Governance: Epic Fail.

I'm in a mood. There is no escaping it. It is an entity that I control if I can and normally I do really well...but not this week. This week I've officially had enough. It's not about people in my day to day life; they are lovely, excellent, fabulous people who I can normally negotiate with, no, its the higher level of idiots and bureaucrats that make life for everyone hard.These are the people pissing me off.


In the last two weeks I've been sent a ream of letters from officials from the local county council to the tax office and back again. I even had a doctor's survey sent to me, asking how I found the service in the last year; stupid really as I haven't seen my doctor in two years! They asked me to pay back money while at the same time giving hefty checks and though I appreciate the tax returns knowing what the hell is going on would be so much better.


This got me thinking, thinking about the maze of offices and the myriad of people and pieces of paper that make up my official existence. I thought about it and calculated and thought some more and wondered why I didn't just have all my details, everything about me on one file? One central point of truth; 'EddLand.'


Why was 'Eddland' not possible? Why the hell bother me with all this perishable, losable, environmentally taxing material when they could just email me? Would that work?! For me? Yes. For others? Maybe not. 


Digging deeper I was feeling more and more frustrated and then I pushed through and the situation was made  crystal clear by my current hinting boss, letting me know that we are mere weeks away from 'Project Complexion.' He's a nice guy, pays well, has never even tried to screw me over (a first in my experience in the building lark) but lets face facts; this guy is not a people person. He's not a chatter and he doesn't have the conflict conversations (excellent) or the conflict resolution conversations. He simply waits for people to see the light. I got the message mate, please stop hinting, when project completes I'm 'down the road.' I got it.


This is something I have known would happen from the very start of my commencing work for him so I am not pissed off about that one ending. I'm pissed off that another one may not be beginning. I'm pissed off that I'm in this ridiculous situation, like nearly three million other people....and that's when I asked the question. Stupid one really but I had to. 


Where are all the jobs and how do we get them back?


Screech! Traffic swerves, people dive into piles of cardboard boxes to avoid their oncoming doom, smoke rises from the carnage left in the questions wake. What?! Why is it such a difficult question to answer? Well, its hard because its not one party, one reign of governance, one person or even one problem. So many people have so much to answer for that it makes my brain actually hurt...hence the mood.


We could track this trail of misery back to Cameron, through to Brown, back to Blair, round Major, straight through Thatcher, Kinnock, up the unions, through the Seventies, back to the Germans and the Americans and the whole world if we wanted too. I don't. I'm not going to. I really can't be bothered. I want them all to go to hell and maybe, just maybe, come back again.


What I feel is the real issue is now, not twenty, thirty, forty or even just ten years ago...no, the problem, the issue, the urgency is now! Where are all the jobs? Where is all the gold? Where's all the money? Where is our 'Boom' that we are told will follow this extensive and seemingly never ending 'Bust'? It isn't hiding in the cupboard or under the stairs and its not in my top pocket! Where did we put all those bloody jobs?!


We lost them because we have no industry. It is complicated and yet simple. We export very little/not enough and there is an issue with the way our governors view us as the people. You see, if you are a manager or an executive or basically anyone with a large, robust income then you have done well, but if you have a normal or 'crappy' job then you failed. That's how they see us...and what's worse is that that's how we are urged to see each other.


With over two million people out of work we need a mass of jobs, not amazing jobs that fly around with a cape and no high heels (that one was for regular readers), no, we need a shit load of shit jobs. We need them to be poorly paid to start with and have them upgrade over time. We need them to be unskilled to start with and we need them to be permanent positions which lead to us exporting something. Ships, planes, shit McDonalds toys, sex aids, hearing aids, cereal boxes, Graphene, pharmaceutical bottles, cat trays, filing cabinets, tampons, spider woven body armour, cakes, cabbage patch dolls, knickers, trainers, fire trucks, flame proof coats, dog bicycles...anything! We need this shit that we make to go somewhere so that the normal people, people that don't have jobs at the moment, can earn money, pay tax, grow the economy, pay back our debts, buy fucking big t.v's and eat out.


We need this badly...but we have no direction to go in and no-one from up high who has the vision or the balls to motivate or mobilise us. We have all those idiots to blame and ourselves as well. We shouldn't have lived the life of Reilly, we should have lived with-in our means and yes, we should have taken a step back and asked the governments before this one to shine a torch in the right direction so that we could pick up the rope and drag our country out of this depression. 

For me, the road is clear, unpleasant maybe? Yes. But clear. Ready?

We need to level our tax system. Twenty percent across the board...no loopholes. What you get paid is what you pay your tax from. Twenty percent for everyone. No excuses. You'd see far more tax brought in as a result as people would no longer be able to dodge it. Close the rich accountants back doors and make everyone pay the same percentage. Of course we wouldn't all be paying the same, if you are richer you are putting more into the system. If you earn £100,000 a year you are paying £20,000 tax. If your earning £20,000 then your paying £4,000. No matter how you look at it the fat cat is still putting more into the system than the poor labourer but he is actually putting in rather than sending it off shore and cheating the country and its people.

Secondly we look at the corporate tax and we implement a system which WILL give substantial tax breaks if the company employs a lot of people and is actively developing its base and growth in the country. By doing this we encourage companies to invest, to thrive and to do it as they like; at low cost. If you think about it they will still be paying a lot into the country; by paying the work force.

I don't have the answers, but I do feel that vilifying the companies that are going to give the population jobs, eradicating industry, implementing cuts to the vulnerable and blaming the unemployed is not going to do anything other than rush us towards an inevitable doom. 


Thanks for reading, I'm tired and so I'm gonna go.


Goodnight.