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The ‘whodunnit’ Mad Hatters’ Tea Party

28 Mar 2022

Let me get this straight. The Barkonomic Committee wants a Barkonomic Panel of Experts to advise it on how to advise the Barkonomic Council to advise the Cabby Nut to advise the Top Boss! Barking mad – that’s all of you. I told you not to do that, noh? Why can’t you listen? I told you when you appointed that Barkonomic Council, that it was useless. Then you went and appointed a Barkonomic Committee to advise the Barkonomic Council. I told you then, please don’t appoint any more subcommittees or panels. But no, you won’t listen! And finally, you go and convene a Mad Hatters Tea Party, which, as expected, turned out to be all party, and little substance. In Paradise Isle, when a government doesn’t know what to do, it holds a Mad Hatters’ Tea Party so that it can pass the blame around to all the Mad Hatters – which means that no Mad Hatter is responsible. And of course, a few Mad Hatters will always boycott it. Others will come and engage in an endless harangue of “whodunnit?” In the end, there’s really no solution, because not a single person at the Mad Hatters’ Tea Party actually brought any solutions to the table! It's a great pity they didn’t invite Uncle Niresh. I would solve this problem in two shakes of a duck’s tail. Well, at least I would try, which is more than any of the participants of the Mad Hatters’ Tea Party can claim. First off, recognise what the problem is, which is that the people who were at the Mad Hatters’ Tea Party are the actual problem. They are collectively incapable of solving a crossword puzzle in a children’s magazine, let alone a mess involving global economics. So what to do men? Simple, hullo! Bring in the experts. And when I say “experts”, I mean people with qualifications and experience. Not some Cabby Nut Monster’s nephew. And don’t be afraid to bring in foreigners. People from this Paradise Isle, from a range of alma maters, have “royally” messed up our own country for over three-quarters of a century. Recognise that we’re no good at running even a good ship, let alone saving a sinking one. I mean, would the captain of the Titanic have called our Mad Hatters’ Tea Party participants to save it? I think not! He would probably rather have turned the other way and chosen to hit another iceberg. A lot of people were impressed with the Nine-Point Plan I came up with a few days back while I was stuck in a petrol queue, to solve our nation’s problems. So when I was stuck in the next queue, which was a gas queue, I came up with a few more practical suggestions. Point 10 – Sell off a bunch of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Not just the loss-making ones, but the ones that investors would be interested in. And don’t try to sell 49% of the shareholding and keep 51% – Emirates did that with Air Lanka and the world learnt how the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) can’t be trusted as a majority shareholder. We have about 500 SOEs (I kid you not! Every time some Cabby Nut Monster’s mother’s cousin needs a job, we launch a new SOE and appoint him to head it). So just sell off about a hundred, okay? That would still leave plenty of top posts for the Cabby Nut’s family tree. Point 11 – Stop fiddling around with banking regulations. Just ask the bankers what’s best, and go with it. Listen to the real experts, not the so-called “expert”. Point 12 – Get more help from nations that have money, instead of running to Bangladesh all the time. How? Easy! Think out of the box, men. Tell all the Arabs that unless they cough up a few billion US dollars, that Paradise Isle will surreptitiously order all their housemaids (who happen to be our housemaids) to poison their masters’ teas. We don’t really have to poison anyone’s tea, just put chilli or something in it, okay? But the mere thought of it should send those wealthy sheikhs scuttling for their cheque books, noh? Point 13 – Have a public competition where every citizen should send in 10 suggestions on how to solve our economic mess. Of course, 90% of the suggestions are likely to involve some form of violent demise for all of our politicians. But we may get about ten sane ones, which is ten more than the Mad Hatters’ Tea Party came up with! The grand prize winner gets a ticket to the next Mad Hatters’ Tea Party or a 2-week vacation in Ukraine. That’s our WTF rant for this week. Cheerio and pip-pip until next week when I’m sure we’ll have something else to talk about in Paradise Isle that would be insanely more insane than this week. (WTF stands for whatever each of you want it to stand for. If you’ve got a ridiculously dirty mind, that’s not my fault).    


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