A party political broadcast on behalf of The Unelectables – or Who cares who wins?

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.