Politics and "Joined Up" Thinking

Politics, and “joined up” thinking.

Why political objectives end up going wrong.

Many politicians claim they have the answer to a nation's problems; some of the more ego-driven ones think they can solve all the world's problems. So, why after all this time are there still problems for just about everyone, maybe except the super rich, in the world? The reason is in that politics does not deal with reality. It does not involve thinking through all the cause-and-effect situations. Politicians consider a problem in isolation, and they come up with resolutions that may be good, IF they were isolated from the actual reality of the whole situation. At an absurd level, it is like solving the problem of water getting into a boat by making a hole below the water line, to let it drain out. The electorates, in modern democracies, elect people to solve problems. At least, that is the basic idea, but political parties have found all sorts of ways of getting their people elected, without even promising to actually solve real problems. The most common tactic is to call it a social fact of life, a problem, and promise to solve it. For example, socialists promise equality for all. They know, and every thinking person knows, that equality of opportunity is not the same thing, since equality of achievement will never happen; humans are too variable for that. Some are better at some things than others. So, the socialist bosses know that equality for all, including the lazy and the feckless, is never going to be worthwhile, nor even desirable. Yet, they get elected on this promise of equality for all.

The biggest problem that results from government by political thought is that nothing is actually thought through completely; everything is designed to get the vote, the headline, the improved poll rating—It is not designed to eradicate the problem forever.

Consider a relatively simple thing: waste disposal.

Many people honestly believe that the EU, with all its bureaucracy and micromanaging rules, is a good thing.

I understand that much of British waste recycling is due to EU edicts, about not putting all waste into landfill.

Like many ideas, it is a worthy and sensible objective, but it was introduced, in Britain at least, without proper “connected up” thoughts about how to do it, and what effect the imposition of rules would have when the facilities and equipment were not in place. This whole recycling operation should never have been commenced, until all the processing and sorting plants, together with gas capturing incinerators, were available to deal with the stuff collected. We now have the utterly silly situation where local authority areas, only a few miles apart, have differing recycling protocols and collection systems. The collected materials are transported, at great costs to both tax payers and the environment, around the globe. I am told even such a simple thing as the huge bins of wood products that are filled by the public taking worn-out domestic furniture to local recycling centres, have to be taken by road to a central depot (many miles away), where they are turned into “chips,” that are then transported by boats to Germany—I assume needing road or rail transport from the docks to the end site—where they are burned to produce electricity.

The authorities have, typical of any bureaucracy anywhere in the world, used threats against the very people who are giving them the materials to try and make all those earning money from the process have an easier time. The paying customer, who bought the stuff in the first place, is forced to pay for its collection, then threatened with additional charges if they do not make it easy for those being paid to process the materials given to them. What a wonderful world we live in.

This bizarre situation may not be all down to the EU; obviously the inept authorities in Britain must bear much of the responsibility. But if the original EU edicts had been worded to give time and proper preparation for their fulfillment, this situation should and could have been avoided. Bureaucratic governance is always the same; consider the famines caused in Soviet Russia, by bureaucrats insisting on controlling the planting times for crops throughout all of Russia. They said, for example, to plant in May, yet parts of Russia are still frozen in May. There will be howls of protest at this comparison between Soviet Russia and the EU, but it shows the way all bureaucracies work, when left uncontrolled by actual real democracy. It is the same, whatever political label is put on them. Political solutions are only headline-grabbing, vote-winning, short-term ideas. They do not solve problems.

In the 1960s, there was a movement based on the mantra, “small is beautiful.” Such idea are obviously opposed by multinational global companies, and by bureaucracies. They can not wield power, make profits, or keep control, if people go around living happily, by doing their own thing. In such small units, there tends to be less politics and more real solution thinking. After all, everyone involved lives and exists in the same community, so the solutions have to work long-term or they affect everyone, including those offering the solutions. Democracy itself works better when applied to smaller units, when the issues are local to the voters who are also local. Many, if not all, of the new age communes failed because they tried to manage and govern by consensus, not by democracy. It only took one person offering dissent for the whole proposal to be shelved. That is daft. You do not get 100 percent consensus in a family, let alone any other group. If we could get back to responsibility, control and finance being vested in parish councils, the smallest “unit” elected in Britain, we may get more long-term, sustainable solutions to problems. This will not suit political parties, or the finance that drives these. This finance is not made available to the political parties out of a devotion to the good of the people. It is given to the political parties to try and influence government, into supporting the needs and aims of those supplying the money. The same applies to all the “green protest” groups. They are political, and they gain money by providing opportunity for the source of that money to make more money.

Breaking up big government to give power back to smaller units, smaller numbers of voters, is the best way to improve democracy. The EU is designed to do the exact opposite; it is a mechanism to reduce the influence of individual voters, to ensure control can stay with the money which back the political parties. It uses the sheer size of the electorate, to ensure no small group can influence the control by the bureaucracy and the finance behind the scenes.

If we want to solve the world's problems, we need to let smaller groups have the power and resources to solve their local problems. Once there are no local problems, the regional ones can be resolved, and then the national ones. This may seem like a contradiction to the earlier comment about differing local authorities having different recycling systems. Cooperation between small units of government is not precluded by these smaller units having power. Getting rid of party power may ensure we have people in government who actually cooperate with anyone, who has a good idea. Party politics means one lot oppose any idea, however good, just because the other lot proposed it. This has to change, if everyone is to have a better life.