Monday 5 December 2011

One 'Porter' has at least begun to realise what is 'baggage'.....

Perhaps Ruth Porter, who  is the Communications Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs has been reading posts about 'Referism' and 'Direct Democracy', ones that originated from the 'North' and 'South of North, aka: Cameronland'?
"A political agenda built around this would involve substantial planning liberalisation, the end to EU food tariffs, privatisation of more transport infrastructure, the end to green subsidies and substantial tax cuts. The complete freeing up of the education system, including allowing schools that make a profit, as well as the localisation of welfare provision, should also be priorities.

Making everyday life easier for people is the complete opposite of introducing rafts of new laws and special interest group exemptions – it is saying we want to help you buy a house, choose a school, run a small business – so we are going to sweep away vast amounts of regulation, we are going to take less of your money and believe that you can make better decisions about things that affect you than we can."(Emphasis mine)
Mind you, the lady has a lot to learn - specifically, we don't need government to help us, we just them to stay out of our lives!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mornin' WfW…

Good post, what she did not point out though, but I think she might agree, is that where our current "government" does free up competences, it does them in a fascistic manner.

So, they are currently relaxing planning regulations, but it would seem to be only so that they can ensure that their friends in energy generation can build windfarms quicker and uglier, and not have to worry about the intervention of the little people.

Where they expand the "private" education system, it is to enable the large corporate providers that seem to be addicted to creationism or islamism to open schools at will.

Where they "privatise" (through the back door) the (ill)health system, it is to make it easier for big pharma to experiment on the same little people, rather than to turn access to provision into something akin to buying a new phone… i.e. checking on performance on the interwebs or through word of mouth and then choosing where to go and when.

Which is where we come back to direct democracy… I reckon that what people really want, is an "excellent" school nearby, they want to be able to allocate the funds to make that happen… These things only happen once in a lifetime and "jam" tomorrow is an irrelevance.

They want to be able to improve, extend or build a new house, and they don't want to have to gamble a couple of thousand quids on planning regulation to be told that their plan doesn't allow for the view that passers-by have traditionally had over your garden (personal experience of this!!!).

Direct democracy, really means that the individual (and his family) is sovereign, that it is only because there is something that one cannot do for oneself, that one consults the local people and work together to provide something, or stop something from happening locally…. (bottom up democracy). The stultifying green belt comes to mind here… or the lack of free parking, new roads or public places to gather for a smoke and a drink.

In a word, government should not be obsessed with regulating, it should be obsessed with getting out of our way.

Sorry… I seem to be rambling, whimsying and ranting, but I think that I am not alone.

Anonymous said...

My apologies WfW, I have just re-read your post, rather than the Beano article that it points to, and you have more articulately made the same points as I was trying to make.