Inspired by commenter curly15 in another thread, I thought I'd set out my plan for lancing the boil (it's in a pretty random order, I admit!):
1. Immediately dismantle every single state-controlled CCTV. Every single state database project will be cancelled and police will no longer receive funding from speeding offences. ANPR cameras will not be allowed to store history. Police will be made accountable to local residents. Complete purge of paperwork to the very barest minimum, focus will no longer be on "successful detections", rather on quality and quantity of investigations, possibly including "customer satisfaction". Abolish PCSOs. Crown prosecution service abolished and every member sacked. Decision to prosecute returned to the police. Every sitting magistrate, justice and law lord sacked and start again.
2. Withdraw state funding from every single charity and quango. Any organisation funded by the state to be under the control of a minister. No funding without control.
3. Suspend pending a review, or where possible, terminate immediately every single consultancy agreement between the state and consulting firms.
4. Repeal every single piece of legislation introduced by New Labour.
5. Cut current employment budgets for each department by 95%. Sack every single civil servant and make them re-apply for their job. All civil service benefits will immediately become subject to the same restrictions as the private sector and no more defined benefits pensions will be allowed. Same applies to MPs. All subsidies in Parliament to be removed. Lords will receive reasonable expenses and no salary. MP salaries will increase in line with inflation figures published by the government. John Lewis list to be replaced with ASDA list. Second homes only if outside Tube coverage or more than 60 minutes by public transport. Massive cut in the number of MPs / constituencies.
6. Raise the tax threshold to £12000 and introduce a flat tax of 25% thereafter -- no exemptions, exclusions or fucking about. Hopefully the rates could come down or the threshold go up as the cuts started to bite. VAT would be abolished. Tax review to identify all stealth taxes and abolish them all. National Insurance Ponzi scheme shitcanned and replaced with an actual insurance project, funded out of income tax if possible. Corporate taxes would be at a flat rate of 25% as well. To cope with the anticipated sacking of 95% of the civil service, companies would get an allowance for every new permanent employee who remains employed for longer than 12 months and was never formerly employed at that company. Abolish the minimum wage.
7. Tell the EU to fuck off. Free trade with all, no binding entanglements with anyone. All EU-based regulation chucked in the bin. Companies who still wish to trade with the EU are welcome to comply with EU regulations.
8. Sack every non-medical person in the NHS apart from the switchboard operators. Break up the NHS so that every hospital, dentist and GP practise is its own business. Restrict "free at point of delivery" to A&E and long-term illnesses only. Everyone can "go private". Voucher system for state contribution to the medical insurance of your choice which will be sufficient for basic health care at any insurance provider.
9. No state curriculum. Schools can do whatever they want. No state sponsorship of LEAs or schools individually: parents will get a voucher for each kid that they can use to put them in any school they like. Schools can choose how much extra they want to charge, if anything. Exams are a matter for the schools, but the International Baccalaureat and International GCSEs will be recognised. Universities are for people who want to learn more, so all admissions targets will be scrapped. Students will be given loans which will be interest free until they commence gainful employment at which time they will be repaid and attract interest on the outstanding balance at BOE rates with a target of being repaid over a period of time equal to the duration of the loan. Repayments will be deducted at the same time as tax, but will not exceed the amount of the citizen's income, unless specifically authorised by the person.
10. Smoking will be re-introduced into buildings with appropriate and adequate extraction devices. This will be aggressively policed to make sure that they are adequate. (Because I fucking hate smelling like an ashtray.) People who want to continue the smoking ban in their buildings may, of course, do so.
11. Watchdogs will get teeth and focus will be on detecting crimes rather than ticking boxes.
12. Climate change can get fucked. Feed-in cuntwaftery abolished. No preference for renewable energy, which must stand or fall on its own merits. Commissioning of nuclear power stations with immediate effect or buy in loads of these. We could probably get a bulk discount.
13. Complete dead stop on all current military capex projects. New military buying to focus on what is necessary to support soldiers in their current engagements followed by a review of the purpose of the military in a Libertarian society (defence, mainly) and a committed 4-year program to fund that structure. No preference for buying British, just buy what works best.
14. All state pensions will be funded by tax feeds into the black hole, sadly. But by reducing the state budget for employees to nearly nothing, the black hole will not grow much. Any surplus in the budget will be used to buy insurance or shares to help reduce the size of the black hole.
15. All current benefit programs will be entirely abolished and replaced with a basic, un-means-tested citizen's income for subjects of Her Majesty, i.e. people born in the UK or people who have been naturalised. Paying tax for a minimum period of four years will be a pre-condition of naturalisation. Such people will be over the age of 16. There will be a further, small supplement on the birth of the first child. Subsequent children are your problem. No benefits for EU citizens or for asylum seekers. Asylum seekers would be housed in basic accommodation and provided with supermarket vouchers in line with the citizen's income for a period of three months and then chucked out onto the street.
16. Complete review of health and safety regulations with a view to making people regard common sense as more important than risk aversion.
17. Complete abolition of all regulation that could be used for rent seeking and all regulation that encourages moral hazard. Bank and other shares currently owned by the government will be sold on the open market. No bail-outs for anyone. Banks and other financial institutions will retain sufficient funds to meet depositor requirements, failure to comply with this (if a bank has a run and can't meet deposits) will result in criminal prosecutions with life sentences for the board of the banks. Regulators will be incentivised on successful prosecutions of crimes which could cause individuals loss of money. Regulators will be massively de-incentivised on frivolous prosecutions.
18. Massive prison capacity-building projects. Crimes against individuals will carry stiff minimum sentences so that even if bleeding-heart judges want to let cunts off with a slap on the wrist, they can't. All trials by jury. Juries can note a recommendation from a judge or coroner, but can't be directed.
19. All drugs legalised. Really nasty Class-A stuff will be available free on prescription and must be consumed under medical supervision. Other drugs will be made available through approved pharmacies and profits from these will be hypothecated to dealing with the consequences of drug abuse, programs to get people off drugs or reducing the tax burden on all. I don't expect many profits, though, because I don't want to make it so expensive that a black market develops.
20. All business regulations scrapped completely and redeveloped on the basis that individuals are engaging with other individuals. Employers and employees will negotiate contracts of employment that suit them both. The state will provide sample contracts that can form the basis of these contracts if people want them. Any regulation will be to allow detection of abuse, rather than to encourage a box-ticking mentality.
21. Land value tax will replace council tax. Councils will receive no government funding. Councils will be subject to a range of minimum standards and strict limits to what they can do. They will have no responsibility for schools, health care, social justice or anything other than sanitation and keeping the environment presentable (streets clean, street lights working, gum and dog shit off the streets, etc.) Competition in managing services versus taxes levied to be encouraged and results published.
22. Abolish any road charging schemes and all bus lanes will be strictly limited to "rush hours" only. Routes not demonstrably full of bus passengers will lose their bus lanes. All subsidies of privatised "public transport" will be removed. All regulation of fares will be removed. All contracts for ownership of routes will be terminated. All rail networks will be open to competitive tender for the management and maintenance thereof. Death of a passenger will attract an immediate prosecution for corporate manslaughter for the entire board of the responsible companies (train and network maintenance.) Same for bus companies. The only get out would be proof that the circumstances were outside their control (such as a plane landing on their train or bus.)
23. Completely open and transparent, audited statistics published monthly on inflation, unemployment, money printing, etc. Since I don't expect to be re-elected, I want you to know just how shit the situation is I inherited, what I've done to fix it and how things look when I leave.
24. All discriminatory legislation abolished. No preference for travellers, Muslims, Jedis, one-legged blind black lesbians. No mandatory paternity leave. Mandatory maternity leave reduced to three months. Public pools that have "Muslim-lady-only" sessions will be filled in and the managers shot.
Update: 25. Firearm ownership to become legal. Licensing required. Training required and an annual proficiency test. Restrictions based on mental health or criminal grounds.
Update: 26. Abolish the license fee. The BBC, Channel 4, etc., can all go fuck themselves. Cunts.
If people like what they see and vote for me again, I'd do my level best to reduce income tax further by reducing the amount spent on vouchers because I really do believe people can spend their own money more wisely, but I accept that this depends on nearly full employement and that people at the margins could lose out.
17 comments:
Feel better now?
;-)
You'll need a lot of civil servants to push that lot through (ducks)
Like it, especially 2, 10, 16 & 20.
You'd have my vote!
The Penguin
Where do I sign up?
You can make savings on the Council costs if you have the death sentance for gum and dog shit polutters.
That's even better than your previous manifesto. Good stuff. I've pencilled you in as Prime Minister in my 'Bloggers Cabinet, if that's OK.
DP, it won't need civil servants to push through "Repeal all laws passed since 1997" can be sorted out in a couple of days, once somebody's tracked down a list.
I agree with your direction. Kinda.
I don't buy the vouchers argument at all. If you must, just give people the money and let them spend it how they see fit.
Can I ask by how many points you would reduce the current government take of GDP. Currently it runs at about 43%.
Specifically what do you think it should be after the end of the first libertarian government and then after ten years say? What do you think it can be reduced to in the longer term (several decades)?
Ah, that's better!
When do you start mass fundraising?
@DavidNcl: I'm pretty ambivalent about the whole voucher thing, myself. Problem is, if we claim it in tax and hypothecate what we're going to spend it on, then we have to enforce that.
Personally, I agree with you, we should simply tax a lot less and let people do what they like with their money, not even tax it and give it back to them.
However, people are very set on state support for education and healthcare, and this is the least-worst way I can see of doing it. It allows a way of providing acceptable universal healthcare and acceptable universal education.
From a pure Libertarian point of view, it potentially involves taking from the childless and giving to those with children, which I don't like; or taking from the healthy and giving to the sick, which I also don't like.
It may be possible that once people become more Libertarian in their thinking that we start to offer opt-outs to reduce our tax take in exchange for you not getting the benefits.
I'd love to see the government under 10% of GDP, but I think that would take several decades. I would regard getting the government take to under 40% as a real accomplishment in a single term, after a decade, I'd imagine that 30% would be viable.
Unrestricted ownership of firearms
Largely, then I agree with you but for one crucial thing:
I think there's little chances of getting a democratic mandate.
This is largely because of the propaganda spend of scores of organizations like the NSPCC. Which for example spent nearly a 1/4 of billion (yes, with a b) pounds over the last decade on shilling for the state.
That plus the BBC as a 14 billion propaganda organ is a powerful force.
On top of that a 1/4 of the working population are the state. Then there's the welfare recipients - a larger class than most realise.
I suspect any libertarian force in power will be there post the collapse of industrial democracy. More like Pinochet's Argentina and el milagro económico.
I don't think there will be the wriggle room to gently downsize the state. It will all be very nasty.
The alternative is not a continuation of the soft, cuddly fascism of the recent past but something much worse.
I'll try and rehash this later on my feeble blog.
And there was I thinking you were radical.
(Chile, DavidNcl. Not Argentina. But point taken.)
After the bomb goes off, maybe. Otherwise, socialism's (wage and welfare) slave class would stymie this or any other sane governance for, oh, a couple of centuries.
On the bright side, you might just get the ASDA list through earlier. Get Dennis Skinner to propose it.
Doh! Yes of course Chile.
As I wrote that I was thinking of the 2001/2 meltdown in Argentina and wondering how to work that in as an example of wrong turns.
Is that it?
Half arsed incomplete list.
Three little letters seem to have escaped you in your efforts.
BBC.
And what to do with it and every body that works there.
Obviously excluding Clarkson, his two mates and the stig.
Good idea, but there are too many vested interests to stop you from ever being elected. Short of a complete break down of society, I can't see how any new party can take over with a sufficient majority to bring in even 10% of these reforms.
I suspect this is part of the Tories problems - they can't be seen to be too radical, or they will be slaughtered by the BBC and establishment, yet if they remain cautious they drop back in the ratings.
I despair....
Crikey! you've stolen my manifesto! here's my version i made a year
ago.
TAXES
Abolish the PAYE system of collection and change any income tax into a flat
system.
Increase tax thresholds to benefit low wage earners balanced by cuts in
benefits. to increase work incentive, reduce unemployment and encourage
low income families to have less kids.
Index link stamp duty.
Aim to reduce VAT to 15%
Aim to reduce import duties as much as possible to promote free trade, ideally
none.
HEALTH
The NHS is top-heavy, sack 80% of NHS admin staff, timewasters and quango
committees. Employ more nurses & doctors with the money.
Scrap any mixed public-private hospital deals not in competition.
Reject clearly bogus litigation against the NHS, currently preoccupying admin
personnel; in fact all litigation should have a prior "bogus" assessment criteria.
IMMIGRATION
Introduce quota of 24,000 immigrants per annum, spread over 2,000 per
month. Give preference to skilled workers through a points system.
Illegal immigrants deported.
CRIME
Build more prisons. Turn spare asylum detention centres into prisons.
Mandate that convicted criminals must serve their term and cannot be paroled
early except in exceptional circumstances.
LAW
Enact a constitutional freedom of speech and of self-ownership that prevents
current erosion of this ideal.
Firmly re-establish habeas corpus. scrap/amend all new laws infringing this.
Repeal bogus laws about inciting religious/racial hatred.
Introduce constitutional right of self-defence.
Re-offending murderers to be terminated by lethal injection; also serial killers
and terrorist mass murderers.
Develop a legal recreational drug and tax it. it could be a specially processed
existing drug with reduced addiction.
Stop bashing smokers.
Stop trying to demonise "bad" foods.
Legalise brothels and regulate them.
TRANSPORT
Scrap the mayor of London and the whole assembly. Scrap congestion charge.
Re-nationalise the rail service, at least in urban commuter areas, unless genuine
competition is possible.
Mandate that speed cameras are only to operate at true accident blackspots
and not at locations that suit councils.
Halt rollout of speed bumps. do not replace existing bumps after road works.
Increase speed limit to 80mph on the best motorways. Motorway speed limit
decreases to have advance "yellow" warning signs.
International Economy and Europe
Under no circumstances have an international government as well as a national
government (and a local one!).
Exit the EU politically because it is not democratic (ie lacks plebiscite).
Reject monetary union.
Sack our MEPs and all their cronies.
Continue to converge trading regulations and civil tort with Europe, but not
criminal law (including the European rights). keep our own criminal justice
system.
EDUCATION
Make A levels (or any replacement) sensible, marks are rebased on a control
group. University entrance contingent on grades. Aim to reduce university
places to 20% of population. Allow tuition fees to be tax deductible from later
employment.
Encourage trades like plumbers, electricians, carpenters and technicians with
vocational tax relief.
non-cooperative kids to not receive special treatment in education, this wastes
resources from the rest. society no longer has a duty to enforce education on
kids, but only to offer it.
BUSINESS
Don't pay sick pay for first two days.
Offer tax incentives to rejuvenate manufacturing.
Do all we can to redress the balance of payments deficit by stimulating growth.
Try to diversity from the paper shuffling business.
Take the lead in biotech wrt human embryo and stem cell research (while the
Americans are arguing and before Asians eat our noodles).
Business with non-linear returns to scale (monopolies) considered candidates
for nationalisation. definition ensures economic sense and sets criteria. But try
to find a new way to avoid nationalisation that does not involve profiteering
privatisation when there is a lack of competition?
ENVIRONMENT
Eliminate greenwash. Get facts straight.
Insist all scientific studies take into account the whole picture. ie the total
energy footprint of solar panels, turbines etc and their eventual disposal and
cost of maintenance and spare parts.
Expose EU landfill tax and electronic disposable levies as bogus monetisation.
Raise awareness of oil reserve problems.
Information
Make national statistics more transparent to the layman.
Stop trying to control the internet.
DEMOCRACY
in a general election, a minimum percentage of voters is required for election.
if this is not achieved, the monarch takes temporary control (a use for the
queen!)
Disenfranchise non-taxpayers.
If the prime minister steps down (dies, abdicates etc.), a general election has to
be called within 1 year (unless it is already due earlier).
It should be illegal for politicians to jump to an opposition party within 3 years.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Scrap the position of mayor.
Halt rollout of bogus CPZ monetisation.
Halt door-to-door recycling collection. no way can this add up!
Drop trying to demonise people who throw things away.
Halt rampant building of "affordable homes" on every square inch. Consider
flood risk more.
Encourage people to install fireplaces that burn with low smoke (modern
enclosed hotter burning ones) so that people can burn their garden waste and
pizza adverts.
Make it illegal for bus lanes to get close to a junction (eg 200m).
Allow certain (smaller) vehicles to use the bus lanes.
OTHER
Reintroduce dog license. Nominal charge to cover admin. all dogs on a DNA
database. Stray unregistered dogs are destroyed after 1-3 months.
Consider the dangers of being a net energy importer. this concept applies also
to food.
Prevent trains carrying radioactive, nuclear waste going through towns like
London.
People in mental asylums candidates for clinical drug trials (those drugs that
have reached this stage). right now this is provided by impoverished students
and it would help filter real nutters from scammers and criminals that hide
inside mental health.
All of the above plus > return the public housing stock to Local Authority control ( or sell it outright ).
The current scam of " bidding " run by unaccountable self-selecting Rightous in housing associations is just a way for them to pick and choose which of their favoured client groups gets access to social housing regardless of how long they have been on the waiting list.
Oh, and MOD to be run by Ex Chiefs Of General Staff only.
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