I’m still subscribed to one woman’s Substack, but I wonder why. She rarely has anything positive to write about; she just complains about how bad everything is, without suggesting any practical remedies. I believe in lighting candles, not cursing the darkness. That’s why I called my campaign for freedom of conscience Diverse Diversity. I’m not against freedom for the oppressed or striving to make the world a fairer place. I just want it to be truly fair and not favouring a supposedly oppressed group or set of groups while persecuting anyone who dare disagree with one narrow definition of diversity. I don’t want to oppose change. I want to help guide that change in the most positive and enlightened direction and prevent the narrow-mindedness which often fails because it just changes the basis of the oppression instead of trying to eliminate the behaviour. You can’t achieve justice by changing the victims. You have to find a way to be fair to all, even those you don’t like.

This country really needs some new ideas. We need a new set of political parties because the old ones really have run out of ideas. The Tories look finished, kept on life support only by some people in big business, though American businesses seem more inclined to back Reform. Will we let them? I don’t know. We criticise Russia for labelling anyone receiving support from abroad as Foreign Agents, which makes it difficult to resist our own parties or campaign groups being funded by overseas interests. There is, of course, a huge difference between a totalitarian state trying to discredit contrary voices while denying them the means to raise funds internally and a free society trying to defend its own values from foreign interference, but it’s hard to define that in a written statement to prevent comparisons. We need new ideas.

The Labour Party looks tired too. Sir Keir keeps talking about growth while spending constraints and rising costs force taxes up and services down. Oh dear, that won’t work well. The idea that our future lies in endless growth is deeply flawed. Has no one noticed we live on a fixed-sized planet which is unlikely to grow bigger? Mathematical formulae can expand for ever. What a pity the world can’t; such an uncomfortable truth! How inconvenient that is. If we’re not going to destroy the world we live in we need a new basis for a thriving economy, because growth is running out of room. People have lost their appetite for it anyway. Covid restrictions forced many to rethink, and they realised there’s more to life than chasing round ever faster becoming more and more exhausted in pursuit of a bit more money which they are then persuaded to spend on things that just drive them further into debt. People don’t necessarily want growth anymore. They want a quieter, more comfortable, life. That’s why those who can look forward to retirement.

This is not without its problems, of course. If you have a nice comfortable life someone will want to came and take it off you, and unless you have a better economy than them they will have the force to do it. We need more spending on defence because potential enemies are spending more, and that drives a need for... growth. Hmm!

We need new ideas. We need new politicians with new ideas, but we don’t need the kind we’re getting at present, because they just have even older ideas and we know no good can come of those. We need something really new and different.

If I knew the answer I’d do it. In the meantime, have a Happy New Year.