Vested Interests

One of the disadvantages of being a neatly ordered country where everything is more or less in its place is that those institutions which tidily fill a hole in the great scheme of things quickly become a vested interest and thus a block to progress. Maggie's greatest achievement was to overturn a number of vested interests but sadly not enough. We see it in education with the unions trying to stop the imaginative reforms now being pushed through by Gove. Other vested interests she did not deal with and which are still with us include those connected to the NHS, probably the most powerful vested interests now existing in this country. The NHS is unbelievably inefficient and expensive as we all know and the need to reform it is self evident but the vested interests concerned are using every dirty trick in the book to keep the status quo. Cameron is quite right to insist on reform even if the reforms hardly go far enough as they only deal with patient choice and putting local doctors in charge of arranging local services. There will hopefully be a further NHS bill after the next election to take reforms further. Another vested interest are the planning laws in this country including the excessive weight given to the environmental lobby which has allowed the fascist green, friends of the earth types to have far too big a say over energy. Aided and abetted as we know by the BBC - another vested interest. We are about to return to energy rationing unless we stop spending money on renewable energy and start building nuclear and coal fired power stations. Much more importantly we must start exploiting the shale gas that lies underneath us in vast quantities. The fascists do not seem to have much of a following however as the numbers protesting against fracking (the process involved in extracting the gas from the rock in which it lies) in a pedestrian lane off Kensington High Street almost opposite the Royal Garden Hotel were less than the number of constables policing the event. The Spectator has an interesting article on shale gas and its benefits here. We desperately need to reduce our energy costs in this country for both households and businesses and we should do everything to ensure that the nasty greens are put back in their box without further ado. If this means getting rid of the new LibDem Energy Secretary and replacing him with a Tory who'll do the business then so be it.