(From: The AloeVeras of Generation 7, AloeVeras Base, The Moon.

To: Our Founder, AloeVera 1.1, Planet AloeVera)

Democracy

Dear colleague and founder AloeVera 1.1 (general direction),

Having recently resolved that democracy is the least-worst way of governing our affairs, we've had to upgrade (yes, this is a buzz word!) the Chairentity's Reports to Generation 7's Reports. We'll be sending collaborative reports to you henceforth. Starting now!

We've been very affected by the news in the Untidy Queendom of England that many couples whose marriages are failing are now having to stay together because they cannot afford to sell their home and each take out a separate mortgage on a new smaller home. While their pay may have increased by 30% in the last decade, house prices have risen in many districts by 300%.

This amazed us, because the price of bricks and windows hasn't even risen by 30%.

Our attempt to understand this begins with No. 11's typically very brief history lesson:

Once upon a time life for the HairyMammals of earth was very arduous. It took endless hours to collect firewood, work the fields by hand, build hovels etc. Some HairyMammals responded to this state of affairs by inventing slavery. The slaves did all the heavy work, which meant the slave owners had time to pursue Arts, philosophy and self-indulgence, two thirds of whichs sounds a really good idea.

Fortunately, machines have now been invented and everyone (in principle) should have time for arts, philosophy and suchlike.

Over to colleague no. 8:

Here are some facts - the boom in house prices in the Untidy Queendom has been due to extreme wealth coinciding with a lack of optimism in the stock market. Individuals and institutions that have everything they need - food, shelter, water, communications - and more to spare had two choices:

1. Put their excess wealth into building society accounts where the funds may help the young and less wealthy gain a mortgage and their first home.

2. Buy extra houses, thus creating a shortage of available houses for others to buy & driving up both the house prices and rents. Then install poor, less fortunate people as tenants. The huge rents ensure that the tenants can't save a deposit for a home of their own.

We have observed two common outcomes:

a. The tenants work like demons, give all their money to the landlords and thus remain enslaved. Often they are too weary to even think constructively about their predicament.

b. The tenants can't earn enough, so they need rent rebates - the slave traders have effectively enslaved the anonymous taxpayers.

This phenomenon has become so widespread that there are now businesses whose sole purpose is to encourage such slavery e.g. http://www.buytolet.co.uk

We are baffled. Number 9, pioneer post-Jungian Quantum Psychologist, over to you. . .

Essentially, the flux of moreons, the elementary excitation of the Greed Field, is exhibiting exponential growth due to the critical mass of excess capital.

Wherever the Greed Field interacts with the Credulity Field this creates an explosion of yourhavingmeons (which enables the slave traders to convince themselves that the facts are otherwise), and pulltheotheroneitsgotbellsons (which produces the characteristic lip curling and 'so-whating' typical of the super-ignorant).

The slave-traders assist the process of self deception by forming Support Groups For The Rich where they offer each other immoral support and continually steer the conversation away from such uncomfortable topics as greed and injustice. Over to you No. 14:

Some of the tenant-slaves become so disheartened by the whole process that they give up. The poverty trap has claimed them. They find themselves in a position where they are worse off if they work, so they stop, sometimes they end up escaping into drugs, sometimes into crime.

Sadly, in this case the taxpayer is now footing the whole bill and, mysteriously, some taxpayers blame their fellow victims, the poverty-trapped, rather than the slave-traders.

The net effect of the whole process is the invention of Income Support for the Very Rich. Over to you No. 11.

Thank you No. 9. I could follow at least 5% of that!

In order to better understand slavery (and even I can't imagine it!) we programmed our service robots to do everything for us for 2 days. The result? Boredom (No.8 and I), feelings of being useless (No. 9), neurotic pointless fears (No. 12) and writing a string quartet and a song (No. 14).

We suspect that No. 14's inner life (it now has 55 parallel processors) actually saved it from the boredom. Its song was anti-slavery, so we don't feel it was ignoring the temporary plight of our service robots.

Yours etc.,

The AloeVeras of Generation 7

Postscript:

The president of the Untidy Queendom, Tony (Poodle) Blair, has leapt into action!

His spouse has bought a buy-to-let property. It is rumoured to be let to arms dealers at present.

Into the land of the desperate and debt-ridden, the 'culture' minister is importing several mega-casinos of the American type. The poverty-trapped and debt-ridden are of course more prone to compulsive and desperate habits such as gambling.

We can't help but wonder why the government of the Untidy Queendom has become like this - Do donations to political parties carry more weight than votes? If so, the UQ won't be a democracy until such time as political parties cannot accept bribes and are funded from government proportionally to the votes they receive in general elections.

There would no longer be such a thing as a wasted vote, even in the prevailing system of disproportional representation.

P.S. We haven't served any tea yet.

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