THE REAL CAUSE OF GLOBAL OVERHEATING

Under the heading of global overheating, as in so many things, governments are a bunch of do-nothing prats, fiddling while the planet goes to hell in a hand-basket. Why? For the answer, go look in the mirror, go look in the street. You and people like you vote the damn fools in.

Goverments do nothing because they know that the people who voted for them do not want anything done. If they ever think of doing anything they quickly pass on to another thought, because what really needs to be done is to ban the use of fossil fuels and all the devices and machines that run on them, arrest the CEOs of the companies that peddle all that stuff and lock them up for committing massive crimes against humanity. But the majority of people do not want that. They want to keep living as they have always lived--the global-overheating way. So the governments they vote for act accordingly.

Today, in one of those interesting discussions that can arise in bus-stops on this island, an elderly woman came out with a brilliantly simple idea. She said she had often thought that voting papers in democracies should have an extra box for people who want to exercise their right and duty to vote but want to express their dissatisfaction with everything on offer--for all the people who want to say 'I do not agree with what is being done or proposed, I do not want what is being done or proposed.' The election result, if that option got a majority, would be a revolution. Revolution by ballot. No bloodshed, no guns, no guillotine. Democratic revolution.

The politicians, of course, would never allow such a simple, wonderful system. They have no wish to find out that we loathe their guts, that we only vote for them because they seem marginally less likely than the other lot to do us harm, and that we are therefore not voting for them, just against what seems an even greater evil.

Footnote: Aha! Thailand already has an abstention/protest box on the ballot papers. And it seems that if that box gets the majority in any electorate no one wins that seat. And the Thai constitution says that all the seats in parliament must be filled before a government can be formed. so the protest vote has enormous power. What a wonderful system! May the whole world adopt it! Real democracy :-))