Not that Orwellian, really!

Harp on about things is what I do best. I find it fun. Harp harp harp... Not that it does any good, then I am not suggesting that it would, or am so full of conceit that I think it might. Maybe I just do it, or even this, just for my own mental well being or simply mental stimulus. Whatever reason, here I am, typing for no apparent good reason other than it prevents me going out and doing something more useful. A bit of procrastination perhaps.

I was dwelling upon the merits of Douglas Adams works the other day. Also upon the works of George Orwell. All of those who enjoy Orwell would appreciate the allegorical nature of his writing. That's what I like best. When first I read his books I was very pleased with myself to understand what he was doing and why, but its not like I was in a small select club. The whole point of his writing was to help explain complex and dull aspects of modern sociopolitical life to the masses... was it not?

Why then would I mention Adams in the same sentence. Because I cannot help but think, if he were still alive, he would be pointing out some of his work and comparing it to the reality we find ourselves in today. Although this is probably just me and Adams, if he were still here, would probably pat me on the head and stick a freshly sharpened pencil through my ear to ease the pain he probably thought I was suffering. And who knows he might have been right.

I was thinking, if thinking is the word, that his idea about a world accidentally populated with cleaners, hairdressers, salesman, HR etc which was doomed to extinction has some elements to parody what is happening with Brexit. Although if you wanted to relate it to something far more real and more terrifying you could look to Russia under Stalin, China under Mao or Cambodia under Pol Pot. Certainly the last one more than most was determined to take his country back to a state of being populated only by hairdressers, salesman, HR people etc (although in reality, firstly, they didn't really exist and secondly they might well have been seen as too decadent for the regime but lets not get too serious...)

It's not that I am suggesting the Hairdressers will rise up and slaughter everyone that has read a non-fiction book or still watches the News at Ten, or even knows what that is, or what channel it's on, or what a 'channel' is! I'm just kinda suggesting that what Cameron did was to suspend the reality of the society we live in which has largely worked for a few hundred years, with incremental improvements every decade or so, and gave back control to the hairdressers as to the direction of the country.

Thing is, they had a choice anyway, always did, there were always parties and representatives that could have been voted for to stand as members of parliament to extricate the country from the EU. Even before the UK joined under grinning Ted, there were those that said 'never'! And they could have been elected, and we would either have never joined or we would have left. But too few people ever voted for them because they either voted along tribal political lines or they could not see enough other virtues to vote for these individuals. Instead they voted for the major parties and the major parties, by and large, thought being inside the EU was better than being outside.

But now the hairdressers have won the day and we will leave in just a few months time. And they think the people that have led us here will look after them when we leave, and that things will all largely be the same as before (although if that's the case, why leave...) or they think things will generally improve. When asked, many think the country is over crowded and that we should barricade the doors and exist without population growth.

Trouble with that is about ten fold, at least. It can be quite exhausting trying to explain to some people the simple basics about population growth needs simply to stand still. To discuss birth and death rates, to explain increases in lifespan, to understand taxation and social security, to explain productivity improvements and relation to wage increases and prosperity and GDP. And all of these things have a relationship to immigration into the UK. And if you cannot grasp the basics, should an elected government hand over the responsibility of deciding such thing to those in society that either do not understand or do not want to have to think about these things and ask them to decide the future of the country.

There are some good theories about the country improving out of necessity. Perhaps productivity will improve because business will have to invest in technological improvements to make up for the lack of available workforce. This is certainly feasible. But it will not happen overnight, it is the sort of change that can take several years, maybe decades to implement. And it might not be the existing companies with existing workers that do it, it might be new companies that arise from the ashes of the previous companies that were not agile enough to evolve to the new reality.

Then again, the companies thus constrained might simply relocate out of the country. Maybe somewhere so full of manual labour that it is still profitable to manufacture and ship back to the UK even after tariffs are imposed. Hardly a new idea.

However, I do like an experiment. Not a Stalinesque or Pol Potian style experiment, that's taking things a tad too far, but as experiments go, this one will be interesting. Painful I suspect, but interesting. And it is an experiment others should note, one way or another.

BTW, I like hairdressers :) and I'm not saying they are dumb, in fact I know a hairdresser with a PhD, who decided that hairdressing was simply less demanding than their chosen career. I also knew a train driver who was a talented physicist and a bus driver who was an adequate software engineer. All of whom decided life in their chosen field was less demanding than their original plans. So it is not that I am simply being arrogant or disdainful of hairdressers or any other hard working individuals. I am simply trying in my own clumsy way, of saying, in my opinion, society progresses by identifying leaders with a higher level of intelligence and expecting them to make complex decisions, having consulted other highly intelligent advisors and then making decisions on behalf of us all. And then you get Trump, which blows everything I just said out of the water. And of course even when we do elect these intelligent representatives they come in a variety of political flavours which tends to colour the decisions made on our behalf. But, at least they try real hard with a publicly stated rationale. Brexit is not the same. There are highly intelligent people that have hijacked the debate and have exploited base fears to their own end to get people to support them even though what they are seeking is not what they claim... crikey now I'm confused, think I had better go and sanitize a phone or something more fitting my cerebral capacity!

Now... where's my spade comrade!