Government is not the problem; the problem is that we go about it in such a half-baked way. We allow vast overmanning and overbudgeting one week, and then we suddenly wake up and strip everything down to the bone till it can hardly function. I've seen it happen. We rebrand, relaunch and reorganise, and come up with new and even more confusing procedures rather than making the old procedures less confusing by doing them properly. And worst of all, we assume that because democracy means government by everyone, that means that anyone is qualified to govern in our name. Anyone, that is, who wants the job. And what person of sense would, knowing that we don't want them for any merit they possess, that barely more than half of us who bother to express an opinion want them at all, and that once they're in the job they'll get the blame for everything from a shower of rain to nuclear testing in the South Pacific?

Yes, yes, yes. This would be why the conservative I was talking to on Sunday didn't understand how I could disagree with him, agree with him, and learn things from him all at the same time.