The Lift

Mechanical Device

It's one of the most commonly asked questions in modern politics, but one that is worth revisiting often - whatever happened to the Lift?

While the nation has changed radically due to globalisation, privatisation and streamlined capitalism, the Lift has been unable to advance. It remains trapped, capable of rising and falling, but never of going forward.

The problem is plain to see - the Lift lacks inclusiveness, with little room for manoeuvre within its narrow confines. One could wait expectantly for decades for an innovative suggestion, but the Lift has nothing to offer but the same simplistic formulations that it has offered since Attlee was a boy.

If anyone had been doubtful of the Lift's irrelevance, its abject indifference to the rise of radical Islamism surely confirmed our most dire suspicions. While thousands perished at the hands of totalitarians, the Lift remained stuck between floors, mindful only of the need for maintenance.

So, what can be done to reinvigorate the Lift?

The answer can only come from the Lift itself, and the prognosis is not good - for as long as it continues to serve only those within its cold embrace rather than offering a coherent vision to society, it will remain an irrelevance for the majority of humanity.

Copyright Democratiya, 2007