Popular Policies are Doomed!

Have you noticed that if ever something turns out to be popular, the powers that be will try to curb our enthusiasm? You name it, it’s been cut back or made more expensive once people see what a good idea something is. Peace, for example, usually has to be seen as an expensive thing to protect and usually has to be fouled up by some governmental idiot or two taking offence or taking liberties. But I digress.

University education was seen a good idea back in the sixties, so much so that quite generous grants were available for some of us of mature years together with some pretty flexible entry requirements.The latter might still be the case but the grants are gone, debts are the alternative, and degrees from anywhere other than Oxbridge or the Russell Group are rubbished, usually by people from such universities. The real underlying motive is resentment that all these ‘Johnny come Latelies’ are muscling in on their nice cosy elite and would rather only see clones of themselves running higher, or even higher and higher, education. Sharing their resources would spoil it for them, while they seek to spoil it for others by asking for higher and higher fees and hoping that not too many comprehensive types get in under the wire. Getting over it would be out of the question of course.

Legal Aid is always a popular idea with ordinary people but always under threat because people use it. In the late seventies the system was improved, became popular and has been the subject of more and more cuts ever since. Once upon a time we were encouraged to take our bikes by train. This was clearly a good idea because loads of people did it so very quickly leaflets started to appear stating the complicated restrictions and where fares had to be paid. This was just a holding operation while they abolished the guards van to be replaced by small cupboards where our newly created ‘conductors ‘ could hide when things got a bit overcrowded or, more usually, late.

There are many other areas where this British disease can be observed. Decent pensions, retirement at 65, housing improvement grant, mortgage interest relief, subsidised transport, civil liberties. At a lower level grants for energy saving and even bus passes are too popular and must either be restricted or preferably made meaningless lotteries. All these ideas are apparently too expensive for the, allegedly, 4th richest economy in the world.

Is it just me but are their no good ideas which will be kept despite their popularity? Now that we are heavily in debt as a nation are we still so rich? Do we have that many great things worth defending? The National Health Service would be at the top of most people’s list, but even that is constantly under threat, as are our traditional liberties and freedoms. These don’t come cheap either. If there is no great list of great achievements to glory in, then what are we defending? Someone somewhere still thinks that there must be. Do these people have safe jobs, good incomes and final salary pensions I wonder? They probably are and will also make sure that we buy some nice new nuclear weapons on the ‘never never’. ‘Some new helicopters that work? Now that’s not quite so easy old boy’.

Dacier ( I feel better now)