These days’ economics are strictly politics. Economics are driven by politics via rigged interest rates. This politico-economic reality is molded on the basis of political doctrine and the interests of politicians. QE, ‘to big to fail,’ bail ins, bail outs, trade deals, subsidies, tax rates, what is legal or illegal practice, our whole economic life is driven by politics and the people forming and applying policy.
More than ever we are at the mercy of political doctrine and whim.
So recently while chatting with a member of the British House of Lords it was amusing to be asked what one law I would implement if I could. My answer was, “politicians and senior civil servants should be put under a drug testing regime similar to performance athletes.” I don’t think the Lord was expecting this answer, but I explained senior people in government are under the same sort of pressure as athletes to perform and increasingly likely to end up falling in to the trap of drug abuse.
Politicians do not tend to be young men, yet they are expected to jet here and there from one place to the next on the sort of schedule that would crush most of us. The temptation is there to seek the wrong kind of help.
Why do famous politicians get caught in bed with hookers when they are nearly 80 years old, how is it even possible?? What makes bad tempered world leaders go fishing topless? Did you spot that drug fueled strut? At the very least the political landscape has more than a whiff of steroids. When one statesman kisses the head of another and slaps the next, well it could be drink but it could be something else entirely.
Politicians are human but the risk of drug abuse in high place is huge. Politicians have our lives and well being in their hands.
This is from the US government site on work place drug testing. http://www.dol.gov/elaws/asp/drugfree/drugs/dt.asp
I think government counts are a sensitive role.
So it was interesting to see that only a few weeks after my new UK law suggestion that the deputy leader of the house of Lords was exposed, at the tender age of 69, of snorting coke from the cleavage of a lady night worker as he entertained a couple of them. He has now left government as a result.
Drugs are a bane our governments must be free of, whether its steroids to keep a politician on the road or recreational drugs, politicians need to, like elite sportsmen subject themselves to a regime of “trust but verify.”
Governments constantly subject their citizens to rules, controls and restrictions based on the misbehavior of a small minority of miscreants.
In this modern world of coke snorting, orgy holding politicians and ‘roid’ rage rulers, it’s time for random drug testing in government. Why would they not agree?