The formula

People get way too heated up about politics. There's far too much 'social' in that Socialism when what we need is a dose of common sense and an injection of 'capital' in that Capitalism. Somebody in government must surely have 'done the math' and worked out what I'm going to show you now, but for some reason they think you can't handle the truth.

The answer lies in simple numbers, presented here in spreadsheet form:

Figures made up for purposes of illustration, but probably not very far from reality

Now it must be true because it's in Excel. For any doubters out there I can easily turn it into a full-colour Power-point presentation, but even the most softened bleeding-heart nutjob out there must surely see the inevitable conclusion in those numbers. (For those hard-of-thinking, I've pointed it out.)

Nobody - not even the (Boo! Nasty!) Tory Party - has ever suggested kicking the sick out of their hospital beds or cutting back on essential front-line services. Nobody (not even the Tories) has ever suggested that there should not be a safety net for those who fall on hard times. Nobody (you got it) has ever actively promoted a divisive society. (No need to; humans will do that all by themselves anyway, whatever you do.)

But all sides have steadfastly refused to face the simple economic truth. If you have a factory making goods nobody wants to buy you shut it down. If you offer a service that nobody needs you have to do something else or go bust. And if you continue to pour money into loss-making ventures you will eventually be broke.

So, I'm going to join the dots and make the connection that no politician dare declare, yet every bloke at every bar in the land knows in his heart of hearts:

Referring to the last line of the table above:

The number of unemployable layabouts = the number of individuals surplus in every way to any properly-working form of society. And we know exactly who each and everyone of them is because they are either in prison or on the state payroll in the form of wilful benefit dependency. They are the rot at the heart of the problem (Yes, yes, the bankers, blah, blah... but bankers are actually not the problem you would really like them to be.) and unless the rot can be excised it will continue to grow.

Of course it's been tried. Their kids have been sent on safari, the parents have been sent on anger management and alcohol awareness courses. Their day-to-day crimes - theft, violence, drunken brawling, theft, smuggling, anti-social behaviour, fighting, theft... you get the picture, have been largely excused and an army of social workers has slowly become mad - proper socialist-crazy - trying to engage them in the business of becoming human. All to little avail and all at enormous expense the country can no longer afford.

When the car's beyond repair you have to get rid of the car or leave it to rust in the drive. We've been leaving it amid the weeds as a depressing reminder of our failure to tackle the problem. Maybe it's finally time to call in the scrap merchants?

Before the shrieking, hating voices of The Left wade in and accuse me of what they regard as an abhorrent principle, they might want to consider this Jonathan Freedland article in today's Guardian, about a bit of socialist history.

So, now you know the staring-you-in-the-face truth, Mr Politician, what are you actually prepared to do about it?