Blame Democracy

The march towards a lean, mean state with a lean, mean leader goes on. My latest scheme is to get the public to take the blame for my next round of service cuts and tax hikes. My assistants and I have gathered up all the plans along with a couple of plausible red herrings for a “Public Consultation”. We are going to let them think they chose the package by popular demand. Of course, we shall carefully manage what they demand.

There has been one little problem, however. It turns out that some of the public can actually understand economics all by themselves, without any civil servants to explain it to them. Who would have believed it? As a result, I keep getting sensible-sounding suggestions. I suppose I shall have to dilute my plans with a few token examples. That should make the Consultation look more real and even democratic.

Exciting Times

Well, well, well. What an exciting few weeks!

I had to exercise all my skills when one of my ministers got himself into trouble. He is a lovely chap, always willing to find his friends a great deal on a used car with incredibly low mileage. He is also one to pull a few strings for his friends. That got him in trouble when some uppity judicial type said he shouldn't have put in a good word for his mate. I had to talk him into quitting to keep a lid on things in the end. I think I have promised him enough to keep his mouth shut. There will be trouble if he doesn't.

I have got rid of the leaker at last. He tried the old stunt of getting re-elected to his own seat. Instead the voters chose a man of the world, who understands how things are done. The new chap talks a bit lefty; progressive taxation and that kind of nonsense. However we can trust him to do the right thing when it comes to the crunch. Progress indeed.

Last week I had a smashing win-win situation. The champagne socialist tried calling a no-confidence vote on Grandpa Munster, my front man. Of course he had a fat chance of winning it. Instead Grandpa Munster got such a huge vote of confidence that he will be able to stay until I am ready to get rid of him. Even if the vote had gone wrong somehow, it would just have given me an opportunity to step into the breach myself. Great stuff.

I have got my tax consultation out now. One way or another I am going to screw the hoi-polloi. Letting them think they can choose how means I can tell them it is all their own fault when they whinge.

Anyway I have to keep up with my in-depth studies of luxury tourism, so I have not got time to be blogging all day. I am off to the Far East for a junket.

Teamwork! That's the thing

A bit of teamwork and string-pulling can achieve wonderful results. We are going to have a by-election. That gives us a chance to get rid of that pest. The one who has been leaking all sorts of stuff he had a duty to his government to keep quiet about. The fool is fighting for re-election to his own seat. We shall see about that.

There is a very promising candidate, used to dealing with low-lives and sorting their troubles out, but one of us at heart. He can charm the hoi-polloi with his track record. He knows what they are really like, however. So he will not be doing that bleeding-heart stuff. Dealing with immigrants has put him off them a bit, but once we get him in, I know he will come to understand our growth plans for the population and economy.

One of my people wanted to stand too. This is where my shrewd teamwork and string-pulling came into play. By promising him he can be one of my star candidates next time, I have stopped him splitting the vote. He has even been so helpful as to endorse our new man. That should make it plain where they are both coming from.

The lovely thing is that the opposition are in complete disarray. Instead of teamwork, the idiots are fighting among themselves like ferrets in a sack. The leaker has upset all his fellow lefties with his bad manners. Now they are after payback and are all queueing for his seat. Even the champagne socialist who already has a seat wants the leaker's instead, just to spite him. The opposition vote is going to split several ways, just like it always does, and our new man will easily come through the middle. I love it.

One more on my side will help keep the lefties even further down in their place. Politics is such a satisfying career, when you are as good as I am.

I had a busy year

Oh, dear! I have been so busy lately, I have forgotten to blog. Now the riff-raff are blogging too, I had better start plugging myself again.

Last year was very exciting. It looked as though I could dump Grandpa Munster, my front man, back in the spring. His team had made a multi-million pound blunder on a big project, but he managed to make the hired help carry the can in the end. Anyway, I hold the purse strings, so I have the real power.

I managed to do some more first-hand research on luxury tourism. We are trying to drum up trade in the Far East. The Economic Development Minister is a friend of mine, so I blagged a place on his junket. I have had enough of India now, so when I won another holiday there, I gave it away as a publicity stunt.

I had a bit of a shock at the end of the year. Getting out of my box and doing blue-sky thinking did not really work for me. But I thought I could rely on the old standby of putting up duties on alcohol and tobacco. They voted against it though. Every cloud has a silver lining, however. Now I can make all the cuts I like and blame the others for not letting me have the money.

We are going to get rid of £50 million worth to begin with. Of course, by the time I have bought everyone off with special funding for their pet projects and causes it will be more like £ 15 million. But it is a start. And then the lean, mean state will need a lean, mean leader. Who else but myself of course.

Restoring Democracy

When the Ancient Greeks invented democracy they meant government by the important people for the important people. Something has been lost in the translation down the years and now every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks that he has the right to interfere in politics.

At present, we are paying political newcomers a lot more than they are worth to us. This makes it a realistic career option for professional and managerial types who know far too much and will not fall into line when we tell them. However, being a man of wisdom and vision, I have come up with an answer.

I propose that we cut the salary right down for the new boys to fund much deserved increases for us ministers. After all, we are the ones who have to struggle through gruelling fact-finding visits and banquets for visiting dignitaries, as well as signing off our civil servants' reports and cultivating essential business relationships in restaurants and golf clubs.

Not only would it mean more for us though. The really clever bit is that it would price out all the family men and career women. We would move back to the golden age when apart from the odd token housewife or pensioner, only businessmen who had made their pile and scions of wealthy families like myself could afford to become politicians.

Just think how much better we could run things then. The Athenian ideal would return for us.

We don't take bribes!

I am absolutely shocked that members of the House of Lords of all places have been taking bribes to fix things for businesses. Where I come from, one never hears of politicians taking backhanders. There is no need whatsoever for this sort of thing.

Obviously a man of the world like myself would not cling to any romantic nonsense about virtue being its own reward. It is just that a reputation for integrity can be made to pay in the long run. By not getting caught taking bungs, our politicians can get top dollar for nice little sinecures as non-executive directors and quango chairmen. It is mainly because they look good on the letterheads. Our politicians are notorious for not having much practical sense about money.

Even so, if they keep their noses clean, and are careful about properly balancing the needs of big business against their duties to their electors rich pickings await. For instance I am years away from retirement from politics, but I am already making sure that our workers cannot kick a failed employer when he is down, the way that they do everywhere else. Redundancy pay indeed – if they had worked harder for their bosses they would still have jobs. I am certainly aiming to have some good jobs to go to when I leave office.

Vacuum Economics

In the Twentieth Century they had a theory about Hydraulic Modelling of economics. Academic economists believed that money flowed through an economy like water through plumbing, So they could represent trade with physical pipework.

In the new Millennium we experts in economics have moved forward. At least we have where I live. The pipework model only theoretically represented the economy. We then realised that we could cut the physical model out altogether, and model from pure theory. This brilliant insight set us free to plan our economy according to axioms grounded in pure faith.

We are now managing our economy by our original and unique Vacuum Theory of economics. Everybody knows that nature abhors a vacuum. So it is obvious and does not need proving, that if you drain money out of an economy more must be automatically sucked in to replace it. Our other axiom is that growth is sustainable and Malthus's two hundred year old twaddle about exhausting resources is thinking that has long passed its use-by date. So it is perfectly possible to suck in more than you are draining out.

We have been busily implementing this by creating as many drains on the local economy as we possibly can. We have not only encouraged overseas businesses to take over our commerce, but also abolished all tax on the profits they repatriate, so maximising the loss to our local economy. Our piece de resistance will be the new world class incinerator. We are lavishing perhaps four or five times the cost of modern alternatives on the plant itself. We will also be bringing in civil engineers for massive surrounding works to make the location suitable, costing at least as much again. All told we can hope to dump almost 300 million pounds from the economy. By our theory, the inrush of replacement money and the inevitable growth will give us back half a billion.

Unfortunately, my advisers have not yet explained to me exactly how the money will suck back into our economy. However, as an act of faith, already we have been busily implementing our vacuum economics, and I am sure that it will soon become clear just how well they work in practice.