Or just a senior government adviser? I said some time back that the new "diploma" scheme wasn't the way to improve the education service. Now we find that universities don't like it either.Seems like most people around the country know certain things years before the government works them out. Here are my top five (in reverse order):
5) The Olympics is going to cost more than everybody thinks.
4) These diplomas aren't going to take off. Good schools will start offering baccalaureates.
3) Rail fares are going to keep going up and this is going to reduce the number of travelers on the trains, and increase cars on the roads.
2) The government is eventually going to force through unlimited random detentions and ID cards, which no-one wants.
And at number 1...) The war in Iraq is going to go on and on and when we do eventually pull out, whether that's next year or in ten years time, they are going to have a civil war.
And there isn't a party out there I can vote for who are going to fix these huge, obvious problems. Maybe I should run myself. Cru for PM...?!
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5) The Olympics is going to cost more than everybody thinks.
New Yorkers were relieved when we didn't get it. Let another city waste its money.
3) Rail fares are going to keep going up and this is going to reduce the number of travelers on the trains, and increase cars on the roads.
Getting serious about global warming and oil depletion would require a real effort to work on mass transit so that a large percentage of Europeans and Americans wouldn't need a car. It's too bad that myopic governments won't recognize this, and try to squeeze a few extra millions out of mass transit riders rather than invest for the future.
2) The government is eventually going to force through unlimited random detentions and ID cards, which no-one wants.
They forced through unlimited detentions in the US with hardly any opposition.
And at number 1...) The war in Iraq is going to go on and on and when we do eventually pull out, whether that's next year or in ten years time, they are going to have a civil war.
They nearly have a civil war right now - ethnic cleansing, reprisal killings, massive refugee flows, constant bombings of civilians. The US and UK aren't improving things by staying there - our presence is giving the various insurgency groups a point to rally around. If we pull out now, there is some hope of some of the less militant insurgents being persuaded to join a political settlement, and of some kind of arrangement about Iraqi oil revenue that would stop a lot of the violence (the oil is in the Kurdish and Shiite regions, and the Sunnis would be really screwed if they were cut off from it. The Kurds and Shiites want oil revenue to stay in their regions, which were cheated out of it during Saddam's rule, while the Sunnis want it distributed nationally.) Also, low-level Baath party members have to be allowed to get government jobs; the firing of all Baathists in the government is another major reason for the Sunni insurgency. And if there's going to be an all-out civil war anyway, we certainly don't need US and UK troops to be caught in the middle of it.
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