OneAndOneIs2

On my way to work, there is a roundabout where I want to peel off from the main road and go off to the left. For the last month or two, there's been roudworks just after this roundabout on the major road. Thus there has been a huge queue of cars waiting to go straight on, all in the left hand lane, which I want to be in because I want to turn left.

So instead, I sail up the empty right-hand lane, do a complete loop of the roundabout, and take my exit having travelled a few yards further but taken several minutes less than I would have had I stayed in the left lane.

This morning, however, as I was travelling said loop, I started to worry about the vehicle in front of me, whom I ha dfollowed onto the roudabout. "What's he DOING?" I thought as he missed the right-turn exit, and then missed the u-turn exit. And then it all became clear, as he look the same exit as I wanted: Here was another driver who'd taken one look at the enormous queue in the left lane, said "Sod that" and used the right lane to make a left turn.

Shouldn't have surprised me, it was just a driver showing a bit of common sense. Right?

Well.. yeah.. but this was the first driver who's done this in the entire time there's been these roadworks. I just don't expect intelligence from other drivers. When they exhibit it, it comes as a complete surprise.

It's kinda sad, really, to be surprised by your fellow populace showing some sign of intelligence. But it isn't just on the roads where it happens.

I generally avoid discussing politics. But in one of those strings of unrelated coincidences that happen in life, something's been bothering me on that subject. There's been a trend, from comedians on TV to people in the press to conversations in real life, of people saying what a big mistake it was to vote in the Tories and no wonder the country's not doing well.

And this really does confuse me. Because the reason the country isn't doing well is that it's in a recession. It's in a recession because the banks stopped lending money. The banks stopped lending money because they lent so much money to people who couldn't pay it back that they completely screwed themselves. And they were allowed to make these incredibly short-sighted loans because the Labour governement deregulated the banks.

This is the same Labour government who sold half the country's centuries-old gold reserves whilst its value had been low for years, despite being told by every finance guru that gold was about to skyrocket in value. A few years later and the reserves they threw away for pennies would be worth three times what it was when they sold it.

It's also the same Labour government that screwed over the pensions fund and was then completely shocked that there was a pensions crisis. And whose solution to this was to ask the public to invest more money in their pensions, because then everything would be alright.

It's simple cause and effect: Labour deregulated the banks, the banks screwed over the country, Labour then threw yet more money at the banks because they were "too big to fail" and now the country is in recession.

So yes, the Tories have come in and they're making budget cuts and spending cuts. Of course they bloody are: Labour already spent all the money the country had, and also billions more that the country didn't have, and now somebody has to pick up the pieces. Which means cutting down on spending the money we no longer have.

And there are people, all over the country, who are looking at this situation, and instead seeing it as "Labour didn't make all these nasty cuts, they threw money around like water. Wow, the new government sucks!"

And the big problem with democracy is, these morons have just as much say in who runs the country as people who actually have a working brain.

I don't mind people voting for a party or a politician because they believe in their philosophy or manifesto. A lot of people still voted for Labour in the last election, and that's fine. What's not fine is people who actually claim that if Labour had been voted back in, the country wouldn't have gone into recession. When the simple fact is, they're the cause of the recession and they've even admitted it.

And the sad thing is, although I avoid American politics even more than I do our own, I'm still aware that Obama's having exactly the same problems. So I can't even take comfort in the fact that maybe it's just a local phenomenon and there's intelligent life in bigger, richer countries.

I came across this cartoon the other day. It kind of says it all, really.

And the sad thing is, people fall for it. Every single time.