Recently my Kazakh acquaintance who lives in London told me an interesting story from the ordinary life of the Englishmen.
He himself lives near Heathrow Airport. So, it turns out that this airport has for a long time wanted to expand and build another additional runway. Being one of the largest airports in the world, its expansion would certainly give a new impetus to the development of its own and of London as a whole. It seems – understandable things. What questions can there be? But … The city authorities demanded that the airport must receive the consent of the majority of residents of the area adjacent to the airport. And these are several thousand families. There is no another way. The airport administration sent a questionnaire to each house, to each apartment, with a request to vote for the construction of a new strip. At the same time they mentioned all the advantages of this step. But the townspeople were not impressed. They are already suffering from the noise of aircraft landing and taking off. It turns out that according to some normative act in London, the take-offs and landings of aircraft are allowed from 4 am to 12 noon. Of course, this is very inconvenient for residents of nearby neighborhoods. In general, the majority of votes were not collected. Permission to build was not given, respectively. The airport did not stop there and took another step. In his new leaflet, he promised the townspeople that with the introduction of the new strip, the time of take-offs and landings will be reduced and will be from 6 am to 11 pm. Now the collection of signatures is underway. I do not know if the new argument will help the airport or not.
It should be noted that such polls, agitation, leaflets come to ordinary Londoners so much that my friend just drops them out of the mailbox every week into the trash without reading them. He is the lodger. It’s all does not concern him. But the locals actively read all the leaflets, discuss them vigorously, sign something, go to some rallies.
– Can you imagine how poor English businessmen suffer? – says my friend.
– Even such a question needs to be coordinated with thousands of citizens. Everything is much simpler in Kazakhstan. You go to the akim of the region. Explain all the pros and cons of the new project to him and that’s all. He alone solves everything. Probably, he agrees with someone up there, but it does not concern me. If akim gave permission, everything is easier after that. All services quickly give all the permits, allocate land, conduct communications. Moreover, money is allocated according to the state program. Beautiful!
-Yes, – I say, – the only strange thing is that London is the world’s financial capital, and all investors dream of living and working there, and for some reason they do not hurry to move to Kazakhstan. What’s the matter? After all, any question can be solved in one office. Taxes are among the lowest in the world. Aid from the state is allocated by billions.
– I do not know, – my friend says thoughtfully and scratches his head.
– Maybe because Kazakhstan does not ask people anything in Kazakhstan, and all decisions are made in the offices? And the owners of these offices often change. And no one is sure that the new owner will be supportive to you. And when the system works in such a way that it does not depend on one particular person, but works exactly as a system, every person who lives in such a system has confidence in the stability of his business and in his independence from the whims of officials. It turns out that the present business does not even need quick decisions of its issues in the private quiet offices, it does not need multibillion-dollar assistance from the state. We need only one thing: clear and liberal business conditions, justice and lawfulness in state bodies and courts. That’s all. After that, the state needs to do only one thing – not interfering. Maybe then we will become the new financial capital of the world?
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