Malice in Blunderland

How would you feel if you purchased and then licensed a mobile home for the road. But for the significant winter period each year the roads were all but closed. But then, in the spring and summer months the roads were in an unkempt state with bushes and trees overhanging. Left that way as their might be birds nesting. The verges are spilling down onto the road surface. The roads now piled high with great clods of mud. Rubbish is routinely fly tipped onto the road, mostly by those living along side it. Where stopping places were few and increasingly becoming time limited. Where people object and complain if you park outside their homes. Where periodically the traffic light system in various places is broken down and all traffic movement stopped for days and weeks at a time. Highways where the people charged with maintaining the road infrastructure were using the money for other purposes. Such as providing a road side habitat for rats. Their priority was seemingly elsewhere, because the money allocated for road maintenance was being spent on upgrading the dilapidated pavement into high speed cycleways.

Alternatively, could you for one moment consider to simply ignore the ongoing maintenance of you home. Just so you could use that portion of your outgoings for various speculative ventures. Would you advertise your overgrown garden as a place for the public to come and visit. Would you then realistically expect your 'friends' and even strangers to voluntary come, free of charge and in their own time, to litter pick and cut back the over grown vegetation for you. Would you leave your garden gate to rot until it falls off its hinges. Then repair it with string and brown paper. Would you leave the walls in the garden to fall down, with only the occasional stone replaced. Would you repair the leaks in the garden pond, so that people could fish or row the boat. Or would lock up the tap in dry weather conditions just to stop people filling it. 

The answer is of course a resounding no. Everyone would think that you had lost the plot. You would need to be certified if you gave any credence to entertaining such an idea. This scenario is not in any way shape or form a sensible way to run your home. neither is it sensible to run your business in the same way. It certainly isn't an acceptable or sensible maintenance plan. Its much more of a 'Malice in Blunderland' scenario. One that is filled with a cast list of numpty characters, with an unbelievable storyline.

Unfortunately for the dry old and very dilapidated waterways, the sun always shines in Blunderland. In a mystical land populated with a Z list of trustees made up of a Black Rat and a few sleepy Dormice. The governing council led by the Mad Breton Hatter. The wacky tea party culture continues to flourish. Where everything is viewed through miopic, rose tinted spectacles. One where any slight transgressions in the playground are dealt with by the simple but expensive expedient of 'off with his licence'. Blunderland is a place where in a Dickensian like story the ill, old and vulnerable are thrown out of their homes. One where charity does not begin with your home.

On the UK's Inland Waterways there are many parallels you could draw with the story of Malice in Blunderland. Maybe you could help to tell the story by adding your own experiences into the story line. 

So I will start it.

Once upon a time in cloud cuckoo land, in a place that's not so far away.....

But I digress....