Twelve Practical Suggestions for UK Governance which will not happen.
1. Adopt expenditure-based statutory targets for government spending accompanied by a statutory commitment to balance the budget by 2012. Consider a 'flat tax' single tax regime based on one rate, with no exemptions, on sales, income and savings seriously.
2. Abolish the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the Department of Culture, the Scottish Office, the Welsh Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the British Council, the Communities Office, the Regional Development Agencies and government funding for regional council organisations.
3. Cut the numbers of members of Parliament to 450, and make individual members of the European Parliament accountable to voters. Abolish half the number of elected councillors, and return spending and local investment to councils with a statutory protection for specific services. Limit the number of ministers to 100 at any one time. Abandon all schemes to elect the House of Lords. Disestablish the church of England, and enhance the powers of the Lords to revise, block or review legislation. Consider a lower age limit of 35 for the House of Commons.
4. Abolish the Crown Prosecution Service and the Carter Reforms. Increase small claims court award ceilings. Adopt the Irish system of estimating and deciding upon costs before a case is heard. Increase the speed and power of the Public Inquiry system and the Coroners' Courts. Make the Family courts operate in exactly the same way as the open criminal courts and subject them to clear, transparent rules of evidence.
5. Institute an independence referendum in Scotland, and consider legislative independence for London. Produce a written constitution, and abolish the Human Rights Act as part of the process. Consider a referendum on membership of the European Union, and adopt the Irish system of subjecting all future constitutional bills, judged as such by a Supreme Court according to published criteria, to referenda. Make free speech a fundamental right and requirement of society and create a requirement to prove malice to a jury for any complaint of incorrect speech.
6. Create an Energy Authority tasked with i) funding or promoting fusion research ii) building new nuclear power stations iii) encouraging the redevelopment of the coal industry iv) encouraging integrated rail-based transport
7. Place the rail and utility industries in a socially accountable framework. Encourage the co-operative, and worker-owned models of enterprise.
8. Increase the capacity of prisons by an initial fifty per cent and task the Sentencing Guidelines Council with a reduction of community and civil penalties ; raise the UK rate of imprisonment per crime to the European average
9. Make universities independent of government and allow them to set their own entrance, ownership and association criteria
10. Allow local referenda on selective schooling. Abolish coursework in examinations. Allow schools to opt out of OFSTED. Exempt schools from the Human Rights Act immediately, until it is abolished. Allow school vouchers.
11. Create a new licence that would give designated pubs and clubs with air-conditioning, whose staff are smokers, the right to allow tobacco smoking on their premises.
12. Abandon the Kyoto protocols.
Will it happen? Will it fiddlesticks. Ask yourself why, and who is to blame, and who profits from not doing these things. The effort in itself will be rewarding.
1. Adopt expenditure-based statutory targets for government spending accompanied by a statutory commitment to balance the budget by 2012. Consider a 'flat tax' single tax regime based on one rate, with no exemptions, on sales, income and savings seriously.
2. Abolish the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the Department of Culture, the Scottish Office, the Welsh Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the British Council, the Communities Office, the Regional Development Agencies and government funding for regional council organisations.
3. Cut the numbers of members of Parliament to 450, and make individual members of the European Parliament accountable to voters. Abolish half the number of elected councillors, and return spending and local investment to councils with a statutory protection for specific services. Limit the number of ministers to 100 at any one time. Abandon all schemes to elect the House of Lords. Disestablish the church of England, and enhance the powers of the Lords to revise, block or review legislation. Consider a lower age limit of 35 for the House of Commons.
4. Abolish the Crown Prosecution Service and the Carter Reforms. Increase small claims court award ceilings. Adopt the Irish system of estimating and deciding upon costs before a case is heard. Increase the speed and power of the Public Inquiry system and the Coroners' Courts. Make the Family courts operate in exactly the same way as the open criminal courts and subject them to clear, transparent rules of evidence.
5. Institute an independence referendum in Scotland, and consider legislative independence for London. Produce a written constitution, and abolish the Human Rights Act as part of the process. Consider a referendum on membership of the European Union, and adopt the Irish system of subjecting all future constitutional bills, judged as such by a Supreme Court according to published criteria, to referenda. Make free speech a fundamental right and requirement of society and create a requirement to prove malice to a jury for any complaint of incorrect speech.
6. Create an Energy Authority tasked with i) funding or promoting fusion research ii) building new nuclear power stations iii) encouraging the redevelopment of the coal industry iv) encouraging integrated rail-based transport
7. Place the rail and utility industries in a socially accountable framework. Encourage the co-operative, and worker-owned models of enterprise.
8. Increase the capacity of prisons by an initial fifty per cent and task the Sentencing Guidelines Council with a reduction of community and civil penalties ; raise the UK rate of imprisonment per crime to the European average
9. Make universities independent of government and allow them to set their own entrance, ownership and association criteria
10. Allow local referenda on selective schooling. Abolish coursework in examinations. Allow schools to opt out of OFSTED. Exempt schools from the Human Rights Act immediately, until it is abolished. Allow school vouchers.
11. Create a new licence that would give designated pubs and clubs with air-conditioning, whose staff are smokers, the right to allow tobacco smoking on their premises.
12. Abandon the Kyoto protocols.
Will it happen? Will it fiddlesticks. Ask yourself why, and who is to blame, and who profits from not doing these things. The effort in itself will be rewarding.
Comments
Perhaps you have shifted your view, but you are really very much a populist of the right.
A Christian Democrat, perhaps - but that's never been anything remotely related to Labour or social democracy
I don't think I actually agree with a single one of those proposals....