The Dead Horse Theory (a.k.a. Modern Government in a Nutshell)
The Dakota Indians had it nailed centuries ago:
“When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”
Simple, logical, elegant.
Sensible advice. Straightforward. The kind of thing any half-witted child could grasp.
But not our politicians. OH, NO!
When it comes to running the country and particularly the NHS, they’ve turned flogging a dead horse into a bloody Olympic sport. Here’s how they do it:
- Buy a stronger whip. Because flogging a corpse always works.
- Change the rider. Same shit, different arse.
- Appoint a committee. Meetings fix everything, right?
- Fly around the world to see how other countries ride their dead horses. A Jolly at the taxpayers’ expense.
- Lower the standards so the dead horse technically qualifies as “alive-ish.”
- Rebrand it: it’s not dead, it’s “living-impaired.” Sorted!
- Hire overpriced consultants to recommend flogging it harder.
- Strap a bunch of dead horses together and call it “innovation.”
- Throw money at it. Billions. Trillions. Taxpayers love that.
- Commission a productivity study: “Would thinner jockeys make the corpse run faster?”
- Spin it: “Dead horses are cheaper – no feed required! Look at the savings for the economy!”
- Rewrite the targets so the dead horse technically succeeds.
And finally – ‘the pièce de résistance’
- Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position. Make it a senior manager on £200k a year, give it a shiny new title like Director of Equine Sustainability, and make a press release about “record investment in healthcare.”
If you don’t get this, you clearly haven’t been alive long enough to watch our governments (all of them – regardless of party) dress up incompetence as strategy.
The rest of us?
We’re standing here screaming: “GET OFF THE FUCKING HORSE, YOU ABSOLUTE LUNATICS.”
