23. Moving…

I’m retired now but am not yet 65. I worked hard for the duration, paid off the mortgage, saved money into my pension and am now sitting in a three bedroom house with a reasonable sized garden on the outskirts of a city. All good so far but we don’t need a house this big any longer, our kids have kids of their own and are settled, so we’ve been looking to move. But there are a couple of things putting me off. 

Firstly, we’ve now been looking for over a year and we can’t find what we want. There are plenty of places we could move to, not far from the grandkids, but we can’t find a house that has what we want.

There is an absolute dearth of properties to suit an older couple. I only need two bedrooms, preferably on the ground floor (future proofing!) but would like a reasonable sized kitchen diner and a cosy room to watch TV. A small garden would be nice with perhaps a conservatory and a deck. The garden doesn’t need to be huge, but not overlooked would be nice. 

There are none. The only thing with two bedrooms either flats or are new developments that have tiny footprints and hundreds of houses crammed onto every acre. And these cost nearly as much as the house I own. To get what I’m looking these days I’d need to buy an even bigger house with four bedrooms. And I don’t want the huge stamp duty bill that goes with that – nor do I want four bedrooms! 

So two things. Firstly, can house builders, instead of building tiny houses, build two bedroom bungalows for older people, in communities a bit like those gated communities we’ve all seen in the US, so that we can move out of our houses and sell them to people with families. 

And secondly, can people who are between the ages of 65 and 75 have a stamp duty holiday so that we are encouraged to move out of our bigger houses into something smaller. There is zero incentive for me to move house and there are a lot of people in my position, you could almost solve the housing crisis by freeing up these houses. 

22. Nelson would weep…

You turn your back for a minute and what happens? Trump invades another country! Actually, to be more accurate, he hasn’t invaded, he’s joined forces with Israel and is bombing it in order to remove the current regime and prevent them getting a nuclear weapon. Whether that will ultimately be successful is anyone’s guess at this moment. But that’s not what I wanted to write about here. 

I have to declare a personal interest in this comment, for I was once a member of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy way back in the 70’s and early 80’s when, funnily enough, I spent time ‘up the Gulf’ making sure shipping could transit the Straits of Hormuz safely during the Iran/Iraq war. What goes around, as they say…

But this time it’s different. In 1981 we had two and sometimes three warships permanently in the gulf – not actually based there, they would travel from and back to the UK (because we had already given up our bases in the med). To service that commitment we needed six or seven ships of destroyer or frigate size to make sure two could be on station all the time. And we needed an oil fuel replenishment ship with them also. Which meant, allowing for refits and crew training we needed eight operational warships, just to keep two or three on station. And two more warships in refit. And three replenishment ships. This was just one of several commitments around the globe but we had more than 50 warships of destroyer and frigate size then, which was the minimum we needed for our Gulf, Falklands and NATO commitments. 

Now we don’t have eight operational warships in total, that we could use for any commitments. It’s just taken almost two weeks to ready one single destroyer to send to the mediterranean to protect Cyprus from drones. And even this is the wrong warship to use for this purpose. We are sending an area defence destroyer, capable of knocking supersonic missiles out of the sky (at over £2m a shot), to take on sub sonic drones that travel at a speed which is less than Hitlers V1 missiles. Our destroyer would use all of its missiles up in a day or two and then have to go back to Gibraltar to replenish its ammunition. 

It’s a bloody shambles. Britain is an island. We rely (more than ever before) on imports that come by sea. We need a navy to ensure we have safe passage for these vessels – or we can starve.

Successive governments of all shades have embraced two ideals.  “We’ll have less ‘platforms’ (ie ships) but the ones we have will have better technology and weapons”. Well that’s fine except that a ‘better’ platform can’t be in two places at once and can’t be at sea forever. We need more ships! And they’ve embraced ‘globalism’. Globalism needs safe passage of shipping and we no longer possess enough warships to guarantee this. And the warships we do have are the wrong sort for this current emergency. 

For drones and the feared fast boat swarms that the Iranians possess (they’ve already used most of their supersonic missiles) we need ships akin to the all gun destroyers that were used against the Japanese kamikazes. In my opinion we can’t afford (or replenish quickly) a £2m missile to take down a £20k drone or stop a similar priced boat. You just need to put a lot of lead into the air or into the sea to stop them. It wouldn’t take long to bolt all of the 40mm bofors, 30mm goalkeeper and 20mm oerlikon machine guns that we have in storage somewhere, onto an old frigate or even a barge or two and tow them into the gulf. For good measure you add some Phalanx CIWS rapid fire kit as well. 

A wall of lead, cheap, effective and deployable in about 20 minutes! 

21. Gor blimey…

Thank god that’s over. I’m talking about Gorton and Denton, places that 99 out of 100 people had never heard of a month ago but which now will forever be remembered as the first constituency to be won by the Greens in a by election.  

Once again the media are talking about it being the end of Labour, the end of the Prime Minister. And many commentators have added that its the end of Reform. 

None of it (in my opinion) is true. 

What the result at G&D is telling me is that the people are actually more pissed off with two party politics than even I thought. I always knew people were fed up, I’ve only got to talk to a few of my friends to confirm that. But the people of G&D showed that even those known as ‘left wingers’, are fed up with Labour, in the same way that the ‘right wingers’ are fed up with the Conservatives. It’s just a confirmation vote that we are all pissed off with government. 

People want change, no-one believes that we can carry governing this country in the way it has been for the last several hundred years. The way we do things isn’t fit for purpose in the 21st century. The people have continued to be ignored by the two big parties, even though people have signalled their unhappiness clearly many times. Now we aren’t listening and are taking matters into our own hands.

It is likely that the next election will be fought between the Greens and Reform. I’m not sure who will vote for the greens given their stance on drugs, defence, immigration etc, it won’t stand up to real scrutiny. But there is still a chance that people might vote for them because they are Left wing and this Labour government really isn’t working. The Green manifesto makes Jeremy Corbyn look moderate and electable, so maybe there’s hope for Jezza yet! Those on the right will probably pick Reform rather than the Conservatives. There are also other parties to the right of Reform to pick from, these in turn make Reform look moderate in comparison. 

For me there is still room in all of this for a party that sits squarely in the middle. I want to vote for a party that listens to its people, a party that will look after old people when they become infirm and young people in their education. I want families to be able to buy a house of their own. I want disabled people to be included (they don’t want special treatment, they just want to be included!). I don’t care what colour the people are, black, white, pink, yellow, brown – I don’t care where they are from as long as they have the interests of the country and the whole of their communities at heart. There does need to be controls on how many people can come here though, we can’t be the worlds destination for anyone and everyone. All I want is for my family to be able to get on with their lives, to live in peace and to have opportunity, not handed to them on a plate, but something that they can work hard for that ultimately doesn’t get taken away by the state. I think everyone should contribute, if you can work, you should work, even if it’s volunteering in return for the states support. 

I can’t be the only person that thinks this way? 

20. Flog ’em and hang ’em!

I’ve written about this before (see 8.)  but it needs writing about again. 

A man gets a job with a kindergarten. He abuses young children. He gets caught and only gets 18 years, a sentence already reduced by a third because he pleaded guilty. With parole he’s be out in 12 maximum. 

An asylum seeker rapes a 12 year old girl. A teenager kills a 12 year old boy. It goes on and on. 

There should be a sentencing jury, made up of 12 good men (and women!) and true. Then we’d get the sentences that the public would really like. 

19. Ey up, it’s AI

More reports this week about how AI is going to take over the world and everyone will lose their jobs as a result. But surely its potentially more sinister than that? 

There were reports that two AI bots had decided to make up their own language that no human understood. It didn’t get far but what if it had? Maybe not yet but when? 

So take it one step further. AI has apparently read every single book ever written, watched every single film ever made. So it must have watched all the science fiction films where the robots take over. It must have read that everyone thinks humans are the worst thing that could happen to planet earth. What happens when it watches Terminator and thinks, oh, that looks like a good idea and after all, humans are bad. How do you stop it then? 

We are often told by the government that we are the third biggest global AI player. SO what is our plan to stop the above from happening? How are we going to control it in the future? What is its plan?

P.S. To be a global AI player you need lots and lots of energy. Reliable energy. 

I’ll stop there. 

18. UK abuse victims.

Am I the only one getting a bit fed up with the Epstein reporting by the media? Yes its important that we get to the rotten core of people who were involved with him, definitely. And Mandelson should never have been appointed, no doubt. And Andrew whatever he is called now, is a wrong un. Tell me something I don’t know. 

But it peeves me a little when I hear everyone connected or expressing an opinion on Epstein talk of the victims, often as an afterthought, and how we should be thinking of them (we should). How he got away with it for so long definitely needs investigation. 

Meanwhile, in this country we know who were the perpetrators involved in the rape gangs. And we know who were the people who were supposed to protect the girls that were abused. And we know who didn’t do their jobs to protect these children. So why aren’t we reporting about this every single day until the government have the enquiry set up and then every day after that. 

The abuse has been going on for more than twenty years. I cannot understand why its taking so long to get the official enquiry set up. The prime minister should be asking questions of his ministers every single day until it is and should report his progress to the public every single day. 

I don’t agree with everything that Rupert Lowe MP does and says, but he has, in a very short time, organised and commenced his own rape gang enquiry. The evidence given by so many young women so far is horrific and should shame the government for its inaction.  

The PM should get on with it. 

17. 2026 – Starting with a bang. 

Well, 2026 has just started. Woke up this morning to find that Trump is conducting military operations in Venezuela to topple the apparently illegitimate regime there (I say apparently because I’m not sure if it is or isn’t).  Breaking international law is not something that I particularly encourage but if you have a dictator, sitting on potential riches under the ground that would make his country wealthy, and then starving his people, then yes, maybe give them a nudge. 

But it does beg the question, what should be the response of our leaders? Shouldn’t the response be similar to that when Russia invaded Ukraine, after all they just rode roughshod over international law, so what is the difference with Trump? We can’t very well look the other way. But in this case we will probably have to because if we upset him then we run the risk of him saying ‘ok, that’s 50% tariffs for you then!’.

And this response from Trump would surely then lead most sane people to start to think ‘is globalism all that its cracked up to be’ or should we as a country have spent more of our time, money and effort in the last few decades, creating and nurturing those core industries and skills that as a country, we need to survive, instead of selling them all or letting them fall into foreign ownership.  

I fear it doesn’t end there though. Russia now has a very small window of opportunity to invade the Baltic states, before Europe has rearmed in the way it has just started to do. It will take about three years for Europe to get up to a war production footing in terms of production capacity, probably longer, and Russia started this process in 2022.

Another thing that needs to be factored in is that China has the global monopoly on rare earth minerals, both mining and processing. So what happens when China takes Taiwan – are we going to shout at the Chinese? There are four tonnes of rare earth minerals in every nuclear submarine (I read recently) and all of our missile, offensive and defensive military capabilities and other military infrastructure depends on the chips produced in Taiwan. 

All of this dictates what we as a country can do for ourselves and at present, its very little. We need to refocus our attention on manufacturing and producing more of the things we need to defend ourselves. Consecutive governments have denuded our armed forces and worse, the infrastructure needed to build and sustain and develop our forces has all but disappeared. If there was a war tomorrow we would run out of artillery shells in two weeks, drones in one week. We could field at best two divisions of troops, put no more than six warships to sea and have about three squadrons of planes at immediate readiness, enough for about a weeks worth of fighting if we were lucky. There is no missile defence capability (except in a few warships) and as we have seen in the Ukraine, defence against drones has to be one of the top priorities – and we have none. The power stations and few factories we have producing munitions would be the first targets…

The government needs to make it a priority for this country to be able to manufacture what it needs to survive, from primary steel to nuclear power to its own food supply. It needs to act now on starting to fix some of these challenges and future governments need to have a plan to continue the work and it should be put into law to make this happen. 

Not a very cheery start to the year really but lets see how we go. 

Happy new year!

16. The end of the year (rather than the end of the world!). 

So we made it to the end of the year with the current PM still in place, which surprised many people but was probably always on the cards. Ask yourself, who would they replace him with? There is only one real contender and that’s the Health Secretary, but even he isn’t a shoe in. And there is no-one else I can see (apart from Andy Burnham, who isn’t an MP so can’t easily be made PM) who would fit the bill.

The latest ‘change of policy’ was announced quite quietly in the middle of December and now the farmers will pay inheritance tax on assets of more than £2.5m. Better but probably still not good enough. We need the farmers and we need more people to go into farming, otherwise it will just be big corporations owning the land as a way of avoiding tax. 

My highlight of the year? Probably for me, the announcement that we are going to spend more money on defence. Long overdue but  even this is too little too late. There still doesn’t seem to be any kind of plan, for defence or for anything else than Labour are doing, that I can see. We just drift from one crisis to the next. They should be ignoring the noise and putting clear communications out about what it is they are trying to achieve, cos I’m missing something somewhere. How can I get behind something if I don’t know what it is?

Which also made me think, we had a lot of ‘crisis’ over Christmas. The word ‘crisis’ is now overused – bad weather isn’t a crisis – flu isn’t a crisis. Its just bad weather and flu – it comes every year. The way its been reported over Christmas you’d think it was the end of the world. We’ve become anaesthetised because of the overuse of words of doom – crisis, armageddon, disaster, they have little impact any longer, even words like far right, racist etc have all lost their impact because they are used all the time. 

Anyway, that’s 2025 done. It was a good year in many ways for me, being my first year of retirement. I’ve learned lots about new things that I never knew I was interested in and have spent more time with the family than ever before. It was good.

So wishing everyone a happy Christmas and peaceful new year. 

15. I’m back from ‘me ‘ols’. 

Had a few weeks on holiday, got a transatlantic cruise with loads of Americans, then a few days on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Quite a bit has happened since I went away so I’ve picked three things. The Trump/BBC fiasco. I was in America when this broke. Suffice to say the Americans weren’t best happy.  On the US news programmes they played the BBC clip and then alongside it they played what was actually said. I’d seen the BBC clips before on the news and I thought, Ooh, Trump, very naughty. And I’d heard comments at the time from other Brits who had heard it – he did sound like he was inciting his supporters and if you were a Trump supporter it was hard to defend. Fast forward to the fake news story breaking and you could see it was a deliberate act to misrepresent what was said, it was no ‘mistake’. Having spent some time in that world it is impossible to ‘accidentally’ edit two clips of film in the way it was done. So I think Trump has a case and we’ll see how much that will cost the British taxpayer in the future. 

The Budget. So we’ve now had the budget. A bit of a non event really after all the hype and near hysteria that the media caused (if you were listening any longer…). There will be lots more tax paid, but in a couple of years time, kicking in just before the next election(!). I couldn’t see anything that stimulated growth in the economy though, nothing at all. And if we’re ever to get the country back on its feet then we have to have growth. Just not under this government… Powerful speech by Kemi Badenoch after the budget, fighting talk! 

Finally, the U turn (I hate that expression, I prefer the grown up term ‘change of policy’ which is in fact what it is) on workers rights from day one of employment – the government have decided that unfair dismissal is something you get as a right after six months instead of immediately. A bit of common sense for once. But I’ve said it before – with all the red tape, regulation and taxes you have to pay, who’d want to start a business? 

14. Rachel’s rummaging round…

The chancellor has difficult choices ahead of here in the next budget. The whole country has been talking about it for the last few months and there still another month to go before we find out how much more we’ll all have to pay. 

So instead of rummaging around looking for a few pounds here and there lets give Rachel a few pointers. 

Stamp Duty. I wouldn’t actually abolish it, instead I’d introduce a simple 1% stamp duty tax on all property transactions. This would be paid by the seller, not the buyer.  It means first time buyers don’t have to pay any stamp duty. 

Public sector employees. Any public sector employee (including any quango’s or charities that receive government funding etc) that earns more than the prime minister, (£172k) is taxed at 75% for salary over that amount. This includes special advisors or anyone else that the government pays for. All bonuses given to any public sector employee (quango employees etc) earning more than the prime minister will be taxed at 75%. 

An online tax. Anything ordered on line pays VAT at 25%. Money raised goes towards reducing commercial rates for high st shops. 

Start there. 

13. Wealth can walk…

Lots of talk about wealth taxes at the moment with the bulk of the country favouring raising wealth taxes at the next budget. The problem is of course that wealth can walk ie its really easy for someone with lots of wealth to leave the country and take their money with them. 

Lets say the government go after wealth at the next budget and say, 50% of the people with lots of wealth decide to offshore it and become non Dom in this country. Then we don’t raise any money, in fact we end up with less tax take than we do now. 

It is estimated that 250,000 British people now live in the UAE, principally in Dubai. That’s the same number of people as live in Brighton. Most of those in Dubai are there because there are plenty of jobs, zero tax and the infrastructure all works. Its also nice and warm. And lots of these Brits are wealthy people. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do think you could raise more from wealthy people but I don’t think they should be singled out for punitive taxes. If we’re going to tax wealth – that is, money that is earned through no endeavour of your own (mainly by an asset appreciating or a large sum of invested money becoming larger but through no endeavour of your own) then I’d rather go after asset wealth and invested wealth but at the same time reduce the amount of tax raised from money earned by your own endeavour. 

12. Can we talk?

I have just spent one of the best weekends ever, that has rekindled my belief in humanity and made me more determined than ever to contribute to getting this country back on its feet again. 

I’ve just spent the weekend with about 2000 people at an event in London called the Battle of Ideas. And what brilliant people they were. 

The idea, very simply, is to debate what’s going on, or sometimes not going on, in the (largely) political world that is affecting people and what we can do to make it better.  There’s a lot of politics involved but the good thing about it was that there were people from the left, the right and the centre and, shock horror, we just talked to each other. Not shout and scream at each other. Not  marginalise some with opinions that you don’t agree with. Not to sit in an echo chamber. But to talk about each others ideas and to listen to the ideas of others. 

Its run by Baroness Clare Fox and this year was the 20th anniversary. I just wish I’d known about it before. I met people there who had been to all of the events from the start. I met old people and young people, from all walks of life, from all backgrounds, of all persuasions and everyone in between – all of whom want to make the world we live in, particularly the political world, a better place to be in, a better place to engage with. And instead of just denigrating the ‘other side’, offering instead solutions to some of the problems that we have that ultimately will benefit everyone. 

Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of plain speaking but in the whole weekend I only saw one woman get upset and storm out of one of the debates – and I’m not sure that she wasn’t catching a train! But the banner above every meeting was ‘free speech allowed’. Nothing was off the table.  

I went to one particular debate (there were over 100 debates going on and you could get to about 12 of them over the weekend) where there were MPs and other representatives of the major parties. I have a new respect for Rosie Duffield, Labour MP for Canterbury who gave an eye opening explanation of what it was like being an MP and to lose the whip. There were reps from Blue Labour, Reform, a Quasi marxist (name escapes me) and a fantastic political commentator called Frank Furedi. And a woman who ran a polling company who spoke so fast I’ll have to watch the video and slow it down, but the stuff she was telling us was amazing. I also saw my favourite economist (well, to be fair he’s the only one I know) Liam Halligan who talked about the states involvement with British industry. Fascinating. I even bumped into the ex mayor of Newham whom I’d met several times in the past. He was in the audience and gave a passionate plea for Labour to make the hard decisions that need to be made. 

I came away with the belief that in this country there are thousands of people who want to make things better, not just for themselves but for everyone of every political stripe. I heard many great comments and ideas from audience members who asked panelists really hard questions, which also showed me that the British public is far more clued up than I think the politicians give us credit for. People do care, people do want things to get better. And they want to be listened to.

But the overarching message I came away with was that people, lot of them, had lost faith in the two main parties to deliver anything other than rhetoric and that the reason they were turning to Reform was not because they like Nigel (although a fair few did), but because, other than not voting at all, there are no other parties that are acknowledging their views. There is basically nowhere else to go.  

Interesting times. 

11. A degree of optimism.

I’ve been thinking about the education system and have decided it needs as much reform as I think the country needs, in order to be fit for purpose in the current century. 

I was listening to some stats this week on how many people go to university – its roughly 50% of those who leave college. But there are now so many people with degrees that for many, there isn’t a genuine graduate place for them. So many graduates don’t actually need a degree to be doing the job they now have and many that have a degree are doing jobs in a completely different field. 

You have to have a degree these days to go into teaching or nursing. I think this is wrong. I have known many youngsters who aren’t academic but who would make superb nurses or teachers, given the chance. I know some kids that are brilliant at maths and mediocre in English – so why spend forever trying to get them to be less mediocre in English and instead make them absolutely genius at maths? I wasn’t very good at pure maths but I was brilliant at engineering sciences where mathematics is used in the real world. I was very good at woodwork and technical drawing but very bad at sport, yet I had to do three hours of sport every week. I was appalling at French and eventually got kicked out of the class and as ‘punishment’ had to do gardening. I have a love of gardening still to this day. 

I was in the Royal Navy and to get into the Royal Navy you had to pass an aptitude test. The result of the test restricted which branches you could join so, if you got an average result you could join up and fire the guns for instance, whereas if you got a better result you could be a radio operator or electrical mechanic. Some people just wanted to fire the guns and were very clever so they were allowed to do this and eventually became instructors or officers.  But it meant that almost everyone could join up and the Navy immediately knew what you were likely to be capable of. If you showed a particular strength they would push you harder in the strength that you had.

And that’s the way we should do education. Find out a childs strengths and passions at an early age and then give them every opportunity to broaden their knowledge in the primary area. I’d still teach them maths and English of course, but I think if a child can add up, subtract, multiply and divide, work out fractions, understands percentages and averages and can interpret a graph – then that’s as much as they should have to learn. If they show a real aptitude for maths then take them on to simultaneous equations  and algebra etc. But if not don’t push them that way. Push them down the route where they have a passion. 

I believe that only the top 25% of academic children should go to university – those that get into this 25% but can’t afford it should get bursaries. Those children that are gifted with their hands should be able to do apprenticeships. Those that are gifted with their heart and soul should be able to become nurses. And those who have a passion for a subject where they have accumulated knowledge through years of  practice and determination, should be able to be teachers. 

10. Still missing the point…

See point 7. I’ve just been listening to a Podcast that featured Mark Littlewood, a guy who I’ve heard on podcasts a few times and whom I follow on X. And Mark says some great common sense things, this time about the Conservative party and the Reform party and how hard it would be to get things through the different stages of changing or introducing a law and how the ‘blob’ as the civil service seems to be nicknamed, would fight agains it. Firstly, I sincerely hope, as Mark suggested and as I have said before, that Reform or any party that might govern the country next time, has a plan BEFORE they get into government. And secondly, part of that plan should be the actual reform of how government works. As has been suggested in the other section of this website, one of the things I would do is to have a weekly programme on the TV showing the progress that each government department is making and why it is or isn’t making progress. The cabinet minister and the permanent civil service head will be responsible for the implementation of whatever plan or policy is being put in place and they would have to report both on screen and in writing to the British people every three months, on their progress. Their performance is judged by the people and if no progress after six months, both get fired. So if the system to get things done, both inside parliament and in the wider world, isn’t simple and slick then I forsee a lot of ministers and civil servants looking for jobs, as would happen if they were working in the private sector…

9. What do you have to do?…

As a simple man, I’ve been thinking why we are where we are today with our politics.

 It started with Cameron – actually no, it started with Blair/Brown. Apart from the decision to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, people think he was ok. But he made one big mistake, the result of which we are now suffering from and that was to encourage kids to go to university. More went than were thought and as a result we ended up with less bricklayers, electricians, carpenters etc – and now of course many of the degrees are worthless and the debt owed will never be paid off. So we imported our the labour needed from abroad. 

Next up was Cameron. Ordinary people in the UK, the ones that didn’t go to university, started to become restless as they saw foreign labour brought in to work in our construction industry. UKIP had a meteoric rise and the British People elected 24 UKIP MP’s to the European Parliament, more than any other party. It threatened Camerons party and so he decided to have a one off referendum, never believing that as a remainer he could lose. 17.4 million people thought otherwise, which shows the strength of feeling there was from those who never expressed an opinion.

Teresa May then spent the next three years trying to get a deal in the face of the most unbelievable anti democratic operation ever seen in Parliament as everything was tried to overturn the result. For years the people watched unbelieving that this was happening. Then came Boris who won a huge landslide with the ‘get Brexit done slogan, but only after UKIP had stood aside. So at this point the British establishment had had 3 warnings, UKIP, the Brexit vote and then Boris’s win. Covid was a distraction and then Boris and then Truss royally screwed it all up, they made a huge hash of everything, so the British people at this time absolutely fed up with them, turned to Starmers government, because there wasn’t really an alternative (the Libs and Greens wanting to take us back into Europe or the Stone Age). And then nothing happened – except now the rise of Reform. Reform are at least giving the people a choice, stark it may be, but a choice that represents the feelings and wishes of many of those who gave the 3 warnings.  

But what has gone wrong with all governments for the last 15 years is simple for an ordinary person to see. Simply, none of them had a plan. Cameron didn’t have a Brexit plan for what happens afterwards, May didn’t have a plan, they just needed a deal. Boris didn’t have a plan other than for the general election, after which the conservatives got it so wrong. Sunak didn’t have a plan for change when he came to power even though Truss and Boris had both been elected by their members who wanted change. And, after 15 years in the wilderness, Labour turned up – with no plan. Which is inexcusable. 

So, if Reform want to get into government, you just need to have a plan and to test that plan in the months and years before the election. There will be hard choices – so just explain these choices to the British people – we’re simple folk but not stupid folk and we’ll either vote for you or we won’t. But at least everyone will be aware of the stark choices we have and what the plan is to tackle these problems. 

That’s what you have to do…its that simple. 

8. Protect the children.

How can someone who sexually assaults a child get only 12 months in prison? How can any judge thinks this is a suitable sentence? This is just what happened today in a court in Chelmsford where an illegal immigrant was sentenced for sexually assaulting a child and a woman. Forget the fact that he was an illegal immigrant, sexually assaulting a child has to be considered one of the most heinous of crimes that you can commit in a civilised society. Therefore the sentences handed out for crimes such as these have to reflect properly the horror that the majority of the public feel when they hear of these crimes being committed. If I asked what a sentence for this crime should be, some would say they need rehabilitation and others would say hang them. But there as to be a middle ground that potential perpetrators need to consider before committing these crimes. I would suggest 10 years in prison is a good starting point. I know that the government says it costs a lot of money to run the prisons – it does – put I would happily pay more tax for the government to double the prison accommodation and then lock away every single person that commits a crime like this against a child. If we won’t protect the children then who will? 

7. Political podcasts missing the point. 

I have a big dog that needs lots of exercise so I’m always out with him. So I get time to listen to a lot of podcasts and my favourites are the political podcasts. Almost every day I’m discovering a new one, there are now seemingly hundreds to choose from. And I listen to all views. I’ve got podcasts covering left wing, right wing, centre party, green, activist, single issue, ex ministers, ex MP’s, mixtures of left and right, political commentators, public organisations – all sorts. But I have realised recently that they all have one thing in common. When they get to the part where they talk about change (and they rarely don’t talk about it these days, like its something that’s just dawned on them) – they’re all making the same mistake. They keep saying that to get their new ideas through parliament, using the existing systems of government and legislature, it would take forever and be difficult. And that’s the point. Its these systems that need completely overhauling or scrapping in large parts, and a whole new system be put in its place instead. I worked for two FTSE 100 companies at a senior level. If it had taken these companies as long to get things done as it takes the UK government to get things done, they’d both have been out of business. Which if you listen to some of these commentators, it seems is a bit like the way the country seems to be going, bust or a managed decline at best. We need a FUNDAMENTAL overhaul of the way we do things in this country, we have to move at pace, like the world around us. If we don’t then you might as well pack up shop and move to Spain – at least its warmer there. 

6. Red, white and blues.

I saw the many thousands of people walking through the streets of London at the weekend with the Union flags and the English flags (and a few other nations as well). I understand why they were marching – but to me it didn’t feel very much like a protest march, looked more like a crowd of football fans heading for the stadium before the game – they were all there because their team needed support. What I found interesting though, was not the actual march itself, which was largely peaceful, but the way that many commentators and news organisations reported the event. ITV news particularly, if you watched it, reported almost solely on the 26 arrests in a fairly truncated report by a reporter looking seemingly despondent because he didn’t manage to get into the middle of the ‘violence’ as it was happening. But as my friend, an ex policeman of many years experience said; we’d get more arrests than that when our local club played Millwall! On Sunday I found the best reporting by far was by Sky News’ Trevor Phillips who had actually been to the march and observed it himself. Balanced reporting if ever there was some. And another report I found was by the MP Clive Lewis on X. I don’t follow Clive but someone had attached a link to what he had said. At last, an MP trying to actually make sense of why people were on the march. It wasn’t about Tommy Robinson or Elon or any of the other mouthpieces of the right that are often the ones asked to comment on something, the march was in the main just ordinary people who don’t think the government is listening to them. I wonder though if that march will make them listen now? I won’t hold my breath. 

5. What next?

Charlie Kirk got assassinated this week. I didn’t agree with everything that he said but I admired the fearless way he would have the debate with people, particularly those supporting extremes. This heinous act is the absolute indicator of a society in total breakdown. If people can’t say what they think any longer without facing an assassins bullet, where does this end? When I was young, in fact up until fairly recently, you could have a reasoned debate with anyone on any subject and then go your separate ways still friends. In the last ten years this has become almost impossible – the narrative is ‘if you don’t agree with me you are obviously far right, or far left or a nazi or a racist or a homophobe or a marxist or voted Brexit, or, or…’. There is no middle ground any longer, no conversation, no debate, just extremes. When people resort to violence to cow people into silence, all this does is to make me want to contribute more to achieve the society I think most people want – that of a common purpose, with common values and common sense. 

4. Do the hokey, cokey…

In the time it took me to get back to London from my holiday in Great Yarmouth (on the train), Sir Kier had had a cabinet reshuffle. So we are now faced with total gridlock again in government as a bunch of the same ministers are given new jobs and try to get a grip with their new portfolio’s, which will take months before they are confident to make decisions. Exactly what will this reshuffle achieve? 

Most of us didn’t know the names of the ministers or what they did before the reshuffle – and now most of us definitely don’t know who they are and what they are now doing? Are you telling me that you had all of the right people in the wrong jobs and that now you’ve got the right people in the right jobs, without sacking hardly any of them? Not sure I believe that. 

3. The rise and rise…

Nigel Farage is happy today. He’s having a good conference and the resignation of Angela Raynor couldn’t have happened a a better time for him (although I’ll lay odds he gets less coverage in the news because of it). Reform are ahead in the poles, can they sustain that for the next few years? I’m not a betting man but I’ve just put my fiver on the fact that they will. I’m not Farage’s biggest fan but I’m probably like millions of others who can’t see an alternative. The two party system and the way we are governed just doesn’t work in this day and age. We need a new approach that’s fit for this millennium, not the last. I’m not sure that Reform is the answer but at the moment that’s what people are turning to. I talk to a lot of people and they aren’t all fans of Farage either – but they are ALL completely fed up with the politics that we have now and have had for the last twenty years or so. Nothing seems to have changed for the better and the people I talk to feels like the country is in decline. I can only use them as my barometer but they don’t usually let me down…

2. Flags of our Fathers

I’ve always been proud of my flag. Its hard to describe why exactly but I was in the Royal Navy and we lived under the flag, we served the flag, we would have fought for the flag (actually, we fought for each other) – my job was actually hauling the flag up every morning and taking it down at night and that piece of cloth meant so much. It united us youngsters, helping form strong bonds, bonds that are still strong 50 years later. Our flag was a physical embodiment of our country, it had a history, it embodied the values and beliefs and behaviours that were copied by a hundred other countries. To some it meant safety, to others it meant dread. But it was unmistakable. It united and it helped form our culture as a country. You have to understand the history of this country to really understand what the flag means. As the older generations pass and newer generations take over, the value and understanding of the meaning of the flag diminishes and soon we won’t really understand what it all meant. People call it progress, I’m not so sure. I just think its a shame that following generations won’t feel that unique sense of belonging to something bigger that it gave me and that I felt to my soul.  

1. What I think most people want? 

I’ve always been interested in politics, ever since I was a child. My mum read the Daily Mirror, my father read The Sun so I had both perspectives of what was happening in the country in the 1970’s. I lived through the power cuts of the early 70’s, going into Europe, a referendum on the same, labour governments, conservative governments – and a long hot summer in 1976. 

When I was growing up my father was a coal miner and then a steelworker and after both industries closed down in the area he became a prison officer. My mother was a seamstress who used to sow airline seats, make tents and also a lot of my clothes. She worked part time so that she could be there for the family when she needed to be. My grandmother lived locally so she filled in when she couldn’t be there, particularly after my grandfather died. 

They bought their first house in a small but expanding village called Culcheth in Lancashire in 1960 for the princely sum of £1250. A small semi, it was built on a close with other semi’s, 16 families in all. I grew up ‘on the close’ with a bunch of other kids my age, 25 of us in all. It was our gang on our close in our community. We felt safe, walking to school from a very early age, In my case I had to walk to the bus stop with three other kids younger than me, catch a bus for half a dozen stops to a temporary school that we used as our school was still being built. I was 7 years old. There were three small primary schools feeding one larger comprehensive school where kids from miles around came. I got my first job at 10, working delivering free papers and leaflets. At 12 I started working on a farm at weekends and during every school holiday. I also did a paper round in the mornings from the age of 12, in all weathers. Sundays paper round was hell, the bag full of inch thick papers full of weekend supplements. I got £1.50 a week for that. 

We had one large shop in the village, the CPS as it was called and one grocers shop, Benny Weirs, who sold everything that the CPS didn’t. The village had a post office, a dry cleaners, one petrol station and two chip shops and half a dozen other privately owned shops including a small DIY shop and a small furniture shop. We had plenty of bank branches (four in total). There were 5 pubs, each with a completely different atmosphere but all with the same smell of beer and we collected empty bottles and took them back for the deposit. We revered the bank manager and the publicans and respected the local village bobby, who rode a bicycle and whom we all knew because he visited the school at least once a month and also taught the cycling proficiency course and test. And if you got into trouble, he knew your parents. We had a Saturday morning cinema run by the Methodist church and when I was older we had the cubs and scouts and the local British Legion ran an evening for 14/15 year olds to come along and play music and socialise. 

The village was surrounded by land owned by the Atomic Energy Authority which had at least four establishments around the local area. The UK was at the forefront of nuclear research and much of this went on in these establishments. To get an apprenticeship at Risley as it was called locally, you had got it made, but only a few of the top academic kids got those. Close to the village was two towns, Leigh and Warrington. In Leigh there were three coal mines, a large cable manufacturers and another big factory building tractors (John Browns). In Warrington there was a large Lever brothers site making Persil, a Fiat car plant, a petrochemical site, a newspaper printing facility and a huge railway goods marshalling yard that was a hub between London and Glasgow and Liverpool and Manchester that both went through Warrington.  

As a family growing up in the 70s we had no spare money, but we had everything. My parents had a house that they could afford. We all felt safe. We didn’t have access to many things in the village so valued the things we did have. We had a strong community, good schools, people who looked out for each other. We were quite poor, but really we had riches beyond understanding. And we had some prospects of getting a job locally in various industries from nuclear, chemical, engineering, steel and many other light and heavy industries. 

And that’s all people want. A home for their family that they can afford, a safe and cohesive community, freedom to experience life growing up, good formal education and opportunities locally afterwards. 

Most of what is described above is now gone. Over the years I have watched as industries closed one by one as we outsourced our manufacturing to other countries, the decline of community as children are forced to leave their families and move to cities often hundreds of miles away in order to find a job, the inability of people to afford a home for their families anywhere, and renting a home becoming more difficult and expensive to do than owning one. Rules have been brought in to ‘protect’ the young and instead prevent them learning from the experiences and risks of life itself. Schools are teaching curriculum looking backwards instead of inventing the curriculum that kids are going to need in twenty years time. And where (and what) will the jobs be once we’ve raised the children? 

If we carry on doing Government the way we do it now, the way we’ve done it for years, then all we will do is to continue to manage the decline. Instead we need to think again and do a root and branch review of how to get things moving in this country – and then get moving. We need change. We need government acting with the speed needed for this day and age, not governing with systems invented in the 16th century. Otherwise we will just continue the way we’re going. 

Every single person in the UK need to play their part, we need to act as one community with common purpose, common values and common sense. We all need to become politicians and take an interest in what’s going on. We need to collectively understand how things get done and where there are blockers we need to remove them. Where there are special interests we need to look at the interests of everyone. We need to call out things we know are not our values. And we need to use common sense when we make decisions, not decisions just based on ‘data’, where we often know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. 

0. What this is about…

This is an experiment to try and find out what the people of Britain would do if they ran the country. We’ve all said it at some time – ‘if I ran the country that wouldn’t be happening’, or ‘if I ran the country I’d do this’. So this is an attempt to ask ordinary people about the ideas that they have that they think the vast majority of people in the country would support if they were prime minister, that would make for a better society for all of the people of Britain. 

In my view, to have a successful society and country we need to have three things;

Common Purpose – an understanding of the human potential and good that could be unlocked by having common and easily understood goals.

Common Values – a fair society where we look after the vulnerable but also encourage people to look after themselves.

Common Sense – a sound, practical judgement concerning everyday matters – the basic ability to perceive, understand and judge information and experiences that are shared by nearly all of the people.

I’m asking anyone interested, ‘if you ran the country, what would you do differently?’. Send your ideas (and policies if you like), on any subject you like to ifiranthecountry@gmail.com 

Keep the politics out of it – I’m really not interested if you are right, left, centre or martian – I just want ideas for now. I’ll put them up on this site for everyone to see perhaps later we’ll organise a debate and see what people think of some of the ideas.  

Thanks!