I think it was a heart surgeon who said "whenever I feel like taking some exercise, I go and have a lie down until the feeling goes away." I've got a new hypothesis for you which builds on this maxim. Put simply, it is that whatever anyone does makes things worse, therefore people should resist the temptation to do things. Anything. More or less. Now this probably needs a bit more work on the grounds that (a) it's pretty clearly not entirely true and (b) the extent to which something is better or worse is rather subjective.
But let's not allow these minor concerns to put us off. If we fine tune a little, we can I think at least say that actions which are designed to "add value", in whatever sense, are at least equally likely to destroy value. Hmmm...that's not as exciting as my first untuned effort is it? I think I can do better. Anyway, to see what I'm driving at, here are some examples. I will post more when they occur to me and please feel free to add to the list. You might be tempted to produce a list which supports the opposite hypothesis but that is no fun at all so, just like our heart surgeon, please resist the temptation.
Fireworks: you used to be able to buy these at the age of 13 (or even younger if you went to the same shops I did). Now you have to be 42 or something. Plus, you used to be able to buy bangers, jumping jacks and helicopters. Now you can't. Plus...you used to be able to buy individual fireworks at your local sweetie shop. Now you can't. Children's lives have been made much more miserable as a result.
Smoking: don't even get me started. No explanation needed.
Education: governments of all colours have messed around with this constantly and have thrown vast amounts of money at it. Has it helped? No. Children know less at any given age than we did when we were young. And as for the money...there's a school near here that had truly disastrous results so, in line with this weird notion of rewarding failure that seems to be the in thing these days, they completely rebuilt the school and parachuted in a hot-shot head and hand-picked "senior management team" (why do schools have to have things like this? Ours never did) at a cost of zillions. And now, about six years on, have things improved? Nope. The results are no better and the head's been given the push.
Health: see education. Constant government meddling has just made things worse. And more expensive of course. I know someone in the NHS who said that in his younger days (and he's not that old) there was only one administrator in his hospital - the only person who wore a suit. Now, as anyone who knows anything about hospitals will know, there are crowds of the people, many with job titles that you could not have imagined only a few years ago.
Police: several things here. If we're so much better off now than a few years back (and we are), why can we no longer afford village policemen? Also: in the old days, most minor indiscretions would be met with a clip round the ear (actual or metaphorical) and an "on your way sonny and don't let me catch you doing (insert indiscretion here) again." Now, you'll get a fixed penalty notice. It's good for their statistics but very bad for our quality of life. Also: why do they not have enough staff to attend to your crime but have apparently unlimited numbers to worry about a bit of phone hacking (£135k for Jude Law? They could have hacked my phone for half the price!)
Public transport: just like the police, there's less of it and it's more expsensive. Why was this changed? Change it back!
Parking: in a similar category to smoking, i.e. a no-brainer. I've pointed out before that this has long since ceased to be a way of regulating supply and demand for parking spaces and is now just another source of revenue for your local council. There are miles and miles of roads now where no one much wants to park, but all the same they're lined with parking restrictions and the ubiquitous pay and display machines. Plus: why are licensed thugs allowed to take your car away and hold it to ransom?
Sundays: it used to be: church at 11.00 to 12.00, pub opens at 12.00 until 2.00 then it's home for Sunday lunch. There was an order to the world. Church service times and pub opening times (that's if your local hasn't been killed off by the over-officious police and the smoking ban) are now all over the place. It may sound tenuous but I'm sure there's a link between this and many of society's ills.
Top of the Pops: bring it back! Surely it didn't cost much to make? How has killing it off improved our lives? What do we get instead? More Eastenders! QED. The corollary of this is daytime TV. It's awful and it costs money - why was it invented? Do away with it! (Apart from Doctors or Mrs Marshside will get upset.)
Share dealing: I don't do much of this but every time I do, it goes wrong. I bought some Tesco shares a little while ago. What happened the other day? They plummeted. I could mention others but it's too painful. I should just do nothing.
Corporate take-overs: this is rather a different thing but I put it in to kind of bring us back to where we started. Companies are forever taking over other companies. It's the way of the world but it is really extraordinary how often these takeovers don't work. They happen because (1) the merchant banker types encourage it, as they make a fat fee out of it and (2) the boards of directors need to justify their existence (and their fat fees) by being seen to do something.
So in the same way that our heart surgeon felt under some kind of peer pressure to do something that he felt might not be really very good for him, so company directors (and idiots like me) feel under pressure to buy all or bits of other companies, even when they know there's a good chance it'll lose them money.
The more things we do, the worse things get. Be like the heart surgeon: lie down and do nothing. Just watch things get better.
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