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.

Clamp down time

We have had worrying news. There is allegedly going to be a flood of cheap cocaine in our capital, This is of course absolutely appalling. Cocaine is supposed to be an exclusive pleasure for the elite and we do not want to see every Tom, Dick and Harry indulging. The supply of cut-price drugs is a menace to our social order. It must be firmly dealt with.

Naturally, we shall clamp down with the utmost discretion. The new police chief fully understands how upholding the law must be balanced against protecting people in important and influential positions. I shall pull every string in my hands to ensure that there are no inappropriate investigations. Fortunately, our local press understand that noses are for sniffing with, not poking into affairs that don't concern them. So long as we find a few specimens of the hoi polloi to make examples of, all will be well in the end.

Merry Xmas

Now all the elections are over, I am quite satisfied with the results. Unfortunately, one or two of my followers did not get the support they should have from the idiot public. But even so, enough of my people got in to ensure further progress in my career. Now I can control all the other Ministers' funding, I really have the power to be the new Peter Mandelson.

Even better, I have impressed upon my new frontman that I am an expert linguist, who should take care of all the foreign relations. This will enable me to continue my in-depth first hand studies of the high-end business travel industry. We used to have a tourism industry here, until my colleagues and I wisely refocused the economy on financial services, so I like to see what it could have happened if we had let things go on as they were.

It is the festive season, and there will be much hard partying to get out of the way before I have to worry about work. So I shall sign off and wish you all a Merry Christmas and taxably Prosperous New Year.

Another one for the suckers

Naturally, we in the government have complete faith in our policies. Sometimes we do wonder, however, if the hoi polloi get suspicious about our image. Ex-broadcasters always do well in elections here. Because we do not have much of a party system, voters just vote for names that they recognise. We already have one washed-up ex-newsreader who has been a loyal mainstay of our government. people grumble about him being a drunken buffoon, but he got elected and he is one of ours. We are now going to build on his success by parachuting in a bimbo from a breakfast radio show. She has not got a clue about anything political. That makes her a lovely blank slate to impose our views on. She has the right background to be one of us, and her bubbly broadcast persona will fool the idiot voters brilliantly. I cannot wait to see her elected by her fans, especially as she is a big fan of mine in turn.