The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

THE LAST DITCH

A recipe for a poor nation

Published by Tom

on

BBC News – Lord Smith: Environment Agency 'bound by Treasury rules'.

Ingredients: 

  • One rich free-range nation, reared on fertile terrain
  • Millions of productive citizens
  • Thousands of intellectuals, incubated in ivory towers well away from reality
  • Complacency
  • Belief in the virtue of the state apparatus (common name: credulity)
  • Problems (foraged ingredients, to be found anywhere)
  • Demands for government to solve all problems
  • Left or right-wing political pretexts (according to taste)

Equipment:

A big stick

Method:

  1. Add complacency and credulity to your rich nation
  2. Mix your intellectuals with your demands that government solves all problems
  3. Beat your productive citizens with big stick to extract juices
  4. Use juices to coat the problems, observing (but ignoring) the increase in risky behaviours
  5. Wait for problems to re-occur
  6. Heat on a high flame of opposition criticism of inadequate government action
  7. Turn up heat as politicians in power blame their officials
  8. Bring to the boil as officials blame the government for not employing enough officials
  9. Marinade the situation in productive citizen-juice and coat with a thick crusting of more officials
  10. Season with political pretext of choice

3 responses to “A recipe for a poor nation”

  1. Cuffleyburgers Avatar
    Cuffleyburgers

    Hi Tom
    I guess you didn’t get this from one of the endless BBC cooking shows?

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  2. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    No, I didn’t. I was on an excellent cookery course at the weekend – http://goo.gl/pVf2y8 – and that stimulated the idea. I highly recommend the school but hasten to add that this particular recipe is of the social democrat world’s devising, not the chefs there.

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  3. Cascadian Avatar
    Cascadian

    Tom, that tastes awful, it’s missing something vital. Might I suggest.
    Sprinkle with politicians and princes in welly boots. Don’t worry about cleaning their hands first, there is no chance they would have handled a sandbag.
    Force feed it to the populace every six hours with a tablespoon of castor oil.
    Announce-nothing can be done to improve the recipe without more taxes.

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Your blogger

Tom is a retired international lawyer. He was a partner in a City of London law firm and spent almost twenty years abroad serving clients from all over the world.

Returning to London on retirement in 2011, he was dismayed to discover how much liberty had been lost in the UK while he was away.

He’s a classical liberal (libertarian, if you must) who, like his illustrious namesake, considers that

“…government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”

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