Pragmocracy is the only way.
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Thu 15 Sep 2011 06:46
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Thursday 15th September 0433 UTC 0533
BST
25:24.574S 007:006.32E
Wind Speed 19 Knots SSE, COG 306 Deg True, SOG 8.5
Knots
For sure I am working Rhiann Marie relentlessly
down the track to St Helena (if I stop there). It has been slow at times
painfully slow but I believe we have squeezed the best course and speed to
our waypoint that we could. Where we have had free wind we have sailed
the rhumb line and trimmed the sails to give best VMG (velocity made good),
where we have been as deep down the wind as we can go we sometimes sail to the
wind especially if sleep is required. The same is true if we are hard on the
wind.
The amazing thing has been the sailing performance
of Rhiann Marie. Between close reaching and broad reaching in winds say up
to 10knots, boat speed is rarely more than two knots less than wind speed
....... but in between on a beam reach boat speed is often matching wind speed.
With true wind just behind the beam I have had 10 knot boat speed from 10 knots
of wind and just yesterday I had 6 knots from 6 knots! Of course you must
realise this is all about the skippers qualities not the boat
.....
As you can see it is the middle of the night and I
have spent some considerable time on the foredeck rigging the pole out to
windward. It seems however I have magical powers of control over the weather. If
you ever want the weather or the wind more precisely to change just ask me to
work out on the foredeck of Rhiann Marie for half an hour! Yep, after rigging
the pole to windward the wind strengthened and veered just a little so no need
for the pole by the time I was finished. So back down below and of course after
stripping off safety gear and oilies - whaddaya know - back to slatting away in
the leeward side so back up again to the foredeck to rig the genoa to the
windward pole. And there we have it rolling along nicely now doing 8.5 knots -
9.0 now,,,,
So being in a little bit of a grumpy disposition
maybe this is good time to talk about politics? This may surprise you but
I don't have "politics". Certainly not of the party political type anyway.
Definitely not the ideological kind. However quite a number of you over the last
two years have written to me - nobody has been more surprised than me -
suggesting that I stand for various political offices! One person however has
written saying my "politics" are apalling! That would appear to be because my
onslaught against big government clash with his political ideology.
Out of frustration for the way our country and
economy is mismanaged, at one time I may have considered it. However I have
come to the conclusion that much more good can be acheived for society and
country by acheiving business success and staying outside
politics. Aspiration to political office is
not for me. However there is still a very real "political" job to be
done from outside politics. Outside councils and parliaments. I was
most impressed back in St Vincent almost two years ago by a taxi driver Colin
MacKenzie who was complaining bitterly about how the government officials and
politicians were treated so preferentially with all kinds of preferential
benefits funded off the back of people like Colin who had to work long hours for
little pay and ultimately had to bear all the costs of those oaf-icials. "Why
don't you stand for parliament?" I asked Colin. "No way! All these jokers do in
there..." he said gesticulating towards the parliament building "is
jaw,jaw,jaw". "Anyway" he went on "there is a very real job to be done on the
outside looking in trying to keep these crooks in line, you can't do that
if you become one of them"
Having talked with many people in country after
country, having met politicians, government ministers and government
workers, successful business people, old money, new money but mostly ordinary
hard working people from all cultures, I have been able to form a clear
view of what is so wrong, and of course what is so right about our
society. On my travels around the world I
have met the same story everywhere. Government doing more for itself than for
its people. Big government paying themselves and all those in on the scam
unfairly off the backs of the working citizenship. Two terms in Parliament,
perhaps as little as six years, and salary and benefits for the rest of your
life? How can that be fair? That's after being paid (not earning), being
paid a ridiculous salary while in parliament and as we have seen all over the
world not least the UK a scandalous abuse of "expenses". All the time this
excess has to be funded by the ordinary hard working man and woman. This is
grossly unjust and those ideological career politicians pretending in their own
self importance that this is in the name of socialism should be seen for what
they are. Power hungry and self serving.
The catastrophic Blair and Brown years in the UK
exemplified this point perfectly. Not only because of their murderous
misadventure following the US into Iraq, not only because their
mismanagement of their "no more boom and bust" economy, nor even their
increase in public expenditure by a factor of more than three. No because they
brought up a whole generation to believe that everything from Health and Safety
to your diet is the responsibility of the state. A whole generation has breen
brought up with the state encroaching on every aspect of their lives denuding
individuals responsibility for themselves. Its like giving a mass labotomy to
the population! This is ideology and political dogma for you and its
self serving big government has left us and most of Europe bust.
You may deduce from all this that I am some free
market capitalist with no care for the social well being of my fellow citizens.
Far from it. In the United States we see the
effects of an economy and society which for years has been driven, by the right
wing free market ideologically to bankruptcy too. All over the world we see
senior management of publicly quoted companies pay themselves enormous,
scandalous, immoral salaries. They are robbing the shareholders. Who are these
shareholders? You and I, through any pensions we may have. Pension funds
are major shareholders in publicly listed companies. So abuse of
remuneration systems by senior bankers or managers does affect you. Even more so
if our funds (well borrowings actually - all the funds were squandered ) are
then used to bail out the mismanaged companies.
Neither of the two systems noted above have left
enough resource for countries to truly care for their citizens who
cannot care for themselves and that is a
disgrace.
Whose fault is all this? Mine and yours. Because we
have allowed it to happen right under our noses. When have I or you
stood up publicly and protested about excesses of our governments or when
have we as shareholders or pension contributors actually stood up and said No!
this salary and bonus settlement is scandalous (obviously if you're in on
either of these scams I don't expect you to protest and unfortunately for
"democracy" that amounts to about 1/3rd of the voting
population)
No I am not "political", and not an ideologist but
a realist. Good old fashioned common sense and a pragmatic approach, free from
dogma and ideology is what it takes to run a country and to obtain the
fairest results for the people. There should be a presumption against the
government doing things, in any event they are inherently useless at running
anything, and a pragmatic view of what is best for the good of the whole
country. Not for those with capital, or in business, or in government or
public service. (Yes, that was Public Service I said. I don't know when
"service" was changed to "sector" but probably around the same time that we
stopped getting good public service funnily enough.) Good for the whole country
- for the long term. Frugal government. All government should be frugal and
only do what needs to be done by government, perhaps then by doing less
they could concentrate on doing it better?
So here is my view ( bloody hell its bright outside
now - I do go on a bit eh!) Small government is beautiful and there should be a
presumtion that the government shouldn't do it, when the government do do it it
should be done as efficiently as the private sector could do it, neither left
nor right is best, ideology and dogma must be binned and replaced with
a pragmatic common sense approach to policy. And. And, most importantly we,
all of us need to find a way to stand up and be counted and protest against what
we know to be unjust. A la Arab spring .... Facebook, Twitter, BBM ?
Perhaps this needs studying and if made very easy for people to vote
electronically with one click then our voices could be heard on more subjects
that require public scrutiny?
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