Skip to main content

Make Elections Boring

I've arrived at the conclusion that the Conservatives can improve their chances of victory at future elections by making them as boring as possible. My non-PC logic is as follows:

Nobody will disagree that we need more and better national infrastructure, education, healthcare, defence, law-enforcement, support for the arts etc etc. The question is, which party has the best chance of delivering it?
  • The ones who prioritise how we can afford it 
  • or the ones who prioritise doing it
Ask the average voter if they want more money and more public services, and the answer's bound to be 'yes please'. And turkeys never vote for Christmas (although if turkeys could think a little clearer, then the only reason they exist at all is for Christmas/Thanks Giving - so not voting for Christmas etc means extinction. But I digress). So it's really easy to make the majority believe you're nicer and on their side. The problem is, countries like ours need tough love. What's good for everyone in the long-term may not be appealing in the short term.

I'm not suggesting that voting rights should be restricted to people who stand a chance of understanding the difference between these priorities, and therefore might vote for better policies rather than hairdos. But I am suggesting that if we sell our politics with sound bites like "The cost of living crisis", and "They're the party for millionaires", or we resort to smear campaigns and highlighting party infighting (how disproportionate is the castigation of Lord Renard for a bit of harmless bottom patting!? Lighten up Britain), then we encourage people who don't get the arguments to only vote for socialist spending policies instead of ones which create net-tax-earning jobs (ie private sector). It's simply too easy to appeal to the majority (BTW lets hope the current tube strikes and other union inspired mischief continues to backfire on left-wing sympathies).

Now there may be value in a meritocratic system like China where your influence on state decisions depends entirely on your rank which is mathematically and rigourously defined by the sum total of your achievements to date - and largely defined by your attainment of qualifications. But Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Dyson, Branson, Tarantino and Shakespeare would never have emerged in modern China. Copies of them will nonetheless multiply there by the million. This TED talk is really illuminating about China (it's quite long - I watched it live, and found it really interesting - so please play it after you've read the rest of my bit).

But here in the UK, we're not likely to go through the agonies that China went through in order to arrive at their massively complex and unique system of meritocracy when we've got a democratic system that broadly sort of works - ie the losing minorities are prepared to wait another 5 years to have another go at electing their politicians to power rather than trying to do it faster through revolution and violence (Syria, Libya, Egypt, Thailand etc).

So my argument for a better result for everyone in Western style democracies (where we killed all potential insurrectionists long ago) is to assist the principle that "If you don't understand how state economics works, why vote for someone who doesn't either"? It's better not to vote than to hope that the person you believe might look after your best interests has any more of a clue how to do it than you. And the way to achieve this is to bore the part of the electorate who don't have a clue, into not voting. Make elections really, really boring!

Someone once described Harold Wilson's electioneering tactics as "Spreading apathy wherever he goes". Maybe the Tories can take a leaf out of his book. Edward Heath (the ultimate bore and 'unelectable' upper class toff) ended up winning that election for the Tories.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Phillips screws - yes I'm angry about them too

Don't get me wrong. They're a brilliant invention to assist automation and prevent screwdrivers from slipping off screw heads - damaging furniture, paintwork and fingers in the process. Interestingly they weren't invented by Mr Phillips at all, but by a John P Thompson who sold Mr P the idea after failing to commercialise it. Mr P, on the otherhand, quickly succeeded where Mr T had failed. Incredible isn't it. You don't just need a good idea, you need a great salesman and, more importantly, perfect timing to make a success out of something new. Actually, it would seem, he did two clever things (apart from buying the rights). He gave the invention to GM to trial. No-brainer #1. After it was adopted by the great GM, instead of trying to become their sole supplier of Phillips screws, he sold licenses to every other screw manufacturer in the world. A little of a lot is worth a great deal more than a lot of a little + vulnerability (watch out Apple!). My gromble is abo

Addictions. Porn, Drugs, Alcohol and Sex. Don't prevent it, make it safer.

In 1926 New York, during Prohibition, 1,200 people were poisoned by whiskey containing small quantities of wood alcohol (methanol). Around 400 died, the rest were blinded. The methanol they drank was in the moonshine they had bought illegally. In fact it had been added by law to industrial ethanol in order to make it undrinkable. Prohibition existed to protect everyone from the 'evils of the demon drink'. However, people still wanted to enjoy alcohol. So bootleggers bought cheap industrial alcohol and attempted to distill it to remove the impurities the state had added, but the process wasn't regulated. The state was inadvertently responsible for the suffering - although it was easy for them to blame the bootleggers and to justify escalating the war. This didn't stop the bootleggers. In fact it forced them to become more violent to protect their operations, and even less cautious about their production standards. Volumes of illicit alcohol, and therefore proportionat

The Secrets of Hacker Golf

Social media is awash with professional golfers selling video training courses to help you perfect your swing, gain 50 yards on your drive and cut your handicap. They might help a few desperate souls, but the rest of us hackers already know everything we need to complete a round of golf without worrying the handicap committee or appearing on a competition winner's list. What those pros don't realise is that for us hacking golfers who very occasionally hit shots that if you hadn't seen how they were hit, end up where the pros might have put them, we already know everything we need to know - and more. Unlike pros who know how to time the perfect swing in order to caress a ball 350 yards down the centre of a fairway, we hackers need to assemble a far wider set of skills and know-how to complete 18 holes, about which pros have no comprehension, need, or desire to learn. Here are some of them: Never select your shot until after you've hit it. A variation on this is to alway