Brick by Brick
Seeing as everyone has put out their manifestos I guess its my turn.
If I was a prime minister I would rebuild the nation brick by brick.
Starting with education.
We’ve let Gen Z and Gen Alpha pay for the fact that the Conservatives hate kids.
So we stop that.
Step 1. We take teachers basic pay to £40,000. If you respect a profession and admit its a hard vocation, you need to act like it. No more teachers on the breadline.
Kids need to start school later aged 7 and childcare needs to be free. Funded by the state, (if you want mothers to work, you need to put the kids somewhere.) Kids will be expected to write their own name and count to 10, when they enter school. Then we have the national curriculum- scrap it. Kids don’t have a uniform learning experience anyway, let teachers teach. Children will be able to take exams at 11 and 16 and we stop education there. Stop keeping kids who don’t want to be in education in education, let them have a trade. Or work in Tesco. There is no shame in doing so.
Teachers need support, so more teaching assistants, less tests and a teacher mentor in each school, making sure we care for those who care for the teachers. Schools have become massive industrial complexes where we spit out children instead of nurture them, out with that, class sizes of 20 max fed by extra teachers (vocational training will be free, so teaching, medicine, nursing, and policing will all be free at university with a stipend to learn it.) (University will be free too) the only mandatory thing is the minimum amount of time kids need to spend on exercise. Teachers aren’t dumb, they want a balanced education for our kids so we need to let them take control based on what the classroom in front of them needs, not what some educational PhD person thinks. More focus on mental health and wellbeing, life skills like negotiation and communication. Reading for pleasure and critical thinking, because I know teachers worry about that. The school day shouldn’t be more than 6 hours because we expect teachers to work no more than 8 hours per day. No more 60 hour week madness, if between the teacher and the teaching assistant they can’t plan lessons and mark homework without doing over 80 hours between them, then we’re doing too much of something wrong.
Tax
Next no working age benefits for a company with taxable trading profit of over £1m. If your company makes money, there is no reason for you to be receiving tax benefits. You go to work to earn money, there is no reason for a person to work full time and not be able to feed and clothe themselves without the government getting involved. Oh and if you work on minimum wage or within £3 per hour of minimum wage you should be exempt from tax. Both income tax and national insurance.
And we’re bringing back the 10p tax band and jiggling the tax thresholds. Flat bands making the 40p tax band £75k. Which basically inflation adjusts the current one.
Income tax and National insurance will be merged. We’re all tired of doing the maths in our heads when we work out what we’re taking home.
Child tax credit should be an out of work benefit and we’ll just add something to your tax code to make you pay less tax if you are working, if you earn minimum wage or within £3 of it and don’t pay tax, you get a rebate. - this will pay for itself in the economy, the minimum wage should allow someone to pay for rent, food (21 meals per week) a reasonable clothes budget and a reasonable travel budget whilst being able to save even if its £50 a month for emergencies.
Council tax.- Bands haven’t been reviewed in 20 ish years, with houses just creeping into higher bands, local government spending has basically been destroyed. We have so many councils going broke, Southampton city council is literally selling off silver gifts and office buildings to balance the budget… So yeah 35% increase in local government spending, because yes we need binmen, births deaths and marriages and libraries. This is basically to repair the damage done by the past 14 years. We need community centres and to encourage more spaces for people to just exist without paying for anything. Warm spaces in the community to just exist.
Transport.
Buses stay £2 per trip. but its £2 per day (are we in a climate emergency or not?) Trains are capped at £5 per day and are re-nationalised. Need to make them a lot more frequent to be viable so they are the method of choice not force for people.
Utilities
Renationalise, and people who are on state benefits receive free electricity and gas and water. Invest massively in clean energy. Water, solar (sourced from the Sahara,) wind whatever. As long as its not fossil fuels who cares?
Housing.
We need an honest plan on demographics, proper demographics modelling with current trends and forcing new builds to be 3.5 times the average salary of the people in that geography. e.g. a newbuild in Kensington and Chelsea where everyone earns on average over £1m would be £3.5m a new build in Portsmouth were everyone earns on average £20,000 would be £70,000.
Defence.
Spend the 2.5%. Russia isn’t playing, and neither should we. Also get the Army back to 100,000. Also, it is mandatory for all Prime Ministers to attend every single D-Day event in Normandy. This shouldn’t have been said, but it needs to be.
Crime and punishment.
Not everything needs prison time. Murder and rape we’re jailing you forever, same with paedophilia. We’re tired of this nonsense of having the nutter get out and reoffend. When you get out of prison you live in a shared home for 6 months to re-habilitate to stop people from living on the street and then going back to prison. Stop and search doesn’t make certain demographics (read black people) feel safer so stop that. We need to pump a lot of money into the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) to empower it to actually do its job, its rape statistics are devastating. Need to reinstate all the courts we closed due to the cuts, both civil and criminal, we need more court time because the waiting list to get justice is currently ridiculous.
NHS.
Both in NHS, Schools and all infrastructure projects the government needs to buy themselves out of these PPI (Public, Private Initiatives) (Read private sector’s license to print money) yes more doctors, which we are importing for the short term but we’re going to long term train more doctors. Yes a junior doctor also needs to be paid £40k per year. or the 35% increase that the Conservatives have screwed them over for years. GP’s should be allowed to prescribe things like “friendship” and gym membership, we should get Dr’s and other associated health professionals in as a national emergency to get waiting times down. This is set at a hospital and healthcare hub centre basis. Each 100,000 people should have a healthcare hub which focusses on common ailments of the population as well as specialist centres, so if its a student town, mental healthcare access is key.
Mental health is given as much emphasis as physical health and the funding to match the mental health epidemic we are currently facing. Counselling should be free. Gym memberships should be given to the depressed as well as recommending “mental health day” (a day off work per month, paid for by the government to help the depressed cope with challenges) mentors, social connections and walks. With adequate GP’s to resource all this.
My thoughts so far…
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.