7,453 Words to Save the UK: A Socio-Capitalist Manifesto Read online

providing their services to independents. These independents would rise through a blog/social media combination through popularity or being noticed by specialist panels which trawl what is available.

  Offering courses and awards, as well as other services and advertising on the network, the facilitators coordinate main and genre channels, publishers, etc, constantly forming and changing as talent is spotted. A similar system can be used to form varied news and comment for news channels. This system takes control away from a few media barons and places it in the hands of the public and particular expert panels who are interested more in truth and culture than profit. Indeed, I use a similar process of facilitating bodies and devolution of power throughout society and its infrastructure.

  NEW PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

  The big business-based infrastructure and society also provides many other serious problems. Technological rigidity takes away the ability to use initiative; we literally become appendages of the machine, as anyone who has had to try to solve a problem through a call centre can testify. Further, modern technology allows control from the centre, and present politics guarantees those in power will grab it. In effect, the machine takes over so much of what is human, resulting in initiative and creativity declining, leaving a mediocracy of systems managers.

  Adding the relentless urge for profit, technology allows the machine to replicate identical models, and big business follows this same trend, destroying diversity and creativity to the point that every city looks just the same. This is counter to evolution and nature, which both demand diversity. So how do we counter the destructive trends in the present system?

  Society and the economy have always been regulated, and social engineering is an eternal reality – even in ‘free’ market economics. So why not regulate and socially engineer in a way directed, not to create a system, but improve the lot of the person instead?

  I suggest a new form of holism, looking, in the first instance, at the whole instead of constructing through specialised bits. Basically, we need to mix the ideologies & services/infrastructure to cancel out the possibility of economy or politics ever ruling us again (taking away the political arguments for this system or that, even), thus empowering the person, within a coordinated system for you, not the powerful. As to the system itself, the new media, above, offers the way forward. Throughout society and infrastructure we need to integrate into a whole, causing order, then fragment into chaos through devolving control of the integrated systems downwards to the local and specialised. Hence, the centre facilitates, and nothing more.

  If this philosophical approach works, then the two sides of the system should pull each other together, creating a more balanced society and infrastructure which caters for all. Indeed, the only areas a central administration should hold power, other than facilitating and guaranteeing standards and policy, are in foreign affairs, military and intelligence, and stepping in to coordinate extraordinary situations above the ability of the fragmented authorities to deal with.

  Within this new philosophical approach we need to redesign the entire way public services and trade and industry work, based on a national model, which can nonetheless allow the nation to exist and thrive in a global world. This is not a nationalistic stance, but a realisation of an often clichéd but true reality: we can only thrive and interact with others if we truly know ourselves.

  For this we need to cater, in the first instance, for all our own needs, particularly in terms of manufacture, thus delivering a further blow to big business, but the system simply facilitating the ability of the fragmented elements to produce.

  I envision this as a robotized wherever possible, on-demand, recycled, component-based manufacturing system. By this, I mean a major element of its raw material should come from recycling by breaking down to its component materials everything from what is no longer needed, including old cars and buildings. By component-based I mean if we begin in terms of creating components for every possible type of product, we save costs and allow new innovations as technologists work out new component integrations (I would add that it is important that there is more than one option for every component or a single malfunction could take out many products). And by on-demand I mean the manufacturing system should be geared to allow everyone from other businesses to the individual to add their own designs to the overall manufacturing process, in a similar way to how on-demand book publishing now allows anyone to publish. This system will become more obvious as this work progresses.

  Also essential are remodelled imperatives concerning public services with the person as central. We think of education, health, security, welfare and technology as separate imperatives. In their actual operation they are, but we need to organise such services in terms of the whole. In effect, the person’s body, mind, education, security and environment are inter-related, and we should accept this.

  For instance, body includes health and food. We should no longer see these as separate, devising new agricultural models that adhere to this oneness (this does not mean we should ban such things as fast food, but make fast food as healthy as possible as well as tasty). Education should be seen as an on-going process throughout life with opportunity essential in all areas through free courses, allowing everyone to be who they feel they want to be, and not what a system dictates they must be (within this model, it is also vital to reverse the idea that rights come above duties. The two are equally essential, but those duties are to a community, not a leadership).

  Mind is also vital to the wellbeing of the person, and should come under the tag of welfare. When things don’t go right for a person it can lead to criminality as well as psychological and physical health issues. Thus, mind can impact on health, education and security, and this importance must at last be taken into account. When one thing goes wrong, everything else can fall around you. Services need to cater for what is, in effect, a perfect storm and be ready to assist. I’d also suggest that social services need to become the primary force in the penal system.

  Finally we have our environment. The most pervasive threat to the environment comes from technology, so we need to rethink what technology is. It must become more than simply a means to extend human activity, but part of the environment, too. These two elements can no longer be seen in isolation, not just in terms of not damaging the environment, but in terms of sustaining nature and using nature for our betterment technologically in ways that nature can easily provide.

  All this must be done in terms of what I call an Alternative Network - a concept of integrated public services, industries and administrations based on holism, and offered as an alternative to the present system, with the hope that, if successful, it will slowly replace the existing systems. This must be achieved by new businesses and charities outside government, and new political imperatives which I will highlight later. In this way it is tested as it goes and will succeed or fail. It must be done without protest, without violence, and slowly, otherwise it could become a revolution, which is totally counter to the hoped for achievements, for revolution means back to the beginning. You see, I’m fanatical about moderation, and moderation is the true key to success. For all the philosophy in all the world is not worth the spilling of a drop of blood.

  And now it is time to look at the specifics.

  NEW ECONOMY

  Work towards creating a £600b national closed economy based on £10,000 average spending power per person per annum (this is based on a population of 60,000,000 – as a population rises or falls, the size of the economy will balance out per population). This will seem a ridiculous, socialist idea, but withhold judgement until the entire new holistic system of this manifesto has been disclosed.

  Create a National Salary of £100 per week for an adult living alone, £90 per week per adult living with one or more other adults and £30 per week for each child. This salary is to be paid universally to all in each category if they qualify by being ill or disabled, or of retirement age, by not being in prison, or, if fit and of working age, pre
pared to work 3 shifts a week (deemed to be equivalent of 7 hours work per shift) for 48 weeks a year (if co-habiting one adult can agree to work 5 shifts thus allowing their partner to become a full time home worker if they want). If a person refuses to work the 3 shift system without cause, their Salary will be cut to £50. This salary means there will be no difference in cost, payment, administration or status between living wage, welfare and pension, thus taking away the huge administration of such payments, as well as the social stigma to being ‘on benefits’.

  If a person earns for themselves more than the National Salary, after an additional £30, they will lose the salary pound for pound and have their duty to work the shift system reduced accordingly. If they subsequently no longer find they have an income, they can automatically go back on the National Salary and shift system.

  NEW WORKER

  Create primary and secondary workers. Primary workers will be full time professionals and will receive salary above the National Salary, paid for by the saving from those who have lesser salary than £100. This workforce would fill some 1,000,000 established posts in public