UK Election 2010 - Rescuing Gromit

Wallace has a manic quirk to his personality that compels him to solve simple problems in quite unnecessarily complicated ways. This leads to tension, danger and near disaster and it is always up to Gromit his faithful long-suffering mouthless hound to save the day. For instance in the film A Grand Day Out, when Wallace finds that he is out of his favourite cheese, instead of doing the obvious thing and buying some at a shop, he invents a rocket and takes a trip to the moon to dig for some. And in The Wrong Trousers, Wallace, through his creativity for making pointless devices merely to get himself up in the morning, brings horrors as one of his designs develops a sinister gene. Enormous fun and hilarious nonsense.

There is a modern parable within 'Wallace and Gromit' relating to our political system. Have you noticed that in solving one problem in society, almost inevitably the solution brings with it a host of annoying, counterproductive effects? These themselves need more tweaking and cause more problems, and on… The growing nightmare needs more bureaucrats, more form-filling, more quangos…But the political masters merely seem to want to retain power rather than solve anything long-term. Do they ever ask: What are we doing this for? Where are we headed? If Wallace were a politician you can hear him saying with an inevitable financial crash just round the corner: ‘No more boom and bust, Gromit. On no, no more boom and bust’.

But there is a wealth of ideas out there that have been talked about for years that would bring long lasting transformations to society through simpler means. The extraordinary thing is that such ideas rarely reach the ‘independent’ national media. Monetary reform for instance which should be the hot topic now, is given virtually no space, despite the current work of James Robertson and Joseph Huber and Richard Werner Instead, a myriad of complex Wallace-like banking regulations are being dreamt up to allow bankers to get back to their self-serving monopoly without the embarrassment of another bust too soon.

After a decade of a Labour government it is reported that poverty is getting worse. The maze of regulations of the tax-credit system catches the poor out and they can end up with a tax rate as high as top earners or even have to repay benefits. Has no one heard of the simple reform that would solve such problems, championed by Malcolm Torry and many other like-minded people world-wide?

If the media / government is really interested in preventing a new housing boom and crash (after this crash has finally reached its low point), editors / ministers should be rushing for the researches and policies of such as Fred Harrison, Dave Wetzel, Carol Wilcox , Chris Huhne, Tony Vickers and the books from publisher Anthony Werner and the important findings of Bryan Kavanagh in Australia.

Just as Gromit always recues Wallace from his follies, so we voters bail out our political masters. We have to, as we are the only ones who together have enough money to do so. This year the UK election is soon to be upon us. Just as Gromit needs rescuing from his dependence on his crazy master so we should try and rescue ourselves this year with our votes. 

Do we really want another decade of Wallace-politics? Do we want complexity for its own sake, when simpler solutions are possible which will turn us towards a truer measure of the fairness and freedom that we all want to be possible? 

For a readable summary of the better future we could move towards, go to: The Free Lunch