STILETTO – a high pointed HEEL on a woman’s shoe or a small dagger.

WHEELS – a medieval instrument of torture or a vehicle for personal mobility.

Boris’ Bikes. I’ve been amazed at how well this scheme has worked in London. Yeah, yeah, to all the Boris haters, I’ve been told it was all Ken’s idea but I don’t really care. For once, an idea that encourages people to do something positive without anyone being taxed, banished or verbally maligned.

Perhaps other politicians might take a leaf out of the Boris book and use carrots rather than big sticks to encourage preferred outcomes in problem solving. Wouldn’t that be a huge relief?

For instance, instead of asking disabled people to work for less than the minimum wage, we might offer employers a significant incentive to employ those with disabilities … like pay no employers NI on their salaries at all. We all know employers would rather employ those without disabilities so why not make it cheaper for them to overcome their nasty prejudice, let them value their disabled employees and genuinely help get people back into employment?

Creative thinking and constructive motivation are surely what we need to resolve some of the longer-term issues around care, disability and pensions that face our currently aging, and woefully under-prepared, society. A bit of tinkering with admin and tax rates, exclusion of swathes of the population from the welfare state and taking yet more from the currently employed are surely not going to be enough to resolve the looming problems especially as the boom years of our economy look to be behind us for the moment.

But where are either the ideas or the politicians providing a positive approach to problem solving? Notable by their absence, it seems. Career politicians live and die through their short-term actions and that really does not make for good, or creative, long-term planning.

So here we are, feeling like we’re on the deck of a sinking Titanic … unless, maybe, Boris steps in to save us all! And what a very scary thought that is, don’t you think?

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