Sorry, this is a long one in response to a comment further up the thread.
Kill off the House Of Lords. With over 800 members, it's basically an ego boost rather than a debating chamber. Replace it with a federal chamber with representatives from each corner of the UK.
If you do this, it is likely you will lose the last element of legislative scrutiny in this country. Such a plan as the above would politicise entrance to the HoL and it would end up like the HoC, where legislation has become a game of political football and hideously bad law makes it way through the lower chamber virtually unimpeded.
Move to a sensible system of voting. FPTP basically devalues everyone's vote in a "safe" seat and inflates it in a swing seat. On top of that, short money funding and winner-takes-all kills off the chance of any new parties getting a foothold. Yes, you can end up with some lunatics in the Commons but it also makes it likely to form a consensus.
I'm not so sure this is the solution you think it is. Wealthier parties will always have the upper hand, purely because they have more resources, and it would do nothing to correct the current problems vis a vis candidate selection.
There is also a danger it would politicise the HoC more than it is already, and you end up with horse trading between similar parties to get legislation passed. You may also find that certain parties gain huge numbers of votes based on "celebrity faces", rather than a solid network of viable candidates: see UKIP and previous Euro-elections.
Reform the housing system (especially leasehold) and get rid of right to buy. Allow councils and housing associations to build and keep properties again. This is important as shelter and adapted housing is in short supply and we have a lot of elderly people to keep safe and well. Decent housing and social systems can mean the difference between an extra decade of good health or repeated hospital admissions.
I am heavily involved in local government and local politics. This idea in theory sounds great; in practice, it's a disaster.
You would be talking about councils being responsible financially and legally for hundreds of homes and the land around them. The cost of running the relevant housing, maintenance and landscaping departments in labour alone would be significant (understatement of the decade there), and that's before you look at the cost of required machinery, goods, services and the various insurance requirements. This was part of the reason why councils got into so much debt in the 70s, and, as it fed into the PSBR back then, why Britain had to go to the IMF for a loan (which is still the largest loan ever given to a country).
A better solution would be ...
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to repurpose vacant units in town and city centres for housing (it would also keep town and city centres alive) -- though there is an extraordinary resistance to this, despite primary housing being a standard feature of most towns and cities in the 19th century when they grew to the size they were.
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for councils to build and sell at cost price under certain regulations and conditions. There's no reason why a council cannot sell a property under the regulation that the property must then be sold back to the council if the owners wish to move (such conditions were attached to the sale of certain council houses in my area in the 80s).
Of course, for this, the council has to be able to procure viable land at a reasonable price. And we are running out of that. Viable developments need to be on an infrastructure network (road, mains water/gas/sewage/electricity/telecommunications) and they need to be near places of work, schools, GP surgeries and amenities. If a plot of land does not have those features, you've got to put them in, and it's got to work organically, otherwise people leave.
Case in point: our borough council recently demolished yes, demolished an old council estate because no one wanted to live there as it was too far away from town. It had only been up for twenty years.
And don't get me started on Housing Associations. I'd say a third of my work involves banging my head against a wall with the local HA on behalf of vulnerable residents. It's pretty common for an HA to avoid maintenance tasks on a property until something goes really wrong.
In terms of social care, the solution is to build low to medium care housing developments with a resident porter, a small 24 hour nursing unit and an onsite dining hall where housing units can either be bought or rented.
Very few elderly people really need the kind of intense care provided by care/nursing homes (which are very expensive to run and councils cannot really cope with the liability either financially or structurally), but they do need some kind of supportive help. Providing that help in one location means you reduce the cost of care provided in-home across multiple locations, and you can extend coverage across the day.
Again, I think such units should not be council run and maintained, because what then happens is that shortfalls in budgets then affect the service, which itself becomes a political football. It is far better to encourage non-profit entities, such a social enterprise organisations, to build and run these kind of facilities.
Reform tax laws. It's going to happen at some point as the health and pension bull rises.
I'd agree with this, but we also need politicians and civil servants who are committed to eradicating waste. You would not believe the amount of money that is spent on bollocks at a local level, even in a funding crisis; I dread to think how bad it might be at national.