To ask if you have an idea you believe would significantly improve life in the UK?

[ConfusedmumUC]

I’ll go first.

I can’t help but think making someone’s rent payments eligible to prove you can pay a mortgage would go a long way to housing security for so many people. And limiting the amount of properties owned by one landlord / amount a landlord can charge in rent, would also go a long way. I can’t help but think profiteering massively off of a basic need and right such as housing is really not ok.

Im sure there’s a reason why my idea wouldn’t work, feel free to put me right 😂

What’s your idea?

Massively increase housing supply.

Yes, housing values would decline. But it would free up peoples incomes to spend on other things and allow our real goods and services economy to grow.

There should be more life skills taught in school.

What are you going to remove from the curriculum to make way for these 'life skills'?

Alcohol is legal, quality controlled and taxed and it causes more problems than all the illegal drugs put together. Legalizing something that causes problems doesn't help, you might as well say that legalizing murder would lower the murder rate.

Build more housing. Normal sized ones (2 or 3 bed houses or flats). 25% for social housing and 75% for private ownership with covenants preventing private tenancy for 20 years. All mixed in together on the same streets / block of flats rather than segregation. Developments only signed off by building control when the 25% social housing target has been met. Keep building at a rate which allows prices to remain constant long term (ie enough homes for new buyers but not so many as to cause negative equity for those who recently bought). Revisit when wage inflation has allowed an average home to be 3x the average salary.

Regulate social media. Make them legally responsible if they fail to remove reported content which would be illegal to print in a newspaper. (Eg death threats and images of child abuse.)

Increase non-contact time for teachers to 20% to acknowledge the massive increase in workload since PPA was set at 10%.

Set public sector pay to permanently increase in line with private sector wage inflation. No more, no less.

Nationalise public transport and utilities. Essential services shouldn't be making profits for private (often already wealthy) shareholders.

Set social care like student finance (use now, pay later). Have a set amount (eg 100k or 25%) as untouchable, the rest can be repaid to the government on death to cover whatever loan was needed for care home costs.

The highest-paid official in the Government is Mark Thurston, the chief executive of HS2 Ltd, who is paid £620,000. The remaining officials in the top 10 all work in the transport sector - with six Network Rail employees paid between £330,000 and £585,000

What happens when all the houses fill up? Build even more houses? What happens when there's no more room?

I expect they will all be powered and heated by solar panels and windmills too. Just like people who have cars powered by fairy dust!

Gas certainly isn't as plentiful as it was this time last year - but apparently we can just build build and build

Would like to see a Gov sick pay for all - not £95 a week but proper sick pay - NI to pay fo this both form employees and employers contribution - so all employee are covered. I'd like to see the same for maternity and paternity leave.
I'd like to see childcare either completely free (pipe dream) but at the very least it should be a tax-free benefit.
Fix the zero-hours contracts - for some zero hours employee (highly paid contractors) it's a happy situation but for others (the low paid) it leads to unpredictable incomes - the low paid are taking all the risks and we don't solve the problem by making these contracts illegal - companies like Clarks giving their employees 4 hour contracts is just the same thing - no one can survive on 4 hours a week.
More access to training with employers receiving a subsidy - why so easy to get into Uni but not easy to learn how to be an electrician or a plumber etc.

Do you realise how tiny a % of the UK is actually built on?

There is plenty room to build houses so everyone who ever needs one could have one affordably.

Network Rail is public sector, their board of directors are mostly on £300k+, with Andrew Haines on £585k. CEOs and CFOs of a number of other organisations reporting to the DfT and BEIS are also on £300k+. It's also worth looking at what some of the part time officials get, pro-rata some are on very handsome rates.

I'd set the threshold much lower though. 5x the lowest earner (pro rata).

▼ Gary Lineker - £1,350,000-£1,354,999
▼ Zoe Ball - £980,000-£984,999
▼ Steve Wright - £450,000-£454,999
▲ Stephen Nolan - £415,000-£419,999
▲ Fiona Bruce - £410,000-£414,999
▼ Huw Edwards - £410,000-£414,999
▲ Vanessa Feltz - £400,000-£404,999
▲ Scott Mills - £400,000-£404,999
▲ Greg James - £390,000-£394,999
▲ Ken Bruce - £385,000-£389,999
▼ Lauren Laverne - £380,000-£384,999
▲ Naga Munchetty - £365,000-£369,999
➤ George Alagiah - £325,000-£329,999
BBC director general's 16.6 per pay rise is “tone deaf and an insult” to staff. Tim Davie's rise – worth £75,000 and taking his pay to £525,000
I'm sure with more digging i could find a better list. The point is it's public money, if there is a fair cutoff then people can choose public service or they can choose the private sector.

Increase NHS per capita funding to the amount spent by France or Australia. Or we could aim even higher and spend as much as Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany or Switzerland.

Ban MPs from voting on any legislation which relates to their own financial interests. Merely declaring any conflict of interest is not enough.

There needs to be more planning for the long-term future instead of just kicking the can down the road for future generations to deal with. The population needs to be reduced, not increased. There should be strict limitations on who is allowed to have children and how many children they are allowed to have. The aim should be to have more people who contribute more than they receive, and fewer people who just take, take, take, all their lives, with no thought given to anyone else.

I’d vote for you.

Carers allowance to be higher and not be considered taxable

A lot of my A&E admissions are due to alcohol, but also combined with MH issues.
How would you make the distinction between the two?
I was always told that if you are drunk, you are vulnerable, so still entitled to help.

At what cost to the environment?

Nah, we need to depopulate. With that in mind (and given the problems associated with an aging population), I would like to propose lifting all bans on tobacco advertising. That'll reduce life expectancy and boost tax revenue. Problem solved.

I would however put in a ban on anyone smoking within 100 clear yards of myself, because I can't stand the stench.

The BBC isn't really the same. You can opt out of paying for it, as I have.

Stop pandering to narcissist males, who are intent on destroying womens rights . Find people in govt who are not incompetent.

Chaneg the law so companies aren't legally obliged to put shareholder profits above customer value and staff conditions but the opposite: good pay and conditions for staff, fair price, then if there's any profit left over, it goes in dividends. I can't believe it is a legal obligation effectively to be greedy, exploitative and shoddy.

I don't disagree that the planet, as a whole, is overpopulated.

The solution to that, however, is not making having a place to unaffordable for the people who have, y'know, already been born.

Make private dental, health care and school payments tax deductible.

Private users are freeing up NHS/state school resources for those that can’t afford to go private.

How's that going to be funded?

I wasn't suggesting making it unaffordable, just allowing people to voluntarily lay down their lives for the national benefit if they so choose. See here:

More seriously, we need to work to extend female emancipation to the developing world. Educating women so that they can have a purpose beyond childrearing has long been a surefire way of reducing birth rates.

Have you missed the point of this thread? How is any of it funded...this is just a wish list.