Desi, I'm against ALL forms of the current political system - none represents our democratic values properly. I'd like to see a balanced solution capable of looking after the interests of the Nation as a whole, not one sector alone - banking, say, or Capital, or workers - but one which gets the lot working together to ensure a rising tide lifts all boats. What we should not be seeing is holes being deliberately knocked in the hulls of some, so they will only float on lead, nor others being pumped full of gas - and both parties have done both.
The impoverished will not improve unless employed, and that needs signifcant capital. The flows of a business need buffering to smooth out the ebbs and flows of normal trading, and that is what banking should do. But bankers are not banking, and employers are not employing, and it is the fault of the governors and governments over a good few years that that is not happening. If it does not happen, then we will drop into a Japanese-style circular recession, through lack of inspiration and alternatives. Business cannot act withjut markets, and if you starve the people, then you starve the market.
The problem lies in not encouraging parasitism. Anyone would love to get by without doing anything - indeed, it's a reproach I half make to myself about retiring early, were it not for the huge and ongoing contributions I can point to having made to the economy during my career, and were it not for what I have done in retirement, which has been described as a trillion-pound idea. In this, I follow in the steps of my father, who got medical implant technology working - have enough to live on, don't take from others who have less and need to come up.
Another angle on parasitism is greed - such as overpricing in the pharmaceutical industry on the supposed ground of reinvesting in research, which somehow never happened. That is a very capitalist failing. We're starting to seriously shame individuals, so perhaps it's time to recover the Stool of Repentance, maybe not in Church, but in public, in railway mainline stations, places where the population goes to. You've heard me talk about treating abuse of office as an aggravated offence, too, escalating the punishment. Yet at the same time we see subtle moves being taken to suppress the Child Abuse enquiry, as revenge for not allowing the setups that were tried. Nobody's yet naming names, but we should start looking at who tried to twist the system, nominating the people who've had to go.