08 November 2007

I don't mind...

...when failed policy experiments are terminated. In this context, I disagree with Matthew Paris:
Before he became Prime Minister I devoted a page in The Times to the detailed story of just one of Gordon Brown's barking mad ideas. Small in itself, it provided ...a useful vignette on what is wrong with his brain. Mr Brown had proposed and forced through a plan for troublemaking teenagers to be paid — in vouchers usable at municipal leisure centres — £20 for every week in which they didn't make trouble. Of course you or I can see at once that this one's a turkey too; but a pilot scheme was duly required, and duly failed, and the whole thing was called off. Gobble, gobble! Another turkey from Farmer Brown, Matthew Paris, 'The Times', 8 November [My emphasis]
It's the failed policies that aren't stopped that are the problem. I think, we need to encourage more potential turkeys, provided people have incentives to terminate them when they don't work.

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