Pro Liberi

This will be one of the more interesting ones as we all have different ideas on what the answer is.

● Sort out our social system

I have a very simple rule that I like to use to work out if something is fair or not. Simply remove any identifying information and substitute another or swap the names around then see if the statement is still acceptable.  If it is not then it is not fair and just. Our current philosophy utilises a rather interesting expression called positive discrimination. As is usual with Government if they want to do it it is positive and all right but if anyone else does it it is negative, illegal and the full force of plod is used to fix it. In my view any discrimination is wrong.   How anyone can think it is right to fix one discrimination by replacing it with another is beyond me.  You fix it for all or there is no point.

So as an example we can take Subject X who was murdered one day by being shot executioner style in the head several times. He had simply been going on his way to work and the (alleged) executioner, Subject Y, had said it was a case of mistaken identity. Now if you were Subject Y and had done that what would you expect to happen when you got to court? Jail time and lots of it and rightly so. However in this case Subject Y was a member of plod, one of our protectors, and Subject X was Jean Charles de Menezes. As we know plod didn’t even get taken to court because our justice system decided there was no case ?? and so this tips the scales against it being right and justice takes a step back.

However this is only part of what Justice is. We need the same to apply to all aspects of our life. Going for medical care, Subject X, gets treated differently than Subject Y and we want to know why. Our court system is too complicated and too long. I blame the lawyers who if you remember have only just been overtaken in the most hated spot by politicians after having held that spot for such a very long time. Legal life should be much simpler and a lawyer should not be compulsory.

Finally, we have too much flexibility in our sentencing system.  We need to make it more rigid and ensure the punishment fits the crime.   Not allow some over zealous civil servant to twist it for his own ends and subvert being tried by a jury because it is in his best interests for people to get away with it or to ensure that they are found guilty.  Crime must have punishment and it must be seen to be taking place.

So the options for this are much simpler and it is expected for them to evolve over time as they used to until they were subverted for political ends.

• Abandon all positive discrimination.
• Make the decision to prosecute rule based and non personal.
• Make the rule of law apply to all.
• Make the sentencing rule based and non personal.
• Make the sentencing fit the crime.
• Simplify the legal system.    (Getting rid of the changes of the last 11 years would be a good start)

What I mean by let the sentencing fit the crime is simple.   In the US they have a three strike rule.  Three crimes and you are away for life.  Even if these crimes are stealing pizza.   That is not Justice.   We are looking at similar legislation here and already we have cries that some crime is too complicated for jurors to understand so we should have them without juries.   In that case with judges and of course they are clearly the brightest of the bunch when it comes to financial fraud so no chance of getting it wrong there. 

In addition I have a very simple proposal for the repeat offenders.  remember we have rule based for sentencing so murder would be X years, (IMO the rest of their life), and stealing a pizza would be cost of pizza x 100 or 1 month in nick, etc.    However it then uses a multiplier based on previous convictions.   First conviction would obviously be x1 but second conviction would be x3 and third x6 and so on.

Jail would also not be a place people would want to be.   If you are in for life then there is really no point in trying to rehabilitate you.   You get all the medical treatment, library books and exercise you need but little social interaction and in a special prison too that makes the black hole of Calcutta look like a 4 star hotel.  If you are going to be released then by all means study and take further education in whatever subjects you like providing you have the entry qualifications.

Finally on the subject of education we all know our current education system is in disarray.  It is failing to educate a large percentage of our future society and I’m relying on them to cure the worlds woes.     It seems, from brighter minds than me, that introducing a voucher system and leaving schools out of politics would fix the biggest issues, crap teachers and working to targets, in one go.   The next issue, pupils who don’t want to learn, can be cured by holding them back, perhaps at special schools, and not letting them claim benefits unless they have the minimum qualifications.  By minimum I mean the ability to read and write English and the ability to do basic mathematics.   Nothing spectacular.

I think if we sort these out the rest will follow.  Feel free to let me know any you think I have missed out.

Now the most difficult short term objective in my opinion.

● Look at our transport facilities

In the really short term there is much we can do to improve our transport situation and none of it seems to go down well with the Luddites and the politicians.

What we really need are teleporters but I actually can’t see them being developed at all. The sheer requirement is beyond even our comprehension at the moment and what does teleportation actually mean? In the Star Trek universe your very atoms are stripped and analysed and sent to the other end for creation and reassembly. I see that as I am killed, analysed and a clone created to replace me. Mmmm. I don’t like the sound of that. I want a doorway or something to walk through that keeps me in one piece.

There is a phrase often used which is we can’t build our way out of this. I have no idea where that came from but when the M6 Toll road was built it certainly improved things but the only thing was it was a Pay As You Go system. We have to pay for it’s use. So building your way out seems a viable option doesn’t it when there seems a way to make some money.

So the question is what actually is the problem? Could it be that successive governments have seen a way to milk us in a stealth tax. Of course it is.  Now they are scared of killing that cash cow. Only a fraction of what we pay in is spent on the roads the rest goes into the pot for the government to waste on it’s pet projects.  Thus we have not kept up the investment necessary and it is all now falling apart.   And, the best bit, is it’s our fault according to the people we trusted to keep it working.

Now the problem we have is that public transport is not really that good for us. They are to fixed locations and you have to make changes for most journeys. For example to get from my house to Liverpool, a journey I did every day for years when I started work, I have to get a bus to the train station and then a train to Liverpool followed by a bus to my work. Total travel time 1.5 hours. If I went by car it took me 45 minutes. When I moved sites to Liverpool centre it took 1 hour by bus and train but by car 30 minutes. Time is precious and nobody wants to spend it on inefficient transport. Plus if I missed my train because the bus was late or full then you could add 15 minutes to the travel time. Of course there is then the fact that many services don’t run on a Sunday or Bank Holiday. How do you get to work then?  Public transport is fine if you live very close to where you work and play and don’t travel far for either.   For most of us that is not the case.

The entire system needs to be revamped. I think we need to remove our requirement on the car and move to public transport but it has to be practical and it will never happen whilst the car is the most practical way to get around by a significant margin for most of us.

My initial thoughts on the matter is to make an underground network that has surface stations every mile or so. We can all have electric cars that are programmed to drive to these stations and then are slotted onto chassis which utilise magnetic technology like the bullet train. You program your destination and it takes you to the nearest station and puts you on the road there where it is programmed to take you to your destination. For those without personal cars one can be called from the surface station to take you where you want. Car owners pay a fee for the trip on a per mile basis (and none of this stealth tax rubbish. Actual costs) and for those without cars a flat fee for car rental plus the same fee as a car owner. I think we have the technology to make this viable now. Feel free to supply another method. We can start building this network in high density and new areas whilst we continue with things the way we are doing at the moment. As the speeds increase we could even use it to replace plane travel. Of course this method does not cater for HGV use. As most HGV use is to simply make it more cost effective it should not be an issue to split the loads but there are some loads that this would be impractical for.  There are some wide loads that travel down our motorways and dual carriageways, large cylinders, transformers etc. which it may be impractical to build in a modular fashion.  Perhaps by enlarging several surface stations we could cater for those but of course they would have different surface requirements. Alternatively for these few items we could use helicopters or something outside the system.   I don’t see it being insurmountable just needs some thought.

Because quite simply I don’t see any way of transporting people vast distances quickly except by making our current methods faster.  That is not impossible but the political issues are tremendous.