’ was, apart from being a hopeless task, no substitute for a properly crafted set of striking alternatives in important matters. The Democrats have (or at least had) a real party. Why don’t they bloody well do something with it?

Let me spell this out, Democrats.

You are standing in front of an undefended goal and arguing, when you have only to kick the ball.

I see Mr Beazely as an oily front man for a bunch of doctrinaire dilettantes who will happily plunge me, and everyone else who has worked hard all their life for a modest return, into poverty and squalor, just so that they can piddle about making lunatic ‘social experiments’. They, of course, being sufficiently well heeled to avoid the consequences – as was, and is, the late, unlamented Mr Keating. Labour in power offers me the life expectations of a laboratory rat, watching pigs get fat.

I think John Howard is the nearest thing to an honest man in politics since Winston Churchill – but he’s the front man for a bunch of strutting egomaniacs who would have been more at home in Nazi Germany. Their only virtue is that their extreme greed does prevent them from bankrupting the country – although no doubt they and their nameless friends pocket most of the proceeds. Liberals in power offer me tantalising glimpses of what I’m not going to get, but they may accidentally drop a few crumbs my way. They’re a better option than Labour, but that’s hardly a compliment.

So IF you would stop whimpering feebly on the sidelines and get your act together, you Democrats would have no competition for my vote. But give me something to vote FOR, Democrats. I don’t care who your leader is, although I was a bit disappointed when Natasha appeared in ‘Thatcher Blue’ suits and began talking stridently about MY party, I want some action.

Tell me that you want to rewrite the companies act, so that the protection of limited liability also carries responsibilities and restrictions other than (but still including) protection of major shareholders rights. How about some really stinking penalties for running a business into the ground without warning? How about making the responsibility for avoiding that clear and unmistakable, so there can be no arguments about who is liable?

Tell me that you want to restrict executive remuneration to a fixed multiple – say 5 – of the lowest salary or wage paid in the organisation (the Commonwealth bank used make it 10, but they seem to have given up now – and why not, when nobody else followed suit?). Tell me that you will force companies to link management bonuses to number of jobs created in the organisation – and make them negative for jobs destroyed.

Tell me that you want to overhaul our lunatic legal system, so that it doesn’t take an army of lawyers and several courts to determine the law. (And ignorance of a law that even the bloody lawyers and judges can’t agree on prior to charges being brought, should be an absolute defence.) Tell me that cases will be decided only on the basis of a just outcome, in accordance with widely understood and agreed principles (those things which keep the majority of us law abiding now, like not assaulting people or taking their possessions or liberty against their will) rather than a performance like a third rate television contest). Tell me that people who use physical violence will be locked away in extreme discomfort for a significant time – which automatically doubles for each succeeding offence. Tell me that non-violent transgressors will be subject to inconvenience and irritation, and detention as a last resort, but never in the prisons, which should be solely for the violent. Tell me that fines for everyday misdemeanours will be tiny for first offences and double for each repeat, so that accidental infringements cause no burden and deliberate repetition gets what it deserves. And make them proportional to disposable income, so that the rich are hit as hard as the poor. And tell me that nobody will be handed the equivalent of a lottery win by the courts for any reason whatsoever.

Tell me that you want to provide health care without charge for every essential need – and get tough on malingerers and hypochondriacs, who wreck the system at the expense of the needy. Tell me that people with mental health problems will be treated and cared for, not turned onto the streets.

Tell me that you want to provide education without charge for all who are prepared to work at it – but not for those who already know so much about how to run a country, or a university, or the world, that they parade the streets, buggering up other people’s lives, in order to get their own way at everyone else’s expense.

Tell me that we are going to admit that the Aboriginal people were attacked and their lands taken by force – exactly as has happened to just about every race in the rest of the world, several times in most cases – and that despite the dreadful unfairness of it we are not going to fast rewind history, so lets just get down to living together in the real world now, and get some real resources into education and medical care, so that Aboriginal people have the same opportunities as any other Australian.

Tell me that you would process refugee claims within 3 months, and automatically grant refugee status to anyone whose claim processing is not completed by then. (Of course you’d have to stop the bloody lawyers from being able to disrupt the process with frivolous ‘appeals’.)

Tell it NOW, Democrats. Or at least do something constructive. Thousands of Australians are just looking for someone to offer a fair go. A lot of them thought Pauline had the answer, because she listened to what they cared about. Maybe if you listened for a bit you could do even better than she. And maybe you should note what internal bickering and public scandal did to her party’s initial successes.

For the last time, Labour and Liberal have NOTHING (that’s spelt ’ABSOLUTELY SOD-ALL) to offer most of us. So get off your backside and walk all over them. Or make way for someone who will.

Don’t make me have to choose between those useless drongos again!

Euthanasia

In October 1940, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, former Prime Minister of Great Britain, was found to have inoperable cancer and told that he had not long to live. He wrote:

‘…this is very helpful and encouraging, for it would be a terrible prospect if I had to wait indefinitely for the end, while going through such daily miseries as I am enduring now.’

How well that evokes the horror of facing just such a ‘terrible prospect’ and enduring such ‘daily miseries’ – miseries that can only increase with time.

I find it difficult to believe that any thinking person could fail to understand and sympathise with that sentiment. Surely a majority of Australians do not wish to condemn anyone to an indefinite term of increasing ‘daily miseries’ that can only end in death; yet our Parliament, supposedly the voice of the nation, continues to support the minority who have the dreadful inhumanity to oppose voluntary euthanasia. Mr Chamberlain died in November 1940. Less fortunate people have been sentenced by the rest of us to suffer for decades.

I know that I ought to pray that the opponents of voluntary euthanasia should find themselves confronted by exactly that ‘terrible prospect’ to which they are so glibly and callously eager to condemn others, but I cannot, for then I should be no better than they. I can only wish that in this, as in many other things, our system of government would reflect the beliefs of the compassionate many rather than those of the arrogant, self-centred few.

In this, as in many other matters, I see no difference between the major parties, each of which panders to the whims of a solidly entrenched, bigoted, self-centred minority. I have to believe that such people are in the minority; what hope else is there of a life without barbarism? Yet apparently their votes are sufficient to ensure that one or the other of those parties receives a mandate to ride roughshod over the rest of us. This can only happen because many other people are conned by the old shibboleth that a vote for other than the major parties is wasted, despite the evidence that those parties do nothing for them..

The supporting argument is that a parliament that is not ruled by some absolute majority cannot provide adequate government, as it will be unable to agree on many decisions. This hangs on the unsupported but often heard claim that even a bad decision is better than no decision. There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case – in fact the conduct of the 1914-18 war, the campaigns of the Somme and the Dardanelles in particular, well illustrates that bad decisions simply cause appalling misery for no gain.

In thinking of how my single vote can be made to be in any way effective, I have concluded that I must never, under any circumstances, vote for a major party. A vote for any other candidate is preferable. Only if a majority of Australians take this course can we hope to break up the entrenched ‘establishment’ – which is supported by Liberal and Labour alike – and gain representatives who will listen to and represent our views. It may not work, but it is better than unintentionally supporting the twisted, narrow and self-serving policies of the cliques who control the legislative machinery of the major parties. A parliament of individuals with the guts to think and act for themselves, rather than a collection of party lapdogs begging for scraps, would be a wonderful thing.

Unfortunately I cannot now recall the title of the excellent book that provoked the following outburst. And the use of mobile phones in vehicles had only very recently been banned.

Policing

?? book about members of the Victoria police force should be required reading in schools – at an early age. (Or any other). And it might be a good idea for young people to be aware of the difficult and distressing nature of much police work. If young offenders’ only awareness of the police is as a group of people bent on interfering with their lives and spoiling their enjoyment, they will be positively encouraged to break the law. That said, there is quite a lot else that could be done to improve relations, (and cooperation) between police and public.

• It is not the fault of the police if they are required to enforce unpopular laws. However, as citizens themselves, police officers have a duty to object to foolish or unworkable legislation, and should use their capability as a coherent pressure group to influence politicians against promoting or supporting such legislation.
  There is, of course, no guarantee that politicians will have either the sense or the responsibility to listen to them.

• The police should be discouraged from the practice of creatively interpreting laws – as, for example, when a driver was prosecuted for using a hands-free phone, despite the fact that there was at the time there was great promotion of the use of such phones as a safety measure. This prosecution fails several tests of fairness and commonsense:

1. It is stupid and unfair to prosecute someone for what is generally accepted and encouraged as responsible behaviour, without having first made any public protest at the widespread promotion of that behaviour.
2. It is a waste of public money, and of numerous people’s time, to use the courts for this purpose.
3. Since the police constantly complain that they are under resourced, the time that they waste on such pointless trivia could be better spent on serious matters.
4. By creating the impression that they are trying to ‘catch out’ law abiding and responsible members of the public, the police encourage lawlessness and create sympathy with lawbreakers. By definition, if they want to make it a contest between them and us, they are forcing onto the side of the lawless elements of society.

• The courts should not be allowed to inflict any penalty on any person for an offence that is so obscure or lacking in commonsense that a person would probably be unaware of its existence, and for which no one has been prosecuted within living memory.

• There should be a constitutional guarantee that no law, however worded or interpreted, shall contradict the fundamental tenets of fairness and justice.

• All members of the police force should be on the lookout for aggression or bullying tactics toward the public by any officer, and this should be stamped out severely. Such tactics simply reinforce antisocial tendencies, creating more harm for the public and more demands on police resources.

Public Transport

Some years ago I sold my car. Now that our children have left home, my wife and I decided that surely we needed only one small car between us, so I have never replaced mine. We were living in Queensland then and found public transport in and out of Brisbane excellent – provided that we travelled within a narrowly defined commuter period. Beyond that, the service deteriorated rapidly and long, chilly waits were its most memorable feature. For a period prior to that time, although we both had cars, I used to travel from Magill into Adelaide CBD by bus and experienced the same problem. I only had to work and hour or so past the general leaving time and I was face with a long wait for an alternative service and then a long walk from its nearest stop to our home.

It seems to me that public transport can only be really attractive if it is usually available to take you reasonably close to wherever you need or want to go, and willing to transport whatever you need to take with you. The moment you are obliged to run a car in order to reach one destination, transport your pet, or carry heavy or bulky objects, all of your other trips in it are made at marginal cost, since you have to pay the same registration and insurance regardless of overall distance travelled and number of passengers carried. And that is always cheaper than bus and train fares, unless you have an incredibly thirsty car or park in the city centre.

The bus might be an attractive option if you want to go out for a drink or just don’t want to drive home tired after a visit to the theatre. But that is when you discover that the services nearest your home are discontinued after 6 pm and the closest alternative runs only at two-hour intervals and passes no nearer than half a kilometre from your street. And when it does arrive it may well be carrying people who make the prospect of a 10-kilometre walk home in the rain look like an attractive alternative.

And you don’t have to be enjoying the dolce vita in order to suffer. After a recent visit to my doctor’s surgery I had to wait for three quarters of an hour by a main road, in a freezing wind, with nowhere to sit, for my first bus. When I reached the interchange I found that the service nearest my home was no longer running, but after a half-hour wait, standing in the same freezing wind, I was able to get a bus to within three streets of my own.

Actually with the new, improved, services, that is the closest any bus comes now. Luckily I am neither ill nor handicapped and I frequently use a bicycle. But proximity to a bus route was a definite consideration when we bought this house, less than two years ago, so I am unlikely to harbour any friendly sentiments toward Trans Adelaide.

We could easily introduce a system of small, economical feeder buses operating off the main routes. In Sri Lanka, some years ago, we were impressed by the tremendous number of small, 35 seater, buses operating everywhere. When we commented on this we were told that businesses that operated a public bus service in additional to their other trading received government tax concessions on all of their profits. With this incentive, just about every business ran a bus service as well. Those buses were frequent and they were full; because people could take their goods and livestock with them and knew that there would be a bus home at any reasonable time afterward. But we will never see enterprise encouraged in that way here; Australian governments of all persuasions are obsessed with introducing ever-increasing masses of restrictive legislation aimed at forcing all business into the hands of a few, favoured, large players and keeping it there. And we’d be pretty stupid not to understand why.

You get what you pay for, don’t you?

Should we pay our politicians much more? Surely we would like the country managed at least as well as any good company.

Does money buy good management? In the press, statements about the need to pay unimaginable sums to attract the right leaders of industry are interspersed with reports of the criminal trials of some and the breathtaking severance payments handed out to get rid of others. This suggests that a shotgun approach is in use. The theory seems to be that you can only get the best people by paying out a fortune but you can’t tell which they are, so you take on the most rapacious of the applicants and hope that they will turn out to be of some benefit to you.

I don’t know whether rapacity is itself a valuable quality in anyone charged with the direction of a great organisation. It seems to me more likely that the ability of large corporations to support grossly inflated remuneration at the top causes the rapacious to claw their way to the head of them; we will never know how much more successful those organisations might have been under the people who were elbowed out of the way.

That’s a bit of a problem isn’t it? Ol’ Sol Trujillo is pulling down the best part of nine million dollars a year from Telstra, even though, according to all reports, his past history does not demonstrate any great competence in successfully running a telecommunications business. Marcus Clarke wasn’t kept short of a shilling, yet he managed to bankrupt not only the State Bank of South Australia but pretty much the State also. Judging from what has been written about his past record he must have been the only person who put his hand up for the vacancy. Giving the job to the first person in the CES queue could hardly have created a worse outcome. Then we have Bond, Skase, Williams, and numerous other examples of the quality that a high income attracts.

If paying excessive amounts is the only way to obtain excellent management we should not be surprised at the mediocrity of the majority of our present politicians; rather we should stand amazed at the quality of the remainder. And surprisingly few appear to be actively dishonest, although that could be due more to lack of opportunity than strength of character.

So should we raise the Prime Minister’s salary to, say, a nice round ten million dollars, hoping that this would attract the sort of person who is capable of managing a large organisation competently? There would have to be a proportionate increase for other ministers, MPs and senators, of course. Would we then see in them a corresponding increase in the sort of behaviour that we have come to associate with the top end of the corporate sector? Or would we get people who were committed to doing useful work instead of constantly having pointless slanging matches with each other?

I don’t know the answers, but I’d like to see the experiment tried. It could be financed by a special tax on high-income recipients, to be deducted from the gross before any other deductions.

This again is very dated, though the sentiments are not. More recently I was astounded at the furore over Christine Holgate’s award of watches as a bonus to a couple of people who had negotiated a hugely profitable business deal for the Post Ofice. It seemed that the problem was mainly that these were CARTIER watches – always spoken of in a breathy hiss, as though they were something obscene. The actual cost was, adjusted for inflation over the years, rather less than I, when a very minor manager, received for some work that provided a minor competitive advantage for my employer. I wonder if poor Christine had simply given them sacks of cash nothing at all would have happened. Interestingly the lady was snapped up pretty quickly by someone who had no doubt of her capability to get the best out of people.

Fair’s fair – or is it?

Just suppose that someone wanted to build a just and equitable society. Nobody has done it in recent times except possibly in some remote parts of the South American jungles that we are unaware of. And I’m talking of a society that is fair to everyone, not confined to a single group or nation. Adolf Hitler promised it to the Germans, together with a motorcar for everyone, but it didn’t extend to the places that he conquered and he got most of the Germans killed anyway. (The Volkswagen lasted longest but even that is a fake now.) The Founding Fathers of the USA tried but they didn’t consider blacks and poor whites to be part of ‘The People’ and what small part of the government eventually became ‘of, by and for’ them is being rapidly eroded. And they aren’t at all happy when foreigners freely elect governments that they don’t like – well as freely as they can with electoral processes that are as flawed as those in the USA.

So where do we start? With Adam Smith, or Jesus Christ; Karl Marx or Mohammed?

Let’s start with old Karl, who enjoyed a far more comfortable existence than did the unfortunate subjects of his social experiments in the wonderful world of communism. ‘From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs.’ Let’s ignore the gender implications, which may have been unintentional, and take the second proposition first. Who decides these needs? Did Alan Bond need money to buy artworks and yachts more than the pensioners whose funds he squandered need money for food? No doubt he thought so. And if he created nothing much of value in return, perhaps he lacked the ability to do so. Wow! That’s both criteria met. He really was being a good communist.

What about Adam, then? His only problem seems to have been blindness to the degree to which rapaciousness and plain crookedness distort the workings of the ‘free’ market. His reasoning was perfectly sound but his conclusions resembled a house of cards built in a strong gale.

And Jesus? No doubt he meant well but his words on the subject of camels and needles don’t seem to carry much weight in the Vatican and nor does that bit about selling all that thou hast and giving to the poor. And as for all the effort his dad put into chipping away at those tablets of stone, did the Crusaders ever even read that bit about ‘Thou shalt not kill’? It’s pretty evident that Geo. W Bush Esq. hasn’t.

O.K. Mohammed perhaps. The idea of Muslims not going in for usury seems to be slipping a little and a few of them are skipping the prohibition on booze but mostly they seem to be logically consistent. It’s O.K. to kill people who don’t share your religious beliefs – and they do, whether Shia or Sunni. They don’t have rock bands and bingo sessions in their mosques. Their legal system is somewhat harsh by our standards but ours is quite puerile compared to theirs. Towards serious offenders that is. If you commit some minor misdemeanor under our system or are a woman under theirs you can expect little justice or mercy.

None of the above seem to cater for a wide spectrum of beliefs and yearnings. I haven’t mentioned the Jews. They just seem to want to work and study hard and not hurt anyone but it’s difficult to join if your mum isn’t Jewish. I’m looking for a system to cater for greater numbers and total diversity.

I think I should declare an interest. I am an individual. So what I am going to suggest will not appeal to that section of humanity that wishes to force people to join, conform, obey and generally subjugate their own wishes to those of others. I am willing to surrender some of my interests in the interest of the greater community but I want it to be as few as possible and I want to ask as little as possible from others. So why should I surrender anything?

For protection. If everyone is free to do as they wish then anyone who wishes can rob, assault, torture, bully, enslave or even kill me. I would prefer that they don’t do that.

For diversity. If we all grow our own food, make our own shoes, build our own houses and perform our own brain surgery we will not have time to develop art, architecture, music, drama, education, philosophy, sport, or any other of the non-productive trivia and useful skills that we value so much.

So I am in favour of both government and infrastructure. And I am prepared to spend more time than I wish doing something that I don’t particularly like doing but can do reasonably well, so that other people can devote their efforts to whatever they do well. That’s how division of labour works.

Before reforming the world, perhaps I should look at things at home.

Here in Australia we frequently hear whining about how dreadful it is to want to cut down ‘tall poppies’. Well I come from a farming background so I know that tall poppies are showy and useless, consuming resources intended for more beneficial crops and capable of causing misery for many people. The parallel with Alan Bond and Christopher Skase seems evident to me. Let’s not confuse notoriety with worth. I am extremely anti fatcat. Nobody ‘earns’ at ten or a hundred times the rate of anyone else who works reasonably hard for 40 hours a week. Such disproportionate incomes owe more to scheming and manipulation than to socially useful activity.

So much for unfairness in the workplace. How about our ludicrously misnamed ‘Justice System’. How accurately George Orwell anticipated the use of such names, in his classic ‘1984’. Let’s start with fines – ignoring for the moment the question of whether guilt and innocence are fairly determined. Let us say that a person earning $500 a week is fined $50. That is a terrifying sum. After paying for food and rent, fares to work and other essentials, there is practically nothing left to start with. To inflict the same degree of punishment on Kerry Packer or Rupert Murdoch you would have to fine them billions of dollars, and even then they would have the contacts and the credit to avoid actual hardship. Even to a person on $50,000 a year it would be no more than an inconvenience. Yet fines are not set to cause the same degree of pain and despair to the affluent as to the poor. No justice there.

But of course, Kerry and Rupert would not be found guilty. Nor would they have to waste their time and suffer the ignominy of a court appearance. If a couple of phone calls to the right people were not enough to get the matter dropped, enough legal firepower could be brought to bear to stop almost any prosecution in its tracks. The law holds little terror for those with well-lined pockets – they even have a good chance of bringing counter charges and making a profit thereby.

How about taxes? Taking even 80% from someone who still has enough to live like the proverbial pig in shit is far less onerous than taking 25% from someone who can barely make ends meet. And the pig can hire accountants and take part in schemes to virtually avoid tax altogether. And what is it all for? Most of the services that our taxes pay for are principally for the benefit of the rich, or at least the tolerably well off. Income tax is a farce that needs to be abolished. The fair way would be to tax money when it’s spent. That way, people who can afford little would pay little tax. Nor would those who saved – until they spent it.

The Australian Democrats once proposed to simply tax money movements – a scheme also proposed by Pauline Hanson during her brief but horrific moment of fame. It is perfectly practicable; fids and bads seemed to work efortlessly enough. The risk of creating a cash economy would be easily avoided, by making cash deals over, say $5000, illegal and reissuing the currency, in a different format, every five years – with a maximum exchangeable amount of $5000. Banknotes wear out and have to be replaced anyway and any extra printing and distribution cost would be more than balanced by doing away with the ATO. It wouldn’t take many people to ensure that the banks were complying – and the threat to take away their licences if they fiddled should be enough to keep them in line. Opulent offices and excessive salaries for tax commissioners would no longer be needed and thousands of tax accountants could be redeployed on constructive tasks. Tax dodging-whether evasion or avoidance – would simply cease, and criminals would find money laundering difficult; even if they succeeded they would at least pay tax.

Of course taxes are used as a political lever. A country that apparently needs eight governments – six State, one Territory, and the Federal – to control a population slightly smaller than that of one of the world’s major cities offers plenty of scope for political tomfoolery. The wretched GST, which imposes a considerable load of useless work and worry, particularly on small businesses, seems to have been created mainly as a political tool. Unfortunately it is probably too much to hope that we could simply tax the money flowing through the financial institutions and give the job of running the whole country to Brisbane City Council. We would at least get a decent ‘bus service that way.

I note that the almost universal use of credit and debit cards that has occurred since that was written makes such control ineffective. Unfortunately it may be difficult to harness the brains that created this, admittedly useful and convenient system, to create suitable controls against its misuse.

The Third Alternative

The present limited options of Capitalist and Socialist ideological politics, are each based on the identical concept of ‘More for Us at the expense of Them’.

I propose instead that both legislation and behaviour should be governed by the concepts of fairness and equality. But because those concepts are so widely misused and abused, I have defined the following tenets, with which all behaviour and laws should comply.

• No one shall deprive any citizen of their liberty or possessions except by their informed consent to the performance of a lawful and fair transaction, or by due process of law, as punishment for an infringement.
• No person shall subject another to physical assault. (But the reasonable and restrained correction of children’s behaviour by moderate physical punishment shall NOT constitute assault.)
• No law shall contradict the concept of fairness. The outcome of every legal action shall be subject to the test ‘is this a fair outcome’ and shall fail if it is not adjudged to be so. The final, optional, course of appeal shall be to a jury of 12 citizens, none of whom shall be members of the police of the legal professions. The decision of a two-thirds majority of this jury shall be final, and shall determine between Confirmation, Acquittal, or Retrial.
• No one shall purchase a legal advantage.
• Ownership and disposition of wealth shall be kept within reasonable bounds, so that it does not excessively disadvantage other citizens.

I do not expect to see any significant progress toward these ideals during my remaining life expectation. My experience of Facebook and Twitter – both of which I have now severed all contact with – revealed such a startling proportion of people lacking any form of tolerance or understanding of others that it seems that greed, selfishness and stupidity are the defining characteristic of the vast majority of the human race.

And yet perhaps the persistence of the socially responsible few will still prevail.