Is this thing on?

Guess who said this:

“This is not about trying to save money. This is about trying to have a bigger, better society”

Say hello to the ill-considered world of one Mr David Cameron, who’s got what he believes is a great idea but absolutely no idea how to sell it. The ‘Big Society’ is a horrible, horrible name for a project that seeks to make some of the buttons and levers of the State accessible to the outer party members or something. That’s got to be a good thing, right? So why is he having such difficulty winning support for the idea?

Consider: At any point normal members of the public already have the ability to get together to build or start a school already. They just raise the money and do it, and voila. There’s currently nothing stopping them. The ‘catch’ is that if people want to send their little darlings to this new school they’d have to pay themselves. The world of free money is the exclusive preserve of the State schools.

So what is Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ trying to achieve?

Imagine, instead, starting your own school AND getting the Government to give it the Free Money that’ll let you send your darling children to it.

No risk. No responsibility. Monkey see, monkey take.

Makes you wonder if this really will save any money. If anything it sort of sounds a bit… expensive, doesn’t it?

“This is not about trying to save money”

Ah. Right. Of course.

I’m just confused because people are attacking it (yes, really, attacking it) because it might deliver the same services for less money, which of course would be an abomination and an unspeakable horror. Those ghastly Tories! IT MIGHT COST LESS! AGHH! We’re dooooooomed!

But, no, calm your boots everyone. It’ll cost us more, don’t you worry. But, if it’s not to save money, what’s the point again?

“This is about trying to have a bigger, better society”

Oh. That… that sucks. Really?  That’s it?

The thing about giving individuals and groups access to public money to do stuff like this is that they’re not accountable. No-one’s really going to be accountable. It gives people access to public money without having to go through the democratic process and that democratic process is supposed to protect tax payers from the monkeys that would ‘fill the world with bananas’.

The democratic process will be sidestepped but the bureaucratic process, the bit where someone, somewhere, says ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ is going to be enlarged and made more complicated. Someone, somewhere, will have to take responsibility for that decision to release the funding. Who’s that going to be? What’s their salary going to be? How many of them will there be? What sort of supporting infrastructure – call centres, form processing etc – is going to be required?

This is still taxpayer’s money we’re talking about here. You can’t simply invite this ‘bigger, better’ society to spend whatever it wants from the taxpayer’s purse and then have the politicians send the ‘bigger, better’ bill… or… is that what’s going on? Is this some sort of political game to (ironically for a Coalition obsessed with localism) render local councillors even more pointless than they already are?

I don’t know about you but I’m even more confused than I was.

Going through Mandelson’s memoirs the BBC highlights that he claims Labour achieved 80% of its aims. I could agree with that, but only because it gives me an excuse to play funny buggers with the 80/20 ‘rule’ – that 20% of the effort will get 80% of the work done, and the last 20% of work will require 80% of the effort.

In other words, if Labour’s achieved 80% of its goals in 13 years, then to get that last stubborn 20% would take another 52 years – assuming the Pareto Principle holds true.

65 years of Labour. Yikes.

Of course, this assumes that all problems are a simple question of time and money and that there are never any new problems created by devoting said time and money, and that there’s never any unintended consequences arising from solving said problems.

Nope, I think even with another 100 years Labour wouldn’t get that last 20%. There’s no ‘with just a bit more time it would have all been perfect’ here. They had a super majority, unbelievable public support until the Iraq War, a boom and seemingly infinite money coming from tax revenues. If something went wrong, who can they really blame?

Apart from being able to name all the James Bond movies, one party piece reserved for very special occasions is doing Evil Third Person Creep. This is where you invert the lyrics of the Radiohead song, “Creep.” You probably worked that out already. Fair enough, moving on.

The same message said by the object of the “creep’s” affection takes on a whole new rather sinister complexion, and as a result I’ve been doing this on a Guitar or Ukelele for a few years now.

Here’s those alternative lyrics:

When you here before,
Couldn’t look me in the eye.
I’m just like an angel,
My skin makes you cry.

I float like a feather,
In a beautiful world
You wish you were special
I’m so fuckin’ special

But you’re a creep
You’re a weirdo
What the hell are you doin’ here?
You don’t belong here.

You don’t care if it hurts,
You wanna have control,
You wanna perfect body,
You wanna perfect soul

You want me to notice,
when you’re not around,
I’m so fucking special.
You wish you were special.

But you’re a creep.
You’re a weirdo.
What the hell are you doing here?
You don’t belong here.

*shudder*

Yesterday I found myself mightily amused by Smoker Logic. Smoker Logic is brilliant, and is something any smoker will recognise: When Smoker Logic is applied to any problem, the solution is always, “have a smoke”. No matter what the problem is. No. Matter. What.

For example, the other day I mentioned that paying less tax was a benefit of giving up. Ah, begins Smoker Logic. But they’re putting up taxes on cigarettes to get you to stop. THEREFORE you should keep smoking. In fact, have a smoke right now! As a fuck you, like! Cos they want you to stop! Fuck them! The only way to win is to pay the tax no matter what! They HATE it when you pay more tax!

Yeah. Sure. Truth is packing in cigarettes is the single greatest perfectly legal tax avoidance scheme known to man. No expensive accountants required and you don’t even need to leave the country.

Of course if it were that simple Governments wouldn’t be able to tax tobacco in the way that they do. Smoker Logic says, “Have a smoke” as the solution to every problem, including the problem of how to give up smoking. Giving up smoking? Simple: have a smoke! Magic!

Smoking’s addictive, which people imagine means that it’s like Pong or Pac Man or Tetris or buying shoes or chocolate. You know… a bit moreish. Not really. In this context, “addictive” means that your brain gets rewired into believing that the substance you’re addicted to is AWESOME and you MUST continue FOREVER because its AWESOME. It’s not your conscious mind that gets reprogrammed though. Your conscious mind knows exactly what’s going on. Problem is people listen to their subconscious first, without even realising they’re doing it.

Needless to say I’m currently engaged in a battle with my half-witted subconscious, although this time I’m winning, which is why I’ve not had a smoke since Monday evening. “No, you moron,” says I to my subconscious. “You know NOTHING. You’re an instinct based want->get->reward->want reaction machine and I’m not fucking listening to you. Whinge all you want. Cry all you want. I don’t care. ”

That’s basically it. Every time I feel like smoking I explain the situation to myself all over again, that I’m in that battle between my subconscious and conscious mind and that with time my subconscious will get bored and start worrying about something else and I will basically be a lot richer, healthier and less of a drug addict than I was this time last week. I just need, for a very short while, to apply reason ahead of bellyfeel. Double plus good!

So this time I’m going to win. This is one of the few areas of my life where I can choose to be a slave, or I can choose to be free. Just like in the real world, choosing freedom often means things get worse before they get better, but things do get better.

So, if you want a super evil libertarian way of giving up smoking, do this: Imagine your smoking addiction as welfare spongers and cigarettes the welfare. If you cut off the ‘spongers’ from the ‘welfare’ they’re going to give you grief for ages, but, eventually, they’ll ‘get jobs’ and they won’t need ‘welfare’ anymore.

Yep. Can’t lose.