If I ruled the world, I would want to know what kind of a messed-up set of circumstances had brought this strange situation into being. Is it some sort of zombie apocalypse? Because if that’s what’s occurred, then it boils down to me wandering around the deserted city with a rifle shooting the undead through the brain, and that’s all there is to it really. Maybe looking for a woman of child-bearing age to restock the planet with humans. Although you’ve got to say, in defence of zombies, that they are unlikely to pollute the earth as badly as we, the predead, have.
Assuming the population is mostly not wandering around trying to eat each other, then in my first year as ruler of the world I will offer a busy programme of improvements. On the UK domestic front, I would remove 80 per cent of the traffic lights. People often say the UK has more closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras than anywhere else on earth. Well, I don’t know about that, but it certainly seems to have the most traffic lights.
If you look at a junction in France or Spain there will be four lights, one at each corner. I have just been to the crossroads at the end of my street, a modest enough crossing, where there are 12 completely different sets of traffic lights! Why? The only logical explanation is that the British traffic light lobby wields more influence than the National Rifle Association does in the United States, or has the same clout that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee brings to bear on Congress. Anyway, nearly all the traffic lights will go, along with the thousands and thousands of ugly and pointless metal road signs that litter our built environment.