An advertising guru once famously said: ‘Ours is the only industry that, when a product is failing, we make it worse’.
I feel that could be the motto for Britain at the moment.
Let’s start with the public sector strike. The whole tenor of the debate seems to surround the fact that public sector pensions are better than for those in the private sector, such as me.
I do not dispute this but the rationale that is offered is that if some workers have it better than others, let’s put it right by ensuring it is bad for everyone.
Of course there are exceptions to this, such as the MPs themselves of course, who have the best pension on the planet, and top executives, many of whom also have fantastic pensions.
But for the rest of us it is: find the lowest common denominator and let us live with that.
Part of the problem with private pensions is that by the time all the fees have been deducted you would be better off sticking some money under the bed each week.
Higher education is another example, where the Government charges students the most it can get away with and if it puts people off going to university who cares? Goods and services, new houses, new roads. You name it and we will build it as cheaply and shoddily as we can.
Once we built to last not just in terms of engineering but socially and politically as well.
Now we have become a Del-Boy society, getting away with what we can and hoping something will turn up.
Next year we’ll all be millionaires.
In the meantime duck and dive and, for many of the poorer people in this country, live on the edge of society.
We have stopped investing and, having already sold off most of the silver, can only keep cutting away at standards, living and otherwise.
We seem to have no pride in doing things properly but a slapdash approach tinged with envy.
It was even lauded that we should become a service and finance economy. Low pay on the one hand and fantastic bonuses earned by reckless financial gambling on the other.
Successful countries, such as Germany, take a different attitude and invest in education, workers, industry and infrastructure.
Emerging countries, such as India, Brazil and Turkey, are all about self-improvement and pride in their country.
Other adjectives of a similar vein that might describe them are self-esteem, self-respect and self-sacrifice. For this country it is more self-important, self-satisfied and self-serving.
We do not want to learn, because obviously we have nothing to learn, and these emerging countries will pass us in the next 50 years, as we slowly slip into gentle decline.
Obviously there are exceptions but the rule seems to be from the Government: pay the least you can, give the least benefits you can get away with and educate the masses formally and informally to continually lower their expectations.
The response seems to be: do the least you can get away with and enviously turn on anyone who happens to be doing a little better or working a little harder.
No doubt someone will one day write a book on the decline and fall of the British Empire but until then it would be nice if our masters could just get a grip and show some leadership.
One of the more recent innovations in our society is the ‘Christmas lights turning on ceremony’.
Where once a council worker just did it, we now have a show, with someone famous, or once famous, or nearly famous, or for Bedford, the Mayor, officially turning on the lights, with great pomp and glitz. Or do I mean kitsch? Anyway, it is very popular and was so on Tuesday night. So popular that the town became gridlocked and arguments and one or two small fights broke out.
Perhaps it is a symbol of its popularity, or poor organisation, or just another facet of modern life. I hope everyone, except those trying to get somewhere else, had a good time and am strongly resisting my bah humbug tendencies.
