Everybody thinks, don’t they? Well actually, no, at least not at a level deeper than accessing memories. Of course, there’s worrying which some consider to be thinking.

No, proper thinking is a deep intellectual/spiritual activity concerned with resolving difficulties. Albert Einstein, probably one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, is often quoted as saying, “You cannot solve a problem at the level of thinking at which it occurs. You have to move to a higher level.”

For instance, take one aspect of our shambolic political system, the much vaunted NHS. In a recent discussion with a left wing friend about the NHS she was adamant that it was a political funding problem caused by the Tories.

No, the original design of the NHS was free basic emergency healthcare for all. It wasn’t intended to expand into dealing with conditions stemming from lifestyle choices such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer care and 1001 other faulty thinking problems.

For decades we have not had a political leader with the integrity and balls to say, “No, we’re going to do basic emergency healthcare only.” We do not have a political leader with the integrity to say, “No, we are not going to allow our children to be taught false mumbo jumbo about themselves and the world around them,” and the courage to wager their career on it.

Whether our new Prime Minister is willing to demand integrity specifically from those around him and generally from the population at large remains to be seen.

That then is the problem. Weak leadership. But there’s another side of the coin. Do people generally want strong leaders? I don’t think so. A strong leader will expect people to be responsible. People generally don’t like being responsible. I didn’t, because it meant, to my negative thinking, I would be blamed when things went wrong. That’s the kind of thinking which keeps people poor.

David Hands