My UK Election Wish List
There will be an election in the UK within the next 6 months, so I thought I would take some time to compile a list of the major issues that will influence my vote.
So here’s my wish list for our next government:
- All government spending and contracts should be published openly, and available for anyone to download as raw data. The only exception should be staff salaries, which I would consider personal information. Each department should publish their total wage bill, and the number of staff they employ so that the average wage can be seen. Currently, nobody, not even the opposition, may scrutinise government spending on certain large contracts – so no-one knows the true extent of our nations commitments. Commercial confidentiality is often cited as an excuse not release such information – in my opinion, if you are a business who deals with government – you should accept that your contracts will be public knowledge.
- All Ordnance Survey and Postcode data should be open and free. There should be a central, authoritative address database that anyone can use. I strongly believe that freeing up all this data will encourage a huge amount of innovation and bring economic benefits of several orders of magnitude bigger than the cost to the public purse.
- Prevent any bank or business from becoming too big too fail. If a business is too big too fail, it’s too big. It’s not fair to privatise the profits, and socialise the losses, therefore these businesses should be broken up.
- Pay back the national debt. It’s not a good strategy for individuals or governments to consistently spend more than they earn. Nor is it fair that every child in the UK is born with £30,000+ of public debt. Let’s try to boost the economy through sustainable activities rather then borrowing from the next generation.
- Simplify the tax system. The current system is hideously complex and inefficient. Surely we could save some money by simplifying things. Do tax inspectors really add much value to society? Couldn’t we redeploy most of them as Doctors, or scientists instead? (Or indeed any other job!)
- Encourage entrepreneurship. Cut back on the amount of paperwork (red tape) that businesses must complete.
- Streamline public procurement and encourage small business to bid for contracts. Let’s make it easier for small business to compete to provide products and services to the government.
What are you wishes for the next government? Add a comment to this post!
Great suggestions. I support all of them.
I would put Encourage Entrepreneurship as a goal on its own as I believe this is the solution to our mounting problems. It may even be the only effective solution. The developing world is raising its game through price competition. India, China, Brazil and other south east Asia countries have big populations hungry to earn more, achieve more and generally better themselves. In the UK, we have a population that is resting on its laurels after centuries of growth and prosperity. The UK became a wealthy country on the back centuries of entrepreneurship and it must go back to its roots.
The other vote-winner for me would be a guarantee for an EU Referendum. We’ve never been asked whether we want to hand over our sovereignty to Brussels. I’d at least like to have a say before we do so (even though we technically already have). Ten reasons to leave the EU.