No Unearned Privilege, Individual Liberty, Personal Responsibility, Earned Citizenship, One Culture, Control of National Destiny:

A BLUEPRINT FOR A BETTER BRITAIN

Further to yesterday’s depressing post about the complexity of solving Britain’s cultural mess, there follows a collection of ideas about how to make Britain a fairer, nicer and altogether more fulfilling place to live.

Brevity is a necessity in this medium. There isn’t room to explain the minutiae, and I’d rather be upbeat about what is possible than drone on for pages about it.

In order not to clog up my email system and this comment thread, could you address more detailed observations please to ward.ink@gmail.com (not live)

The order of play reflects my belief in the relative importance of the topics.

Education

A selective system aiming to fulfil these primary functions: 1. A body of graduate scientists and skilled management adept at original and organised thinking; 2. A technical and services class providing a healthy self-employed sector and meeting domestic demand; 3. A body of hitherto rejected kids who would be streamed for focus on finding their metier,and raising self esteem; 4. The teaching of key social realities and skills, ranging from the needs of others to parenting; 5. The teaching of medical awareness about lifestyle, ranging from contraception to alcohol and drugs. 6. More citizen self-confidence, and easier social mobility.

Return to a logical ability measurement system, and the scrapping of targets. A universal exam marking system removed entirely from considerations of  ‘places available’.

Reduce graduate intake from 44% to a maximum of 15%.

Persistent truancy to be made a criminal offence faced by parents.

Medicine

Gradual abolition of the National Health Service in favour of a universal Insurance Card/online ID.

The aim would be to make the system cashless and EFTPOS in time.

Shift in emphasis away from Primary Care ‘business’ model to GPs as an active paid-for social service. Concurrent shift of funds away from Primary Care to hospital resources, equipment, and research.

Every citizen is in a ‘band’ – like Council Tax – reassessed every two years. This determines how much they have to pay. Free care for all children under 16.

Radical shift in funding model away from taxed private individual, and towards larger commercial/retail concerns.

Tax

Abolition of income tax and corporation tax. To be replaced by the Social Actions Tax (SAT).

Effectively, every organisation and citizen would act on the basis of their own ‘satnav’. This removes power from both government and the HMRC, and shifts responsibility back to the individual person and organisation.

Obviously immensely complex and difficult to run, but then if it was easy it would’ve been done long ago. The aim, however is simple: to make everyone responsible for his or her own tax, and reduce the cost of anti-social actions.

Trade

To aim for a lower volume of trade on a much more profitable basis.

To reduce the EU to 2nd-tier trading partner over the next ten years.

Economics

Basic principles: Rejection of the globalist model in favour of self-sufficiency and profitable trade; creation of a ‘mixed objectives’ economy…but with no State ownership.

Overseas Aid to be for disaster relief only.

All essential services – health, transport, energy and water – would have a break-even objective after investment. They would be removed from plc status. Everything will wash its face…..without dumping on society and the citizen.

To shift the dependence on financial services from 60% to 20%

To treble the size of our manufacturing base

To aim for 85% self-sufficiency in agriculture

To reduce our imports by 70%

Finance & Fiscal

To make a strong Sterling currency the chief aim of fiscal and economic policy.

To reduce the deficit more quickly – before the vicious debt-servicing vortex swallows us up.

Make deficit government unconstitutional after 2014.

Make government employment of more than 15% of the population unconstitutional.

Any bank based in Britain (regardless of ownership) will by law have to fund its own risk-taking losses. The UK taxpayer will never again be the borrower of last resort.

Each national or multinational bank will also have to lend at least 30% of its funds to the SME sector, raise and lower interest rates for borrowers and savers concurrently, and restrict its interbank business to 15%.

Creation of mixed objective (see above) regional and local banks without remote shareholders, but with the primary aim of encouraging soundly-based entrepreneurship.

Gradual shift away from the Bourse-finance/remote shareholder model of raising money, and towards involved shareholders funded by the new regional, mutual banks.

Radical reform of Bankruptcy law, with a shift in emphasis towards the needs of creditors – and much stricter supervision of bankrupts restarting again.

Abolition of local business rates, partial replacement by SAT.

Culture

The remodelling of the UK as a monocultural, multi-ethnic, devolved-power, balanced-work culture.

Curtailing of laws encouraging pc, neurotic safety fears, and a sense of entitlement.

Real citizenship expectations rather than window dressing. Persistent unwillingness to accept loyalty to Britain to become a deportation issue.

An immediate ban on further immigration, and the retraining of workless people already here to fill the skill-shortages – which have anyway been exaggerated.

The teaching of two foreign languages to a level of fluency to be obligatory.

Return to the idea of family and community as the provider, and the gradual dismantling of all but the most obvious cases of welfare need. (Somewhere between 5-8 million people would fit this latter category, either through general disability or other incompetence).

Society, Police and Justice.

Abolition of ASBOs. (See above under SAT tax).

Massive downsizing of the prison population in favour of skills/self-esteem placements. Prison doesn’t work, giving criminals self-respect does.

Abolition of Social Services as an arm of local government. Formal attachment instead to Educational system, working in harmony with teaching staff.

Secret Family Courts to be abolished. All child Court Order legislation to be scrapped and subjected to Royal Commission.

Abandonment of the plan for elected police chiefs. Devolution of power within the police force to local level, and closer informal attachment to the education system. Abandonment of the focus on high profile and cultural diversity concerns. There will no longer be any special groups – rich or poor. The soul criterion of police performance will be the the detection and prosecution of crime.

Reversal of the CPS budget cuts, and increase in its budget to restore respect for the Long Arm of the Law.

Abolition of invasive surveillance law outside the terrorism/security sector. Complete abolition of local authority ‘spying’ warrants.

Creation of a properly-funded anti ID, online and City ‘techno’ crime unit, making free use of experts – and the advice of former miscreants if necessary. End the farce of pretending that physical crime is still the big problem.

Constitution

Secession from the EU with immediate effect.

A written Constitution in which our fundamental liberties are enshrined, future privacy is guaranteed, and the power of Parliament to borrow money is drastically curtailed.

Enshrine collective Cabinet decision-making in the Constitution – and ditto for the Executive/Commons balance.

A declaration of opposition to all forms of privilege, be they on the basis of money, membership, profession, ethnicity, religion, class, gender or nationality.

Affirmative action to be unconstitutional.

A declaration that the judiciary, social services, and the police are de-politicised.

Voting an earned citizen right, not an automatic one. Behaviour and ability rather than age (once over 18) to be the criteria.

Politics

Abolition of  Party Whips.

Institution of full proportional representation for all elections, with the abolition of Commons constituencies.

Parties to then be constructed using the ‘list’ system.

Reduce MP numbers to 350.

Active rejection of all the voting-slip options to be recorded – and act as a measure of representativeness.

Retain the two-Chamber system, but abolish the House of Lords. Replace the Lords with a new Chamber, two-thirds elected at a local constituency level based on local issues. They in turn will nominate members to fill quota’d vacancies for another third – ie unelected – of people with a proven track record of success in their chosen field – success to be judged on innovation, employment creation and social actions….not wealth.

Fixed four year terms for Commons + the second Chamber, to run staggered.

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29.12.2010