The Conservative manifesto today points us in a better direction – towards smaller government, towards a world where government is more the servant of the people and less the master.
Under it people will be able to set up their own school with public money diverted from state schools, vote for a Police Chief of their choice, run parts of the public sector as co-ops or employee led private companies, get a share in the state owned banks, vote on the level of Council Tax, see their Council freed from much of the Whitehall regulation that currently controls it, and exercise more choice over access to public services. It offers some lower taxes to create more jobs. It wants to help more people own a home, participate directly in the business or servcie area they work for and to save for the future.
There will be a Bill to cut regulation and abolish some busybody quangos. Many people want to see an end to too much political correctness, some reversal of the surveillance society, and deployment of the thought police to more useful tasks.
Promoted by Christine Hill on behalf of John Redwood, both of 30 Rose Street Wokingham RG40 1XU
April 13, 2010
All nice sounding stuff but the two ideas SKY ran with this morning from the manifesto were not to increase NI again and to give married couples a £150 tax break. Again all well and good but crushingly modest stuff.
This hardly galvanises the core vote nor encourages the undecided to turn blue let alone get us out of the hole we are in.
(And puh-leeaaseeee…… can you ask certain people attached to the campaign to stop referring to Mr Cameron as "Dave" This is fooling no-one. I do not care what school his parents selected for him 30 years ago, nor whether he is posh or not, this attempt to make him sound like an Essex lorry driver is just transparently patronising).
April 13, 2010
I await with interest to see the contents of the manifesto.
April 13, 2010
The last paragraph is very welcome, I hope it happens. I am concerned about the stance on the "green" stuff. This promises to be so expensive as to be unaffordable apart from the loss of industry, including the danger to our energy supplies. This does not seem to be addressed although I am waiting to see the full version of the manifesto. It is a millstone round the neck of all developed nations and to that extent it is an evil, if we destroy our world we will not have the money to give in aid to others. This seems to be a blind spot in the first world countries ( well we are, just).
April 13, 2010
Government has never been cut. To cut government would require, vision, strength leadership and honesty.
Instead politicians continue to lie to people. Everybody who is educated in politics knows government is growing. They have exaggerated threats like the war on terror and global warming to justify global government, so the elite can run the world.
They are now getting the deluded left to push the tobin tax/ robin hood tax as the first global tax.
Power is going up from national to transnational and local to regional. No matter how much politicians lie and call that devolution, reality will never change.
The Tory Reform group vision is to remove as many rights and as much power as possible from the people and transfer it all to a small group of social science trained experts who will re engineer human society.
Saul Alinsky regional activist groups like London Citizens and forced service to the new illegitimate fraudulent corporate public-private state, in order to earn a few basic rights, is not returning power to the people, it is enslaving them.
Lying to the media and seeing your lies in print does not then make them the truth.
Government is the cancer on the face of humanity.
It was created out of murder death and destruction, in order to perpetuate itself it requires more or the threat of more.
Bilderberger Paddy Ashdown says that Liberal Democrat must be insurgents who lead the fight to destroy the 'tyranny of Westminster', Gordon Brown celebrate the arrival of the "New World Order", Robert Cooper writes books with names like 'the breaking of nations', Matthew Taylor says Parliament is the building he hates most in Britain and he would knock it down tomorrow if he could have his way.
Anyone who is informed knows what is really going on.
Why do our politicians think they are the elite. You are supposed to represent the public and tell them the truth. They wont listen to me over their MPs. Gordon Brown is not going to get to run anything, whoever is in control of this world order, it certainly isnt you deluded politicians.
April 13, 2010
Any manifesto which doesn't show how state spending will be cut by £200bn is inadequate.
April 13, 2010
A couple of ideas here, John.
Firstly, a while ago someone tried suing the Labour Party for reneging on a manifesto promise to hold a referendum on the EU constitution. The lawyer for Labour said that "Manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation", which I take to mean "The Labour manifesto may or may not consist of a pack of lies; we're not going to tell you which". This may be nice to trap Gordon with in a debate; it may also be useful to declare that "Unlike Labour, we Conservatives keep our manifesto promises".
Secondly, on the subject of smaller Government, you've no choice here. Either you make Government smaller on your terms after the election, or Britain goes bust and can't afford to pay all the Government workers, so we get small government that way. Either way, it'll happen. Planned downsizing is a lot less painful than a bust, though; it may or may not be worth pointing this out.
April 14, 2010
This is probably the first post of the campaign I can pin my thoughts on.
I agree with the idea of a smaller state, although I am somewhat concerned as to what that will mean in practice. It could easily mean those groups that can organize themselves become dominant in some areas where traditionally the state has played a part, but without the limitations the state has on it.
For example, without an overhaul on how the teaching of religion is dealt with in schools, I'd be very worried on religious bodies having even more power over schools. I'd also be worried about big business influencing universities more, or local charity organizations that deliver services.
But I'd also like to make a point on this £150 new married couples allowance. If the conservative party is trying to reduce the state, why seek to influence people's marital status ? Why cause an increase in bureaucracy to manage such a paltry sum ? I'd much rather see some vast simplification of the tax system, rather than the tinkering proposed here.
Maybe one of the school exams should be about filling in a tax return. If an average school leaver can't complete an average tax return in 90 mins, there's something wrong with either the education system of the tax system 🙂