Mind the Gap

Mind the gap!

The space between intention and achievement

There is a gap between all of our intentions and our achievements.

We all live with this gap every day of our lives. How many fall asleep having achieved every intention and reached every goal, during every day? I would suggest very few and it does not matter if we are rich or poor, it does not matter how powerful we are; we all have this gap to live with. The reality is politicians also live with this gap but theirs affects all of our lives, not just their own.

There is the gap between what people tell us about their feelings towards us and the actions they take.

People claim to love us then constantly criticise and try to change us. People claim they support us, then appear to do all they can to undermine our self confidence.

Then there is the gap between our individual aims and our results.

For most people who reach the age of around 25 years, there is an idea of where they are going. For most this is not a clear defined path but just a notion of what is important in their lives. We intend to do what we can to enhance this importance but when we get to 60; how many can claim total success? We may have intended to raise good healthy well balanced children. We may have put great amounts of time and energy into doing this but, how many can be certain of total success?

How about one huge big gap? The gap between what an advertisement suggests and what you actually get for your money. The law may prevent advertisers from telling outright lies but this does not stop them emphasising some information and minimising the truth.

But far more important are the gaps in those things that shape the very future of our nations. Those things that affect all our lives, every moment of our lives.

One of these important gaps is the gap between media reports and truth. Then there is the gap between political promises and political possibility. The gap between “spin” and reality.

There is the gap between publicly stated aims, by the heads of public services, such as the police; and the rational expectations anyone else would put on the results and consequences of the decisions and policies of the same public official. Voters should pay more attention to results and less to headline grabbing ambitions.

Most important of all; we all need to mind the gap between what a government intends to provide for the people and what its administration actually delivers to the public.

The easiest way to spot this is to note the gap between announced government budgets of spending and what actually gets available to front line workers. These gaps are created by administrations and bureaucracies. It often seems to amount to nearly half of the head line politically announced budget. The government bureaucrats are very good at hiding the true cost of their bureaucracy, so it may be easier to look at the funds donated to charities and the actual amounts reaching those it was given for. Similar discrepancies occur between what politicians intend and what gets delivered in their name.

The gap is causing problems for all of us. The gap is being exploited by bureaucrats and bottom feeders. The gap is making some very rich, at the expense of the many.

Mind the Gap.

Examine political promises and claims, then try and measure what actually happens in the real world of the tax paying people. How many of the billions it is claimed goes on education actually get spent on the real life education of your children? How much disappears into bureaucratic control of education providers? How much gets spent on education conventions and politically correct junkets? How much of the health care budget actually gets spent on front line medical health care? Where does the rest go? Start asking politicians to explain why so much tax money goes on the administration and bureaucracy, that faceless system that controls us all.