For those who can’t be arsed reading this article, here’s what Britain needs:
- Regional task forces of community-minded individuals – not just anyone, but people with brain cells (they’re not particularly well represented round here so assembling crack squads of homosapiens possessing triple-digit IQ could be more elusive than it sounds) – to discuss solutions to society’s big issues.
- Mandating all unemployed people to carry out tasks and jobs that not only revitalise local communities, but also generate rewards for these workers that will contribute towards their pension fund. Because state pensions will be no more in 20 years time.
Moderately inclined? Let’s press on…
Petite princesse and I were patrolling our deprived neighbourhood’s challenged avenues and cul-de-sacs this evening, dodging feral youths on ramshackle mopeds and ducking poo bags flung into trees by dog owners evidently too clueless to figure out a more civilised dumping spot. Could be worse – could have ended up in a burger down the local chippy.
You see the problem with Britain is that we’re far too soft. Not in the violent, aggressive sense – I think we’re world leaders at unprovoked assaults and GBH.
I’m talking about finding remedies for the apparently perpetual downward spiral of our country’s civilisation.
Today we discovered the pension deficit at the Post Office (that’s as an organisation, rather than the local branch) extends into many billions of pounds. The situation is mirrored across all public sector groups, including councils, emergency services, and probably the entire network of civil servanty-type people.
Today we discovered an end to ASBOs – Anti Social Behaviour Orders that kind of prevented shouty and confrontational people, from kids with spray cans to old men and crap too-loud Saisho stereos. Instead, we have to ring 101 and one day, maybe, a copper might pop round and have a sit down and a nice cup of tea with the aggressor to find out how he’d like to remunerate the inconvenienced.
Likely.
So the indebted administration looks for answers. And comes up with Big Society, asking us to basically look after ourselves.
But what it won’t do is solve our £635bn debt.
What we need to do is get people back into work. Millions of ‘em, claiming allowances, doing precious little else but becoming Grandmasters at Killzone 2, screaming at flickering screens adjacent to their leather-upholstered settees or screaming at little Kylie to bring the ice cream into the front room before daddy has to get down the boozer for a brightener. At 10am.
People whinge and whine there are no jobs. In the digital age. In a moment of time when, as Seth Godin would put it, the office is where you are.
Bollocks to the shackles of 20th century workhouses, otherwise known as offices. Today there are more occupations you can do at home than there are at what we would have described until 2009 as ‘at work’.
So excuses be damned! What this country needs is a Ministry of Teleworking to identify all the possible opportunities available to people who aren’t contracted by employers, to provide for their peers and their families by the miracle of PC.
“But I can’t afford a computer,” wails the blinged-up momma with her loft conversion and Ford Sierra with the latest stripes.
“But you can,” counters the work advocate. “We’ll simply deduct the cost of the computer from your ‘credits’ you earn.”
Credits that can pay towards the pension of the individual. Credits that can be converted into repayments on the mortgage, or for food tokens, or to contribute towards utility bills. The TV licence, even. What more can you need?
There can be no more excuses. Everyone who can move, can work in the information age. And this is stage 1.
Stage 2 is to identify and isolate the issues crushing communities with deleterious effects on the ‘Great’ wrongly prefixing Britain.
We do this with community participation. By identifying groups of people passionate about their home towns, with an agenda for change and evolution. They, with the tools they need (paper, pen, time) are instructed in the white magic of Mastermind Groups. They blast ideas like quarry machines do slate. They identify, simplify and make plans to rectify the concepts plaguing and disaffecting every corner of this once-magnificent country.
With the Government’s help, solutions are assembled and made realistic. With some measurable goals and timelines in place, we start to rebuild.
This is the manifesto for Britain’s future. It takes effort. It takes stoic focus. And it takes you and me.
Ready for the challenge?
Picture by Chuck “Caveman” Coker.