Politics

The main reason I never write about politics is it's a 'hot' issue and, no matter how funny I try to make it, I inevitably haul out the soapbox, jump up on it and start making a speech. A long-winded and boring one, at that. (Other hot issues include religion, rude teenagers and the fact that Guinness tastes better in Ireland.)

I'll behave this time, I promise.

Following politics in the UK is not for the easily startled. Over the course of an average day, even the most casual observance instills generous measures of mirth, outrage, incredulity, boredom, hopelessness, ennui and, ultimately, the desire to move to France. Watching British politicians is like watching the Key Stone Cops in off-the-rack suits. These people fairly tumble over one another in their rush to make bad decisions.

Take regional economics. The southeast is an attractive place to live because people can find jobs here. A reasonable solution might be economic incentives to other areas of the country to jump-start the local job markets and bring in some warm bodies and cold currency. Instead, this government decided to move every person in the country to the southeast. And all the while they were forcing the construction of a gazillion clap-trap flats across an area of outstanding natural beauty, it never occurred to one of them that at least some of the people streaming into this area, once they arrived, might want a drink of water.

We're now in the throes of a magnificent drought, not because it isn't raining here (this is, after all Britain; it is raining as I write this) but because too many people are drinking the water. No matter how much it rains, we are always going to have a drought. The proposed solution? Standpipes in the streets.

This meant nothing to me so I had to ask for a translation. Unfortunately, the translation means exactly what it says.

"They turn off the water and put a standpipe in the street," my wife informed me. "If you want water, you take a bucket out and fill it up."

After I stopped hitting my head against the wall to knock the disbelief out of my brain, I asked her to repeat it and received the same reply.

"Surely there'd be riots," I said, rubbing my forehead and trying to imagine any scenario this might inspire if it were proposed in America that didn't involve gunfire.

"We're English," she said. "We just get on with it."

Any twelve-year-old kid playing Sim City knows you can't move this many people into this small an area without beefing up the water infrastructure. Perhaps each MP should be presented with a copy when they assume office, instead of a pamphlet entitled, "How to Fuck Up Your Country." (I am, of course, merely assuming they have such a pamphlet, but it makes perfect sense; no one can become this incompetent without ample practice and mentoring.)

Having this many people about also means that the roads tend to crowd up a bit at critical times (i.e. between 4AM and 10PM each weekday and all day on weekends and holidays). Give them their due; the government is attempting to encourage people to use public transportation as a means of easing the problem. But at the same time, they are making such a hash of the railroads that the train companies are actively discouraging people from traveling by rail as they are unable to cope with the volume.

And don't get me started on what they've done to the NHS.

This doesn't so much raise the question of how they manage to amass an empire as it much as it solves the mystery of why they felt they needed worldwide domination in the first place. Ineptitude of this scale requires a monolithic bureaucracy in which to hide it; that's how America gets on as well as it does. With a current lack of overseas dominions where they can hide the more egregiously inept, they are forced to allow them to remain here and, well, this is what you get.

Don't get me wrong, I still love England; it's a beautiful place, full of history, cordial inhabitants and pleasant pubs. They just need a place to off-load their politicians.

Tell me, is anybody using Montana these days?