The aim of The Slog is to protect vulnerable new ideas from powerful process.
I advocate developing a scaled-down and reconfigured model of social economics, government and citizenship in three ways:
1. No State, less Bourse, and more mutuality in business.
2. Less global, less mercantile, more sufficiency, more entrepreneurial, more agricultural, more communitarian capitalist in political economics.
3. To make zero-agenda education more….
- Holistic in giving a much larger role to civics, mental and physical health, cultural history, and personal responsibility.
- Grounded in returning the role of ‘teacher’ (in its more eclectic sense) to being one of inspiration, discernment of individual student metier (talent), and the achievement of practical skills in all the key areas of maths, language, media, technology, business, and the Law.
The aim would be to make future generations far more willing to think for themselves and question the wisdom of the status quo. To make future products of education less vulnerable, in possession of far more self-esteem, and able to grasp not just that fellow-citizens are as important as them, but why.
A natural corollary of this approach would be the rejection of rigid ideology – be it racial, religious, gender-based or political.
Some specific policy aims
To introduce a proportional representation as the voting form in all democracies
To reduce the power of central Government in favour of local communities, whose Reps would replace the House of Lords
To clear monied influence out of politics
To clear all commercial lobbying out of government
To cap inheritance from one generation to the next at an absolute level
To reduce the tax burden of small business
To ban media ownership by expats and foreign nationals
To drastically reduce citizen surveillance
To remove health and pension provision from government, and fund it via mutualised insurance and employer schemes
To reduce the role of Bourses in funding capitalism
John Ward, 2018
The Slog 