Manifestos Everywhere, But Not Much Compelling Argument

 NATALIE-BENNETT

Manifestos Everywhere, But Not Much Compelling Argument.
Boring Variations On Worn Out Themes.
Flat Tax, Kill Climate Act, Shake up NHS, Defence 2%, Reform Islam?

“If you’ve spent kerzillions of pounds you’ve borrowed you have to pay it back. You can’t disagree with austerity”

So many manifestos, so little impact. I’ve tried to pay attention to the various political parties’ manifestos but so far they’ve just reminded me how far out of touch they are from me.

The free stuff parties – Labour, LibDems, Greens, and SNATS are pretty predictable. Labour pretends it will balance the books, but it’s clear they have no chance of that, just look at the Miliband/Balls record. Any chance they had of making headway (zilch) in my neck of the woods disappeared when they decided to spike “A” 27 improvements. This group of lefty parties want to steal money from the middle classes to give to their dopey drones, and pretend that austerity can be ended before you’ve paid the money back.

Let’s get this straight. Austerity isn’t something you can decide to end. You have to make it end by your own efforts. If you’ve spent kerzillions of pounds you’ve borrowed you have to impose austerity to pay it back. Otherwise, the amount of interest you pay will devour more and more of the budget. Even LibDem leader, the soon to be late MP Nick Clegg in his first debate appearance, pointed out that interest alone is costing us more than £40 billion a year, more than the defence budget. If this isn’t stopped, interest will be the biggest cost of all. So you can’t end austerity until you’ve paid it back, or at least brought it under control. The SNAT’s Nicola Sturgeon above all others doesn’t seem to grasp that simple point. Or is she just lying about it? I suspect the latter.

The Tories are sounding desperate as they seek to bribe us with our own money, rather like the Labour party does. Its economic management message only works because it’s better than Ed Miliband’s. Not saying much. So far I’ve not heard any details of UKIP’s plans, but the way they’ve been moving lately, seeking to win Labour votes in the north by dumping plans to rationalize the health service, I don’t think a Libertarian conservative like me is going to find their offering all that compelling.

I’ve not heard anything meaningful yet about the some of the most compelling issues of the day like tax, energy (apart from Miliband’s Spart-like call for a price freeze), the threat from Islam, or the defence crisis in eastern Europe.

So clearly I’ll have to come up with my own manifesto.

Let’s start with a flat tax
Listening to Green’s spokesman, the dullally Caroline Lucas, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme glibly talking about raising tax rates on those she considers rich reminds me that my number one priority would be a flat tax. How on earth should anyone pay income tax at a higher rate, just because they earn more? And the BBC always talks about tax rates as being 40 p or 50 p, never 40 per cent of 50 per cent, which sounds a bit nastier. If people earn more, they pay more anyway. What is the incentive for someone to expand their business, only to pay an increased rate of tax as they expand their profits? Madness and envy, that’s why. A flat tax – at 20 per cent on everything, period, is gaining traction in the U.S. too. And I’m sure it would actually end up bringing in more revenue to the state (although I must admit this is a hopeful assertion) than this monolith of rules, regulation and the army of accountants it uses. You could shut down the Inland Revenue, or most of it. And all those tax avoidance lawyers could turn their ingenuity to something useful.

Repeal the Climate Change Act. Not only would this make Ed Miliband, its deranged architect, hopping mad, but it would rescue us from the looming energy crisis. The lights will go out if we don’t soon rectify this. By all means allocate funds, or preferably incentivise the private sector, to find efficient ways to produce renewable energy, but not at a cost which will torpedo our economy, and lead to blackouts and economic crisis.

Commit to two per cent of GDP in the defence budget. Repeal the commitment to 1.7 per cent to third world aid. Be generous, but only when we can be charitable with earned, not borrowed money.

No wards, no waiting lists
Instigate a simple study on comparative health care outcomes in Germany and France and make sure the conclusions are trumpeted across the nation. The NHS provides care which is shockingly inferior to that provided by Germany and France (see OECD reports), where it is state-backed, but organised through insurance. Every citizen has to pay for their treatment, and is reimbursed by the private insurer. Result – the systems are much more disciplined with costs, and more efficient. No waiting lists, no wards. Can you imagine British hotels if they were state-controlled? We would be put up in dormitories, some of them mixed. David Cameron would talk about “our hotels, the best in the world, I and my family use them all the time”. The Labour party would scream blue-murder at this inevitable reform, but the NHS was also designed to keep us in order rather than provide great health care. Socialists want to control us while pretending they care.

Acknowledge the reason some Muslims become radicalised is because it’s all in the Koran. British Muslims would be invited to acknowledge this and produce a new set of tenets that are compatible with British values. The Koran of course would remain unsullied. But British Mosques would have to comply with this modernised set of beliefs. Perhaps Muslims could demonstrate their good faith by stopping Hallal killing, which offends our animal cruelty laws anyway. Religions (Jews too of course) are allowed a special dispensation from these laws, raising the question – why should any religion seeking to elevate its devotees to a higher plane of thinking, need to retain some ridiculous medieval mumbo jumbo which justifies animal suffering?

No more postal voting
Leave the European Union. Quickly sign up to a free trade pact. Our partners will be gagging to do this, especially the leaders of countries where the likes of BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen Peugeot, Renault and Citroen live.

Repeal the fixed 5-year term parliament act.

End postal voting for all except the chronically sick, and I mean chronic. How can you vote in an election in an informed way, three weeks before polling day? How can you stop corruption, when postal voting slips are handed to heads of households who might supervise voting? Voting must be secret for each individual, that is a principle of our democracy which has been sullied. It points to the cowardice of our politicians that they haven’t stopped this yet.

Introduce primary elections which poll party members. That would raise the possibility of more local representation and put a stop to the HQ dominance perpetrated by Labour and Conservatives. This would also lessen the power of the whips in Parliament, raise the quality of our democracy, and stem the clamour for proportional representation.

Brown for St Helena
Restore what was a world class pension system by reinstating tax concessions taken away by Gordon Brown to finance his socialist state of dependents. This would also take the heat out of the property boom because potential pension investors wouldn’t need to acquire buy-to-let to finance their retirement.

And take away Brown’s pensions and exile him in St Helena.

(That’s enough manifesto points for one day – Ed).

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