The Official Monster Raving Loony Party Is Too Normal

The OMRLP is short of candidates. Only 12 Loonies have been nominated for GE2017, the fewest since 1987. The problem is that nothing seems whacky anymore. Satire and irony are dead. There’s no competing with the idiocy of the major party manifestos, as the party political machines inhale more and more data from a population hooked on the Daily Mail.

"Shit in, shit out," as a data scientist might say, if quotes from such 'experts' were allowed.

But they're not, which is how Trump got to the White House and why Theresa May was there to sort of hold his hand. 

The "truth" is that the OMRLP could romp home in this election. It just needs to become truly loony. Here are some genuinely ‘strong and stable’ foundations on which to build: 

• Every university that accepts UK government funding must offer Creationism as a degree course, and as a compulsory module in Archaeology, Anthropology, Education, Geography, Geology, History, Medicine, Physics, Theology and Veterinary Science;

• The UK government should endow a new Flat Earth Geographical Society;

• All aircraft flying into or from the UK should be fitted with a ChemTrail monitor to measure the quantity of mind-control chemicals they are adding to the atmosphere (ignore these people);

• All academic research grants should be awarded by a simply voting majority of all the UK's local councillors.

Of course, the OMRLP must also recognise that it is competing with the sheer mendacity of mainstream politicians. It should therefore utterly fail to deliver on any of these cast iron commitments. This will inspire hope that they'll manage it next time, and guarantee progressively more electoral success at GE2018, GE2019, GE2020...

Do the NHS and the BBC Really Need My Help?

I was recently invited by 38 Degrees ("people. power. change.") to email my MP to save the NHS. Previously, I was told the BBC needed me to ride to its rescue.

Now, I've been a great supporter of harnessing people power via the Internet to facilitate social, political, commercial and retail improvements. Hence my subscription to updates from 38 Degrees (amongst others). I was attracted by the mission statement:

"38 Degrees brings you together with other people to take action on the issues that matter to you and bring about real change."

But I don't think you improve the effectiveness of our institutions - particularly the NHS and the BBC - by campaigning against the forces for their reform. Both institutions devote adequate resources to that already. I don't mind emailing my MP to support one of a number of rival reform proposals. But I won't trouble anyone in support of the status quo.

Image from kuduTalk.

The Natural Economy - Sustainable Capitalism

In this age of economic and environmental meltdown, it's worth considering what "sustainable capitalism" means to you. And whichever way you plan to vote (if at all) in the next UK general election, Zac Goldsmith's book, The Constant Economy, is worth reading as part of the process.

Goldsmith rightly cites as "an extraordinary statement" Neil Armstrong's belief that 'the important achievement of Apollo was that it demonstrated that man was not forever chained to this planet'. There may be few better examples of man's apparent contempt for his environment than incinerating vast quantities of fossil fuel to escape it. Perhaps this is harsh, but the Apollo missions do seem to mark an acceleration in what we now recognise as a wasteful, exploitative energy binge.

The Constant Economy provides a concise summary of what we've learned since the Apollo years about both the scale of our environmental problems and potential ways to address them. Importantly, Goldsmith calls for greater focus on addressing the root causes, rather than merely some of the causes or the symptoms. A key starting point is actually valuing the various elements of our environment and including that value in our growth and accounting metrics.

I hope I don't do Goldsmith or his book any injustice in listing the gist of most of the policies below. It would be interesting to see them voted upon in much the same way as Power2010 is deliberating over a list of wider policies to develop a Top 5.

1. Tax pollution, waste and the use of scarce resources - inappropriate or polluting agriculture should not be subsidised;

2. Promote more direct democracy - ballot initiatives, referenda and recall initiatives;

3. New food technology (like GM) should not be able to be released without proof they do no harm;

4. The public sector should buy sustainable, local produce;

5. Food growing should be part of the school curriculum;

6. Agricultural subsidies should reward farmers for land management that benefits society, but is unrewarded by the market;

7. Planning policy should favour walkable town centres and maintaining the viability of independent shops;

8. There should be a stronger code of practice for supermarkets with more than 8% market share;

9. There should be less prescription and red tape for primary producers who meet quality standards;

10. Nations (particularly EU member states) should be able to insist that imported food meets the same standards as locally produced food;

11. Antibiotics should only be used to treat sick animals, rather than boost meet yields;

12. We should identify and promote GM-free produce/regions;

13. We should create more marine protected areas to aid re-generation of fish stocks;

14. We should ban the use of destructive fishing methods;

15. We should limit industrial fishing catches;

16. There should be higher standards for fish farms;

17. We must establish the truth about oil reserves, and extraction costs vs price;

18. We should require power generation to occur closer to where it is needed, and facilitate community-level generating capacity; appropriate micro-generators should be a permitted development, rather than require planning permission;

19. There should be a "feed-in tariff" to ensure the export price of sustainably-generated electricity stimulates investment in the alternative methods;

20. We should encourage the formation of renewable energy investment funds;

21. Reduce subsidies for fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy;

22. Invest in high speed rail and hold off on airport expansion;

23. Make green cars cheaper;

24. Encourage only biofuels that generate a net carbon saving, are not generated at the expense of valauble habitat or at the expense of food production or security;

25. Transport policy should favour cycling, buses and a school bus system;

26. Promote technology that reduces travel;

27. Protect the greenelt and gardens;

28. Ban building on floodplains;

29. Fill the million empty UK homes;

30. Incentivise building in the right place - improving an existing building should be VAT-exempt;

31. Subsidise energy-efficient homes, including smart-meters and water efficiency;

32. Create building standards to replace prescriptive regulation about how to build;

33. Taxes, subsidies and public procurement should promote a zero-waste economy - take-back rights for appliances, paid recycling, reduce landfill, recycle building material, promote long-life goods/buildings, combined heat and power systems;

34. We should contribute to a forest fund to support conservation by countries with forests;

35. Buy sustainable timber, starting with the government;

36. Implement carbon pricing.

Gordo Got You Down? Try Power 2010!

If you aren't thoroughly disillusioned with UK politics and hell-bent on doing something about it, I don't know how much more mayhem it will take.

The good news is that even Gordon Brown admits he has to unwind his vast public sector binge of the past twelve years. The chips are really down.

But as the great HST himself said, "when the going gets tough, the weird turn pro".

So now is the time to ensure we get to keep and invest in what's important.

Enter Power 2010, a campaign chaired by Helena Kennedy and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.

Like MySociety, Power 2010 uses the internet to enable you to share your thoughts in a way that politicians cannot ignore without being called to public account. It doesn't matter whether Parliament is sitting or not. The internet is always on, 24-hours of disinfecting sunlight shining into the Westminster pit.

So please share your ideas now, at http://www.power2010.org.uk/page/s/yourideas.

Better Regulation - Fill Your Boots

For those interested in keeping regulation to a bare minimum, like BERR (yeah, right), here's a little gem from the Office of the Leader of the House of Commons - the Government's rationale for the 2008/09 legislative programme.

It actually wouldn't let me set up any email alerts for speeches, statements, debates, parliamentary questions and so on, but it's a nice idea all the same...

There's plenty of fun to be had figuring out what problem(s), if any, they are trying to solve and comparing the rhetoric with the substance. I have some pet issues to revisit in the coming months.

Meanwhile, look out for random infrastructure projects to be paid for with public funds, like the £1.5bn pledged toward the Manchester congestion charge scheme. New Labour seems to believe it has a lot of taxpayers' money to hand out and not much time to do it!

Politicians@LinkedIn

I was slightly taken abarack just now to see that someone in my LinkedIn network had added Mr Obama to their network. Having viewed the candidate's profile, I also see that other US politicians have created profiles. I was somewhat comforted not to have found profiles for Gordo or Dave, but concluded that this may be more to do with their own arrogance than any desire to spare people the dilemma of whether or not to add them to their networks.

I don't know about you, but I can't see myself adding a politician to my social network, unless they happened to be a trusted, real-world friend. And that's just it. As far as I know, none of my trusted, real-world friends are politicians (other than perhaps in the sense that they cope with daily cut and thrust of office politics).

I also reckon that to add a Politician to your social network is tantamount to drinking the Kool-Aid - it's never going to end well.

Waiting for Gordo

I'm no political activist, nor wedded to any political party. But I'm not apathetic. I prefer my politics 'unbundled' and simply want to ensure that I'm getting real value for my tax spend - that the root causes of social problems are solved efficiently.

Research tells me that I am not alone, but what tools exist to help us achieve this?

Needless to say, the government of the day is particularly untrustworthy when it comes to demonstrating value for all the money we give it. The opposition are generally at the opposite extreme. The various media are concerned only with what is “news”, which is to say what they believe to be immediate, significant and topical - usually the posturing of the main political parties. And only the PR-skilled, lucky or very persistent ever get their message into the news. Like politicians and those who hire lobbyists.

The rest of us have been pretty much left with the National Audit Office, which provides great ammunition for everybody to use. But the NAO quite rightly focuses on how the government is currently spending or promising to spend our money now, and can't ever be seen to be using its fact finding and reporting as a basis for 'campaigning' for change.

So, it's up to us as citizens to find other ways of keeping the pressure on. But how?

Charities and other 'pressure groups' often do a good job of including the humble citizen in their activities e.g. Scope, Cancer Research, Oxfam. Otherwise, it's self-help.

Of course, "self-help" could mean voting, and even swapping your vote at the next General Election. But while you're waiting for our beloved Prime Minister to call one, you could get an overview of the problems as the politicians see them (and comment on your MP's blog), share your views with others via social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc), comments on blogs and email, participate with other vigilantes in our 'special relationship' with the US, sign up to a petition that proposes a solution to the root cause of your problem, write to the civil servants with your problem directly, or report an issue to your local council.

If there are other self-help measures, I'd love to hear of them.