So
game is on and the election battle is off to a rip roaring yawn. The
most closely fought contest since the … the last one.
The
fact is that the major issues remain the same, as do the stock
answers. The health service, the economy, immigration, education,
housing, transport and pensions have always been the key concerns,
always have been, always will be. The bottom line is that we all want
utopia, there is only so much money in the pot and it all comes down
to how the spoils from the pot is divided. Fundamentally there are
more problems than there are solutions and it comes down to
politicians to put whatever spin and window dressing on the situation
they can to make their party look different from the rest. The
election run in is not the for radical thinking so my guess is that
we are in for another mud-slinging contest.
I
would no more wish to be a politician than stick my head in a kitchen
blender, far too much finger wringing, back stabbing and baby kissing
for my likes, however in the spirit of contention I would like to put
forward my own thoughts of what I would like to see in a manifesto.
Not that I expect that my proposal would be adopted because it
wouldn’t work, proposals seldom do, but at least it would be a more
entertaining debate than the usual fodder.
My
proposal would be to extend the day from 24 hours to 26 hours which
would not only produce a variety of benefits, which I shall outline,
but also go a long way to solving some of the unanswered questions to
the key concerns listed above.
This
may seem like a ludicrous idea though I do believe it does have a
number of merits.
It
would need to be a 2 hour increase so that you could spilt am and pm
into whole numbers.
An
additional 10 hours to the working week would bring a boost to the
economy through productivity and taxes. Those in employment could see
a rise in their income of up to 30%, while this will also be an
opportunity to create thousands of new jobs. More money in our
pockets with more time to spend it.
Those
who like to party will have more time to do so, while those who claim
they do not get enough sleep will get longer in bed.
There
would be the equivalent of an additional 28 shopping days till
Christmas, giving us more time to ponder what to buy our loved ones.
If like me you struggle with this task the good news is that we will
have fewer Christmases and birthdays in the future.
The
extra 2 hours will give the government an opportunity to cram ever
more ridiculous demands into an already overcrowded school curriculum
and more time for students to complete their homework.
Students
staying on longer at school should see an improvement in grades and
there should be a welcome decrease in youth unemployment.
With
the extra 2 hours even the most inept transport provider should be
able to ensure that their buses or trains run to schedule. The
potential for staggering journey times should lead to a drop in road
congestion. It should also free up slots in the air reducing the
need for a new runway at Heathrow Airport.
It will mean that patients will spend fewer days in hospital, freeing
up much needed beds. The average pregnancy will be 3 weeks shorter
than at present. The number of work days lost due to sickness will
drop. Hospital waiting times will be shorter and those on daily
tablets will not have to take their medication for so long, reducing
the NHS drugs bill.
Those
who believe that the legal system is too lenient on criminals can
take heart from the fact that sentences will now be longer.
One
of the biggest problems that this country faces is that there are
more of us living longer lives. Increasing the length of the day
addresses this problem by ensuring that life expectancy, which also
helps reduce the pensions bill and the demand for home care for the
elderly.
Some
may view a shorter life expectancy as a negative factor but on the
positive side we will not age as quickly, so no one will be worse
off.
Assuming
that most people will continue to eat 3 meals a day, increasing the
length of the day by 2 hours should see no, or minimal, increase in
our food bill which would effectively mean that the cost of our
weekly shop would go down and this would reduce the effects of
obesity in society.
As I
see it, there are 2 downsides to this proposal, for the situation to
work it would require the rest of the world to adopt the same option
and extend their day. This may not be beyond the realm of possibility
given that most of the other countries are in a similar financial
mess and have just as few ideas of how to get out of a crisis.
The
other concern is the impact it would have on nature. This again is
possibly not so problematic. Climate changes would be largely
unaffected but items such as bird migratory patterns and crop growth
may. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your view, modern
techniques have already dealt with timing issues for milk, seed and
egg production. As for the birds and the flowers, well they are
probably already confused by our fickle weather conditions but nature
is very dynamic and adaptable so maybe the impact of any change would
be minimal.
In
the longer term there would be a changing of the seasons which could
bring further challenges that may work in our favour. Heatwaves in
November might expand the tourism market, removing the bottleneck for
July and August breaks. It may also mean that our highly paid golf
professionals who seem to play a disproportionate number of
tournaments in exotic places where the sun always shine may find
themselves on waterlogged or windswept greens in the middle of July.
It would be nice to see how they get on in conditions more suited to
the enthusiastic amateur.
There
might be problems with future Winter Olympics being held in Summer
conditions, but if they can hold the Soccer World Cup in Qatar in
December then perhaps this will not be an issue. Personally I would
look forward to seeing the ski jump turned into a water slide though
I suspect that will never happen.
Doubtless
there will be detractors who will be argue that it will mean the
demise of the traditional clock. We are living in a digital age,
changing the watch face should not be too difficult. There will be
campaigns to keep the grand time pieces such as ‘Big Ben’ – you
mean the ‘Big Ben’ at the crumbling halls of Westminster, the one
that would probably disappear if parliament was ever relocated?
Decimalisation saw us change from the old £-s-d to new pence yet the
value of the pound did not change overnight, why should changing from
24 to 26 hour days be any more difficult?
That
just leaves the housing shortage and immigration issues to be
tackled, both far too complex for me to contemplate in my lifetime no
matter how long the day is.
