The fundamental feck-up-ness of the whole damned shebang

I have been treading a fine line for a while politically. I fall into nowhere space in the US because of the partisan system it inevitably is. For example, I supported the war in Iraq whether WMDs were there or not (the whole regime was intolerable to a modern world), yet I openly support gay marriage. You see the dilemma here?

Ms Luminous's account of her experience with the NHS in the UK just further confuses my pathetic intellect. In principle, I'm all for the NHS. In practice, it is a black hole for tax payers. I've probably said this before but I'm going to say it again anyway; the UK discourages treatment for anything since it costs while the US will find the slightest thing wrong with you because they know they can bill your insurance company. Come on people, somewhere twixt the two lies a sane compromise.

There's a part of me (that blogged the other night but was censored by another part of me the following morning) that seriously thinks we're on a path to economic meltdown. The madness that is the stock market, the fact that people don't like paying for electronic gizmos, the reliance of the economy on service industries, employers' lack of willingness to take risks, the burden that we are increasingly placing on the next generation to pay for the sins of the fathers, all of it, is a massive pointer to the fact that the market economy may be the best thing we've come up with so far, but it's not a viable long-term philosophy. Maybe, and I put this forward as only a maybe, instead of spending millions a year on developing people who analyse the markets and create wealth for the already wealthy, we need to stand back and look at this from a purist point of view. There's a problem here that we are trying to solve using known techniques when in fact we should be 'thinking outside the box'.

It started with goats and land and has escalated to a ridiculous level. As a teenager, I read Karl Marx and while I sympathized with the equality aspect, I realised that it was not practical. Hell, I could go to the pub on a Friday evening having worked 60 hours that week and recognise people in there who had received their giro the day before and who had never worked a day in their lives. In fact, I know a guy who is a couple of years older than me who has never worked in his life, prefering instead to sit with his copy of the Daily Express in his parents' house, issuing judgements on the economy, workers' rights and criticizing the establishment. That is why puritanical socialism doesn't work. Because some people are lazy. Hence the realism that communism would never work (aside from the nanny-state arguments).

And while I'm at it, nanny-states are not the sole property of the formerly or currently communist block. The US and UK are just as bad. Do not smoke, do not drink. In the US, bars are hidden because they are shameful dens of iniquity. In the UK, your social life pretty much revolves around the local pub, but being caught there is a sign of social inferiority to those of the respectable classes (who sip port in their dining halls).

Maybe I'm just disillusioned with it all due to my current circumstance (I needed $5 to pay airport tax on a flight to CA that I had booked using my airmiles but none of my cards have that left on them - I nearly cried, but didn't - I'm English and we don't do emotion) but it all seems to be completely mad to me at the moment. The whole shebang seems to be on a downward spiral and the partisan conventional wisdom only accelerates it as the left take on the right. What a pathetic battle that is.

If people did what is right rather than what is politically correct, oh how much richer our lives would be. In the meantime, if you happen to find yourself in England with a gammy ankle, I have an angel of a cousin who you should look up. She has just chopped her mother's wait down to a paultry four months, from what could have been a life sentence.

Yatesdisillusioned out. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.