I think that we should be worried about the way things are going. I've often said it but today we appear to have gone soft on the things that should be important and hard on the things that should not be. You can get a visit from the thought police for posting hurty words online yet they are reducing police numbers in areas where, in reality, they should be boosting them. A number of ex Police friends lost their jobs some time ago now and they were happy to be paid off, let's face it, it's not always Dixon of Dock Green, when they took out a layer of experienced Officers. Of course some were taken back under contract but hey.
The "Trump Tariffs" have made markets jittery and I can see why he's done it. It's a world-wide economic gamble and our Rachel from Accounts didn't see it coming....again! I'm shaking my head again wondering why we cannot see beyond the Friday of the week we are in. There is no long terms strategic planning at all. It's crazy that we are about to shoot ourselves in the foot yet again when the foot we shot last week hasn't really begun healing up!
So, how about our Canal system. I imagine very lightly used as a means of transporting goods but there is a little commercial traffic on them. Thousands of miles of Canals, Tow Paths, Locks winding their way through beautiful countryside (in the main) and big cities too. So they want all boats to be, wait for it, electric, not to have log burners blah blah. Somehow they are going to need to put infrastructure by the sides of the Canals and in the Marinas. Being a trained electrician, I ought to warn people that the old mantra we used was "Water and Electricity do not mix" So the dangers are electricity close to water now I know you can hook ups in Marinas but the joy of canal boating is that you poodle along at 4 mph maximum and that you have the bump bump bump of a diesel engine under you. I imagine that electric would make it quieter, we have a local electric boat which is whisper quiet. You wouldn't need a Tesla type arrangement as the water would provide you o glide through but who pays for the conversions and who pays for the infrastructure, how do ensure complete safety of the charging?
The other "Look at how stupid I am" was that they want to reduce the size of petrol and diesel tanks on cars to 20 gallons and then to 10 gallons. These people are absolutely crazy - what does that achieve? These days it's like a class of ten year old children have been asked to come up with energy saving ideas and their class project is to demonstrate how they'd save energy. The trouble is, these fanciful ideas further oppress people who are already made poorer and struggle on day to day living costs because of Venezuelan style policies. Once one of the richest countries in the world you can do some research on what's happened since they adopted socialism.
I don't know how long it will take to impact people but I feel a growing resentment coming, even among my friends that are shall we say left leaning. Time will of course tell and these mistaken ideological policies will, as they always have, lead to the very people they are meant to help being the victims of the very well intentioned but worthless policies our naive elected politicians think are so clever and helpful. As they will inevitably end falling flat on their faces we can only hope that, as they are always saying "Lessons will be learned" are uttered as their faces hit the mud.
