LONDON LETTER: Rubbish policies of the ‘experts’

TO me, the most frightening two words in the English language are ‘expert opinion’.

I mean, what have current experts got right?

In the days when I ran marathons (okay, very slowly) I religiously followed so-called expert opinion by carbo-loading before races.

I gobbled down pasta like a pig. Now I’m told that was hogwash. Carbos are the cheap kerosene equivalent of energy. It’s fats that are avgas.

I also drank gallons of high-energy, day-glo-coloured drinks which – I was led to believe – would make me charge across the finishing line like a cheetah. I’m now told I probably consumed enough sugar to insulin-spike a rhino.

The same with butter. I was told that eating butter led to instant cardio-arrest and margarine was the elixir of life. Now butter is apparently natural rocket fuel, while hydrogenated margarine is said to have potentially carcinogenic trans fatty acids.

So basically if I had ignored the experts and eaten the foods my grandmother cooked, I would have been far better off.

I may even have come 5 999th in the Comrades instead of 6 200.

Speaking of grandmothers, that generation actually did produce experts. They gave us vaccines, antibiotics, jet planes, nuclear power and space flight. They walked on the moon.

In other words, they either invented or gave us stuff that worked.

No longer. In fact, today’s so-called experts seem hell-bent on destroying the West.

Our political experts are the worst. They weren’t even able to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, when any fool could have seen that the ‘red’ in communism was actually the ink on the balance sheet.

Then, when the USSR imploded, our experts were left shell-shocked in the aftermath.

Experts also were completely blindsided by the rise of terrorism that led to 9/11, not to mention spectacularly managing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the follow-up Iraq and Afghanistan imbroglios.

In Syria, expert policies (especially in the Obama administration) led to incalculable civilian deaths and millions of angry young male ‘refugees’ flooding Europe.

This has irrevocably transformed an entire continent, as well as providing a new politically-correct sanctuary for terrorism.

Tinderbox standoff

It has also resulted in a tinderbox standoff between Iran and Saudi Arabia, kick-starting a nuclear arms race unprecedented since the Cold War.

Expert opinion led to the toppling of Libyan strongman Muammar Gadhafi, only to see – again – countless deaths, huge numbers of refugees and another haven for insurgency.

Expert policies have caused the near-total annihilation of the oldest bastions of Christianity in the world. Iraq has virtually no Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) Christians left, while the Copts in Egypt are on the run like never before.

But it not just recent battlefields that the experts botched. Take the ‘war on poverty’, where experts predicted hunger and homelessness would be history.

Trillions of dollars have been spent on messing that one up. Or the bazillion-dollar ‘war on drugs’, where there are now more addicts than ever before.

In all cases, highly-credentialed expert opinion shattered like glass on the rocks of reality. The cost in ruined lives and bloodshed is criminal.

Economically, it’s not much better. Experts brought us the dot.com and housing bubbles, followed by the subprime crisis, as the movie ‘The Big Short’ graphically showed. The experts also didn’t see Brexit coming and now spend more time insulting voters than providing solutions.

Today five companies – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook – are more powerful than many governments. Experts tell us that is a good thing, skirting valid arguments that perhaps it’s a monopoly systematically putting other businesses out of work.

The chronically disillusioned working class is increasingly on benefits, something experts don’t consider to be a problem.

But what really galls is that no matter how wrong expert predictions are, the experts themselves are unaccountable. Even worse, they’re prospering. Today’s experts come exclusively from the ‘progressive’ ruling elite, and it’s the rest of us who bear the brunt of their rubbish policies.

You know who’s the best expert? As I said earlier – your grandmother. If she gave you any advice on health, marriage, dating, cheerfulness and prosperity, follow it.

You’re more likely to succeed — and be far happier.