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LIVE 24-SEVEN


DIGBY LORD JONES THOUGHTS FOR DECEMBER...


84


I write this epistle as the country moves into full swing for the 2019 General Election. It would be pointless to devote this column to pontificating on the outcome and consequences, since the linking of my copy deadline and the publishing date means you’ll be reading this after the result is known.


But as the runners and riders are withdrawn or declared or just dig in, I am reminded of one of those historical constants that is not only shown up by our Electoral System but also in many other walks of life: The Law of Unintended Consequences.


Take Jim; a long-standing Labour voter in a northern seat who voted Brexit and loathes the metropolitan, hard-left, London-based elite that has taken over the Party for which they and their families have voted for over a century. Jim has made a monumental decision; he is not going to vote for a Party led by Corbyn (“but don’t tell me Dad, he’ll kill me!”). But the snag is that hell will freeze over before he votes Tory. Ah...a solution is riding into town: Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party. And so, in the secrecy of the voting booth, Jim breaks with a century of family tradition, puts his cross in a different box...and promptly elects a Corbyn-supporting Labour MP because the anti-Corbyn vote is thus divided. In the farce of a not-fit-for-purpose, first- past-the-post system of voting that our country calls democracy, that MP then goes to Parliament and supports a Corbyn Leadership, claiming he is


representative of a constituency in which Jim and thousands like him made sure more people actually and actively voted against Corbyn’s Labour than for it. A mixture of the emergence of smaller parties (which first-past-the-post can’t cope with) and a refusal to vote for the Big One leads to... the continued election of the Big One! The Law of Unintended Consequences writ large.


Let us move to another topical aspect of life in the UK right now, in mid-November: Floods.


Our hearts go out to the poor devils in the Don Valley whose possessions, businesses and homes have been ruined by flood water. When billions of pounds have been spent on flood defences since the widespread flooding of 2007, we (and especially they) are entitled to ask how did this happen again? There will be many reasons and each one in isolation will not cause havoc, but a fatal combination of three or four together and the result is painfully there for us all to see, but thankfully not experience. I give you the Law of Unintended Consequences.


Those who campaigned for, and won, a wetland wildlife LIVE24-SEVEN.COM


BUSINE SS LORD DIGBY JONE S


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