Nurse!

So, I wake up on a Monday morning and I really don't want to go to work. The same thing happens on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And sometimes on Saturday and Sunday as well. I think that makes me normal. What sets me apart from the hoi polloi, however, is that as hungover as I may be, as crotchety as I sometimes feel or, as much in agony as I am this week (nursing a new and interesting, probably age-related, knee injury) I still go into work.

I'm self-employed, so illness isn't an option. If I don't go in I don't get paid and that isn't something that causes me much distress because I grew up without any sense of entitlement for the simple act of existence. I look to nobody to steer my ship and expect nobody to man the boats if I hit the rocks. Although, I admit, it would be great if the NHS, for which I have paid all my life would look kindly on my need for pain relief when it all gets too much.

Nurse! Pass me my keyboard I have work to do!

But that isn't going to happen is it? In the never-ending quest for votes, socialists on all sides (for there are few enough other types of politician these days) woo the electorate by spending ever more of their money on stuff to placate the necessitous. And what better way to grow your electorate than to create more need and hence more needy? The country can easily afford to staff and stock hospitals with the right people and placebos to treat pain, disease, old age, trauma and good old bleeding. But where's the fun in that?

No, what we need are ever more impressive infirmities, maladies and melodrama. We need to celebrate the complexes, exaggerate the ailments and fill our waiting lists with the sicknesses, signs and symptoms of advanced disorders befitting our increasingly pallid, infantilised and ineffectual population. Tell somebody they are unwell and lo' they will take to their state-funded bed and wait to be cured.

"But our hospitals are overcrowded!" they wail, as low self-esteem competes for attention against eat-too-much-itis.

"Then we shall build more!" sayeth the 'profit' "Build it and they will come!"

"But you spent all our money!" they object.

"Why, we shall spend thy children's money then. And thy children's children's..."

"And there will be enough nurses?" they ask.

"Nurses? Fuck off! What use are nurses against the modern malaise?" spake the profit. "We need consultants and accountants and managers and alchemists and hoodoo and voodoo that you do so well..." And thus was born the private finance initiative.

How's that working out for you South London Healthcare NHS Trust?

I really don't care whose fault it is. I couldn't give a damn what colour tie they wear to the House of Commons. Somebody - and it might as well be me - needs to stand up and say it out loud. There's nothing wrong with you. Now fuck off out of my hospital and get back to work you malingering poltroon!

There, that's fixed the NHS. No need to thank me.

Ain't you got homes to go to?

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. Hot on the heels of his condemnation of Jimmy Carr's tax affairs (somehow commentable-upon where Philip Green's were not) Shiny Dave floats a raft of ideas for welfare reform. And predictably enough the shrill notes of righteous ('lefteous'?) indignation echo across Twitter like banshee wails for the dead. Not content with the ever-rising social tariff the flag-wavers for totalitarian statism will rest at nothing until the entire country is yoked to the despotic wheel of welfare.

David Cameron has a tricky budget to balance. He wants people to pay more tax, but he also needs people to claim fewer benefits. Only a fool could believe the two are not linked in a desperate spiral of positive feedback. In the boom years the high tax take was spent bribing ever more families to become reproductive rather than simply productive. Labour's time in office has seen the rise and rise of procreation as an industry and a not unprofitable one at that. Under the socialist creed, sacrifice and endeavour have been punished by ever-increasing tolls, while the cult of idle individualism has been feted and rewarded.

It simply cannot last forever. If Jimmy Carr has paid 1% tax on £3m, he has at least paid £30,000 into the system while almost certainly taking very little out - I am pretty sure he doesn't rely on subsidised housing, public transport or hospital services. In the same period an idle household has been granted the same amount in welfare payments, plus they will have liberally helped themselves to schooling, medical care and anything else going without any thought other than that it is their due.

Choosing welfare dependency over work is as much an abuse of the system as tax avoidance - in fact it's worse. The tax avoider is intelligently - if slightly immorally - using the wealth he has earned to buy himself the expertise to avoid the penalties levied on those who do well. It is outrageous to demand that those who take virtually nothing from the system pay an even higher percentage of their income, so that those without the wit or wisdom to earn their daily bread can continue in their infantile state of dependency.

So we should welcome the fact that we have a Prime Minister at least willing to acknowledge the formerly unsayable - that some people simply do not deserve the free ride they've had for the last thirty years (the Conservative Party has been just as guilty of appeasement of the masses as Labour) and that it has to end. But it's all just empty words because the part of the population that contributes the least is growing the fastest and the part that provides all the funding is shrinking.

Those who can are getting the hell out, one way or another and as always it's the backbone of our society - ordinary working people - who are taking the strain. How many more straws can this particular strained backbone take?

Carrm Down

I've been out of town and out of touch, but even I know that David Cameron has considered himself hard enough to come and have a go at Jimmy Carr's tax arrangements. Is this a wise move, I ask myself considering the long history of successful entertainers and tax avoidance? Surely everybody remembers the case of Ken Dodd and his famous Diddy Men - Diddy Pay and Diddy Fuck.

But maybe it is a good tactical  move after all, because it poses something of a problem for the left. It shines a feeble sort of light on the hypocrisy of show business, which is almost entirely populated by folk who declare themselves the epitome of caring socialism and the enemy of what they think of as conservatism. Show business attracts the young and hopeful, who often earn little throughout their lives and live in an extended, often ill-educated, mutually supportive peer group as they struggle to make ends meet by dressing up to make the grown-ups laugh and clap.

The grown-ups, of course, are happy to pay to keep performers in their juvenile and starry-eyed state, in the hope that they'll continue to entertain them for next to nothing. Sounds a lot like Socialism to me, where a ruling elite keeps the poor barefoot and helpless, while pulling their strings and offering crumbs of encouragement in place of real wages.

But all the sweet bonhomie does little to disguise the fact that in the fiercely competitive world of entertainment the big breaks are few, far between, fought-over and favour the hardest-working and most persistent. (What's that? A capitalist work ethic?) Your time in the spotlight - if it ever comes - may be short-lived and could be the only chance you get to build a nest egg. The question shouldn't be, "How dare you?" but more why wouldn't you avoid paying tax?

Many years of "progressive" politics have led us to be forced to hand over ever more of our earnings to support experimental policies of social engineering, touchy-feely (failed) multiculturalism and an infantilisation of the entire population - we're all in show business now. Which of us wouldn't - given the opportunity - pay an expert to allow us to legally avoid that high price and put something aside for those rainy days ahead?

Breaking free of the bounds of mediocrity, it is rarely long before achievers in all walks of life seek to separate themselves from the masses. Give a lefty a bit of money and pretty soon he or she buys a secluded house with security to keep the little people outside. Let people improve themselves and see how long they continue to espouse their former quaint notions of equality.

Jimmy Carr is only doing what most of us would do if we could. If there is fault here it is that the tax burden is too high, to pay for things that we don't need and ultimately don't really believe in. The irony is that the showbiz masses are natural Labour supporters - somebody has to pay the welfare bill for when they're 'resting' - but quickly reassess their priorities once they've made it. It's called human nature.

Who's laughing now?

Wet What?

So, I arrive at the Travelodge - the motel of choice for the discerning guest lecturer on a budget - to find I'm booked into a room subtly different from every other Travelodge room I've ever stayed in. At first I can't quite put my finger on it, but then, using the 'facilities' I notice how spacious everything is... and that there isn't a bath... and the shower area has a seat in it. Wait a minute... shower 'area'?

It's a disabled wet room, clearly designed for a wheelchair user. But why no shelves or towel rails? Why no place for soap? Why no shower curtain? I eye the set-up with a certain degree of disdain and suspicion.

In the bedroom everything is at a convenient height - if you're in a wheelchair. Being able-bodied and reasonably tall, everything is at a slightly inconvenient height. I crick my back while hanging my clothes on the low, low rail and decide to have a lie down. Instead of the usual double bed there are two exceptionally narrow twin beds. I'm not at all sure how this stacks up against any disabled needs checklist but, predictably enough, I roll over while having a nap, fall out of my bed and bash my shoulder against the twin.

Time for a shower. Its a wet room for heaven's sake...which means that EVERYTHING gets wet. (The clue is in the name, I guess.) The floor, the walls, the sink (in which sits my toilet bag - no shelves, remember) the towels and of course the toilet - all soaking wet. The toilet paper is now not so much tissue as papier maché. Merde.

I once saw an under-stair wet room conversion which involved a shower head placed directly above the toilet bowl, the owner of which could not see that this was functional under no objective criteria whatsoever. This room is not so far different from that - yes, there's plenty of space, lots of floor area, but every square inch of that floor is now covered in wet. The shower seat is directly beneath the nozzle and yes, of course I bash my shin on it as I juggle with the shower gel in the shelf-free zone.

Damn you, Changing Rooms! A pox on your house DIY S.O.S! Wet rooms? In houses? What were you thinking? What is wrong with you people?

Curse you, Nick Knowles!

Leaving the wet room to attempt to air-dry, I trap my hand as the over-width door swings wide and meets the opposite wall. For a moment I am in 127 Hours movie hell, as I realise I may need to amputate a finger or two if I am ever to be able to leave this room. Is this where I die?

Finally freed, I dress, have coffee - the makings are conveniently placed at knee height and I scald my eyebrows leaning over to free the fiddly kettle from its tricky base - and prepare for my day at the chalk face. I just have to clean my teeth and get the hell out..

Like a car smash, everything goes into slow-motion. Stepping into the bathroom the soapy, wet floor gives me no traction at all and my feet slide in opposite directions. I can feel a hernia erupting as the angle between my legs exceeds its last-known limit, doing the splits as I crash towards the hard porcelain basin. I wake into water-boarding nightmare as the dripping shower bathes my bleeding forehead and jerks me back into consciousness.

Through my blurred vision I can see a red cord - the emergency pull - and with my last ounce of strength I summon help, thanking the lord for my good fortune in finding myself in a disabled suite.

Cunctatious Claptrap

Once upon a time, I had a job where desks had to be cleared at the end of the week. No drawers, no hiding places; all in-trays to be emptied and processed, no question. It didn't take long for one bright spark (not me - dull as a dishwasher[sic] me) to come up with a cunning plan. Like all the best plans it was devilishly simple. You scooped the detritus from your desk into a large envelope, addressed it to yourself and sent it to the post room, where the drones, who never thought to question the destination, duly franked and despatched it.

The mail being what it is, said envelope often didn't return to sender until the following Wednesday, by which time it was inevitably too late to respond to some items. Disgraceful, I hear you say... outrageous. Ah, but stick with me. Anything that genuinely needed doing would usually trigger a follow-up call, the response to which would be an innocent declaration that you'd not received the original request. It was an eye-opener to discover just how many formerly "utmost urgent" requirements could nevertheless stand a fair bit of delay.

But here's the best bit of all. The vast majority of un-actioned items generated no response whatsoever. Nada. Zilch. Sweet F-A. In other words, an awful lot of what passed for 'business' was simply somebody else's way of wasting my time. Filling quotas, ticking boxes, yada-yada-yada. For me the sound of that particular penny dropping was deafening.

When I later learned that certain management gurus even preached about the principle of managing by delay - do the urgent, important stuff now; the stuff that must be done, else the world ends, and leave the rest. If it's important for 'them', let 'them' do the prodding. If they don't, it clearly wasn't that important. Subsequently I have met a great number of people whose grasp of the strategic importance of their job to the company is feeble to say the least.

Am I implying that a significant proportion of workers care not about what they do? That in their absence the organisation notices not one jot? Am I implying that despite the billions pumped into the Euro experiment, virtually nobody can really justify their tax-free salary or properly explain their job? Am I implying that some of the European leaders are fully aware of this and that management by procrastination is their game plan? Stifle debate, stall and obfuscate and hope that in the end it will all come good? Damn right I am.

One way or another people have to eat. In the case of Greece and Spain, followed by Italy and France it probably matters not whether they remain an integral part of the Euro confidence trick; they'll get fed. If it takes uprisings and civil wars, the very thought of which should signal abject failure of the one feeble justification for the whole project, the Eurozone apparatchiks will shrug, do nothing and call it a re-balancing or some such meaningless aphorism. They'll all still get paid, out of our money, for performing their important function of remaining motionless on their shiftless arses..

The European Union is a huge white elephant. Like the United Nations it has rarely achieved anything of worth. Its history has been one of endless rounds of discussions and its edicts have either been prohibitory (the disastrous CAP) or damagingly liberal (human rights, open borders). The EU is the political equivalent of one of those 'premium' bank accounts that takes your money in return for doing fuck-all while looking and sounding important. The Emperor has new clothes, or so they say.

A bunch of cunctators doing fuck-all

Which brings us, neatly, back to the title. We are not lead by dictators, instead we have replaced them with a bunch of Cunctators. And it really doesn't matter how you pronounce or mispronounce that word it still contains all the right letters to express just exactly what a bunch they are.