Tax and Electoral Reform

So

Apparently Labour have spotted that electoral reform might save them at the polls. [link]

What they're talking about is probably to a certain degree what they have in France, but geared down to the local parliamentary level. This would probably work pretty well for me, because I vote tactically against the party with whom I most disagree. I say most disagree. I mean loath the principles of. But there we are. However, I don't think this goes anywhere near far enough.

Here's an idea (it's my idea, but I'd like to call it an idea)

There's 646 seats in the commons. That's pretty big.

Probably about 15 are in Northern Ireland, which is a pretty unique political environment. To be honest, I think it would be good to have a lower house in England which dealt only with English issues and had only English representatives (ie elected by the English population) and an upper house who ratified bills as legal, and dealt with national issues (I'm going to say Security, Foreign Policy... that's it).

But that won't happen, because of the electoral math that Labour uses. So let's keep the Scots and Welsh in too, but recarve the political districts. The problem with PR is that you

A - lose the local value from MPs
B - have coalition issues

But the problem with first past the post is that you have

A - local MPs lobbying for programmes which won't help the nation as a whole
B - have absentee MPs who are the party fat cats

So let's mix

636 Constituency MPs.... No use to me. Let's have 346 constituency MPs, still plenty so that a city like Leicester would have 1 MP instead of the current 3, with some spill over into the counties. Probably Charnwood would get rolled into Loughborough, for instance.

Let's also have 300 PR elected MPs. What you'll get there is probably all the front bench MPs in the PR list. Because let's face it, if you can't get 100 of these people (1/3 of the total vote) you aren't winning the election.

The party leader would be #1, your deputy leader #2 etc. This would also get rid of the farce of Lords being appointed to sit in Cabinet, or parachuting MPs into safe seats (which is just insulting, really).


And tax

Let's talk tax

All the money we pay in tax goes into the consolidated fund (let's exclude NI for the time being). This big current account type money gets cut up into all sorts of bits and bobs. But who knows where.

I think a hypothecated tax system would be a bit clearer, don't you?

Oh.

I'll explain. Hypothecation would mean (this is just an example) that you'd pay tax like this:

You earn 22 grand. 6 grand of that is tax free. You'll pay

8% on the remaining 16 grand for the NHS
3% for national defense
1% for communities
2% for benefits/pensions deficits
1% for border control/immigration
1% for education

etc

Then all the tax you pay on petrol goes to transport infrastructure

Let's get rid of VAT, because it is evil. Because you pay it regardless of your means. And I think that's immoral.

This way, of course, when governments came in and said "we're going to cut tax by 1%" you'd say: "which bits, chap? Because, if anything, I'd like to see my NHS contribution go up a bit so we could have shinier new hospitals. And do we really need those nuclear submarines? Because if we didn't have them, you could slap that money into hospitals too. Or maybe some schools. You know, for the little kids, who will then pay tax and then I can retire before my hands fall off with the rheumatiz"

Just a thought that the current system allows the politicians to lie to us, and I think certain parties are more likely to lie to us, because I just don't trust them to be honest.

Also

Arch Enemy. Disturbing how hot she is.

Quick, it's a controversy

Ok, so I can't bring myself to give a rat's ass about the Sun's latest lunacy. "The one eyed prime minister misspelt my dead son's name".

Go bollocks.

The prime minister takes time out of his schedule doing nothing important besides, you know, running a political party and a country, to write hand written letters. I'm not sure who started this hand writing letters thing, but I suspect it was someone with no massive recession and a casualty toll that wasn't mounting. Don't get me wrong, I respect the sacrifice the soldiers make, but they also know what they're getting themselves into. It's a volunteer army, not a drafted corps anymore. We should respect the courage, but we shouldn't be totally surprised when, in a war, some of those brave men and women die.

The worst thing about this is, if I were an incoming politician, I'd have serious qualms about continuing with the practice of privately recognising the sacrifice. Especially when it turns you into a political punchline and punchbag in short order.

So yeah, well done Mrs James, or Janes, or whatever. You've disrespected the highest office in the land, undermined parliamentary political process, potentially removed the possibility for politicians to sincerely and privately recognise the bravery of soldiers without any ludicrous flag waving or patriotic nonsense.

Jack Straw

I thought he did well, except on the question about the failures in the migration system. I think I would have said "when we inherited the system, failed asylum seekers were being returned at a rate of X, now it's a rate of Y" (and this has definitely gone up, there are PAC reports and stats for that) "despite two wars".

Then "we should have done more to raise social housing stocks, and we will, and it is unfortunate that we are in a global recession and that there have been political scandals". take some on the chin, smash the tories a bit.

I'm outtie

BNP membership in Charnwood

What I don't understand is, why is the membership of the BNP so high in Charnwood? Are the lower middle class people of rural Leicestershire so threatened by and fearful of the majority residents of the county town? I cannot understand it. The Asian community is one of the reasons why Leicester is so brilliant.

Of course, this isn't reflected in the set up of the Leicester Tigers playing staff (I miss Aadel Kardooni, and according to Wikipedia he was Iranian, so not exactly representative of the Asian populous in Leicester). But I digress.

And North West Leicestershire can go bollocks too.

The funny thing is, as a long time resident of the county, these are the areas which middle class Asians are now moving to. 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants, who run their own businesses or are professionals, often mildly conservative socially, would seem to me to be an ideal fit with mid sized rural communities. But of course, they are brown, and therefore for some reason which has always eluded me, not welcome.