Disaster Solutions

Is it just me or is there a limit to how many times you can watch miners in Chile going up and down in a small cage. The first and the last ones up surely would do to satisfy our need for information on the subject, I'm just not sure that the 31 in between are that interesting.

I am of course joking, it’s a fantastic achievement to grab these brave guys from the jaws of death and I find myself riveted to the TV watching it unfold. For this is a real disaster with a real solution and as the 12th miner comes up, will hopefully have a glorious outcome. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the British economy, yes there is a real disaster, but one that is still looking for a real solution and as for the glorious outcome, don't ask. I was listening to that scary Mr. Darling talking the other day, now free from the burden of government it seems he has found something to say on the disaster he in part created. According to him people expect a good health service where they can get prompt, professional care. They expect good road and rail systems. "Well", he said and I quote, "someone has to pay for all of this and that is why we have taxes". My theory is that most people in the UK would have no objection to paying taxes to fund a good health service and all the other bits Darling thinks people expect. What taxpayers don't expect is to have their taxes used to keep MPs firmly on the gravy train. We have had the embarrassment of their expenses fiddling and here is another one, their bloody pensions. It seem that after just 15 years of hard work spent creatively filling in their expenses claims, they are entitled to a pension of 25,000 quid a year. Most taxpayers would be happy to earn that for a 40-hour working week. The reason for this it seems is because they have a very short working life as an MP. Did anyone tell Winston Churchill that, he was an MP for over 60 years; Gordon Brown was first elected in the mid 1980's. To be honest if they don't serve very long as an MP it’s because they are rubbish, so why do they get a big pension. No, I don't think the average UK taxpayer would want to continually support MPs financially, but Darling and his mates expect it.

As mentioned earlier, there doesn't seem to be a real solution to this disaster yet, but full marks to one minister who is clearly thinking out of the box. His plan to save the country from this impeding disaster is to have smaller desks for his staff, so he can get more people into less space and ultimately require fewer offices and thus save cash by not leasing unwanted office space. Truly brilliant, in a very British way. But perhaps more off the planet, than out of the box. But there is a lesson here for the ministers who are being forced to look at their expenditure.

Lets for example look at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as the name suggests its work is in foreign places and anyone working for the foreign office could expect to be posted somewhere foreign. So if you joined a department knowing you will be posted abroad, why should you then expect to have everything paid for you as though you were living in the UK? For example, private health, private schooling for the EndFragmentStartFragmentkids, free business class travel back to the UK twice a year to see the extended family. I could go on, they even get free housing, free electric, free everything, but the bottom line is if you joined a job that entails working abroad why should you expect anything more than your wages, you could always join the home office if you wanted the benefits of the UK health system and to be able to pop round to your mums for a chat whenever you wanted to. I am sure most of the public schools in the UK can only keep their heads above water thanks to the numbers of kids belonging to foreign office staff posted abroad and the odd smattering of Arab princes and Russian billionaires off spring. Do away with it, this would be a big saving and I am sure all government departments have similar solutions that they could come up with. It strikes me that if something has been done for a long time, it doesn't make it right, but sadly those on the receiving end do expect it. By the way the 14th miner is now up and breathing clean fresh air.EndFragment