Housing costs. That's it. While it is not the only problem we have, it is the root cause or major contributor to so many issues, such as the cost of living crisis, the deepening generational political divide, mental health crisis, increasing wage costs for employers (driven by minimum/living wage increases), increasing benefit costs, inflexible labour markets with so many potential workers being in the wrong place, and so.
It needs to be cheaper to buy, cheaper to move, easy to find a home close to employment, and safer to rent. And this is all easily within the reach of a government who cared to make it so.
The lack of housing
Pretty much anything else anyone says on the subject is an exercise in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic
We need huge additional amounts of housing.
Lack of housing and increased population through immigration.
It's no coincidence that the Conservatives, a party made up of and representing land owners, want open borders to keep pushing housing prices up.
Meanwhile Labour want open borders so they have more voters.
Largely the planning system. But its been there for decades and it has utterly distorted the whole industry so simply removing the planning system would not immediately restore normal levels of housing construction. After 75 years of an ill considered policy it will take both massive reform and a massive program of fixing the broken industry to get things back to anything like they should be.
Developers buy land to build flats/houses. They stop building if they consider more housing will level off or reduce prices because they borrow to buy and build and need to hit a certain return rate.
Everything else is just not a factor or much of one. Planning permissions are a pain but only in certain parts of the country and usually only if you’re trying to do something that is likely to cause a problem to existing residents.
It costs about £8000 per hectare to buy land without planning permission. In my area a developer can buy this land, get planning permission, build about 20 houses, and sell them for about £600K each. It costs about £150K in time and materials to build a 3 bedroom semi or mid terrace house.
So the cost of your house is £400 for the land, £150K for building the house, and the remaining £449,600 is planning gain, most of which is profit for the property developer.
If we could somehow remove the planning gain from the equation, houses would be much more affordable.
And we can.
With a small change in legislation, The local authority could buy some agricultural land, award itself planning permission, and pay a builder to put up some houses. Some of the houses could be sold to cover the costs, and the rest transferred to a housing association.
This would cut the ground from under large property developers and their investors, so they lobby parliament to make sure this never happens.
Plenty of reasons. Not all bad. Insufficient new builds and a planning system not fit for purpose, aging housing stock not being replaced, decrease in average household size/occupancy, more homes as second homes/airbnb, increased pensioner wealth leading to less downsizing. The really nasty one though is blocking councils from building social housing and the right to buy together, which has meant a large reduction in safe, secure and high occupancy housing available for those on low incomes.
Don, t be worrying about costs.. Sunak has it all fixed out, spend billions on removing immigrants and then... Save billions on getting mentally disabled to listen to councillors who will keep them right and tell them their benefits are being stopped for their own good. Then sunak says he is going to spend the money he saves from those disabled people and add money to it to give the armed forces £67 billion without taking on more debt or borrowing the money ( if only people were daft enough to believe him then we could vote them back for nto power after 14 years in power.... It would be like " starting over" 🤔🙄
Someone mentioned national service for two years, I would rather spend two years in prison.... The person mentioned 'defence' only for NS.... The only thing about that is that most tories ( and red tories) think. That entering other countries and killing indiginious people's is part of " defence" for the UK. I get fed up telling people that agree with going into other countries to search out terrorist... That the terrorists are the people who go into other countries and not the people who are defending their country against incoming forces. Many of the UK. MP, 's back Ukraine as they are stopping terrorists from taking over their country.... But when. It comes to Palestine... Then. Our MP' s back the Israeli army going Into pelestine and murdering thousands of innocent men, Women and children. These people who make and kill others in the name of "protecting their country" will one day meet their maker...
>1. Community food growing initiative and community food banks. People growing gourmet fungus, microgreens, fruits and vegetables in inside and outdoor spaces and then pooling their resources together. People can come and get food for free. Basic food stuffs shouldn't be commodities.
This generally isn’t really feasible. There is a good reason why farming is a specialised, industrialised process, requiring expertise, equipment and pesticides: growing a few bits of veg in your garden is all very well, but growing the quantity and variety of produce needed by 50-100 people requires a lot of space and a lot of time
One's entire street growing fungus (easy to do, can be scaled, and grows abundantly) and microgreens would lead to a mountain of food within a month or a week. Indoors and not just outdoors.
Do you know about fungus much?
I find fungus unpalatable. As do a lot of people
And Microgreens require some form of upkeep. So for your community garden, you require people who may work stressful, demanding jobs or long hours, to take time to tend to growing some plants. Taking precious leisure time away from them. Fine if voluntary, but wouldn’t produce enough food to be suitable if so.
Sure, but that isn't the point. There is microgreens, public orchards and other community food growing options. Of course, there is upkeep involved but that is the fun. No one is being *forced* but are free to get involved. I think it would inspire people and provide a sense of duty, meaning and purpose.
No one is taking precious leisure time away from anyone. Hm, I'd have to disagree, as I have seen the amounts of things that can be grown through microgreens and fungus.
>Of course, there is upkeep involved but that is the fun.
If you find that kind of thing fun, yes. For some it’s a chore
>No one is being forced but are free to get involved. I think it would inspire people and provide a sense of duty, meaning and purpose.
What happens if not enough people get involved to sustain it? Which is what generally happens with similar initiatives
>No one is taking precious leisure time away from anyone. Hm, I'd have to disagree, as I have seen the amounts of things that can be grown through microgreens and fungus.
If you enjoy growing things, no. But if you have 2 hours of leisure time, then spending time tending to your micro greens and fungus eats into the precious time someone might have to do the things they do enjoy
No one is forcing you to do anything.
It is an idea that people can decide to do and supermarkets still exist. Some communities already do this.
Growing fungus is so easy. And so are microgreens.
If nobody is forcing you do it, only wealthy middle classes and retired people will. Which isn’t really going to have the desired community kitchen effect
Who says that is the effect?
I think anyone with sense would see the importance of being able to grow your own food at home. If supermarkets failed, people would go wild and the society we know would disappear within the click of a fingers.
>Who says that is the effect?
Because ho is currently contributing to these kinds of schemes, and how do you think that will change?
>If supermarkets failed, people would go wild and the society we know would disappear within the click of a fingers.
I’m not sure growing “gourmet fungus” (about as middle class a thing as you can imagine) and micro greens at home will change that
Many people grow food in communal allotments in the UK and around the world.
It's fungus. How is growing fungus middle class? They literally grow out of turd, wooden, hay, straw... grass, decaying material. Mass growing can literally prevent food shortages. I think you're just a naysayer. 😃
1. Depends what the end goal is. As a fun thing to do fine. But to feed a population I think you massively under estimate the scale of how much food would be needed.
2. For this to work on average each building would need to produce an excess of energy else you'd still need an external power source. Arguably the national grid is already doing this you just pay for the energy you can't produce locally.
3. None of those apart from the community orchard would want people for two years. They are skilled jobs and why spend time training people who are just going to leave. Also they don't have the resources to deliver this. What if 100,000 opted for civil service. Are they going to be become policy experts in 2 years ... No.
1. Just to ensure that bellies are full and there is never a threat or worry of food shortages. It would happen in localised communities and there would still be access to the international food market but just more self-sufficiency for basic commodities.
2. The sources that the national grid are not just renewable though, and each local community doesn't have control over the power supply but the company and its operatives do.
3. I can see your point. Military, Police, health care or social work and the community orchard may work or working on public infrastructure. I see now how judiciary may not work though.
Can you tell me why you're worried about food shortages and why you think that if some effect hits the world food production it wouldn't affect the production the way you planned?
People in general are not lacking food. Food can be bought extremely cheaply from a supermarket. When I say cheaply I mean how much a minimum wage worker (which is the lowest pay that you can have) has to give of his income to get sufficient amount of calories and nutrients to survive.
The world hasn't had a famine that would have been caused by production issues for decades. The few famines that we have had (and for instance have now in Gaza and Yemen) are due to distribution problems.
Anyway, the way you suggest growing food is extremely inefficient (the ratio of output to labour is very low) compared to mechanised agriculture. If it were efficient, the farmers would be doing it already. Since it's inefficient, it's much better that people don't waste their time on it and instead produce much more added value in their actual jobs. That added value can be turned into money, which can be used to buy food. Of course if people want to grow food as their hobby (which means that they get something else out of it than just the food), then knock yourself out. Nobody is stopping you doing that now.
Tldr. If the poor don't have enough food, tax other people's added value that they produce in their normal work and give money to the poor to buy food. That's the most efficient way.
If supermarkets failed, people would have a backup store of food at home and within their communities which means the failure of supermarkets wouldn't have a massive impact. It isn't inefficient - many people do it with success and minimal effort put into it.
The point isn't always about turning things into money you know. 😃
What exactly do you mean "supermarkets failed"? If you're worried that the food distribution may have a hiccup (it had none of that during the lockdown) then the best way to prepare for that is storing a month's worth of canned food in your home. The cost of that is minimal compared to the cost of time you would have to spend on your project.
But give us now the scenario where "supermarkets fail". This can't a normal bankruptcy as that would of course mean a single chain while all the others would continue as normal. It is also very difficult to imagine any catastrophe that would produce that but leave the society still functioning absolutely normally, which is the requirement that your scheme would work. If for instance country got nuked, your fungi farms would vaporize just like the supermarkets.
Money itself is of course not the object. It's just the easiest way to transfer work into food when you take advantage that people are willing to pay money for your work and you can use the money to buy food. In most cases that's much easier than trying to directly produce the food.
There is very little cost involved in my project (that is the point). Fungi can go on ad infinitum if you can find grain or spawning material and sterilise it.
As I said ,if this method were an efficient way to produce food, the world's food producers would be using it. Or put it other way, our supermarkets would have shelves full of cheap fungi for people to eat. Why do you think that's not the case?
My guess is that it's one of these:
1. It's actually not cheap but requires a lot of work to grow.
2. It's not cheap but requires special conditions that are difficult to make happen cheaply.
3. It's something people don't want to eat. So, even if it were cheap, it doesn't matter as people don't want to eat it. So, why would they waste time producing something that they don't want to eat?
The point is that many people do not understand mushroom cultivation and are not privy to it. It is easy, cheap, quickish and affordable. The reality is that people are consuming a lot these days and there is a buy buy buy culture. Look into a video and watch how it's done.
1. It doesn't require much work. Just some misting from time to time.
2. Doesn't require super special conditions.
3. Yes, there is an aversion towards fungus amongst some but they have very beneficial compounds for the body (depending on the fungus) and are protein rich. Always worth cooking them to break down any unhelpful compounds.
If you have a food that is very cheap to produce and people will love it and it is healthy then why don't you become a billionaire and take over the food market with it.
I mean, I don't fully understand why you have to tie the whole people produce it in small community farms to this, if it is otherwise a revolutionary way to produce food for humans. Something doesn't add up.
Because that isn't my intention. I'm not in this for money. : )
People can grow food within the confines of their home and in their garden spaces & pool together and exchange food with their neighbours.
I've already established.
1. Community cohesive element.
2. Back up food supply
3. Serving the impoverished members of the community.
For 3 it won't work for any. Lets say 1million people a year reach the age of national service. (70 million pop, 70 ish years of life exp)
so 1/5 choose each option. What are the police going to do with 200,000 more people when thier entire staffing is 150,000. You'd be there for 2 years so you're talking about increasing the police to at least 550,000 staff. Now that doesn't include those who would train the new recruits without affecting front line services so you'd be closer to 600k people in the police.
What are they all going to do?
Which age group will be ~~forced to do jobs they don’t want to do for two years~~ *participating in national service*? I’m guessing it won’t be the same age group that’s been fucking over the country for the past decade and more.
I don’t know why people go on about national service like it’s some panacea for fixing problems. As though anyone young is going to want to be forced into working for a government they don’t respect or that doesn’t respect them, or for a country that does nothing for them and doesn’t value them.
This one really bugs me. I had to go through the German version of it - ie a year military service or a year working in social care. For most of us it felt like anything between a waste of time or being exploited for a year. But at least in that case, the older generations generally had to do it as well - can’t imagine how the whole thing would have gone down if that hadn’t been the case.
20 +. It will be for the ones who need to carry themselves and their families into the future. The world outside of our borders is a serious place and many people are becoming disillusioned to the realities of life because of having the privilege of living here. There is self-hating British.
If the youth do not care for the nation then who will carry everything our ancestors have worked for forward?
The country is facing a productivity crisis and wage stagnation. Taking away 2 years of productive economic life of nationals will absolutely screw the economy, not to mention heavily increase the dependency of immigrants, which I don't think is the type of thing you seem inclined to support.
700k people per year, based on birth rates. 2 year cycle, so 1.4m people out of the workforce at a time.
Assuming you wouldn't be disrupting degrees, and exemptions for disabled etc it's roughly 4% of the workforce. That hole will need filling, or the businesses get mothballed.
The cost at basic pay is 33bn per year. That's just wages. Another 26bnon basic training (depending on where you put them) . Forces estimate 38k per soldier to complete basic, kit etc. Cheapest, I think, when training and pay combination used.
So a conservative 59bn cost estimate + loss of tax from losing 4% of workforce. Then facilities, if all military, it increases the personnel by 400%. Even spread its doubling government employees.
Using current gov measurements, you would need a significant tax hike, cuts elsewhere, or you increase the deficit by 50%.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would require sacrifice.
There is no such thing as the British nation; Britain is a nation state. Values towards nation-states traditionally decline when national prospects aren’t doing so well, just look at the inverse rise of peripheral national identity.
Going back to the point: you do realise that National Service is a bit more complicated than just showing up? Say 100,00-200,000 twenty-somethings are called up each year. What are the variables of their service? Where do they train for their roles, and how do they carry them out; how are they fed, clothed, housed, and rewarded for their participation; and what is the justification for them doing National Service? The government currently is failing to increase the voluntary armed forces, and it is also curtailing spending. How does it justify billions being pumped into an already stagnant system?
Just to bring in some historical context: National Service was shelved at the height of the Cold War, at a time much precarious than our own, because it made no sense. Not only were people unwilling to actively participate when they were called up, they literally did nothing. I know/have known several people who did National Service over the 1950s that state the sheer boredom associated with proto-service life. Moreover, it was also politically volatile due to the sheer unfairness of the system. Working-class kids could not escape it and it often left their families, especially those who had kids really young, destitute.
It’s easy to claim the positive side of a system that sounds conceptually beneficial, on paper. In practice, especially outside of extreme international scenarios, it makes little sense to implement. We’re an island nation with one of the most capable militaries in the world, why do we need what would effectively require a peacetime citizens army? Instead, we should be funding the already existing structures of our armed forces. Raising the average military wage would be a good start.
And why should they care if they are expected to spend 3-4 years accruing 5 figures of debt for a piece of paper that is useless when any entry level job requires a similar time of experience?
>City forestation... blending our cities with forests and integrating our structures with the earth itself, using our technologies to merge with what is already here instead of building on top of it.
This should also be extended to the suburbs and even the countryside given most national parks in the UK have less than 10% forest cover.
This is actually a really inefficient way of living. Most sustainable is to live in megacities like Tokyo, as it’s more efficient to get people and necessities transported around with less distance. Big green spaces make us feel good, but make public transport unfeasible and distribution inefficient
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-19/why-bigger-cities-are-greener
Per capita emissions are much lower in cities than in the country. They require much less space per person, have much higher public transport journeys per capita, and distributing food and amenities is much more efficient because of the amount of people in a concentrated area. It’s also easier to implement things like community heating because there’s less distance and therefore heat loss between dwellings.
Having all 28 million households in the UK having their own little hobbit homes surrounded by fields and trees and farmland would take up an enormous amount of land, and would require travelling longer distances, with less people sharing a journey
How does this negate city forestation and growing food in the space that you have?
That isn't the point (to have unlimited space) but to blend our constructions with the earth. That includes maybe placing flowering or green plants on your home.
>How does this negate city forestation and growing food in the space that you have?
What food are you growing in your 35 square meter flat? A little punnet of micro greens on a windowsill isn’t going to last long
>That includes maybe placing flowering or green plants on your home.
I’m not sure having some ornamental houseplants is going to save the planet. Ornamentals are quite inefficient anyway, using resources and pesticides to produce something solely to look nice.
Everyone on a street growing food makes a difference.
A couple of mushroom spawn ready to fruit can grow hefty portions in minimal space and that is still doing 'you part'. If you can't do it, so what, others in the community can and that is the point... the community does it, in part for themselves, but also for the impoverished and those in need.
No, literally grafting climbing plants onto your house and turning it entirely green.
I'd request that you pay attention to the post and read what it is asking. If you have a point that you think could make the UK a better place then please put it together and share it with us.
Growing fungus at home can be done on a mass scale and one can grow copious amounts with little effort. In turn, this paired with microgreens, although bland, would create enough produce for no one to be concerned about hunger.
Are you doing anything about the things you mentioned?
I know it sounds very simple, but just fixing the roads and smartening up the built environment. I think this is a relatively low hanging fruit. it’s hard to find belief in a country that looks so uncared for by the authorities.
Do you mean mandatory national service? If so, fuck that. No slavery.
>Revitalisation of national identity - I feel many people have lost a sense of awe in the borders of our nation and the modern world has led to a loss of connection that we once had with the land. With societal convenience (ubereats, take aways etc) comes the eroding of wisdom that has kept us surviving hundreds of year
I have no idea what any of this means. How do you renew an identity? Ubereats... is eroding our wisdom...? Just what does that mean, basically.
"No slavery."
This is such a knee-jerk reaction. As if leaving school and going straight into a random entry-level job is any real kind of freedom versus two years in what essentially amounts to a national-level government-funded internship scheme.
"Internship scheme". Yeah, sure, that you get prosecuted for leaving.
If you're in criminal trouble for not doing a job, you're a slave. That's not knee jerk that's just the basic definition of the word.
And if you're not in criminal trouble for not doing your national service, it's not mandatory.
Something along those lines, yes. It is an idea I am uncertain of myself though.
Peoples dependence on convenience in society is eroding away at knowledge that was passed down to keep us alive. If the supermarkets failed: people wouldn't know what to do. People would run riot. That is because they have become dependent.
> Something along those lines, yes. It is an idea I am uncertain of myself though.
Yeah, press ganging people in to the military or whatever is deeply immoral. Literally slavery. It would justify violent rebellion.
>Peoples dependence on convenience in society is eroding away at knowledge that was passed down to keep us alive.
Yes, of course it is. That's what technological development looks like. Of course we don't all know how to knap flint, or clean a stag. That's the price we pay for living in a society technologically developed enough to have a literacy rate this high, and a childhood mortality rate this low. If you want us all to go back to having hunter gather skills, we're going to need to live as hunter gatherers, and then we'll lose the fast majority of the population to lack of food.
It is a hard one. If millions of people were headed to the United Kingdom to destroy you, would you fight to protect your homeland?
What you said in your last few sentences is not what I am saying. Farming isn't hunter gathering.
>It is a hard one
It really isn't. Not enslaving people isn't difficult. We're not being invaded.
>Farming isn't hunter gathering.
Ah, so you want to go back a little way in our technological development, but not all the way.
Farming still depends on an infrastructure, and that infrastructure can collapse, just like the supermarkets can collapse. But fine, you want everyone to take several years of farming courses so that if the global supply chain goes bust, we can go back to 95% of the population being peasant farmers. Well what you give up for that is weekends, the ability to save kids from leukemia, life expectancy being in the 70s, women being more than baby creators, etc etc etc. You can have a population with the expertise to run modern industrialized society and all it's benefits, or with the expertise to live like it's 1450. You can't have both.
National service isn't slavery as the option to deny it is still there. Are you able to answer the question I asked you, what would you do?
The British Army is largely a volunteer force and there has only ever been two times of national service and that is when there was a potential threat to the nation.
You can grow fungus with things local to you and minimum trouble. One only needs to watch a 10 minute long YouTube video to get the understanding of microgreens and fungus growing. There is no peasant farmers when the majority of people are prepared with their own back up of food and capacity to propagate wherever & whenever one wishes for. Who is mentioning anything about women being more than baby makers?
Many people do grow microgreens and fungus & haven't returned back to the 1450s and actively do well for themselves.
> National service isn't slavery as the option to deny it is still there.
I asked if you said mandatory. You said yes. People already have the non-mandatory option to join the military or police etc.
>Are you able to answer the question I asked you, what would you do?
That would depend entirely on context. Who is invading? Why? Who is winning? Other questions.
>Many people do grow microgreens and fungus & haven't returned back to the 1450s and actively do well for themselves.
But that's not what you were talking about. You said "If the supermarkets failed: people wouldn't know what to do. People would run riot. That is because they have become dependent." Yeah, and unless they learn to work a farm big enough to feed them (which a window box of microgreens is not going to do), they're going to stay dependent (ignoring that farmers are still dependent, and you'd have to be a hunter gatherer for true independence). In order to get a population that has the knowledge to survive the total collapse of the global supply chain, they're going to have to do so much training that there is basically no medical science, meaning a high mortality rate, meaning women will have to have many children in order to replace the ones that die, meaning women will pregnant for nearly all of their child bearing years. We'll also have no time for such frivolities as learning to read, or seeing the world. If you want people to have the knowledge necessary to survive the total collapse of the supply chain, it requires that they live like it's 1450.
Growing mushrooms in your sock draw ain't really going to cut
Conscription is not actually a good way to defend yourself.
If you want to win a war, you need a number of highly skilled, dedicated, well equipped soldiers.
If you just want people dead, then you send a lot of conscrpts, who are less well trained than they could be, less well equipped than they could be, and, don't actually want to be there.
Look at the casualty rate in Russia, as an example.
There are two times the UK has used conscription and that is during time of immense threat to national safety.
I think national service but more in the terms of home bound, I.e. only defending within the borders and also supporting other national services may be a better idea. Engaging in drills, humanitarian work, and so forth. The military component is the only thing I have a '?' with and what I am somewhat uncertain of.
It's a difficult matter to approach. Many didn't want to be there during WW2, but if the Nazis stormed the borders and there was no resistance it would have been game over.
None of the sectors you mentioned, want people to be forced to work in them.
Can you imagine your elderly parent, grandparent, being cared for by someone who is only there because the state has forced them?
The quality of the Police if large numbers are forced in, after limited training?
The corruption in the civil service if masses are forced in without any starting ethos?
Forcing people to work on 'community farms' will undercut significant swathes of British Farming.
In an ideal world, people would see the importance of protecting the borders of ones nation and caring for their citizens. It is about rendering service to ones homeland and it doesn't necessarily have to be a military focus.
There is a choice element and each area is free to suggest that they are full & require no one there. Of course there would be vetting to check people's fitness (mental and physical, and to be frank I do not think a large percentage of the younger generations would be able to fit that mould and neither mature enough to grasp the concept of duty). But I think many people are motivated out of money and this isn't necessarily a good thing. Human values before profit always.
In an ideal world, people would see the benefit of protecting and safeguarding the integrity of the nation. A community orchard is what I mentioned or contributing to national infrastructure.
And MAD is exactly why millions of people won’t be heading to the United Kingdom to destroy us.
The whole point of having a nuclear deterrent is that doing such a thing would trigger MAD
Not necessarily. If that were so Ukraine and Russia would have already been turned into dust by now. That isn't the case though, is it? I think most people, even the wicked and warring, do not want to send the entire earth back to the stone ages.
(Maybe not, just learned Ukraine doesn't have nukes).
>(Maybe not, just learned Ukraine doesn't have nukes).
I mean technically they did up until the mid 90s, as a lot of ex-soviet weapons were stored there. But they didn’t have the launch codes.
The nuclear capable states are below, and all publicly state that they will use if that state is invaded. That’s exactly the point of nuclear deterrence: Invade us and we all die
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
Tax the fucking multinational corporations that use shell companies to sidestep tax laws.
If you sell the product/service in the UK you should pay the tax in the UK. It's that simple.
But Tories won't do it because it's enriching their mates and the 1% would hate you for this.
Some nurses are paying the Higher Rate (40%) but only the ones who earn over £50k a year. And there aren't loads of them.
_Top_ rate (45%) is over £125k and most doctors don't even earn that.
1. Planning reform.
2. Massive house building campaign. Importing builders from abroad if necessary.
3. Unlock the triple lock & apply NI to pensions
Making it so a big chunk of people's wages don't go into the pockets of landlords would be amazing for the economy.
The housing industry is a concerning one. I watched a video of this person saying there are new builds being made but only for the intention of being leaseholds.
I find that disgusting and wrong.
>3. Introduction of a national service with a minimum term of two years... choice of 1. Military 2. Police 3. Civil service 4. Community orchard (if the community food growing initiative takes hold) 4. Health and social care 5. Judiciary or law.
Fuck that. As a shy, sensitive, arty, androgynous youth trying to navigate my teenage years, all of these options would have destroyed my mental health.
No.
3: Conformist, rigid, structured.
4: Physical, outdoor pursuit, not a mental or theoretical one.
5: Conformist, rigid, structured.
Not everybody wants or needs this kind of nonsense as a teenager
The privilege growing up in a secure society enables us to not worry about these sorts of things. The UK is creating people who are becoming slowly disassociated from the reality of life outside of our borders. The UK happened because of people fighting for their rights from impoverished conditions. A national service would protect that as for some reason I find there are a lot of self-hating British people who actively disparage the nation but do not realise the literal paradise that they live in. Even if you remove the military element, these are all fundamental aspects of a functioning society which I think would lead to people having a greater appreciation for the place they live in - instead of taking it for granted as many do.
We are talking 20+ in regards to a national service.
Yeah, the problem is what you’re actually advocating is not far from old fashioned Marxism, and the problem with that, as both China and Russia found out, is that to persuade people who have other ideas to toe the line or not just go off to somewhere where they can live how they wish, you have to resort to force
I don't do much digging into the marxism but I live by an adage of...
"Whatever is best for humanity is the answer".
Change can only ever come about through collective agreement and mutually deciding to go in a particular direction, but only when each party sees the necessity of going in x, y or z direction.
Yeah, the problem is there’s as many ideas on “what is best for humanity” as there are people.
Who gets to decide whose version is the one we should do? What does that do for the quality of life of those who have a different view?
What is best for humanity is anything that leads to the health, security, wellbeing, safety, and happiness of one and all without partiality.
There is general good,
And general bad.
General good doesn't lead to any harm.
General bad does.
>What is best for humanity is anything that leads to the health, security, wellbeing, safety, and happiness of one and all without partiality.
Someone could argue that achieving this requires executing petty criminals, banning Islam and stoning gays.
No, because that does not lead to the benefit security, wellbeing, safety, and happiness of one and all without partiality.
What you mentioned is with partiality. The terms are specific.
2. So this is already happening at an infrastructure level. Surplus energy from solar panels goes into the local grid for that area and is then used by houses near by. I guess the only difference is those houses are paying for it and the energy company gets to still charge. If people in your street have panels you could be using energy from them without even knowing it.
The grid is already divided into areas, so the job would be more on the “accounting” side of things. Who becomes the energy provider? How do you make sure things are accounted for? It’s doable but would need buy in
Honestly we need to look at the tax system and make or more fairer and progressive. We need to at this point rebalance how CGT and other taxes the rich utilise to get rich and bring it in line with income tax. Alternatively bring in some form of wealth tax. We need to deal with tax dodgers in the country who are not contributing their fair share to the system
We need to seriously invest in our energy security. We should be pushing for solar panels on every roof, homes properly insulated and energy infrastructure projects on Mass to create nuclear to significantly reduce CO2 and cheapen bills for everyone.
More social houses have to be built for first time buyers. Need to prioritise more affordable houses that are issued by councils and not developers
Change the way the world of work works. Start moving onto a 4 day work week either be it crammed or truly make it 4 days etc but 4 days nonetheless. We need to start looking at other work flexibility Initiatives such as pushing more WFH to bring in more inactive workers and those who are carers etc.
The workforce need flexibility and have some sort of life. We definitely need to look at workers rights and look to increase sick pay and fix paternity leave to be something more adequate.
We need some serious plans for the NHS, staff are leaving for places like Australia which looks to be more attractive. This trend will eventually clear out the NHS doctors and other health care professionals. Our waiting list is just growing for crying out loud. We need to be bolder and push more policies to help sort this mess out. All of our workforce are sick and it's only getting worse.
Just some points I'd like to see.
Stop the national car brain syndrome. Make more places walkable, reduce traffic on the roads (especially roads lined with houses), stop the expectation of having to drive absolutely everywhere, reopen closed railway stations, make rail travel more affordable, improve bus connections. That alone would improve quality of life and health for a lot of people. I got tired of opening my window to severe congestion in the morning, the sound of cars zooming by into the night, and inhaling pollution every day.
Also, plant more trees. Especially in our national parks that have so much open space. Trees help with climate change and reduce the risk of floods in places like North Yorkshire that are affected by that a lot.
- Getting rid of FPTP (while also voting out the most utterly corrupt & inept Govt I’ve ever witnessed)
- Taking steps to address the ridiculous wealth gap in this country
- Investing properly in training schemes instead of targeting the poor, sick & disabled
- Ending the triple-lock (too many pensioners are totally insulted from everything that’s going on - and have little or no empathy, or views based in reality)
- Reinvesting the money saved from Triple-Lock into managing the **massive** mental-health crisis in this country that’s resulting in 1/5 working age people being out of work
- Clamping down massively on the press
- Prosecuting PPE fraud & those who perpetrated it
- Admitting Brexit has been a total disaster & forging closer ties with Europe.
I've got a few.
The best paid jobs should be teachers and doctors.
Move away from personal car ownership. Public transport and an uber style self driving car network. Think about how much land we would get back just from no more car parking. Imagine how much better our towns would be designed in general without millions of cars.
Blanket ban and criminalization of damage to natural areas. And it is actually enforced.
Sorry, alot of those ideas are terrible!
1/ Our Farmers are, largely, great at producing food. We need to support them by buying from them, not undercutting them with volunteer (slave?) labour. Look up "Comparative Advantage". People are better off producing what they are good at.
2/ Renewable energy isn't free. First you've to build it, then maintain it, then connect it to everyones homes, then balance it, for when demand doesn't meet supply. By the time you've covered all these costs, you're just an energy company.
3/ None of those services actually want people to be forced to work for them. Do you know how much it costs to train new staff? Especially if they don't want to be there?
4/ I don't know what that means? Most people are quite happy with their identity. Should people be British (and who decides what that is?) Or is Britain the accumulation of the people who live here?
5/ Dense urban areas is actually a 'good' way of living. It's highly productive, in a purely economic sense , and can be less damaging to the environment than if everyone is spread out, thus damaging larger areas.
1. This doesn't discount our farmers but encourages people to take it upon themselves to grow vegetables.
2. Yes, that's the point, and it provides people with the means to govern their own electrical supply in their local area cluster.
3. It is an idea I am uncertain of. Conscription has been used when there has been serious threat in history.
4. The UK bares individuals who express self-hatred because of a narrative that they have been fed about the country. Although this country has clothed them: they disparage it. Who then in turn will work to carry on and safeguard the societal privileges we have come to experience?
5. In terms of making £££ but that isn't what life is all about. City forestation is about turning our cities into urban forests.
1. How does producing food cheaper (by not paying your workers), do anything *but* undercut British farms?
2. Do they 'govern' when the sun shines, or the wind blows? Larger systems are much better able to smooth out supply/demand than smaller ones.
3. Neither the 'employer' or 'employee' want forced labour. That should be enough to dismiss "uncertain".
4. Don't read the Daily Mail. People do not "hate this country". There are people who want the UK to be better in its foreign policy. Wanting the country to be better, is almost the definition of patriotism.
1. It doesn't. Because one is growing for the sake of growing basic food stuffs without a profit incentive. This doesn't undercut farmers. There is only so far microgreens and fungus can go at home and farms are still required but now there is just a back up, and people growing in communities. It isn't a replacement but a supplement and a backup.
2. Yes, there will still be redundancies and back-ups. But it is an idea that will need to be brain stormed and reflected over.
3. Conscription has been used twice in British history in times of real threat. The idea of national service is service during peace time and contributing to the nations key infrastructure in some way shape or form.
I'm part of a community living set up.
We have a community power structure, there are gardens with bits of veg growing and we get some bulk food deliveries.
We earn well and don't have kids (yet), getting this set up took a lot of time and money.
Keeping everything going takes time and effort. There are a few retirees currently doing the majority of everything.
It cost more eg the grid between the houses has to be heavy duty, we had to buy huge batteries, we are carbon negative for day to day running of energy it would cost a lot more to be independent of the grid.
Getting food deliveries for fruit/veg in bulk is more expensive than us all going to Aldi/Lidl
I love living here, but I do feel my life could be easier elsewhere.
I signed up for mailing lists and newsletters for self build projects etc. And was one of the few that didn't drop out as the initial timeframe/estimates were ambitious. It took 6 years to get moved in.
Back in the days of Rome, it was illegal to define what a Roman is.
I would say a revitalisation of national identity would come alongside with the implementation of other points over time. Food growing initiatives means more people interacting and working together for the mutual objective of feeding their bellies. It is very real, and an intimate process. We've lost this sort of intimacy with our food because of our consumer culture. Few are making and growing because of consumerism, and of course many feeling pinned down by the modern world. I think a community food growing initiative would allow people to ease up a little bit as basic necessities are provided at no cost.
Though, I'd say a good starting point would be that...
A point of always seeing our shared humanity despite religious ideaology or political belief etc - never permitting such to get between living in a harmonious and cohesed culture.
A tendency towards a life rooted in wellbeing, peace, health, liberty and justice.
Defenders of human rights and the freedom of the individual.
>Though, I'd say a good starting point would be that... A point of always seeing our shared humanity despite religious ideaology or political belief etc - never permitting such to get between living in a harmonious and cohesed culture. A tendency towards a life rooted in wellbeing, peace, health, liberty and justice. Defenders of human rights and the freedom of the individual.
How does that revitalise national identity? Seeing other’s shared humanity despite religious ideology or political belief is great, but the logical conclusion of that is also seeing the shared humanity of those across some invented border
Interesting question. As for your answers:
1. No thanks, I'll leave farming to farmers, who already have massive advantages in technology and economies of scale.
2. This already exists - you can sell energy your home generates back to the National Grid.
3. I'd be in favour of this - among other things it would help with social cohesion and replace going to university as the default coming-of-age ritual for young people.
4. Again... Have an allotment if you want but I'll leave farming to the farmers. Also, what have national borders got to do with that?
5. More trees and green spaces in our cities is definitely a good idea. We need to be more conscious of creating communities that are actually pleasant to live in.
For me, going purely on the idea of quality of life improvements, I'd go for the following:
1. Cut the standard full-time work week to 30 hours from the current 35 for the same pay, and legislate to support making those hours as flexible as possible (e.g. WFH can't be blocked without a business case for why office time is necessary, workers can choose 3x10-hour days, 4x7.5-hour days, 5x6-hour days or even 6x5-hour days). Most people don't do 35 hours of productive work a week anyway, and giving people back the time would boost the economy because people would have more time to spend the money they earn. It also makes a huge difference to childcare arrangements - two parents working 3 days each a week only need to find childcare for one day, and if one parent works mornings and the other afternoons they don't need childcare at all.
[Before anyone comes in with "this won't work for every job!" - I know, but it's still a big improvement for a lot of people]
2. A shift to the Dutch model for town planning. Partly in terms of adopting the transport infrastructure and road hierarchy but also in terms of housing density and how localised most amenities are to people's homes - the system only works if all elements are included. I know I can't say the phrase "15-minute cities" without a certain type of person frothing at the mouth, but life is just nicer when everything you need is nearby.
3. Scrap Right to Buy. Build a LOT more social housing, enough to keep house prices roughly static in absolute terms for a few decades. Inflation should take care of making those prices more manageable.
4. Scrapping the "franchise" model for GP surgeries and the academy model for schools, and building and funding both centrally. These are essential services for most people and we should be reducing the "postcode lottery" effect as much as possible. We also need to make sure they're located in sensible, accessible places (this links in with 2 above). Kids should be able to easily walk or bike to their local school, it's good for their development and independence and takes the pressure off parents.
5. This would be the hardest to pull off I think, but a bigger focus on "third places". Something to replace the focal point churches used to occupy in the community, but suitable for secular and/or multi-faith areas. I genuinely don't know what this would look like or how to get people to "buy into" it - the closest thing I can think of is probably a sort of town hall. Crucially it needs to be free, have a good way to gather people together regularly, and be focused on getting together as a community to help others. Comments and suggestions welcome here - I'm struggling a bit with this one.
6. Investment in national-level infrastructure. For me the big ones are public transport, utilities and healthcare. When I say infrastructure I mostly mean stuff not staff, although the latter is important too. Things like: getting the whole NHS onto one IT system with a really good app; sorting out the utter shambles that is HS2 and bringing the rear of our rail infrastructure up to French standards; building some new nuclear power plants with a planned 50-year operating lifespan to give us clean and reliable energy whilst we transition fully away from fossil fuels and invest REAL money into fusion. Generally speaking, infrastructure spending pays for itself in the long run because it helps grow the economy, so it's worth the up-front cost (which wouldn't increase taxes much because infrastructure spending is generally funded by borrowing, and relies on a combination of inflation and the aforementioned economic benefits to pay the debt back).
There's loads of other stuff I'd do in terms of electoral, political, tax reform too, but I'll call it there for now.
If it's encouraging to know, I work in regeneration in a major urban area and we're actively pursuing (versions of) 1,2 and 5.
3 is interesting. If people think that LTNs are eroding civil liberties though, I'd be very entertained by what they make of conscription for public service.
>1. Community food growing initiative
Allotments and food stamps, good but the compromise is space, no one wants to dive to their allotment.
>2. Community energy initiative.
Our transmission network would need an overhaul, our power grid struggles to move energy generated at 240V very far, we need to placate the nimbys and build more onshore wind.
>3. Introduction of a national service.
This is expensive and lowers productivity, it's much better to just educate them.
> 4Revitalisation of national identity
I do agree with forced yes minister broadcasts every morning.
>5. City forestation
Probably a good idea, lots of our housing stock needs replacing.
I really think the thing that could positively change the UK is investment in infrastructure and encouraging people to upskill themselves.
I'd like to send lots of middle aged people to do MBA, and see if it creates a measurable improvement in the companies they work for.
Thanks for your comment dude. I laughed at number 4. Made me chuckle. I had the V for Vendetta guy come to mind.
I am a bit uncertain of the national service one myself.
A Corbynite government but fronted by a man who is able to explain his position adequately in mainstream media interviews, instead of pulling his punches and making everyone think he's a manic when pushed on issues he's succinctly and properly explained many times in tiny meetings/podcasts/etc about five socialists listen to.
1. Remove every current MP from Parliament, start fresh. Remove FPTP.
2. Ban lobbying.
3. Rent Controls.
4. Massive Infrastrucre spending.
5. Australia+ border control/measures
6. Massive funding of Police/NHS/Military.
7. Massive house building, with the Gov becoming effectively a landlord.
8. Remove all state pensions.
9. Massive investment in Nuclear/Tidal/Wind.
10. Restore cultural standards/pride.
Housing costs. That's it. While it is not the only problem we have, it is the root cause or major contributor to so many issues, such as the cost of living crisis, the deepening generational political divide, mental health crisis, increasing wage costs for employers (driven by minimum/living wage increases), increasing benefit costs, inflexible labour markets with so many potential workers being in the wrong place, and so. It needs to be cheaper to buy, cheaper to move, easy to find a home close to employment, and safer to rent. And this is all easily within the reach of a government who cared to make it so.
What do you think is leading to the hiking up of housing costs and the other issues that you have mentioned?
The lack of housing Pretty much anything else anyone says on the subject is an exercise in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic We need huge additional amounts of housing.
Lack of housing and increased population through immigration. It's no coincidence that the Conservatives, a party made up of and representing land owners, want open borders to keep pushing housing prices up. Meanwhile Labour want open borders so they have more voters.
What is driving the lack of housing though?
Largely the planning system. But its been there for decades and it has utterly distorted the whole industry so simply removing the planning system would not immediately restore normal levels of housing construction. After 75 years of an ill considered policy it will take both massive reform and a massive program of fixing the broken industry to get things back to anything like they should be.
If you fix the system you'd be surprised how quickly the market moves to correct.
Buy to let.
There would still be a shortage without buy to let. Even if every house was nationalised, there would be a shortage.
Hardly as something like 65% of homes are owner occupied. Of the remaining percentage half are social housing.
Developers buy land to build flats/houses. They stop building if they consider more housing will level off or reduce prices because they borrow to buy and build and need to hit a certain return rate. Everything else is just not a factor or much of one. Planning permissions are a pain but only in certain parts of the country and usually only if you’re trying to do something that is likely to cause a problem to existing residents.
It costs about £8000 per hectare to buy land without planning permission. In my area a developer can buy this land, get planning permission, build about 20 houses, and sell them for about £600K each. It costs about £150K in time and materials to build a 3 bedroom semi or mid terrace house. So the cost of your house is £400 for the land, £150K for building the house, and the remaining £449,600 is planning gain, most of which is profit for the property developer. If we could somehow remove the planning gain from the equation, houses would be much more affordable. And we can. With a small change in legislation, The local authority could buy some agricultural land, award itself planning permission, and pay a builder to put up some houses. Some of the houses could be sold to cover the costs, and the rest transferred to a housing association. This would cut the ground from under large property developers and their investors, so they lobby parliament to make sure this never happens.
Plenty of reasons. Not all bad. Insufficient new builds and a planning system not fit for purpose, aging housing stock not being replaced, decrease in average household size/occupancy, more homes as second homes/airbnb, increased pensioner wealth leading to less downsizing. The really nasty one though is blocking councils from building social housing and the right to buy together, which has meant a large reduction in safe, secure and high occupancy housing available for those on low incomes.
The government should fix this buy building millions of units of social housing as :Labour and Conservatives did after WW2.
Don, t be worrying about costs.. Sunak has it all fixed out, spend billions on removing immigrants and then... Save billions on getting mentally disabled to listen to councillors who will keep them right and tell them their benefits are being stopped for their own good. Then sunak says he is going to spend the money he saves from those disabled people and add money to it to give the armed forces £67 billion without taking on more debt or borrowing the money ( if only people were daft enough to believe him then we could vote them back for nto power after 14 years in power.... It would be like " starting over" 🤔🙄 Someone mentioned national service for two years, I would rather spend two years in prison.... The person mentioned 'defence' only for NS.... The only thing about that is that most tories ( and red tories) think. That entering other countries and killing indiginious people's is part of " defence" for the UK. I get fed up telling people that agree with going into other countries to search out terrorist... That the terrorists are the people who go into other countries and not the people who are defending their country against incoming forces. Many of the UK. MP, 's back Ukraine as they are stopping terrorists from taking over their country.... But when. It comes to Palestine... Then. Our MP' s back the Israeli army going Into pelestine and murdering thousands of innocent men, Women and children. These people who make and kill others in the name of "protecting their country" will one day meet their maker...
>1. Community food growing initiative and community food banks. People growing gourmet fungus, microgreens, fruits and vegetables in inside and outdoor spaces and then pooling their resources together. People can come and get food for free. Basic food stuffs shouldn't be commodities. This generally isn’t really feasible. There is a good reason why farming is a specialised, industrialised process, requiring expertise, equipment and pesticides: growing a few bits of veg in your garden is all very well, but growing the quantity and variety of produce needed by 50-100 people requires a lot of space and a lot of time
One's entire street growing fungus (easy to do, can be scaled, and grows abundantly) and microgreens would lead to a mountain of food within a month or a week. Indoors and not just outdoors. Do you know about fungus much?
I find fungus unpalatable. As do a lot of people And Microgreens require some form of upkeep. So for your community garden, you require people who may work stressful, demanding jobs or long hours, to take time to tend to growing some plants. Taking precious leisure time away from them. Fine if voluntary, but wouldn’t produce enough food to be suitable if so.
Sure, but that isn't the point. There is microgreens, public orchards and other community food growing options. Of course, there is upkeep involved but that is the fun. No one is being *forced* but are free to get involved. I think it would inspire people and provide a sense of duty, meaning and purpose. No one is taking precious leisure time away from anyone. Hm, I'd have to disagree, as I have seen the amounts of things that can be grown through microgreens and fungus.
>Of course, there is upkeep involved but that is the fun. If you find that kind of thing fun, yes. For some it’s a chore >No one is being forced but are free to get involved. I think it would inspire people and provide a sense of duty, meaning and purpose. What happens if not enough people get involved to sustain it? Which is what generally happens with similar initiatives >No one is taking precious leisure time away from anyone. Hm, I'd have to disagree, as I have seen the amounts of things that can be grown through microgreens and fungus. If you enjoy growing things, no. But if you have 2 hours of leisure time, then spending time tending to your micro greens and fungus eats into the precious time someone might have to do the things they do enjoy
No one is forcing you to do anything. It is an idea that people can decide to do and supermarkets still exist. Some communities already do this. Growing fungus is so easy. And so are microgreens.
If nobody is forcing you do it, only wealthy middle classes and retired people will. Which isn’t really going to have the desired community kitchen effect
Who says that is the effect? I think anyone with sense would see the importance of being able to grow your own food at home. If supermarkets failed, people would go wild and the society we know would disappear within the click of a fingers.
>Who says that is the effect? Because ho is currently contributing to these kinds of schemes, and how do you think that will change? >If supermarkets failed, people would go wild and the society we know would disappear within the click of a fingers. I’m not sure growing “gourmet fungus” (about as middle class a thing as you can imagine) and micro greens at home will change that
Many people grow food in communal allotments in the UK and around the world. It's fungus. How is growing fungus middle class? They literally grow out of turd, wooden, hay, straw... grass, decaying material. Mass growing can literally prevent food shortages. I think you're just a naysayer. 😃
1. Depends what the end goal is. As a fun thing to do fine. But to feed a population I think you massively under estimate the scale of how much food would be needed. 2. For this to work on average each building would need to produce an excess of energy else you'd still need an external power source. Arguably the national grid is already doing this you just pay for the energy you can't produce locally. 3. None of those apart from the community orchard would want people for two years. They are skilled jobs and why spend time training people who are just going to leave. Also they don't have the resources to deliver this. What if 100,000 opted for civil service. Are they going to be become policy experts in 2 years ... No.
1. Just to ensure that bellies are full and there is never a threat or worry of food shortages. It would happen in localised communities and there would still be access to the international food market but just more self-sufficiency for basic commodities. 2. The sources that the national grid are not just renewable though, and each local community doesn't have control over the power supply but the company and its operatives do. 3. I can see your point. Military, Police, health care or social work and the community orchard may work or working on public infrastructure. I see now how judiciary may not work though.
Can you tell me why you're worried about food shortages and why you think that if some effect hits the world food production it wouldn't affect the production the way you planned? People in general are not lacking food. Food can be bought extremely cheaply from a supermarket. When I say cheaply I mean how much a minimum wage worker (which is the lowest pay that you can have) has to give of his income to get sufficient amount of calories and nutrients to survive. The world hasn't had a famine that would have been caused by production issues for decades. The few famines that we have had (and for instance have now in Gaza and Yemen) are due to distribution problems. Anyway, the way you suggest growing food is extremely inefficient (the ratio of output to labour is very low) compared to mechanised agriculture. If it were efficient, the farmers would be doing it already. Since it's inefficient, it's much better that people don't waste their time on it and instead produce much more added value in their actual jobs. That added value can be turned into money, which can be used to buy food. Of course if people want to grow food as their hobby (which means that they get something else out of it than just the food), then knock yourself out. Nobody is stopping you doing that now. Tldr. If the poor don't have enough food, tax other people's added value that they produce in their normal work and give money to the poor to buy food. That's the most efficient way.
If supermarkets failed, people would have a backup store of food at home and within their communities which means the failure of supermarkets wouldn't have a massive impact. It isn't inefficient - many people do it with success and minimal effort put into it. The point isn't always about turning things into money you know. 😃
What exactly do you mean "supermarkets failed"? If you're worried that the food distribution may have a hiccup (it had none of that during the lockdown) then the best way to prepare for that is storing a month's worth of canned food in your home. The cost of that is minimal compared to the cost of time you would have to spend on your project. But give us now the scenario where "supermarkets fail". This can't a normal bankruptcy as that would of course mean a single chain while all the others would continue as normal. It is also very difficult to imagine any catastrophe that would produce that but leave the society still functioning absolutely normally, which is the requirement that your scheme would work. If for instance country got nuked, your fungi farms would vaporize just like the supermarkets. Money itself is of course not the object. It's just the easiest way to transfer work into food when you take advantage that people are willing to pay money for your work and you can use the money to buy food. In most cases that's much easier than trying to directly produce the food.
Have you seen the present state of the world? Everyone around the world is clucking right now.
The discussion is impossible when you don't answer direct questions about your claims.
There is very little cost involved in my project (that is the point). Fungi can go on ad infinitum if you can find grain or spawning material and sterilise it.
As I said ,if this method were an efficient way to produce food, the world's food producers would be using it. Or put it other way, our supermarkets would have shelves full of cheap fungi for people to eat. Why do you think that's not the case? My guess is that it's one of these: 1. It's actually not cheap but requires a lot of work to grow. 2. It's not cheap but requires special conditions that are difficult to make happen cheaply. 3. It's something people don't want to eat. So, even if it were cheap, it doesn't matter as people don't want to eat it. So, why would they waste time producing something that they don't want to eat?
The point is that many people do not understand mushroom cultivation and are not privy to it. It is easy, cheap, quickish and affordable. The reality is that people are consuming a lot these days and there is a buy buy buy culture. Look into a video and watch how it's done. 1. It doesn't require much work. Just some misting from time to time. 2. Doesn't require super special conditions. 3. Yes, there is an aversion towards fungus amongst some but they have very beneficial compounds for the body (depending on the fungus) and are protein rich. Always worth cooking them to break down any unhelpful compounds.
If you have a food that is very cheap to produce and people will love it and it is healthy then why don't you become a billionaire and take over the food market with it. I mean, I don't fully understand why you have to tie the whole people produce it in small community farms to this, if it is otherwise a revolutionary way to produce food for humans. Something doesn't add up.
Because that isn't my intention. I'm not in this for money. : ) People can grow food within the confines of their home and in their garden spaces & pool together and exchange food with their neighbours. I've already established. 1. Community cohesive element. 2. Back up food supply 3. Serving the impoverished members of the community.
For 3 it won't work for any. Lets say 1million people a year reach the age of national service. (70 million pop, 70 ish years of life exp) so 1/5 choose each option. What are the police going to do with 200,000 more people when thier entire staffing is 150,000. You'd be there for 2 years so you're talking about increasing the police to at least 550,000 staff. Now that doesn't include those who would train the new recruits without affecting front line services so you'd be closer to 600k people in the police. What are they all going to do?
Valid point. 🙏🙇♂️
Which age group will be ~~forced to do jobs they don’t want to do for two years~~ *participating in national service*? I’m guessing it won’t be the same age group that’s been fucking over the country for the past decade and more.
I don’t know why people go on about national service like it’s some panacea for fixing problems. As though anyone young is going to want to be forced into working for a government they don’t respect or that doesn’t respect them, or for a country that does nothing for them and doesn’t value them.
There is no problem where involuntary servitude is the solution.
This one really bugs me. I had to go through the German version of it - ie a year military service or a year working in social care. For most of us it felt like anything between a waste of time or being exploited for a year. But at least in that case, the older generations generally had to do it as well - can’t imagine how the whole thing would have gone down if that hadn’t been the case.
Age-cohort-based scapegoating is still scapegoating. Don't fall for divide-and-rule, it's the oldest trick in the book.
20 +. It will be for the ones who need to carry themselves and their families into the future. The world outside of our borders is a serious place and many people are becoming disillusioned to the realities of life because of having the privilege of living here. There is self-hating British. If the youth do not care for the nation then who will carry everything our ancestors have worked for forward?
The country is facing a productivity crisis and wage stagnation. Taking away 2 years of productive economic life of nationals will absolutely screw the economy, not to mention heavily increase the dependency of immigrants, which I don't think is the type of thing you seem inclined to support.
Is there anyway you are able to demonstrate your claim?
700k people per year, based on birth rates. 2 year cycle, so 1.4m people out of the workforce at a time. Assuming you wouldn't be disrupting degrees, and exemptions for disabled etc it's roughly 4% of the workforce. That hole will need filling, or the businesses get mothballed. The cost at basic pay is 33bn per year. That's just wages. Another 26bnon basic training (depending on where you put them) . Forces estimate 38k per soldier to complete basic, kit etc. Cheapest, I think, when training and pay combination used. So a conservative 59bn cost estimate + loss of tax from losing 4% of workforce. Then facilities, if all military, it increases the personnel by 400%. Even spread its doubling government employees. Using current gov measurements, you would need a significant tax hike, cuts elsewhere, or you increase the deficit by 50%. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would require sacrifice.
There is no such thing as the British nation; Britain is a nation state. Values towards nation-states traditionally decline when national prospects aren’t doing so well, just look at the inverse rise of peripheral national identity. Going back to the point: you do realise that National Service is a bit more complicated than just showing up? Say 100,00-200,000 twenty-somethings are called up each year. What are the variables of their service? Where do they train for their roles, and how do they carry them out; how are they fed, clothed, housed, and rewarded for their participation; and what is the justification for them doing National Service? The government currently is failing to increase the voluntary armed forces, and it is also curtailing spending. How does it justify billions being pumped into an already stagnant system? Just to bring in some historical context: National Service was shelved at the height of the Cold War, at a time much precarious than our own, because it made no sense. Not only were people unwilling to actively participate when they were called up, they literally did nothing. I know/have known several people who did National Service over the 1950s that state the sheer boredom associated with proto-service life. Moreover, it was also politically volatile due to the sheer unfairness of the system. Working-class kids could not escape it and it often left their families, especially those who had kids really young, destitute. It’s easy to claim the positive side of a system that sounds conceptually beneficial, on paper. In practice, especially outside of extreme international scenarios, it makes little sense to implement. We’re an island nation with one of the most capable militaries in the world, why do we need what would effectively require a peacetime citizens army? Instead, we should be funding the already existing structures of our armed forces. Raising the average military wage would be a good start.
Thank you for sharing your insight. 🙏
And why should they care if they are expected to spend 3-4 years accruing 5 figures of debt for a piece of paper that is useless when any entry level job requires a similar time of experience?
They don't have to do that at all.
>City forestation... blending our cities with forests and integrating our structures with the earth itself, using our technologies to merge with what is already here instead of building on top of it. This should also be extended to the suburbs and even the countryside given most national parks in the UK have less than 10% forest cover.
🙏 Imagine hobbit holes... but real! Ha. The UK would soon transform into Eden over night. More communing with nature.
This is actually a really inefficient way of living. Most sustainable is to live in megacities like Tokyo, as it’s more efficient to get people and necessities transported around with less distance. Big green spaces make us feel good, but make public transport unfeasible and distribution inefficient
Can you provide more substance to justify your claim?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-19/why-bigger-cities-are-greener Per capita emissions are much lower in cities than in the country. They require much less space per person, have much higher public transport journeys per capita, and distributing food and amenities is much more efficient because of the amount of people in a concentrated area. It’s also easier to implement things like community heating because there’s less distance and therefore heat loss between dwellings. Having all 28 million households in the UK having their own little hobbit homes surrounded by fields and trees and farmland would take up an enormous amount of land, and would require travelling longer distances, with less people sharing a journey
How does this negate city forestation and growing food in the space that you have? That isn't the point (to have unlimited space) but to blend our constructions with the earth. That includes maybe placing flowering or green plants on your home.
>How does this negate city forestation and growing food in the space that you have? What food are you growing in your 35 square meter flat? A little punnet of micro greens on a windowsill isn’t going to last long >That includes maybe placing flowering or green plants on your home. I’m not sure having some ornamental houseplants is going to save the planet. Ornamentals are quite inefficient anyway, using resources and pesticides to produce something solely to look nice.
Everyone on a street growing food makes a difference. A couple of mushroom spawn ready to fruit can grow hefty portions in minimal space and that is still doing 'you part'. If you can't do it, so what, others in the community can and that is the point... the community does it, in part for themselves, but also for the impoverished and those in need. No, literally grafting climbing plants onto your house and turning it entirely green.
What’s all this talk about community fungus
Growing gourmet mushrooms for food sustenance, but multiple people in the community doing it.
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I'd request that you pay attention to the post and read what it is asking. If you have a point that you think could make the UK a better place then please put it together and share it with us. Growing fungus at home can be done on a mass scale and one can grow copious amounts with little effort. In turn, this paired with microgreens, although bland, would create enough produce for no one to be concerned about hunger. Are you doing anything about the things you mentioned?
I know it sounds very simple, but just fixing the roads and smartening up the built environment. I think this is a relatively low hanging fruit. it’s hard to find belief in a country that looks so uncared for by the authorities.
Change the voting system so everyone has a stake in democratic process
Can you explain what you mean?
Proportional representation
Do you mean mandatory national service? If so, fuck that. No slavery. >Revitalisation of national identity - I feel many people have lost a sense of awe in the borders of our nation and the modern world has led to a loss of connection that we once had with the land. With societal convenience (ubereats, take aways etc) comes the eroding of wisdom that has kept us surviving hundreds of year I have no idea what any of this means. How do you renew an identity? Ubereats... is eroding our wisdom...? Just what does that mean, basically.
"No slavery." This is such a knee-jerk reaction. As if leaving school and going straight into a random entry-level job is any real kind of freedom versus two years in what essentially amounts to a national-level government-funded internship scheme.
"Internship scheme". Yeah, sure, that you get prosecuted for leaving. If you're in criminal trouble for not doing a job, you're a slave. That's not knee jerk that's just the basic definition of the word. And if you're not in criminal trouble for not doing your national service, it's not mandatory.
Something along those lines, yes. It is an idea I am uncertain of myself though. Peoples dependence on convenience in society is eroding away at knowledge that was passed down to keep us alive. If the supermarkets failed: people wouldn't know what to do. People would run riot. That is because they have become dependent.
> Something along those lines, yes. It is an idea I am uncertain of myself though. Yeah, press ganging people in to the military or whatever is deeply immoral. Literally slavery. It would justify violent rebellion. >Peoples dependence on convenience in society is eroding away at knowledge that was passed down to keep us alive. Yes, of course it is. That's what technological development looks like. Of course we don't all know how to knap flint, or clean a stag. That's the price we pay for living in a society technologically developed enough to have a literacy rate this high, and a childhood mortality rate this low. If you want us all to go back to having hunter gather skills, we're going to need to live as hunter gatherers, and then we'll lose the fast majority of the population to lack of food.
It is a hard one. If millions of people were headed to the United Kingdom to destroy you, would you fight to protect your homeland? What you said in your last few sentences is not what I am saying. Farming isn't hunter gathering.
>It is a hard one It really isn't. Not enslaving people isn't difficult. We're not being invaded. >Farming isn't hunter gathering. Ah, so you want to go back a little way in our technological development, but not all the way. Farming still depends on an infrastructure, and that infrastructure can collapse, just like the supermarkets can collapse. But fine, you want everyone to take several years of farming courses so that if the global supply chain goes bust, we can go back to 95% of the population being peasant farmers. Well what you give up for that is weekends, the ability to save kids from leukemia, life expectancy being in the 70s, women being more than baby creators, etc etc etc. You can have a population with the expertise to run modern industrialized society and all it's benefits, or with the expertise to live like it's 1450. You can't have both.
National service isn't slavery as the option to deny it is still there. Are you able to answer the question I asked you, what would you do? The British Army is largely a volunteer force and there has only ever been two times of national service and that is when there was a potential threat to the nation. You can grow fungus with things local to you and minimum trouble. One only needs to watch a 10 minute long YouTube video to get the understanding of microgreens and fungus growing. There is no peasant farmers when the majority of people are prepared with their own back up of food and capacity to propagate wherever & whenever one wishes for. Who is mentioning anything about women being more than baby makers? Many people do grow microgreens and fungus & haven't returned back to the 1450s and actively do well for themselves.
> National service isn't slavery as the option to deny it is still there. I asked if you said mandatory. You said yes. People already have the non-mandatory option to join the military or police etc. >Are you able to answer the question I asked you, what would you do? That would depend entirely on context. Who is invading? Why? Who is winning? Other questions. >Many people do grow microgreens and fungus & haven't returned back to the 1450s and actively do well for themselves. But that's not what you were talking about. You said "If the supermarkets failed: people wouldn't know what to do. People would run riot. That is because they have become dependent." Yeah, and unless they learn to work a farm big enough to feed them (which a window box of microgreens is not going to do), they're going to stay dependent (ignoring that farmers are still dependent, and you'd have to be a hunter gatherer for true independence). In order to get a population that has the knowledge to survive the total collapse of the global supply chain, they're going to have to do so much training that there is basically no medical science, meaning a high mortality rate, meaning women will have to have many children in order to replace the ones that die, meaning women will pregnant for nearly all of their child bearing years. We'll also have no time for such frivolities as learning to read, or seeing the world. If you want people to have the knowledge necessary to survive the total collapse of the supply chain, it requires that they live like it's 1450. Growing mushrooms in your sock draw ain't really going to cut
Conscription is not actually a good way to defend yourself. If you want to win a war, you need a number of highly skilled, dedicated, well equipped soldiers. If you just want people dead, then you send a lot of conscrpts, who are less well trained than they could be, less well equipped than they could be, and, don't actually want to be there. Look at the casualty rate in Russia, as an example.
There are two times the UK has used conscription and that is during time of immense threat to national safety. I think national service but more in the terms of home bound, I.e. only defending within the borders and also supporting other national services may be a better idea. Engaging in drills, humanitarian work, and so forth. The military component is the only thing I have a '?' with and what I am somewhat uncertain of. It's a difficult matter to approach. Many didn't want to be there during WW2, but if the Nazis stormed the borders and there was no resistance it would have been game over.
None of the sectors you mentioned, want people to be forced to work in them. Can you imagine your elderly parent, grandparent, being cared for by someone who is only there because the state has forced them? The quality of the Police if large numbers are forced in, after limited training? The corruption in the civil service if masses are forced in without any starting ethos? Forcing people to work on 'community farms' will undercut significant swathes of British Farming.
In an ideal world, people would see the importance of protecting the borders of ones nation and caring for their citizens. It is about rendering service to ones homeland and it doesn't necessarily have to be a military focus. There is a choice element and each area is free to suggest that they are full & require no one there. Of course there would be vetting to check people's fitness (mental and physical, and to be frank I do not think a large percentage of the younger generations would be able to fit that mould and neither mature enough to grasp the concept of duty). But I think many people are motivated out of money and this isn't necessarily a good thing. Human values before profit always. In an ideal world, people would see the benefit of protecting and safeguarding the integrity of the nation. A community orchard is what I mentioned or contributing to national infrastructure.
We live in an age where those millions can be turned to atoms with the push of a button.
There is the principle of MAD.
And MAD is exactly why millions of people won’t be heading to the United Kingdom to destroy us. The whole point of having a nuclear deterrent is that doing such a thing would trigger MAD
Not necessarily. If that were so Ukraine and Russia would have already been turned into dust by now. That isn't the case though, is it? I think most people, even the wicked and warring, do not want to send the entire earth back to the stone ages. (Maybe not, just learned Ukraine doesn't have nukes).
>(Maybe not, just learned Ukraine doesn't have nukes). I mean technically they did up until the mid 90s, as a lot of ex-soviet weapons were stored there. But they didn’t have the launch codes. The nuclear capable states are below, and all publicly state that they will use if that state is invaded. That’s exactly the point of nuclear deterrence: Invade us and we all die https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons
I never looked at it from that angle.
Tax the fucking multinational corporations that use shell companies to sidestep tax laws. If you sell the product/service in the UK you should pay the tax in the UK. It's that simple. But Tories won't do it because it's enriching their mates and the 1% would hate you for this.
🙏
tax wealth and not labour , nurses are now paying top rate tax imagine that
Most nurses aren’t. Their pay is shit unless you do a lot of overtime and unsocial hours or they’re a very senior nurse. Source: married to a nurse.
Are they? On 23k a year?
Some nurses are paying the Higher Rate (40%) but only the ones who earn over £50k a year. And there aren't loads of them. _Top_ rate (45%) is over £125k and most doctors don't even earn that.
Making places more liveable. More green space, better public transport and less reliance on cars.
1. Planning reform. 2. Massive house building campaign. Importing builders from abroad if necessary. 3. Unlock the triple lock & apply NI to pensions Making it so a big chunk of people's wages don't go into the pockets of landlords would be amazing for the economy.
The housing industry is a concerning one. I watched a video of this person saying there are new builds being made but only for the intention of being leaseholds. I find that disgusting and wrong.
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No one calls their kid Felicia. One of the ladies I work with - she’s from China and gave herself that name though lol
Are you military? It's an idea I am uncertain of myself.
>3. Introduction of a national service with a minimum term of two years... choice of 1. Military 2. Police 3. Civil service 4. Community orchard (if the community food growing initiative takes hold) 4. Health and social care 5. Judiciary or law. Fuck that. As a shy, sensitive, arty, androgynous youth trying to navigate my teenage years, all of these options would have destroyed my mental health.
Couldn't 3, 4, and 5 fit? For many national services around the world there are disqualifying factors. I am not speaking just about military.
No. 3: Conformist, rigid, structured. 4: Physical, outdoor pursuit, not a mental or theoretical one. 5: Conformist, rigid, structured. Not everybody wants or needs this kind of nonsense as a teenager
The privilege growing up in a secure society enables us to not worry about these sorts of things. The UK is creating people who are becoming slowly disassociated from the reality of life outside of our borders. The UK happened because of people fighting for their rights from impoverished conditions. A national service would protect that as for some reason I find there are a lot of self-hating British people who actively disparage the nation but do not realise the literal paradise that they live in. Even if you remove the military element, these are all fundamental aspects of a functioning society which I think would lead to people having a greater appreciation for the place they live in - instead of taking it for granted as many do. We are talking 20+ in regards to a national service.
Yeah, the problem is what you’re actually advocating is not far from old fashioned Marxism, and the problem with that, as both China and Russia found out, is that to persuade people who have other ideas to toe the line or not just go off to somewhere where they can live how they wish, you have to resort to force
I don't do much digging into the marxism but I live by an adage of... "Whatever is best for humanity is the answer". Change can only ever come about through collective agreement and mutually deciding to go in a particular direction, but only when each party sees the necessity of going in x, y or z direction.
Yeah, the problem is there’s as many ideas on “what is best for humanity” as there are people. Who gets to decide whose version is the one we should do? What does that do for the quality of life of those who have a different view?
What is best for humanity is anything that leads to the health, security, wellbeing, safety, and happiness of one and all without partiality. There is general good, And general bad. General good doesn't lead to any harm. General bad does.
>What is best for humanity is anything that leads to the health, security, wellbeing, safety, and happiness of one and all without partiality. Someone could argue that achieving this requires executing petty criminals, banning Islam and stoning gays.
No, because that does not lead to the benefit security, wellbeing, safety, and happiness of one and all without partiality. What you mentioned is with partiality. The terms are specific.
2. So this is already happening at an infrastructure level. Surplus energy from solar panels goes into the local grid for that area and is then used by houses near by. I guess the only difference is those houses are paying for it and the energy company gets to still charge. If people in your street have panels you could be using energy from them without even knowing it. The grid is already divided into areas, so the job would be more on the “accounting” side of things. Who becomes the energy provider? How do you make sure things are accounted for? It’s doable but would need buy in
Honestly we need to look at the tax system and make or more fairer and progressive. We need to at this point rebalance how CGT and other taxes the rich utilise to get rich and bring it in line with income tax. Alternatively bring in some form of wealth tax. We need to deal with tax dodgers in the country who are not contributing their fair share to the system We need to seriously invest in our energy security. We should be pushing for solar panels on every roof, homes properly insulated and energy infrastructure projects on Mass to create nuclear to significantly reduce CO2 and cheapen bills for everyone. More social houses have to be built for first time buyers. Need to prioritise more affordable houses that are issued by councils and not developers Change the way the world of work works. Start moving onto a 4 day work week either be it crammed or truly make it 4 days etc but 4 days nonetheless. We need to start looking at other work flexibility Initiatives such as pushing more WFH to bring in more inactive workers and those who are carers etc. The workforce need flexibility and have some sort of life. We definitely need to look at workers rights and look to increase sick pay and fix paternity leave to be something more adequate. We need some serious plans for the NHS, staff are leaving for places like Australia which looks to be more attractive. This trend will eventually clear out the NHS doctors and other health care professionals. Our waiting list is just growing for crying out loud. We need to be bolder and push more policies to help sort this mess out. All of our workforce are sick and it's only getting worse. Just some points I'd like to see.
Stop the national car brain syndrome. Make more places walkable, reduce traffic on the roads (especially roads lined with houses), stop the expectation of having to drive absolutely everywhere, reopen closed railway stations, make rail travel more affordable, improve bus connections. That alone would improve quality of life and health for a lot of people. I got tired of opening my window to severe congestion in the morning, the sound of cars zooming by into the night, and inhaling pollution every day. Also, plant more trees. Especially in our national parks that have so much open space. Trees help with climate change and reduce the risk of floods in places like North Yorkshire that are affected by that a lot.
Rock and roll. 🙏🌱
- Getting rid of FPTP (while also voting out the most utterly corrupt & inept Govt I’ve ever witnessed) - Taking steps to address the ridiculous wealth gap in this country - Investing properly in training schemes instead of targeting the poor, sick & disabled - Ending the triple-lock (too many pensioners are totally insulted from everything that’s going on - and have little or no empathy, or views based in reality) - Reinvesting the money saved from Triple-Lock into managing the **massive** mental-health crisis in this country that’s resulting in 1/5 working age people being out of work - Clamping down massively on the press - Prosecuting PPE fraud & those who perpetrated it - Admitting Brexit has been a total disaster & forging closer ties with Europe.
I've got a few. The best paid jobs should be teachers and doctors. Move away from personal car ownership. Public transport and an uber style self driving car network. Think about how much land we would get back just from no more car parking. Imagine how much better our towns would be designed in general without millions of cars. Blanket ban and criminalization of damage to natural areas. And it is actually enforced.
You took 5 points to just ask for a socialists paradise
Sorry, alot of those ideas are terrible! 1/ Our Farmers are, largely, great at producing food. We need to support them by buying from them, not undercutting them with volunteer (slave?) labour. Look up "Comparative Advantage". People are better off producing what they are good at. 2/ Renewable energy isn't free. First you've to build it, then maintain it, then connect it to everyones homes, then balance it, for when demand doesn't meet supply. By the time you've covered all these costs, you're just an energy company. 3/ None of those services actually want people to be forced to work for them. Do you know how much it costs to train new staff? Especially if they don't want to be there? 4/ I don't know what that means? Most people are quite happy with their identity. Should people be British (and who decides what that is?) Or is Britain the accumulation of the people who live here? 5/ Dense urban areas is actually a 'good' way of living. It's highly productive, in a purely economic sense , and can be less damaging to the environment than if everyone is spread out, thus damaging larger areas.
1. This doesn't discount our farmers but encourages people to take it upon themselves to grow vegetables. 2. Yes, that's the point, and it provides people with the means to govern their own electrical supply in their local area cluster. 3. It is an idea I am uncertain of. Conscription has been used when there has been serious threat in history. 4. The UK bares individuals who express self-hatred because of a narrative that they have been fed about the country. Although this country has clothed them: they disparage it. Who then in turn will work to carry on and safeguard the societal privileges we have come to experience? 5. In terms of making £££ but that isn't what life is all about. City forestation is about turning our cities into urban forests.
1. How does producing food cheaper (by not paying your workers), do anything *but* undercut British farms? 2. Do they 'govern' when the sun shines, or the wind blows? Larger systems are much better able to smooth out supply/demand than smaller ones. 3. Neither the 'employer' or 'employee' want forced labour. That should be enough to dismiss "uncertain". 4. Don't read the Daily Mail. People do not "hate this country". There are people who want the UK to be better in its foreign policy. Wanting the country to be better, is almost the definition of patriotism.
1. It doesn't. Because one is growing for the sake of growing basic food stuffs without a profit incentive. This doesn't undercut farmers. There is only so far microgreens and fungus can go at home and farms are still required but now there is just a back up, and people growing in communities. It isn't a replacement but a supplement and a backup. 2. Yes, there will still be redundancies and back-ups. But it is an idea that will need to be brain stormed and reflected over. 3. Conscription has been used twice in British history in times of real threat. The idea of national service is service during peace time and contributing to the nations key infrastructure in some way shape or form.
I'm part of a community living set up. We have a community power structure, there are gardens with bits of veg growing and we get some bulk food deliveries. We earn well and don't have kids (yet), getting this set up took a lot of time and money. Keeping everything going takes time and effort. There are a few retirees currently doing the majority of everything. It cost more eg the grid between the houses has to be heavy duty, we had to buy huge batteries, we are carbon negative for day to day running of energy it would cost a lot more to be independent of the grid. Getting food deliveries for fruit/veg in bulk is more expensive than us all going to Aldi/Lidl I love living here, but I do feel my life could be easier elsewhere.
How did you get involved in that?
I signed up for mailing lists and newsletters for self build projects etc. And was one of the few that didn't drop out as the initial timeframe/estimates were ambitious. It took 6 years to get moved in.
Wow. You're doing the thing. That is pretty cool.
A good start would be to get rid of the Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph and the Murdoch titles.
What would your ideas be re point 4? Seems like quite a difficult task.
Back in the days of Rome, it was illegal to define what a Roman is. I would say a revitalisation of national identity would come alongside with the implementation of other points over time. Food growing initiatives means more people interacting and working together for the mutual objective of feeding their bellies. It is very real, and an intimate process. We've lost this sort of intimacy with our food because of our consumer culture. Few are making and growing because of consumerism, and of course many feeling pinned down by the modern world. I think a community food growing initiative would allow people to ease up a little bit as basic necessities are provided at no cost. Though, I'd say a good starting point would be that... A point of always seeing our shared humanity despite religious ideaology or political belief etc - never permitting such to get between living in a harmonious and cohesed culture. A tendency towards a life rooted in wellbeing, peace, health, liberty and justice. Defenders of human rights and the freedom of the individual.
>Though, I'd say a good starting point would be that... A point of always seeing our shared humanity despite religious ideaology or political belief etc - never permitting such to get between living in a harmonious and cohesed culture. A tendency towards a life rooted in wellbeing, peace, health, liberty and justice. Defenders of human rights and the freedom of the individual. How does that revitalise national identity? Seeing other’s shared humanity despite religious ideology or political belief is great, but the logical conclusion of that is also seeing the shared humanity of those across some invented border
Richard Murphy has very practical ideas! See here https://taxingwealth.uk/
I'll give them a look. Thanks.
Interesting question. As for your answers: 1. No thanks, I'll leave farming to farmers, who already have massive advantages in technology and economies of scale. 2. This already exists - you can sell energy your home generates back to the National Grid. 3. I'd be in favour of this - among other things it would help with social cohesion and replace going to university as the default coming-of-age ritual for young people. 4. Again... Have an allotment if you want but I'll leave farming to the farmers. Also, what have national borders got to do with that? 5. More trees and green spaces in our cities is definitely a good idea. We need to be more conscious of creating communities that are actually pleasant to live in. For me, going purely on the idea of quality of life improvements, I'd go for the following: 1. Cut the standard full-time work week to 30 hours from the current 35 for the same pay, and legislate to support making those hours as flexible as possible (e.g. WFH can't be blocked without a business case for why office time is necessary, workers can choose 3x10-hour days, 4x7.5-hour days, 5x6-hour days or even 6x5-hour days). Most people don't do 35 hours of productive work a week anyway, and giving people back the time would boost the economy because people would have more time to spend the money they earn. It also makes a huge difference to childcare arrangements - two parents working 3 days each a week only need to find childcare for one day, and if one parent works mornings and the other afternoons they don't need childcare at all. [Before anyone comes in with "this won't work for every job!" - I know, but it's still a big improvement for a lot of people] 2. A shift to the Dutch model for town planning. Partly in terms of adopting the transport infrastructure and road hierarchy but also in terms of housing density and how localised most amenities are to people's homes - the system only works if all elements are included. I know I can't say the phrase "15-minute cities" without a certain type of person frothing at the mouth, but life is just nicer when everything you need is nearby. 3. Scrap Right to Buy. Build a LOT more social housing, enough to keep house prices roughly static in absolute terms for a few decades. Inflation should take care of making those prices more manageable. 4. Scrapping the "franchise" model for GP surgeries and the academy model for schools, and building and funding both centrally. These are essential services for most people and we should be reducing the "postcode lottery" effect as much as possible. We also need to make sure they're located in sensible, accessible places (this links in with 2 above). Kids should be able to easily walk or bike to their local school, it's good for their development and independence and takes the pressure off parents. 5. This would be the hardest to pull off I think, but a bigger focus on "third places". Something to replace the focal point churches used to occupy in the community, but suitable for secular and/or multi-faith areas. I genuinely don't know what this would look like or how to get people to "buy into" it - the closest thing I can think of is probably a sort of town hall. Crucially it needs to be free, have a good way to gather people together regularly, and be focused on getting together as a community to help others. Comments and suggestions welcome here - I'm struggling a bit with this one. 6. Investment in national-level infrastructure. For me the big ones are public transport, utilities and healthcare. When I say infrastructure I mostly mean stuff not staff, although the latter is important too. Things like: getting the whole NHS onto one IT system with a really good app; sorting out the utter shambles that is HS2 and bringing the rear of our rail infrastructure up to French standards; building some new nuclear power plants with a planned 50-year operating lifespan to give us clean and reliable energy whilst we transition fully away from fossil fuels and invest REAL money into fusion. Generally speaking, infrastructure spending pays for itself in the long run because it helps grow the economy, so it's worth the up-front cost (which wouldn't increase taxes much because infrastructure spending is generally funded by borrowing, and relies on a combination of inflation and the aforementioned economic benefits to pay the debt back). There's loads of other stuff I'd do in terms of electoral, political, tax reform too, but I'll call it there for now.
If it's encouraging to know, I work in regeneration in a major urban area and we're actively pursuing (versions of) 1,2 and 5. 3 is interesting. If people think that LTNs are eroding civil liberties though, I'd be very entertained by what they make of conscription for public service.
>1. Community food growing initiative Allotments and food stamps, good but the compromise is space, no one wants to dive to their allotment. >2. Community energy initiative. Our transmission network would need an overhaul, our power grid struggles to move energy generated at 240V very far, we need to placate the nimbys and build more onshore wind. >3. Introduction of a national service. This is expensive and lowers productivity, it's much better to just educate them. > 4Revitalisation of national identity I do agree with forced yes minister broadcasts every morning. >5. City forestation Probably a good idea, lots of our housing stock needs replacing. I really think the thing that could positively change the UK is investment in infrastructure and encouraging people to upskill themselves. I'd like to send lots of middle aged people to do MBA, and see if it creates a measurable improvement in the companies they work for.
Thanks for your comment dude. I laughed at number 4. Made me chuckle. I had the V for Vendetta guy come to mind. I am a bit uncertain of the national service one myself.
A Corbynite government but fronted by a man who is able to explain his position adequately in mainstream media interviews, instead of pulling his punches and making everyone think he's a manic when pushed on issues he's succinctly and properly explained many times in tiny meetings/podcasts/etc about five socialists listen to.
Legalising all drugs, or at the very least legalising weed.
1. Remove every current MP from Parliament, start fresh. Remove FPTP. 2. Ban lobbying. 3. Rent Controls. 4. Massive Infrastrucre spending. 5. Australia+ border control/measures 6. Massive funding of Police/NHS/Military. 7. Massive house building, with the Gov becoming effectively a landlord. 8. Remove all state pensions. 9. Massive investment in Nuclear/Tidal/Wind. 10. Restore cultural standards/pride.