What the UK needs
Tom Golden
This is not a manifesto. This is not divine research. This is just some ideas and thoughts on the current sociopolitical status quo in the UK.
What is going well?
- having a changeable constitution has allowed the UK government to respond faster to changing circumstances
- the local authorities (councils, police) are broadly well-intentioned across the board
- the UK is culturally a very green nation
- our appreciation for the "cheap and cheerful" forces companies to compete more on price and pushes prices down
- the UK's people and government are vocal supporters of progressive causes internationally
- all of our neighbours are in a joint military alliance (NATO) which offers our citizens security
- the Premier League gives us huge cultural influence worldwide
- we are making progress (albeit slowly) towards a more inclusive society
- young British Muslims and young non-Muslims are far more tolerant of each other than generations previous, improving social integration and reducing tensions
- our education system makes social mobility possible (but does not represent total equality of opportunity)
What the UK is doing wrong
- social media has centralised influence over a democracy, and allowed social media companies to play God
- the government and parliament have basically no working class representation
- the current political landscape is populist with both Conservatives and Labour often ignore developments on controversial issues
- the tactical prorogation of parliament was a power grab; the government effectively asked the monarch to take power away from parliament
- while the monarchy can be trusted to follow conventions, it still has some wiggle-room to "select" a convention - this represents significant influence in unelected hands
- our "special relationship" with the United States causes us lots of problems as our priorities largely do not match
- our adversarial cultural relationship with France causes us both harm; our priorities largely do match and we should celebrate more what we have in common
- we have enough people with skills to become a world leader in software and robotics, but we haven't been able to capitalise on it
- our NHS is costing more and more to run, and our economic growth cannot keep up to pay for it
- prospective teachers and nurses are put off by uncompetitive pay
- too often, top graduates work for financial companies instead of industries that could benefit from them
- our social classes do not share much commonality and this has no suggestion of progress; broadly, our working class does not want to be like our middle class, and vice versa
- the different school types (private, state, grammar, faith) separate children of different backgrounds, which leaves space for ignorance and apathy towards people from other backgrounds
- people are divided on to what extent a post-colonial UK should leave behind symbols of the British Empire to find a collective national identity fit for today
What the UK could look to do next
- solve certain governmental problems using decentralised blockchains/smart contracts, massively cutting costs
- requiring social media companies to publish their content recommendation algorithms (and requiring them to use "closed" and "static" logic)
- ban Facebook/Meta from the UK
- punish Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple for anticompetitive practices
- replace first-past-the-post with a system devoid of tactical voting
- lower tuition fee caps for STEM subjects
- create £0 STEM undergraduate degrees for over 30s (to encourage retraining)
- (long game) create a universal maximum individual income (remainder is taxed and could fund national insurance + more)
