General Election?

Maybe I should start here by saying a few words of introduction. Firstly I'm a UK citizen, and a registered voter. Secondly I'm not affiliated to any political party. I grew up watching Margaret Thatcher's Conservative party rule the UK, having experienced power cuts, strikes, and all kinds of union problems as a very small boy. I watched Labour leader after Labour leader get a spanking in the elections, before they decided to abandon their traditional views and embrace Thatcherism in all its glory. I studied 19th Century British and European History at school, and have a basic understanding of economic theory, I am a 'pretty ordinary bloke'. I make only one caveat: I am a child of Thatcher's Britain. This may colour my views... On to my musings.

It looks like the UK is heading for a new General Election at a time when it really isn't needed. As an ordinary man-in-the-street I've listened to both sides through the quagmire of Party Conference and tried to slip a fag paper between the two political parties (apparently there are other parties, but I cant say I've noticed). Both the big parties have had their big guns blazin'. (This has been pretty unenlightening, but now at least I know what David Cameron looks like. I never had that problem with Brown - he was always the bloke in Blair's shadow).

So I was thinking; similar politics, similar smarmy appearance, similar-looking stages... similar, similar, similar. What we really need is a manifesto for the real people. Something that tells those guys what we, the ordinary folk, would really like to see. I think it'd be nice to write this myself; at least then I'd be happy with it.

So here goes:

1. The UK people pay too much tax.

As a percentage of our income the tax burden on the people of our nation is higher now than it has ever been. Far too high. I think we pay around about twice as much tax as we really need to. I don't mind paying tax, if the money is used wisely, or redistributed to those that need help. I'm happy with that. We're now in a global economy; we need to compete on all fronts. Lets compete by having a fair taxation system that actually helps people build wealth rather than hinders it.

As a UK citizen we will each fall into one of three categories for tax (this is a generalisation to make the point, it really is more complicated than this).

The first category is those below the poverty line, people who do not pay tax anyway because you don't earn enough (one of the few good things about the tax system).

The second category is those who are fantastically wealthy, and can afford really good accountants who can help them avoid any tax liability whatsoever.

The third group is everyone else. It is this middle section of the people get to pay all the tax.

Changing tax rates is not a way to control poverty; how can it be when the really needy are not earning enough to pay tax. Changing tax rates is not a way to control extremes of wealth either, because the very wealthy don't pay tax either (but their accountants do - you'd think they know better) and they'd go live in a tax haven if the tax burden became too high, and they're a really small proportion of the population anyway. All changing the tax rates does is hurt or help those in the middle.

The problem is not an unfair tax system, the tax threshold is generous enough that it helps those on poorer incomes, and a higher rate band is only unfair on the face of it (remember that those earning enough to pay higher rate tax only do so because they've not got the right accountant yet). The problem is that taxation is a slow system and money is wasted hand over fist. We have too much government for it to be cost-effective, and this burden is hitting everyone in the pocket. Thirty years ago we had half the size of government that we have today, and its all very costly. Time to rethink how government works and reduce the tax bill to something reasonable.

2. Law and order is too complicated, we really need to simplify it.

We have more police around than ever before. We also have more crime than ever before, and our prisons have more people in them than ever before. Which of these came first?

I don't actually mind having too many police - provided they catch the little scumbags that just ran past my house and left a big scratch mark down the side of my boring ordinary saloon car, give them a good ticking off, and pass the repair bill to their parents. The trouble is we have so many complicated laws that the really important and basic stuff is being missed. Too many people being arrested and jailed for not paying parking tickets or their council tax, and not enough real criminals being arrested and taken out of our neighbourhoods and rehabilitatated. The police force have a difficult enough job already, yet that those in power have made it much more difficult by turning crime detection and solution into a heavy paper-pushing exercise. Common-sense policing would be much more useful.

We also have a justice system that is really too long winded. It can take months for even the simplest cases to get before a court. One of the best deterrents to crime would be a system of swift justice. Crimes from detection and proof to conviction in just a few days would be much more effective as a deterrent than having the process take months and months. Many cases cant be heard that quickly because the evidence can take a while to assemble, but those that can should.

3. Schools.

Schools need proper funding; they need proper computers for the kids to learn on, and they need more good teachers. In twenty or thirty years time the kids in our schools today will be running our industries (if we have any left) our major organisations and our government. I think I'd prefer it if they'd been well educated before they do that. We will not be able to compete as a nation unless we teach our kids as well as we possibly can.

We should also make it possible for every child to be able to walk to and from school. Kids these days get woeful levels of exercise already, having schools close enough for them to do this should be a priority. Of course in some extremely rural areas, this may be impossible to do, but it should be a goal. We should look at ways to discourage school runs inside the boundaries of towns and cities.

Some kids are disruptive - they get a stern talking to, then they get expelled for five minutes until the appeal board lets them back in to be disruptive again. These kids need special treatment (and I don't mean taking on 'outward bound' courses to have fun and be rewarded for being complete prats) we need to have effective ways to allow the majority of kids that are trying to learn stuff to do just that; and ways to actually help those that are disruptive to get the same educational chance.

4. Europe.

Lets face it, the European Union is broken. Some suggest that we'd be far better off out of it. I'm afraid I disagree. Little old Britain would be ostracised politically and economically. It's not so long since the 1970's when Britain became the sick man of Europe, and we could easily go back down that road. We need the EU much more than the EU needs us, we need to be part of the trade region, and we need to influence the direction of Europe which we can do while we're a part of it.

The biggest argument I have for staying in the EU is because it needs fixing. We would have no way to change it from outside; and we should be campaigning continually for changes to the way the EU operates. Britain is a net contributor to the EU - more, I believe, than anyone else. We should have far more influence as a result, but we don't have. We should be using such power as we have to negotiate real change. Germany and France are the other backbones of the EU, and so we should be working with them both to improve the processes that make the EU so unpopular here in the UK. the current Downing Street incumbents (and the two previous ones) don't seem to be able to do that.

Another big Europe issue that needs addressing is the arrival of our own 'free trade' zone. We subscribe to the EU, this gives us the privilege of setting our taxation system to be roughly in line with everyone else's in Europe. This is a big argument for leaving; but why should it be? Why can we not change the policy of the EU over sales taxes - to set up a proper free trade zone across Europe would foster wealth for everyone. The only way for a free trade Europe to be truly free trade would be to remove all sales tax, especially the totally unfair VAT. (This would also simplify the taxation system and make the whole thing much cheaper to run, which is another debate but also applies here.)

5. Fuel duties.

I've never understood the fuel duty levied by the government. It's a horribly unfair tax. Its a back-door to VAT on food (the fuel duty hits all food deliverers - they drive their food to the shops, after all) Everyone who owns a car is hit by this - the government make ecological arguments about raising the tax, but it really isn't about any environmental argument, it's about raising money by stealth. With fuel duty so high the fuel costs in the UK are one of the highest in Europe and we all pay the price in everything we buy. And it's not like the government is using the duty to adjust demand for fuel, demand for petrol is inelastic with respect to its price; changing the price has little impact on demand - it just makes it more expensive to buy food and more expensive to go to work. It's a government stealth tax. That said, I'm not in favour of abolishing it altogether. Duty and high price do encourage people to try and get smaller cars with more efficient engines, but again the impact is minimal.

It really is time to look long and hard at these unfair taxes - if the government really want to discourage people from using their cars then a proper public transport system that can replace car drives to and from work for more people is a much better plan - it could reduce the journeys that people have to make rather than the journeys they take for pleasure. Personally, I drive to work and back because there is no alternative (I'd love to be driven to work - I could use the journey time for something productive then, such as reading more books) but it's impossible to do regularly because public transport is so unreliable and ghastly to use. I go to work every week day. I'd not consider taking public transport to go collect some piece of furniture I'd just booked and reserved on-line, however. But I do that kind of journey every six months, so it's clear how public transport could be improved to reduce the frequency at which I use my car.