Blizzard of Ideas
David Cameron is apparently planning a "blizzard of ideas" to be released when the "taxman behind the throne" finally takes over at the end of our pop star Prime Minister's valedictory world tour.
I propose collecting a list of suggestions under six headings to match those of the Party's official policy review process. The week that Gordon Brown officially becomes our Prime Minister, the suggestions will be compiled into six polls for you all to vote on, to see which policy ideas you think should lead the blizzard.
The six areas are as follows—When making your suggestions, please clearly identify them with one of these six headings:
- Making our economy more competitive
- Improving our quality of life
- Public service improvement
- Protecting our security
- Social justice
- Globalisation & global poverty
N.B. This short term campaign is in no way intended to compete with Conservative Home's more extensive 100policies experiment that has been running since last August to identify 100 policies proposed and approved by its readers—the conclusions of which, as one of its contributors, I look forward to seeing as it moves towards its third, amendment phase.
15 comments:
Can I start the ball rolling on globalisation with John McCain's call for the creation of a worldwide League of Democracies to "revive democratic solidarity" and bypass the United Nations?
To make our economy more competitive: leave the EU.
On improving public services, I like Mike Christie's 100 policies idea for all secondary schools to become directly state-funded but independent trust schools.
Protect our security by investing in our armed forces. Although our troops are more over-stretched than ever thanks to the increase in operational commitments since Blair came to power, defence spending is incredibly at its lowest level since 1930.
Dannatt R suggests increasing our spending on our Forces to protect our Security. How about a two-armed approach to protect security both here and overseas at the same time? With overstretched troops we clearly need MORE troops, so a one year conscription for 18 year olds would increase troops while decreasing the 'unemployed' who hang around streets causing problems - it would also teach the youngsters a trade, something their grand-parents benefitted from in the past when they were conscripted.
Jean in Witney Oxfordshire
I see Cameron has picked up on and Blair is denying your "pop star" label. Keep up the excellent work!
Top of list cut back on immigration/re-install border controls.
Social Justice: how about some reserved seats in the commons and lords for representatives of stakeholders not currently represented in our democracy: children, and generations not yet born.
Given the confusion regarding education policy, might I make the following suggestion?
Dave should announce that one of the first acts of his government will be the abolition of all LEA's and most of the Department of Education followed immediately by the introduction of a universal school voucher system
Improving our quality of life: bring back one-to-one midwifery care for all patients who want it, and give pregnant women the option to choose their midwife. Because of staffing shortages and understandably low morale among midwives, standards of pregnancy care in many hospitals are a disgrace - this could solve the problem in one fell swoop and the stats show its likely to SAVE money. What on earth are we waiting for?
Self-regulation of the press has failed. Introduce privacy laws to prevent paparazzzi hounding famous people, and replace the Press Complaints Commission with a joint Commons & Lords Select Committee.
Make it easier for people of goodwill to set up schools AND have access to similar funding as current 'state schools.'
That is a supply-side measure. On the demand side, let parents have more local options for their children's schooling through vouchers. May we generally trust parents and potential organisers of schools to be concerned to make good choices and decisions for, and effecting, young people.
Establish a new ‘Commission for Public Procurement’. This would
be set up to investigate and report on new guidelines for public procurement. Its terms of reference would be to boost economic growth and to improve the
partnership between public and private sectors – it would report
directly to Ministers.
A one-stop-shop agency - companies only need to fill in paperwork once for public contacts no matter which local authority or NHS Board area they are applying to. Standardising procurement in the UK would give it a competitive advantage.
This would save companies a huge amount of time and effort in bidding for work and revolutionise the opportunities for social enterprises and small companies.
To cut back the legal time-frame in which abortion is allowed and enforce strict guidelines on allowing state-funded abortions. To allocate more money to pro-life counselling and support for unintentionally pregnant women, pre and post natal. To allocate funds to sexual health programmes that advocate abstinence as a positive life-style choice for the unmarried.
I work in the Westminster area and was charmed last year, in the few days before the opening of Parliament, that there was no traffic on the streets in the immediate vicinity of my workplace: it was so tranquil.
I would love to see measures being taken to reduce traffic more in the inner-city areas. Ways towards achieving this might include:
Choosing one day in the month when no cars at all are allowed inside the congestion zone
Assigning a day each week when cars with number plates beginning with a certain letter can’t be inside the congestion zone
Only allowing cars to be moving during rush hour if there are at least 2 people in the car
Making more cycle paths (and bus lanes don’t count; they’re too dangerous)
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