One thing we hear a lot especially is that people should pay a fair amount of tax, this is something that is trotted out almost weekly by people like Owen Jones, Polly Toynbee, UKUncut amongst others.  However when you ask someone who holds this view what is a fair amount of tax for someone to pay the only answer you get is “the rich should pay more….” But they never say how much more or why they think they should pay more. 

So this got me thinking just how much tax do the rich pay a year.  Well I suppose we have to work out who the rich are.  Now I am assuming by the rich they mean this magical 1% of the population.  Now the 1% is about 300,000 people who all earn over £149,000 per year.  So someone on a wage of £149,000pa would pay a total in income tax and national insurance of £59,043.36.  An effective tax rate of 39.6% which is a fair whack of anyone’s wages to have to give to the tax man.  If the wage increases it goes up rather drastically;

• £200,000 gives an effective rate of 43%
• £300,000 gives an effective rate of 46%
• £500,000 gives an effective rate of 48%
• £1,000,000 gives an effective rate of 50%

As opposed to the average person on £20,000pa who has an effective rate of 20%.  Now looking at the effective tax rates of the “rich” I would say that anyone paying more than twice the effective tax rate of an average person is most defiantly paying their “fair” share; if not actually paying more than their fair share.

As if we look as where the tax income actually comes from the +300,000 people paying the top rate tax actually contribute £47bn a year to the treasury in tax, roughly about 30% of the total income from about 1% of the working population.  If we increase that to the top 10% of earners in the UK which is about 3million people that becomes about 65% of the total tax income paid by only 10% of the working adults in the UK. 

Now when you look at those figures it makes you wonder what these people mean by fair share.  As if anything I think the current tax system is grossly unfair, especially on those who earn large wages.  Why should Mr Smith pay 40% of his wages in tax when Mr Jones only pays 20%.  Now if Mr Smith paid effectively 20% then 20% of £150,000 is still more than 20% of £20,000. 

I can’t see any reason for increasing Mr Smith’s tax bill that would be remotely fair.  Arguing that he should pay more tax because he is rich; is well not an argument it’s an ideological left wing statement.  If these people wanted to have a properly fair tax system then the only logical tax system is a flat rate tax.  Where people pay the same percentage and those who earn more still pay more. 

So to those people who think that the rich should pay their fair share, I suggest you go and look up what fair actually means before you start using it; and stop using it as a disguise for what actually is the politics of envy and the fact you want to impose punitive taxes on those who work hard and earn a good wage.  In a properly fair society people would all have an equal tax rate and pay a fair proportionate of their wages to the tax man.  Not this unfair system we have now and most defiantly not your socialist ideas of penalising the rich simply because they are rich.

Having an education system that provides the children of the country with a good and suitable education is the key to any nation’s ability to be productive and have the ability to grow both economically and socially.  If we sit and look purely at statistics that the education system has been turning out then we would think that the UK education system is fantastic as the results are just going up and up.  However this is something that if you talk to any academic in a university they will simply say is not true, if anything the education system is dumbing down to the lowest common denominator which makes those above average look rather good.

My own experience of this was during doing my law degree, which I did as a mature student; one of the optional modules was on International Criminal Law.  Which we naturally covered the Nuremberg and Japanese war crimes trials and about 60% of the class had no idea what they were; and when the tutor said well if you don’t know what they are to go and read up on them there was outrage.  Because these people had been spoon feed up till then on how to pass an exam.  Now this to me says there is something wrong with how we are teaching people in the UK, and something needs to change.

But this leaves us with a problem as the current system is set up to treat everyone the same in that we have a comprehensive education system where the very brightest are in the same system with those who are not as smart.  It is this attitude that everyone can be anything they want to be which is in my opinion wrong.  We should be encouraging the children to be the best they can be and not setting one against the other.

I would personally propose a three tier education system, with an increase in the number of grammar schools to encourage the academically gifted to push themselves in an environment set up for academia.  To produce the new Doctors, Lawyers, scientists of tomorrow in an environment that is conducive to this.   

I would maintain a middle level of education which would focus on a mixture of academic and practical skills.  So these children got a well-rounded education which could see them go off to university if they wanted but would equally leave them in a position where they could go off and pick up a trade become an electrician or a carpenter or something along those lines. 

Then in my third tier it would be for those people who naturally struggle with academic work, and it would focus on teaching them practical life skills give them a basic understanding in English, Maths and  Science but teaching them that you don’t have to be smart to be a success. You could have these people being taught bricklaying, carpentry, plumbing, cookery, dressmaking ect.

This New Labour idea that everyone should go to university is well stupid.  Everyone should have the opportunity to go to university but we need to change social attitudes so that success is not measured in how many qualifications someone has or hasn’t got.  As a country to be success full needs a varied mix of people with all skills; with this current attitude to education we will start to lose those important skills. 

We need to instil in to children that being a Chief or a Plumber is as important to society as being a Doctor or a Nurse.  Get rid of this stigma that exists that just because someone uses their hands and not a computer that their job is somehow lesser. 

So let’s bring back grammar schools for the bright, and encourage the rest to explore options to broaden their horizons and explore other options for employment.  100 years ago to become an apprentice for a skilled artisan was a prized thing; we should look to the past for how to improve the future. 

Now on the face of things a cut of the VAT rate from 20% to 17.5% or maybe even to 15% sounds like a great idea and that it’s an easy way to get money back in to people’s pockets; so that they can go out and spend spend spend and watch the economy grow at an astronomical rate.  Well that’s what Ed Balls would have you believe that such a simple thing could be the solution to the UK’s current economic situation. 

Now not being one to just dismisses an idea because it comes from Labour, as they have at times had one or two good ideas within the plethora of total nonsense.  I decided to look up just what we actually pay VAT on.  To my surprise there is actually not a huge amount of things that we do pay it on.  But I think the easiest way to illustrate this would be with a hypothetical family and their monthly spending. 

Now for this Mrs Smith earns £25,000 and takes home after tax £1,613.53 and Mr Smith earns £20,000 giving him a take home pay of £1,330.20.  With their outgoings being the following;

• Mortgage payment of £700
• Monthly Gas and Electric £100
• Council tax bill £110.60
• Food bill £250
• Car loan payment £300
• Pension payments £500
• Petrol for car £350

Total monthly spend of £2310.60 out of £2943.73 leaving a disposable income of £158.28 per week. 

Now just which of those items have VAT on them, and what rate of VAT they have it at.  Well most financial services are exempt from VAT so that’s the Mortgage, pensions and Car Loan both at zero rate of VAT. But then we have the heating and electric bill’s, now there is VAT on them but not at 20% its only on them at 5%; so a cut in the 20% rate would not affect those bills.  The council tax bill has no VAT on it either.

Which leaves the food bill and petrol, now both of these have VAT on them and both at 20%; however it’s a minority of foods that have VAT on them things like chocolate biscuits, ice cream, fizzy drinks, crisps ect.  So the majority of day to day food is not really subject to VAT.  Now even the guardian accepted that the 2.5% increase in VAT added £33 per year to a shopping bill so a £2.5% cut in VAT would save this family about £2.75 per month.  Not really an earth shattering amount is it?

Then on to the petrol, the £350 is about 246l of petrol at £1.42l.  Now of that £1.42 only 23.6p is VAT at 20% so a 5% cut in vat would save 5.9p and 2.5% cut only 3p.  Which works out to a monthly saving of £7.38 for a 2.5% cut and £14.51 for a 5% cut.

Therefore in the Smiths monthly spend a 5% cut in VAT would save them £20.01 a month.  At a cost of £13bn to the nation, which if they just gave every one of the 30 million people over the age of 18 their share of the £13bn it would equate to the government giving everyone £433.33 each.  Which you would have to argue is a much more sensible way to redistribute £13bn in to the economy. 

So yes a 5% cut in the rate of VAT would have very little effect on the average family as it would equate to giving the two earners in this family £2.50 extra a week to spend which is hardly going to generate a mass stimulus that the economy needs. 

Today I thought I would do something a little different, instead of blogging about a topical issue I thought I would do a blog on what I would do with the country if I had the opportunity.  What major changes would I make, what I would do away with and what I would bring in to play.  As it’s my birthday it’s somewhat of a birthday wish, so as I blow out the metaphorical candles this is what I am wishing for. 

Tax

The tax system in the UK is well a mess it’s overly complicated and not really that fair, there are all sorts of tax loopholes that people can exploit so they don’t pay the right amount of tax.  So to start with I believe a flat rate of tax is fair so I would set a flat rate of tax on all income of 30% with a personal allowance of £12,500 and I would take income to mean what they lay out in the 2020 income tax report; so that would be all capital income and job based income.  This would apply to both individuals and business.

I would also address VAT especially on food, now instead of it being luxury food v’s non-luxury food I would change it so that VAT was applied only to food with more than 5% fat content.  So in essence it would be a tax on unhealthy food; I think this is justifiable due to the growing obesity problem in the UK.  So if you ate healthy then you pay less tax.   VAT would be removed also from Petrol and Diesel and road Tax would only be allowed to be used for the maintaining the roads.

Duty on Alcohol would be split between retail duty and pub duty; the first would be raised by £2.50 initially to stop the sale of really cheap alcohol in supermarkets.  But the duty on alcohol in pubs and clubs would subsequently be cut by 50p. 

Law & Order

My plans for the prison system as laid out earlier would be implemented as well as my reintroduction of the death penalty set out earlier too.  There would also be a comprehensive review of the sentencing guidelines that are issued to judges with a move to longer prison terms for more serious offense, and automatic custodial term for people convicted of an offence for a third time.  With community sentences reserved only for minor criminal offences; those that can only be heard in the magistrates court.

Education

The focus on education would be purely on ensuring we have a well-educated and informed youth.  I would introduce a three tier education system with the ability to form new Grammar Schools for the educationally gifted, a middle tier made up of Academies, Free Schools and Comprehensives to teach those who fall in the middle.  Finally a third tier for those who are not academically gifted which would focus on vocational training teaching people to be plumbers, carpenters, builders and alike.  With systematic reviews at the ages of 10, 12 and 14 so there is flexibility to ensure that the children are in the right environment. 

I would also make education mandatory till the age of 18, be that through A-levels or through a vocational course.  To ensure that we don’t generate division between the children we would build campus’ which would hold all three types of school for an area which would have shared common areas to ensure integration of the population.    

National Service

I would re-introduce national service for those aged 18-20, however it would not be purely military national service though that would be one option. It could be something like working 2 years as a classroom assistant, or two years working in a hospital or something similar.  It would be a scheme to benefit the nation and help instil some national pride in the youth. 

Welfare System

I would reform it even further than the current reforms plan to, I would reduce the cap down to £18,000 in a way to ensure that benefits were not a way to live, but they became a safety net for when things go wrong.  However I would re-train and increase the number of staff in the benefit centres who deal with people face to face so that they can ensure that people do find work. 

NHS

I would do a huge top down re-organisation of the non-clinical side of the NHS.  It would be to turn it in England in to one big organisation that is split in to the 9 regions, and would be organised like any national based company would be; so in doing so would make a large number of the managerial and administrative staff ultimately redundant.  Thus reducing the overall running cost of the NHS, giving the ability to divert some of the saved money back in to clinical staff increasing their numbers.

Military

I am tempted to merge the armed forces in to one big single force in an attempt to make it more efficient.  With any savings being pumped back in to it for equipment to ensure that we have the best equipment that any modern day military could want.

Legal Changes

Well for one I would withdraw from the Council of Europe, well I would have to if I wanted to bring back the death penalty.  I would also repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights that was clear and easy to understand. 

There would be a major overhaul of employment law to ensure a competitive labour market whilst also ensuring workers were not exploited.

I would reduce regulation on international trade, to make it easier to import and export goods around the world.  This should encourage international trade with the UK.   

Then have a jolly good clean up of the British Statute book to remove unnecessary legislation.

The EU

Although I am an EU reformist and not opposed to the original core ideas of the EU, that it being an economic trade area.  I think the only way to deal with the EU question would be to hold a referendum on the EU with three questions;

•   Should we leave?
•   Should we give the EU an ultimatum to change or we will leave after 2 years without change?
•   Should we stay?

International Aid

I think aid to countries like India and alike would have to be cut, as if they can afford to have a space program then do we really need to be giving them money.  As for other nations, those who have a dictatorship in place would also have to be reviewed to see if the money is getting to the people or being diverted elsewhere.

Though I think a policy of providing food or other solid materials may be more beneficial than giving money.  So my idea would be to provide these nations with physical goods rather than cash.



I am sure that if I sat and thought about this a lot more I could come up with hundreds of other additions to this, but if I posted a huge essay I doubt many people would read it.  So feel free to post a comment about this or suggestions for things that I may have missed off and let’s see what we come up with. 

There has been some recent criticism in the plans of the government to offering parenting classes for new parents.  Some people have said it’s the Nanny State telling us what to do and how to do it.  I have personally sat and thought about this and listened to both sides of the argument and have to say that I disagree I don’t believe this action is the state being overbearing at all, and in all honesty I think it’s a jolly good idea. 

Now yes go back 30 or 40 years and lots of people lived round the corner from their mum or another relative who could pass on their wisdom about what to do and how to do it, when it comes to looking after a baby.  But now we are a more socially mobile society and out of all of my friends in their late 20’s early 30’s none actually live near their parents.  So that safety net is not really there in a lot of cases today. 

We don’t hear people complaining about anti-natal classes for pregnant women and their partners, and this should really be seen in that vein; it’s a continuation of help for parents after their children have been born.  Now I accept that there will probably be a lot of people who don’t actually use it because they will either look up the information themselves in a book or online; but there will be some people out there who wouldn’t think to do that and they are the parents that we need to help. 

In any large town and city there is normally a housing estate where there is a lot of social deprivation and it’s these people that this program appears to be primarily aimed at.  The kind of families who due to poor parenting skills and alike are the ones that social services inevitably end up getting involved with which leads on to costing the state a fair bit of money.

So if we can get in there early and educate these people and give them the skills they need to look after their children properly then in the long run it’s beneficial not only for the State but also for society.  So I can’t really see how people can think that teaching people how to be a parent and raise their children properly can be a bad thing?

Drawing on the analogy David Cameron made, we make sure people know how to use a car before we give them a license to drive one.  So why not teach people the basics about parenting when they become one? If we can teach people how to raise children so that they respect their parents, themselves and other people then we all win. Yes it’s not going to be an overnight thing but the sooner we start with it then the sooner we will see the results. 

The past 2 years have shown us that to be an opposition leader or shadow minister is actually a really easy job.  As all you have to do is stand there say you shouldn’t do that, oh we wouldn’t do that and lots of other really easy things to say.  This Labour opposition well have done jolly good at saying they wouldn’t do that or your cutting too far and too fast and lots of other media friendly sound bites.  Yet we haven’t heard what alternative they would do instead.  They have become more a party of opposition not an opposition party.

So this got me thinking it’s easy to say what you wouldn’t do and as a result have the public say oh we like the sound of that, and get a boost in the opinion polls as a result of it.  But what is hard to do is to actually put down some policies for the public to look over and see just what they would do.  As at the moment all we know about Labour is they wouldn’t cut as much and they would borrow some more for a stimulus package of some sorts. 

Now that on its own is not really a lot, how much more would they borrow? £1bn, £10bn, £100bn or £1,000bn? And how much less would they cut by, a million pounds less of cuts is cutting by less.  So the public are left hearing we would spend more and cut less.  Which when times are hard is quite appealing more money in your pocket and more public sector people there to help.  Which in a sense is conning the voters that you would be better, when in reality you may only borrow a little bit more and cut by a little bit less. 

Which is really not on as you could very well be giving false hope to the electorate that things may be financially better under the party that well let’s face it caused the mess in the first place.  Then it hit me that for financial policies not would the government publish its plans and have them put in to action like they have done. 

But that the opposition party would have to publish some strict economic policies that list values detailing both proposed increases in spending and budget cuts.  That would then be given to the Office for Budget Responsibility who would look over them and model them to see just how they would play out.  Then this data would be released to the public so that the electorate could see just how or if there would be any difference in the two sets of policies. 

So that they could then make an informed and educated decision on the plans of the government and the opposition so when it came to an election people could vote more informed.  I also think you could probably extend it to other areas such as reform of services. 

Then when it gets to the time for a general election the OBR could do maybe a TV program that would illustrate the different positions that the two parties would have got the country to.  Which could list things like national debt, the state of the emergency services and the NHS and all the other things may be presented by Andrew Neil or someone.  What I think is great about this idea is that you couldn’t have an opposition party saying something really stupid like they would give every one £1,000 because that would be factored in to the calculation so overly populous policies couldn’t be trouped out just to win votes then returned to the closet under the stairs. 

In my opinion it would be beneficial for everyone, opposition leaders would really have to think about what they were saying, the government may pick up on an idea that they missed and implement it and above all the voters would get to see the big what if question.  So its win win all round. 

I have come across this story on a few different places on internet message boards.  Now every time I have come across it the LGBT community in large numbers have defended her actions blindly, in an attempt to justify her actions. This bemuses me beyond belief.

Now I have looked at several different sources on this incident and there is no great deal of difference in who said what and what happened.  The basic facts are three undesirable people made some offensive comments; her and a group of her friends went to confront them.  She was attacked by one of the women in the undesirable group which lead to her retaliating and stabbing fatally a man; who had at most only said some offensive comments. 

Now the LGBT community seem to think that her actions were that of self-defence, which on consideration of the facts this is a stupid accretion.  As the confrontation which lead on to her assault and the fatal stabbing was something that she created, she had the option to ignore the possible situation and move on.  At this point it’s gone from there being any possible innocent people involved to people participating in civil disorder, which ultimately lead to murder. 

I even took time to look at the laws for murder and self-defence in the state of Minnesota, which for murder are actually straight forwards.  Which if you impose the facts in to them there is no grounds for a claim of self-defence, yet these people seem to think that she should somehow be allowed to claim self-defence. 

Now one of the most alarming comments I read on this whole issue was, that the murder victim as he had a past of violent criminal convictions and he was supposedly a member of a Neo-Nazi group and was inherently homophobic and transphobic that it was fine for her to kill him.  The justification for this was, that well he may have at some point in the future tried to kill her.  Now if this was any form of justification for murder then it would give just about everyone the possibility to go and murder who they wanted to, because that person at some point may want to kill them. 

Now what worries me is the strange disregard for the rule of law, and how that if someone from a class of people you belong to does something wrong that they defend them to the hilt, regardless of what they have done.  It is as if these people become somehow blinded by the fact that the person involved is like them in some way. 

People need to wake up to reality, and it’s not just the LGBT community it’s all minority groups.  You may want to think that your little clique is perfect and no one does anything wrong because they have something in common with you.  Well that’s a load of poppy cock every minority group has rotten eggs in it, its part of life.  To blindly defend someone’s actions because of who they are is just wrong and will lead the world to a very bad place.

As where would it stop? If they are happy to defend someone who commits murder or child abuse or grievous bodily harm because well they are kind of like us.  Do we carry on do we start trying to justify that locking up Dennis Nilsen was wrong because he was a gay man or we shouldn’t lock up Muslim paedophiles because the Muslim community says a proper Muslim can’t be a paedophile. 

Civil society says that if someone breaks the law we should punish that person, and that it doesn’t matter if that person is LGBT, religious, from another country, male or female or even from another planet.  If someone breaks the law they should be put on trial and if convicted punished accordingly.  We should not start to let people off because of what could have happened if they didn’t do something, or because we think that maybe it’s a bit harsh that they are being put on trial.

This all comes down to the fact that as a society we seem to have lost the grasp that people are accountable for their own actions.  If that person does something they shouldn’t do they have to face the consequences, there should be no exceptions; and the rest of us should not try and justify the un-justifiable.  As it makes you look foolish and almost as bad a person as the perpetrator.

Now for the purpose of this blog I think we have to ignore the legal technicalities about just what we would have to do to bring back the death penalty. 

The death penalty is a highly controversial issue, and just about everyone in the UK has an opinion on it. Some people want to bring it back to hang rapist, paedophiles and murders. While on the other hand there are people who think we should never bring it back, as there is a risk that we could always hang an innocent person, as it has been shown in the UK and around the world that there have been miscarriages of justice which have led to some innocent people being executed.

Now I can see both points of view and sympathise with them on both counts.  It would be a great tragedy to find out that we brought back the death penalty and latter executed someone who had been framed for a serious crime. We have notable incidents in our recent history of this happening with both Derek Bentley and Timothy Evens.  Both of whom it was later found out that they were innocent of the crime they had been accused of.  Now if this were to happen today with the death penalty then I think the British public would be angered and demand that we got rid of it and made sure we never brought it back.

There is also the opinion that executing someone is not the way to go, and the state should not punish someone by killing them.  As this is not punishment its revenge and that it would be more of a punishment to let this person have to live out the rest of their life in prison.  Also arguing that it’s cruel and inhumane to kill someone as you are not treating them like a human being, and prison should be a deterrent enough.  

However this argument I personally find the weakest of those against the death penalty.  Now in the UK a mandatory life sentence does not mean that we send the person to prison for life, the average murder only tends to serve 14 years in prison for murder.  We have to consider that is prison really a deterrent for murder?  I think we can say for a lot of people prison is not really a deterrent for most crimes so why would murder be any different. 

However I think we need to look at just who commits murder and the reality of it is murder is committed by loved ones and friends, and tends not to be a premeditated thing and more of a spur of the moment rage.  Where someone snaps and kills someone they care about.  Personally I think using the death penalty for these people in 99% of cases would be the wrong thing to do.  I think it would send the wrong message to society that if you kill someone then we will kill you. 

But I do think that there are some situations where the death penalty would have a use in today’s modern society.  There are some crimes that truly do shock society we see the likes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Stephen Griffiths, Dennis Nilsen, Steve Wright and Ian Huntley.  Whose crimes were predatory, sexual and violent in horrific nature and causing fear and terror in the areas that they operated in. 

We accept that prison is there to rehabilitate offenders and be able to release people who do not pose a possible threat to the safety of other people.  Now nearly all of the prison population would fit in to this category but those listed above and a small minority of other prisoners are never going to be safe to release in to modern society.  The risk of them killing again is too high, and it would be a dangerous move to release a psychopathic killer back in to polite society.

So instead in the current situation these people are left to live out the rest of their natural life in prison with no possibility of release.  They can be in prison for 20, 30, and 40 years plus at an average cost of £47,000 per year.  Now in these cases we also know that these are the persons who committed their vile crimes and there is no doubt about that.

Therefore I propose that for the most egregious crimes where we know that the person would never be released due to the fact that they would just not be safe to release.  That for these evil people the death penalty is more than justifiable and not only would it be legally justifiable but I think the consensus within the population would be that it’s justifiable to punish these people with the death penalty. 

We are as a nation, if not a world to dependant on fossil fuels they dominate power production around the world be it power for our homes or power for cars, bikes planes et al. Now realistically we do need to find an alternative way of powering humanity or very shortly we will be living in caves again. 

There are currently alternatives to fossil fuels in solar, wind, tidal or bio mass or the slightly controversial Nuclear power stations.  The logical step for an island nation like the UK would be to harness the natural resource that surrounds us and try and harness the power of the sea to generate a reasonable proportion of our electricity.  To take some of the strain off fossil fuels and to appease the environmental lobby.

I don’t believe we should be looking at wind energy as a viable option in the UK at the very least, on a few grounds.  Wind energy is reliant on there being some wind to generate energy and when there is no wind where you have the wind farms you have no energy generation.  On top of that they are not overly aesthetically pleasing and its fine if you live in a city or a town as you don’t have to see them, but they are a blight on the countryside and I personally don’t believe that they are as productive as some people would have you believe.

Now solar power has its advantages that you can stick some panels on your roof, providing its facing the right way, and you can generate a bit of power to save some money on your electricity bill and put a little bit back in to the national grid.  Which is great, it saves you money and reduces by a small amount the need for burning fossil fuels.  However there is one small problem, and the clue is in the name, solar power needs sun light to be effective so when it goes dark it doesn’t work.  It’s great in the summer time when there is lots of sunlight but in the winter when we want to heat our houses and use more electricity it’s not so good. 

So what about bio mass, well there are certain environmental issues in that although we are not burning a fossil fuel to generate the power we are still burning a fuel which releases potentially harmful gasses in to the environment.  So although it is a viable alternative in that we can grow crops to use as bio fuel which could take the strain off fossil fuel consumption; environmentalists would argue that it’s not really doing much difference.   We would also have to factor in the setting aside land to cultivate crops like hemp purely for fuel production.  Which could have an impact on our food production. 

This leads us on to Nuclear, a very reliable and clean energy production method. They can be run day or night and are not reliant on external forces such as wind, tides and the sun.  Its currently an under used power generation method, and is estimated to be value for money wise as cheap as producing electricity as a coal power station.  Though people will point to the accidents as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and most recently at Fukushima as to why we shouldn’t move to this type of power production and the fact you are left with some rather nasty waste at the end of it, which has to be disposed of safely for several thousand years. 

If we look at them all like that then there really does not seem to be a really viable solution to solve what is a rather big problem; and that we may have to actually resort to decimating our countryside with thousands of wind farms and sticking solar panels on every available surface that faces the right way and replace our cars with horses and bicycles.

Though there is one other option one that you won’t hear any environmentalist spouting off about, purely because they all have shares in bicycle companies, but that’s Nuclear Fusion. The same reaction that happens on our sun every day, the great power source of the universe, which in essence is pushing hydrogen together to make helium and a hell of a lot of power.

Now people will say that this is a technology that is decades away and it may not work and all of that stuff.  Currently it’s probably one of the most underfunded alternative energy sources out there.  Which considering what it would mean if we could harness its great power is shocking.  We see at the moment little clusters of some of the greatest minds working away on separate projects in different corners of the world.  Instead of this we should look to our not too distant past and look what happened when we put the greatest brains and engineers together to work on the Manhattan project, humanity split the atom. 

If we took a lead from that, and got all of these great minds together and funded them properly like it was a military project.  I guarantee you we would have viable fusion reactors in years rather than decades. Imagine a world powered with clean unlimited energy just how beneficial to mankind that would be.  Businesses could prosper; old people wouldn’t have to worry about heating bills in winter, you wouldn’t need to worry if you turned the light out. 

So let’s stop this debate about should we put wind farms in the peak district, and let’s get the G8 nations together to commit to putting in the money that is needed to advance the development of fusion as a power source.  The money that we would have to spend to do it would be miniscule to the benefit that humanity would get out of it, and it’s Green so there would be less chance of making the poor polar bears homeless.  The only viable long term solution to the worlds energy demands is Nuclear Fusion, so let’s make those politicians do something about it now!

Political correctness has been a buzz word for some decades now, in general it’s been used as an attempt to sanitise the western world to make the world a less offensive place for people to live in; or so those who are the main exponents of it will have you believe.  In its very basic set-up it has had us stop using nouns to describe people, so we shouldn’t call someone who suffers from male pattern baldness a bald person, or refer to someone who suffers from dwarfism as a dwarf.  This is all done in the name of advancing equality. 

But I have some major issues with them trying to equate political correctness with equality.  As if we look at all the big equality movements of the last century; we have the suffragettes, the civil rights movement, feminism and the gay rights movement.  Now each of these were fighting a social injustice such as no votes for women, unequal pay for women, unequal divorce laws, segregation of people because of skin colour, treating people differently because of skin colour, treating people differently because of sexual orientation and the list could go on and on.  Now the equality changes were done to correct an injustice that everyone would now consider to be wrong and unfair. 

Now I am not naive to believe simply changing the law has changed society, there are still incidents of inequality happening today, or I would be out of work, but political correctness is trying to push things a lot further than is needed and in an attempt to stop people being offended is actually offending people.

I was reading an article about a current consultation by the General Medical Council, who are looking at changing their code of conduct for doctors. Currently a doctor can refuse to provide medical treatment to patients if they find that particular treatment to be immoral or not right for that person.  The big proposed change is in the field of gender reassignment, where at the moment a GP can refuse to treat someone because they have a moral objection to doing such.  The current GMC proposal would change it so that a GP had to treat that person or fear possible sanctions by the GMC with the possibility of being struck off as a doctor.

This change in stance by the GMC is being done under the guise of the Equality act says you can’t discriminate against Trans people, as per section 7.  However this to me is not about a quest for equality, but more the GMC trying to be political correct and not wanting to upset the Trans community.  As if it had been about proper equality they would have looked past section 7 and noticed that section 10 covers religious belief and discriminating against people on the grounds of it.  Which arguably you can say that forcing doctors to do things that go against their belief is most defiantly discrimination.   

Though the PC brigade will tell you that oh its only religious people and they really don’t matter when it comes to discrimination.  Even though they have the same legal protection as the other minorities under the Equality Act.  But because in 95% of cases they are Christians it’s fine to ignore them. 

Which follows on to another contentious issue, and that’s the wearing of a crucifix. In which two women were reprimanded for wearing one at work.  Now we don’t hear of a Sikh being banned from wearing a turban or a Muslim woman being banned from wearing a head scarf.  It gets to a situation where one group can’t do something because it may offend a minority group.  Now I don’t see how someone wearing a plain crucifix around their neck in a Christian country would offend anyone one!  If you were to go to a Muslim country they would not go round de- islamifying their country as not to offend you, so why does the PC brigade insist that in the UK we have to. 

Then we have the press, an issue that is somewhat under reported at the moment is Female Genital Mutilation, something I had a discussion with someone only this week about.  The media reports that it is an African problem, and young girls in the UK and across Europe are being taken to Africa to be subjected to this horrific situation.  Now if you read what is said in the press and by the WHO it is put across as being an African problem, indicating it happens all over Africa, but if you do some digging it’s a problem that happens in Muslim countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. But because of the PC brigade and not wanting to offend Muslims we strip it down to being an African Problem. 

Political Correctness is not about bringing about equality or not wanting to offend people, as if you look at the laws of the land there is legal equality already, and legal remedies for when that is breached.  What political correctness is about is social engineering or in another word cultural Marxism. It is about getting everyone to think the same way and punishing those who don’t comply.  It’s not about ensuring freedoms for everyone; it’s about forcing people to adopt the same view point on a topic.  In the first half of the twentieth century we saw a few people who imposed similar ideals on countries, restricting freedoms and making people do and think what they want.  That lead us to World War Two and the deposing of people like Hitler and Mussolini. 

Yet now after the battle for freedom, so that people could live their lives how they wanted to free from persecution, we now see in the here and now our freedoms and beliefs being ebbed away with each new push in the name of political correctness.  But because these people pushing this agenda are claiming it’s in the name or equality society lays down and lets it happen.  People need to realise that it’s not equality that is happening it’s an erosion of our freedoms one by one.  We need to say enough is enough.