GrumbleSmiles

Following on from my last post, there are another group of civil servants in need of radical reform.

🤡The Prison System🤡

The civil servants working there have been letting prisoners out accidentally and those they manage to keep in are let out early, only to reoffend quite quickly. So freezing their pay doesn’t seem so unreasonable.

Perhaps we need a new approach altogether. Let them all out and do away with prisons and prison officers. That’s pretty radical.

But we can’t be irresponsible. So:-

• Offenders will be fitted with heavy helmets.
• The helmets are heavy so that prisoners keep their heads bowed for the whole of their sentence, as an apology to society.
• They will be fitted with GPS trackers so that they can’t step out of their designated area. Which could be their house; or their mandated work area; or a remote island in the case of extreme offenders.
• Finally of course, the offenders will have to ‘face the music’. Before leaving court the sentencing judge will ask the offender to “what’s their favourite music?” and “what’s their least favourite music?”.
• Thereafter each morning at 6am they will wake up to their favourite music to get them in a good mood for the working day, played by their stereo helmet.
• Their work will consist of litter picking; cleaning graffiti off walls and filling in potholes. On the remote islands they may just be weeding or breaking rocks to build some sort of shelter. Their looking-down heavy helmets will be highly suitable for this work.
• Anytime they slow down or step out of their designated area their stereo helmet will play their least favourite music, which will get louder and louder if they persist, to remind them they are OFFENDERS.
• Some hardened criminals may feel they can take off their helmets, but that will trigger automatic electric shocks instead of music.
• In desperation, some offenders may think about resorting to violence, but cameras in the helmet will instantly raise an alarm and taser the prisoner.
• The happy music will wake them up again after 10 minutes, so they can carry on with their work.

🤡The sophisticated helmets will cost a lot less than the cost of the prison service and pay for the redundancy of the prison officers in the civil service🤡

Following on from my last post, some of the ideas proffered by the One Day Prime Ministers really found favour amongst their colleagues.

The easy proposal voted through with a record majority, was to Freeze civil servants pay. Who could possibly disagree with that ?

There were as expected, predictable consequences. An almost immediate ‘work to rule’. When that didn’t work the trade union leaders called for a ‘go slow’, but sadly, nobody noticed any difference. So finally they mandated an ‘all out strike’.

Over 500,000 civil servants didn’t turn up for work, although most of them ‘work from home’, so once again nobody noticed any difference. The good news was that the country was saving a fortune🤡

There were also some unforseen consequences :-

• The border force officers stopped working on passport controls, so foreign visitors could just walk into the country unchallenged.
• That instantly scuppered the boats crossing the Channel; something successive governments had been trying to do for years.
• We were also able to stop paying the £600 million bung to the French police for not stopping illegal immigration.
• 🤡QUITE A HAPPY OUTCOME🤡

There will be more consequences in the next post, which maybe even more radical.

Every politician aspires to be Prime Minister one day. So in this period of uncertainty, why not let them all have a go?

🤡PRIME MINISTER FOR ONE DAY🤡

There are 402 Labour MP’s, so in just over 13 months they could all have a shot at it. Then after this ‘trial’ we could appoint a winner from the one who had achieved the most in their day at the top.

Each one would have to pick an idea and get it through a vote in the House of Commons. The key rule would be that their proposal can’t cost anything. Saving money would be a big bonus.

It’s more than likely that many of the proposals would not get through and that little would be achieved in this trial year. So no real change at all.

But you never know. A genius hidden on the back benches may come up with a radical idea that no-one had been bold enough to suggest like :-

• Switching to Parliament working one day a week and the rest of the time MP’s Working From Home.
• Selling off all the Government’s chauffeur driven limousines, issue MP’s with bus passes since they are so keen on public transport.
• Strapping solar panels on the backs of all MP’s to give them more power.
• Moving the retirement age to 100, thereby saving on the state pension and the winter fuel allowance.
• Shortening school terms to only 4 weeks, so that our hard-working teachers can have more time off.
• Making junior doctors automatically into senior doctors and giving them £100,000 a year providing they treat some patients.
• Nationalising everything without compensation and locking up the previous owners / shareholders / profiteers.
• Privatise the NHS and sell off all the hospitals to pay down the National Debt.
• Sell all Government buildings now that all civil servants are Working from Home.
• Make a virtue of potholes. Drill baby drill all potholes down to I mile deep to see if we can find oil / gas / rare earth minerals. Funded with Pothole Bonds.
• Freeze all civil servants pay until 2030 and remove ‘London weighting allowances‘ for those working from home. This will probably cause them all to strike, which will save even more money. And we probably won’t notice any reduction in productivity.

🤡NOT A BAD START🤡

“Don’t cast a clout ‘till May is out” is something I can remember from my childhood days. The word “clout” means clothing.

I must admit that my thermal vest, my fleece lined shirt and my woolly jumper are already making it a bit hot in April. I will probably be cooked alive if I have to wear them throughout the month of May.

Obviously nobody anticipated the onset of global warming when these proverbs were first used.

“Be a hero, go for nett zero”

A word I’d never come across a few years ago, but now seems an ever present description of our current state.

Confused, bewildered, perplexed are all more readily understood alternative descriptions.

Life and the world seemed simpler in years past. Now with instant worldwide communications you can be aware of much more, but that doesn’t necessarily aide understanding. Which leads to DISCOMBOBULATION.

I wrote about bewilderment in April 2010 (click on the Archive box to find the post) which was a blog about lack of a strategic sociSince then the problems of the ageing population have increased significantly but there has only been a faltering response. The retirement age has been put back and equalised for men and women, but we are still arguing about winter fuel payments and the tripple-lock. The future funding of social care is still unresolved.

That is just one BEWILDERING issue. There are many more whose resolution continues to CONFUSE and PERPLEX us :-

• Wars in several parts of the world.
• The challenge of Climate change and nett zero.
• How to curb the rising cost of living.
• What impact will AI have on jobs.
• The never ending saga of immigration.

I could go on ……….but without solutions it all adds up to

DISCOMBOBULATION

Perhaps we should have a Minister for bewilderment. Or a perplexed Parliamentary Committee. Or a Lord of Confusion.

Or how about a DISCOMBOBULATED Prime Minister?

🤡MAYBE WE HAVE ALL OF THEM ALREADY🤡