With a UK Election just gone it is apparent that UK Politics is spiritually, morally and practically bankrupt. Be Revolting and say "I'm just not going to take it any more."
Here's a 19 point plan for Revolutionizing UK Politics loosely based on The Revolution from R.U.Sirius.
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Here's a 19 point plan for Revolutionizing UK Politics loosely based on The Revolution from R.U.Sirius.
- Stop Global Warming NOW! Clean energy is now overwhelmingly do-able. We want an emergency program to convert the UK to clean energy. It should be 100% complete before the end of this decade.
End the prohibition against most pleasure drugs, prostitution, and gambling. Institute a 'sin tax,' taxing these activities at 100% to make up for some of the funds lost as the result of #5. Use part of this tax income to make counseling and rehabilitation easily available in all locales.
- We will repeal twice as many laws as we pass. We need to simplify and clarify the rules of the game. We will do a better job of enforcing and obeying a few reasonable rules than thousands upon thousands of incomprehensible statutes.
- End all corporate welfare. Let allegedly free-enterprise stand on its own two feet.
- No Personal Income Taxes on an individual's first £75,000 income. Encourage states and counties to also end taxation of middle-class and poor individuals. Institute a flat tax on income over £75,000.
You can't own the human genome. We need to examine biotechnology's promises and threats more closely, and share the information and the positive results more democratically.
- Close down the prison/industrial complex. Pardon all prisoners who are in for victimless crimes, provided they have no known history of violent activities. Pardon all prisoners listed with Amnesty International.
- Defend civil liberties. For the first time in recent memory, let's have a UK Bill of Rights and aFreedom of Information Bill. Let's have representatives of pro-rights organizations in the Judicial system.
- Stop the war on youth. It's time to end absurd zero-tolerance policies in schools, curfews, and other impositions of martial law on the youth of the UK.
- It's time for a new globalism. Advocate a global minimum wage and environmental standards. Oppose excesses in corporate property rights through patents, copyrights et. al.
- Stop policing the world. Become just another member of the UN, with responsibilities equivalent to our numbers. Reduce the military's budget by at least 30%.
- Tibet can't wait. And neither can millions of other victims of state repression around the globe. Emphasize human rights in foreign policy, and be consistant about it. Representatives of human rights groups should represent the UK in the UN.
- Close down the National Security State. Since the end of World War II, representative democracy has been hostage to the National Security State. Release all secret documents (excluding only those recent ones that present a very clear and present danger), fire MI5 and MI6 and reform the intelligence apparatus. Put mature computer hackers in charge of intelligence.
- Put environmental concerns before profits and jobs. On the other hand, put scientific consensus and reason ahead of emotion-based environmentalism. Protect the environment while limiting Orwellian bureaucratic absurdities. Pay loggers not to clear cut the forests.
- Allow 'autonomous zones.' Offer ways in which localities and even households can -- with a very few limits -- opt out of the system.
- Re-establish social services at pre-Thatcher levels, for starters. Study the possibility of replacing demeaning welfare by using government to create an ultimately self-sustaining 'generic' maintenance economy. By creating co-operatives that co-exist with free enterprise, we can replace welfare with a less demeaning, and more democraticly engaging alternative.
- Study the possibility of restructuring the economic/money system toward making money consistent with actual value in an age where money-as-information is excessively abstracted from the creation of real wealth and unfairly favors those who know how to manipulate it. Also, question the oligarchic power of those who control the money system, such as the Federal Reserve, the IMF, and the World Bank, reforming or possibly eliminating those organizations.
- Fund a 'Manhattan Project Toward Utopia.' Finance and encourage altruistic scientific and technological projects geared towards breakthroughs that can diminish or eliminate scarcity, disease, and other forms of suffering that most people would prefer not to experience. Establish a principal of universal access to the products of such breakthroughs.
- Victory Over Horseshit! The political process in the UK is hostage to certain obvious absurdities that are an embarrassment before the civilized world: our refusal to sign the land mine treaty, the opposition to policies like needle exchange that are geared towards slowing down a plague, refusal of funding for international birth control, ad infinitum. Let's have a national government that calls ridiculous horseshit what it is.
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