| 2010: Puzzling times: a cosmological explanation? Is time actually running backwards? Or sideways? I consider the evidence from the year’s bizarre political developments (policies that make the problems they address worse, people believing nuclear power is cost effective like they did in the 1970s, Eric Pickles …) |
| 2009: Making the weather Time to privatise the arrogant, top-down, technocratic Met Office and replace it with a choice of private sector forecasters who will predict the sort of weather hard-working families deserve and want to hear about, and will replace a drain on the public purse with healthy profits as makers of umbrellas and ice cream compete to sponsor forecasts to support growth in their sectors. |
| 2008: No news After a year in which nothing much happened, I fill the news void with speculations about what various public figures might have said. George Bush quotes Tacitus, Jeremy Clarkson extols the Daf 44, the Taliban say it takes all sorts, Thatcher says sorry. |
| 2007: Growth, the final frontier I offered Gordon Brown some suggestions to help achieve his goal of endless economic growth. The secret is to make sure that growth does not satisfy the demands that drive it, so that they can continue doing so. In particular we must ensure that growth does not make us happy, because that would sap our will to grow. We’re doing rather well at this. |
| 2006: Efficiency: another thrust My second, also unsuccessful, attempt to get hired as a Prime Ministerial efficiency adviser. This time I suggested cutting congestion by simply removing the busiest (and therefore most congestion prone) roads, and solving the housing shortage with a shacking-up allowance to reverse the growth in single person households. |
| 2005: Efficiency: the next thrust My first unsuccessful attempt to get hired as a Prime Ministerial efficiency adviser by offering bright ideas for improving public services, including Centres of Mediocrity where people can do a decent day’s work and go home on time to their families and hobbies, motivating staff with symbolic performance incentives such as decorative whiskers for computer mice, and strict regulation of piped musak. |
| 2004: A celebration of modern British life A modern heptathlon for London’s Olympics inspired by the weekly heroism of the supermarket shopping run by SUV, and a visitors’ guide to our traditional seasonal festivals including Leafslip, celebrated each year by trains sliding gently backwards over a mush of fallen leaves to symbolise the sinking of the sap and the regress of the sun towards the horizon in winter. |
| 2003: Authenticity Under the hot midday sun somewhere in India, people arriving in a long low windowless building are commiserating with each other in perfect English about the cold wet morning … |
