Ideal

In an ideal world, everyone would be able to afford everything they wanted, and nobody would ever be ill. The sun would shine in the day and it would rain at night.

There would be no crime, and everybody would be nice to each other.

In the real world, the only way people can afford things is for other people to suffer in order to make them cheaply enough for this to happen. So, unless you stop buying every electronic gadget that comes out, and stop wearing clothes that are so cheap you can throw them away instead of washing them, you're subscribing to that.

The alternative is that everyone earns the same. This would be nice. It used to be the case in East Germany. Unfortunately, the "same" meant that nobody could afford anything, because the world doesn't spin like that. Nobody, apart from Mother Teresa of Calcutta, would want to train for years to work 25 hours a day as a doctor when the bloke whose job it was to pick strawberries for two hours a day in the sunshine earned the same and didn't have any responsibility.

Everyone could have a nice car, but that car would be a Wartburg Tourister. I had one. Trust me, you wouldn't want one.

People get ill because the human is a bit of a shit design, and if God had done a bit more work instead of resting on the seventh day, that might be different too. But it isn't.

Ditto the sunshine. The earth is round, and because of the way it revolves and where the sun is and complicated stuff like that, the Sahara is hot and dry and Norway is dark for half the year. In a few years, Britain will be less wet and more hot, and in yet another few it will be wet and cold again. It always has been and always will be.

Criminals will always be with us because we're not all doctors. Some of us are thick and we don't earn as much as the doctor up the road, so we steal. Especially if we're big and a bit nasty.

I think even the nasty Tory voters would like everything to be wonderful. The difference between the nasty Tory and the idealist Socialist is mainly their view of reality.

I would vote for Miliband, Balls or Hitler if there was even an outside chance that the world would end up with any form of equality, and everyone would live happily ever after.

There is no chance. It can't happen. A pint pot will not hold a quart.

Under any government, you CAN'T afford everything, you WILL get ill, it WILL rain at Glastonbury and there WILL be floods. Some people WILL always hate you, because they can, because they don't understand you.

And you WILL keep buying shit from Primark. You will NOT give a stuff about the Indian who can't afford to feed their kids. Because the iPhone is shiny.

And you WILL go and vote next year, for one lot or the other, because you always do, even though they lie to you, cheat you, then make hollow apologies to match the hollow promises.

I won't. And I've bought a lottery ticket.