March of progress more nightmare than fairy tale

LET’S assume I live in Shangri-la, a fictitious country.

Until recently we were governed by a benevolent dictator who realized that a formula for failure was trying to please everybody. He therefore accepted that a few noisy subjects would be unhappy, so he tolerated them in the knowledge that the large majority were content with their lot.

He abdicated and gave control to the people to elect a democratic government.

Because the politicians were voted in and received generous compensation they wished to continue receiving high wages to hold onto such a great lifestyle. How could this be achieved? They wanted ALL votes and the only way they could secure them was by trying to please everybody. This could be done by greatly expanding welfare even though they knew the system was open to fraud. So as the numbers increased they had to finance the huge burden, so they raised taxes, power costs and petrol excise etc.

Initially the welfare recipients reluctantly accepted the payment, but they soon came to expect payment and now were demanding welfare as a way of life.

The politicians now had more welfare recipients than taxpayers.

Since all subjects voted, it was easy to keep the same politicians in power because the welfare numbers outnumbered taxpayers.

So the politicians now had minority groups with outrageous demands.

One way of increasing the pollies’ coffers was to have compulsory voting and receive x dollars for each vote. No matter that only a couple of other countries in the world have forced voting. Also they hoped to secure the first spot on the ballot because they knew many voters did not even know who or what they vote for. So they called it the Donkey vote.

To keep voters attention elsewhere they thought, why not frighten them with something? So they said we were destroying our environment and wasted money on a massive scare campaign.

A couple of minorities did not accept the national flag and had their own flag so we accepted their flags. So now we had a country with three flags.

Of course if anyone complained we simply would quash them by calling them racists.

The politicians then decided to really pamper one minority group and bowed to all their demands. Because the group received so much there was no need to have a goal, so they did not have to work and had so much idle time they became angry.

The politicians were also in a bind of how to treat people who came to the country illegally. So they gave them more welfare than their own citizens which included payments for each of their children. To their dismay they families had many more children.

The dictator then realised it was too late to resume authority and put his once great nation back on an even keel so he moved to another far away country.

So ends a sad fairy tale. NICK BELLOFF, SOUTHPORT