Utopian chaos

Yet although they may be individually tenable, putting them together in a national political context would be rather like taking pieces from several different jigsaw puzzles and jamming them together in a futile bid to make a coherent picture.

In seeking to make sense of our "mad, mad world", the Common Sense approach would, paradoxically, produce a society of chaos and conflict.

For example, appointing the Green Party to look after the environment sounds fine - until you consider what might happen if the Confederation of British Industry wanted to build a new oil refinery. Similarly, the idea of talented politicians like John Major, Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown playing for the same coalition "team" has its appeal, and political battles at Westminster often do seem silly. But they are part of an adversarial system which pits one view against another and, ultimately, allows voters to state their preference at the ballot box.

Under the sort of all-embracing utopian system proposed by the Common Sense Party, there would be no alternative government voters could elect if they became fed up with the status quo, for all its virtues.

Mr Corcoran's ideas are undoubtedly laudable, but in a world where one individual's good is another's evil, they simply wouldn't work out. Quite right WE warmly applaud the decision of council bosses NOT to ship Bolton's historical treasures out of town.

Their about-turn is the result of a public outcry after the BEN revealed controversial plans to loan out machinery, including Samuel Crompton's spinning mule, James Hargreaves' spinning jenny, and Richard Arkwright's water frame.

The council is to be congratulated for coming round to the view that to remove our industrial heritage would be as unacceptable as taking the crown jewels from the Tower of London.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.