I’m sure our local morning paper is mostly a source of cold amusement or boredom to those of a more skeptical turn of mind, like me – those not easily fooled by shoddy propaganda. Its sudoku is also too easy, damn it! Why don’t I take another? Well I did switch to a national paper of a definite higher quality for a while (with harder sudoku), but it had the irritating habit of arriving after eight o’clock on weekdays and as late as one o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, if it arrived at all – inexcusable, of course. The one redeeming feature of our present publication is the local gossip.
The government here has a problem: it’s always made up of at least three political parties and presently we have a mixture of centre Christian Democrats, rightwing Christians Fundamentalists and leftwing Socialists – a motley crew.
Due to the inevitability of compromise they’ve all joined forces somewhere in the middle, producing a rather tasteless, thin political soup. The opposition comprises about three hundred parties (slight exaggeration) all constantly fighting each other and as such not really forming any effective opposition to the ruling coalition. As in many western nations, the more rightwing parties have gained in popularity the last few years, largely due to bungled immigration policies and their repercussions.
The upshot is that our leaders (well, let’s be kind) like to push important decisions as far into the future as possible and let the less important ones sink into the quagmire of seemingly endless official and public debate, where they lie dormant until some irritating journalist inevitably resurrects the underlying issue, hopefully at a much later date.
The largely disillusioned public doesn’t really care, anyway. Elections are a mere distraction and unlike many special days on the calendar one is not even given time off. Well it’s true, as I’ve said, that many do have an obsession with immigrants who can’t fit in and generally seem to lounge around, some descending into criminality, and there’s the persistent sore of different cultures and religions not getting on too well. Oh, and politicians who propose legislation that obviously steals from salaries don’t last long.
The latest important decision has been to introduce a kilometer levy on vehicles from 2018. Yes, you read it correctly – 2018. No more purchase and running taxes but a distance-travelled tax (sorry levy) instead, and (how could it be otherwise) there will be a reduction for vehicles producing less CO2 than their guzzling counterparts. The people I referred to in the first sentence think that, at an estimated guess based on experience, the sending out of nine million bills per month might stretch the capabilities of even a most industrious future administration to breaking point, and that the whole system will ultimately prove to be too expensive anyway, as so often has happened in the past.
Perhaps in 2018 we’re all driving clean vehicles with only their drivers producing CO2, so it would seem a safer bet to just heavily tax breathing and be done with it. Perhaps in 2018 little green men will have taken over the Earth and turned us all into slaves – without vehicles. It’s all possible.
After years of research and debate involving the unions, the government has decided to raise the pensionable age from 65 to 67 with effect from 2017, yes 2017. Most unions are steadfastly against the move, as they see it as their members having to contribute longer for less. Anyway, there’s plenty of time left to iron out the details. Of course, many of those higher up can even now go on as long as they are capable if they wish.
On a lighter note, according to the media in general the western economies are easing out of economic depression (or is it recession?), crawling it’s true and likely to slide backwards at any time, but momentarily making slow upward progress. All except Britain it seems, which is making Prime Minister Brown’s severe headache even worse. Well, he can perhaps still manage a thin smile thinking about the coming utopia of the New World Order (perhaps as late as 2018), in which he imagines his personal problems will be over. How naive can one be?
Oh, and the NASA has found water on the Moon, several bucketfuls I’m told. So the future seems a little brighter for those of us who will have to survive on our sister body while raping it of its natural resources or when the planet becomes inhabitable for humans or both – hopefully after 2018.
I’m sure there are those who, in their craziness, see man’s situation in 2018 clearly, but let’s all agree to do our best to ensure that their dreams don’t become our nightmare reality.
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Jan Freeman's Wanderings - Let Nature be your guide 