Quote of the day 27th November 2014
“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.”
( H.G. Wells, The Time Machine )
( H.G. Wells, The Time Machine )
Comments
Do you know it dawned on me, i have complained often enough that the parties are all the same, and of course you have often disagreed Chris. But then it dawned.
They all go in the direction the people allow them to lead, and that is strange.
Thoughout history The socialist side have always wanted to go flat out in the wrong direction, always have really, then the "conservative" side put on the brakes and slow the train down, sometimes they have even stopped it in the very short term, but it always starts again.
No one ever changes tracks, no one ever hits reverse.
Think about debt, think about tax policy, think about spending.
Think about EU membership, we were conned on board a trade train heading for a full on political union. Some governments have increased the speed, others have applied the brake and slowed it down. but the core point is that the train is headed that way. Now we may be riding it as we were mis sold our ticket, but we have to make a desision, and we have to do it now. we can change trains and go to our prefered destination (a trading partnership) and that is fine, or we could answer honestly do you want to move towards politcical union (ie, its this ticket really, do you still want it) If the answer is yes then thats fine, but we cant go on like this.
we need to stop the train and ask the travellers "are we on the right train here" be that with debt, spending or the EU. The current governement has not reduced debt, all they have done is put on the brakes a little tiny bit, so now we are heading for ablivion at 75 miles an hour rather than 110.
With the EU its not the trade deal ticket holders that are leving the Train, its the train leaving them, they just had to change trains.
That is why i like the HG Wells link, time goes in one direction and one direction only, and his time machine can speed it up or slow it down, but it cant change things. Many people live in that world, but, we can actually change our future if we do it in time. Leave it too late and HG Wells cant help us
We can act now to change the future (and changing the future is not slowing down the train) its getting off the train and getting on another. We cant take the UKIP ideal of going back to 1950, but we can change our final destination. its time to stop the train, give the people an honest train time table and ask, "which train shall we board."
And however imperfect democracy is, the reason Churchill was right to call it "the worst system there is, except for all the others" is that you can do it without a (literal) bloodbath (though there might be an electoral one).