Deadbeat has been revitalised by a new hip. A very nice man called Mr. Slack (who truly belied his name) even managed to make my legs the same length!
The other reason to be cheerful (and precious few there have been since Ian Dury died...) is that this is a hinge-point, a decisive moment in history, one of those times when a small amount of pressure - applied at the right time at the right place - can have disproportionate results. Financial turmoil, general dissatisfaction with the system of government, the increase in natural catastrophes, even the prospect of a general election is all signaling that things could, and bloody well should, change. Time for a lazy man's coup d'etat. A Deadbeat opportunity, in fact.

First, a little background. The destruction of the Berlin Wall was the decisive moment which signaled the collapse of communism. It took a while after that for the whole edifice to topple but that was the death knell. The credit crunch (more specifically the demise of Lehman Bros.) signaled the failure of capitalism (again, it'll take a while - but the die is cast). The church has been irrelevant for ages (as evidenced by the increase in alternative spirituality providers). Now is the time to get rid of democracy as well. Then mankind can finally move on.

Deadbeat gave up finally and irrevocably on democracy shortly after 9/11. There was, after all, a completely rational response to the attack - the USA should have convened a world summit with the headline aim ' Sharing Resources Fairly to Build Better Worldwide Understanding'. The agenda would have included items such as:
1. Cancelling Third World debt.
2. Facilitating Technology Transfer.
3. Empowering Ethnic Minorities.
4. Israel/Palestine - A new Opportunity for the Timeshare Industry?
(well maybe not the last one, but you get the idea.)
A sub-committee would have worked on 'Osama Bin Laden and Al Khaeda - Formulating a co-ordinated, multi-denominational response to international terrorism'.

Given that Bin Laden - however sociopathic - is a canny old chessplayer who wouldn't spend men and resources on such a scale without considering his opponent's response, and given that (in life as in chess) following your opponent's script is a recipe for disaster, then any reaction other than heavy-handed over-reaction would have wrong footed the Axis of Evil. It would also have been a PR victory, maybe even to the point of reducing the availability of potential martyrs willing to die to defeat The Great Satan. The problem is that, with a moronic populace and a rabid press, no democratic leader who proposed such a policy would have survived a week.

As expounded in Deadbeat 22, the real question about all the 'isms' is not how beautiful they are in principle, but how badly they fail in practice. Democracy might be very pretty as a concept, but if it makes the only valid response to a situation impossible, (exactly as above) then it's screwed as far as I'm concerned.

Since the bloody, obscene and fundamentally stupid debacle of the 9/11 aftermath, the stock of democracy as a serious method of popular government has taken a number of crucial hits - Mugabe, Berlosconi, Hazel Blears, expenses... The whole, rotten, self-perpetuating edifice is tottering. I feel the time is right to declare that Deadbeat, (as ever totally current) is with Plato - what we need now is a benevolent dictatorship. More specifically, a Deadbeat Despot. Not me, I hasten to add - the whole despot thing appears to be very hard work, what with discovering plots and neutralising plotters, and the incontrovertable fact that many despots become deadspots - despotism isn't my ideal career choice.

With this in mind, I am happy to place some of my preferred policy solutions in the public domain, for free adoption by any would-be despot.

1. Crime. This could be reduced by 70% (according to various commentators I am too idle to research and reference properly) by simply legalising drugs. Although some addicts choose crime and heroin as part of an 'outlaw' lifestyle, the majority of addicts would rather not spend their days robbing to fund a habit which they fell into as a result of over-enthusiastic experimentation (or stupidity, depending on your level of bigotry). Giving them the opportunity to do something else would be the start of Deadbeat's drug management policy. This is not a new idea - in fact what with public proposals to this effect having been made by a galaxy of thinkers and police chiefs, it's practically Established Wisdom. The only thing which has so far prevented this idea from becoming fact is the politician's fear of the Daily Mail readers' reaction. Democracy and a free press again, screwing things up.

The millions of pounds saved by society could easily fund a proper drug education programme. (Not the laughably unsophisticated and ineffective government propaganda that is currently served up.)

The organised, violent and socially destructive drug gangs would be out of business. No doubt they would turn to other means of making illegal fortunes, but there would be a lot of freed-up police and court time to fight them with.

We, as a country, could source our freely-dispensed heroin ethically. Fair trade scag! What a slogan! This would represent a real blow to the drug-barons and the drug-funded regimes who oppress and torture whole populations.

2. Transport. I would double the capacity of the road network without a single new dual-carriageway to threaten the wildlife and beauty of our land. It would take about three months. Using tried and tested technology (thanks to Red Ken) I would impose a £20 tax on any private vehicle traveling on the motorways with a single occupant. This would reduce to £10 for dual occupancy and to zero for two or more passengers. Instantly, hitch-hiking would become a really valid alternative method of transport. CCT surveillance of the designated pick-up points and ebay-style feedback should keep the whole thing safe.

I would reduce the carnage on the roads by building race tracks (enclosing bmx, skateboard and other outdoor activities) outside the major conurbations. Anyone with a driving license would be able to turn up, sign a release (as at the old Nurburgring circuit) pay a reasonable fee and then explore the performance limits of their vehicle. The twist would be that any moving-traffic violation would mean a ban from all the tracks. The result would be that the 18-22 year-old males who are responsible for most of the carnage on the roads would drive very carefully on public carriageways. Telling a testosterone-fuelled youth (and Deadbeat was one of those, once) not to drive fast is pointless. Tell him how and where he can enjoy his car safely and you give him choices. He just might respond as a responsible young adult rather than as a disenchanted youth.
The environmental impact of this would be mitigated by increasing taxation (a lot) on any car with an engine over two litres.

Foreign lorries would be subject to a surcharge (let's say £500) as soon as they disembarked from the ferry. This would rebalance the economy of freight in favour of container ports and rail - and maybe even to make the canals a viable freight network once more, thus migrating freight off the road. The ecological benefits are obvious.
Under-maintained and overladen foreign trucks driven by underpaid and over-tired drivers would no longer be a cost-effective business model for continental hauliers. We have enough home-grown unprincipled truckers operating dangerous juggernauts already, and the police/VOSA have a better chance of catching and dissuading them.

More policy outlines to come soon. Feel free, dear reader, to suggest/demand details, but right now Deadbeat is considering the perfect education system.....

Cheers and happy Cold Snaps to everyone!

Sarah's comment:

Unfortunately capitalism survived the crash and the great depression of the 20s and seems likely to survive the current unpleasantness. After all, the taxpayer has now guaranteed the banks' bonus culture - brilliant demonstration of where the risks really lie. Now the main parties' response to the economy is to further cut welfare (insofar as there... See more is any) and further deregulate capitalism - ie more of same, with sharper teeth even than under Thatcher. There was a brief moment about a year ago when it looked possible for something else to flourish, but it has passed. It would be nice to believe otherwise... I wish I could.
04 March at 11:28

Deadbeat's reply:

The end of capitalism is happening - but it's a very big system, which takes a while to disintegrate. It hasn't even got really nasty yet, that happens when major currencies fail. The Euro is is structurally unsound without a Federation of Europe to support it politically and fiscally. The Dollar is fundamentally shaky. Its current strength is due to its position as a global reserve currency, so sovereign wealth everywhere is vulnerable to a major devaluation, but the economic underpinnings of the dollar are not in good shape.

This artificial valuation based on perception is a fundamental (error, imho) of capitalism. The famous bubbles, slumps and Ponzi schemes were seen as an unwanted side-effect of a generally beneficial system - even though they caused untold misery, death and even wars (I'm sure I remember something about the hyperinflation of the deutschemark contributing to the rise of Hitler - but then I mostly played battleships with Ho Yen during history lessons).

Originally, of course, currencies were underpinned by real value - gold, mostly, but any 'dig it out of the ground and sell it' resources will do. Over time, the gold standard was replaced by sober, risk-averse, self-regulating bankers - all of that 'my word is my bond' bollocks, which only works if everyone has been to the same schools and parties and really CARES about being cut out of a tiny, polite society. When the oiks began to infiltrate, that stopped working. Then it was felt that statutory regulation would provide adequate control (that and the harsh justice of Mister Market) - but the regulators were all in the same clubs and had their noses in the same trough as the bankers and financiers they were supposed to control. The result was a raft of confused and very leaky 'light-touch' regulations and the creation of mostly useless regulatory bodies. Private Eye rightly calls the FSA the 'Fundamentally Supine Authority'. So the world's financial system was delivered, mostly uncontrolled, to now not-so-risk-averse, greed-is-good, testerone-and-cocaine-fuelled oiks. Who pissed it all against the wall (whilst amassing personal fortunes, obviously).

Now if I were in charge of, say China - who are at least still suspicious of capitalism and have no real loyalty to a world financial sytem based on it, I would turn most of my foreign exchange into real assets - large tracts of the third world, mining rights, that sort of thing. The Chinese do play the long game - something structurally impossible in modern capitalism - and they are gearing up for the endgame, the struggle for diminishing resources. Then, whilst out-manufacturing and out-exporting everyone and still generating piles of foreign currency, I would let the Dollar and the Euro fall apart. In fact, I'd help. At which point, as I said, it all gets really nasty. And, just possibly, better (eventually).

In the meantime, the dollar supporters are talking about the 'flight to value' rubbing their hands at the Euro's woes and hoping that the American downturn will hurt the Eastern economies which depend on exporting to Uncle Sam. The domestic Chinese market - some 1.3 billion, many of which are very poor and would dearly love an enhanced lifestyle - can and will take up the slack. Of course, raising peasants out of grinding subsistance-level poverty has always been a recipe for revolution... but without much in the way of human rights a free press or proper democracy China is much better placed to manage that change than most. Watch out capitalism, I say.

Thanks Sarah.