Shortagesg due to lack of ‘good government’

MAY one who after more than 70 years of faithfully using the privilege of voting now finds it is

going to be impossible in future to vote for any particular political party candidate – because all, without exception, appear equally incapable of competent leadership – offer a comment on our present situation.

Thomas Jefferson, in the early 1800s, spoke of ‘good government’ as that which ‘most effectively secures the rights of the people and the rewards of their labour, which promotes their happiness, and also does their will’. He said ‘the care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the only legitimate object of good government’.

I think one is entitled to ask whether, in all conscience, one can say that this is an accurate description of the way we are governed now.

Is it unreasonable to suggest that the current problems with deliveries of all sorts of things, especially perhaps fuel which affects most other things, should have been anticipated long ago – there seem to have been plenty of warnings many months ago that these things were going to happen if something wasn’t done about them? they not know about the upcoming lack of HGV drivers, for example? Of course they did; so why are they only now starting to do something about it, insufficient and inadequate and short term as that seems to be?

those leading us not understand that it is a natural human reaction when people are told there are shortages, to do everything they can to provide for themselves and their families by ‘stocking up’? Of course, we can all tell ourselves that

it doesn’t make sense and no one should do it but surely we can understand why people do, even though of course WE don’t! WE don’t, of course! It’s all those others.

The fact is that leadership should surely recognise the way things are and not the way they say things ought to be, and they should govern and anticipate and provide on that basis. What else do they think they are there for? Giving credit where credit is due, the Covid vaccination programme has been hugely successful, and the NHS and everyone involved in delivering it deserves our thanks, as do all those in all those other areas where we have been sustained by individuals’ self-sacrifices in making sure that we have all been looked after to their best abilities.

But to a significant degree I believe government in general cannot escape the fact that it has just failed to look and plan ahead to avoid most of the difficulties we are now experiencing.

If only they would admit that they just haven’t done the forward planning and made the provision they should have done, instead of doing their best to make us believe it’s really all someone else’s fault – mostly our own - perhaps it might be the start of some sort of better government and leadership, or is that a forlorn hope?

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