The local revolution

Some months ago I purchased The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain by Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan.  The central premise of the book is the idea that too much power has been taken away from Parliament and local communities and handed to unelected bureaucrats in Whitehall and Brussels. Twenty-first century Great Britain is the sorry story of a nation overrun by qangos and the EU, and as a result, politics in the country is failing.

Since I bought the book, I have read and re-read it, looking for ideas that can be applied to the New England experiment. It goes without saying that I have found a number of things that any sensible politician should consider adopting as policy, but the most important thing I have gathered from the book is the idea that any decision affecting people should be made as close as possible to those same people. It seems obvious, and very simple, but in recent times there has been a swing back to the big spending centralist governments of the left who quite frankly, couldn’t run a whelk stall.

Here are just some of the many ideas discussed in The Plan that have been translated to the New England experiment:

• No public funding for political parties;
• Devolution of social security to local authorities;
• Singapore style health insurance; and
• Referendums that can block any legislation passed by Parliament.

It goes without saying that I think this policy should apply to Australia as well. There need to be more states, not less; and the ever increasing power of the Commonwealth should be curtailed. At the present, it is far too big.  Given the centralist policies of all the political elite in this country, there isn’t a snowflakes chance in Hell this would happen.

And people wonder why I gave up on the real world years ago and started New England Online…

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