tbaldwin said:
1 Election of all Judges,Council officials on pay of over £50,000.
The problem with electing judges is that you're still going to be drawing your "source material" from the same limited pool of legally-qualified people, which means you won't actually change anything except judicial tenure, which then means you remove a motivation for people to take that next step up the legal system.
You'd have to totally re-design the entire legal system t accomodate election of judges, and while wholesale reform of the system is a good idea, you'd have to explore the repercussions first.
As for executive-level council officers being elected, I've no problem whatsoever with either doing that or employing them only on short-term and performance related contracts. That way, no savings of public money, no bonus.
A second chamber elected by PR. For a start.
Agreed, and then the HoC as well.
2 Very difficult but to start with you would have to find ways of making the tax system more fool proof and gradually increase taxes on those who can afford more.
Progressive taxation? Fair enough, except no government would buy it because their mates in the city would tell them it was a "bad thing" (it isn't, of course, it's a "good thing", but business doesn't like having to pay for anything. "Render unto Caesar" and all that.
Wealth (IMHO) really isn't the point though. The point is that it's
power that needs to be re-distributed, and not power of the type that people are offered now, the whole phony "empowerment"
spiel, but something that allows communities to (if they so wish) set the priorities for the funding of their neighbourhood, that allows individuals to question (and expect a proper answer from) their elected officials, a system that gives individuals and communities the power to hold public officials (great or small) to account and that institutes punitive measures if it can be shown that such officials have acted outside the expressed interests of their "constituentz".
Of course, a system like this would have to be based around compulsory voting, or "interest groups" would be able to exert untoward influence.
3 For taking any of their skilled workers today and the ongoing way the west treats the developing world.
In which case, to be pedantic, you're not talking about "reparations", you're talking about "restitution", compensation for depriving a body of a usable resource.
The problem with doing this is where would the money go? As far as I can see it'd go to those governments in the "developing world" who are directly complicit with some of the wests' more egregious rip-offs off their human resources.
Im with Gordon Brown in wanting to see more money go to these countries..
The problem (apart from what I've outlined above) is that DfID is looking at "tied aid" as a way of "helping", but all "tied aid" really does is give certain industrial sectors (agriculture, construction etc) the opportunity to either offload surplus production or garner work from the countries being "aided".
It's what the Americans do and it doesn't do the "aided" countries much good in terms of assisting them toward an aid-free existence.
Now if it were money "ring-fenced" for particular mutually beneficiall projects that's fine.
4 Anti Social Crimes like mugging and rape etc. I would like to bring back the stocks but short of that change the law on rape to ensure more rapists are convicted and longer and tougher sentences for muggers and child molesters etc.
Sorry, but they're not (under current legal definitions IIRC) "anti-social crimes", they're "crimes against the person".
As for punitive approaches, do a bit of research; it doesn't discourage re-offence. It might make
you feel a warm glow of satisfaction, but it does bugger all to prevent the person re-offending on release, and any actual changes in law need to be thoroughly legislated first, otherwise you just leave big loopholes through which your rapists and muggers will jump.
Seems to me that rather than thinking things through "from the ground up" (why does the crime happen, what can be done to prevent it happening), you're attempting to impose solutions "from above" (give a longer sentence and that "warehouses" a single offender for longer), the very thing you're accusing other people of.
5 Ending all free H/E for x private/public school pupils.
I would go after anybody who wants to see more money for Private education or H/E as opposed to universal education.
I'd like to see more money to
all sectors of education, but I'd also take into account the existing private resources of educational institutions when alloting funding. So, if a school or college has a charitable trust worth millions of pounds, the interest on that capital (premised on a decent market rate) should be deducted from any funding. If the interest exceeds what the funding amount would have been, then the excess should be removed as "taxation" and re-distributed to other educational institutions.
And i would want to see steps taken to curb the powers of Judges Lawyers etc.
Lawyers don't have any power, except their grasp of the law of the land, and judges only have power as part of an institution of government. You're aiming at the wrong targets imho. You should be looking at why and how those institutions have gained and held onto power for the advantage of the privileged, not just pointing the finger at the people the power is manifested through.
Because our viewpoint on immigration is a minority viewpoint?
