Two-jugs politics

You have to be like Janus to be a politician these days, but with more than two faces. You would have to look to the future and analyse the past, while presenting an individual face to whichever constituency you happen to the facing. And this gift is not restricted to party or persuasion, it's part of the genotype of putting yourself up for election.

Consider the following from the last few days:

• criticisms of public and private sector pay;
• accepting the need to pay the going rate to get the best people;
• opposing industry job losses;
• promoting 'efficiency in the workplace';
• acknowledging the need to work for the good of mental health;
• setting targets for worker expertise;
• encouraging university applications;
• bemoaning lack of skilled trademen and women; and so on.

Result? Stress city, Arizona (or any other state you care to mention).

What's the solution? I don't know, but Capitalism doesn't allow for people only to take on the work they can manage and for deadlines to fit into people's ability to fulfil them.

The default position of our culture is overload. Email and the internet at 21st-century slave-drivers. Either we go for utopian robots to do our work, and pay ourselves to manage them and re-balance our work-life priorities, or we explore variations of humane social policy ideas (in the European Union and elsewhere) that give people back their quality of life and their humanity.

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the decline of Soviet-style Communism, what is the equivalent symbol for a Capitalism gone haywire? Perhaps with the turmoil in the banking sector and the opportunity to agree big climate change stuff in Copenhagen, we are close to finding out.