What's the one single thing a government could do to make your life better?

[verdantverdure]

Mine?

Rejoin the EU.

It the single most powerful lever any government could employ.

It makes the country significantly better off at a stroke and improves all kinds of situations, growth, investment, labour shortages, farming, fishing...

What's yours?

Fill the potholes.

I drive a couple of hundred miles a week and I spend much of the time watching like a hawk and trying to avoid the craters all over the roads. It's very stressful.

Only if you promise to not moan about inflation, then again you’d love it with your triple lock pension!

Triple lock pension? I'm in the private sector, my pension is rubbish

@maranella god yeah the potholes. I'm trying to drive less and cycle more and the roads round my way are so bad its dangerous!!

Musixa state pensions (which everyone gets) are inflation protected with the triple lock.

Raise the 40% tax threshold

Ah, got you, sorry. I was thinking of my private pension. That's why I want the state one earlier!

Thanks for pointing this out.

Stop bankrolling Scotland, they don't like us, they want independence so give it to them, we'll have their share back and it will help fund our NHS and social care. I love Scotland, don't get me wrong, but they really don't know they're born with their free prescriptions, free bus travel for all up to age 20+, free school meals in primary school, chromebooks in all primary and secondary schools for all pupils. They have it very good

You know there’s both a higher rates of tax in Scotland and the 40% tax rate kicks in much earlier than the rest of the U.K. (and is now 42%) - folk in Scotland are paying 54% on salaries over £43k. And we don’t have Chromebook’s for kids in school.

England really doesn’t bankroll Scotland.

Go to the country

Stop bankrolling Scotland, they don't like us, they want independence so give it to them

Erm, if that was the case then the independence referendum would have had a different result…

er, you and your high earner friends can voluntarily contribute more tax. You don't have to ask.

Make the disabled a priority in society. Government gives money to companies to encourage them to make disabled access. Closed captions on every cinema, platform and channel programmer. Closed captions would have the benefit of encouraging children to read sooner. Fine companies who don’t make access a priority. Change the way we view disability, help to encourage disabled people into work by WFH, but not pressure in the same way that HMRC do, make priority to train existing staff into accepting disability in the workplace. It would never happen but that’s what I’d change if it was up to me.

Merge charities and have proper focussed fundraising.

Legalise Euthanasia for the terminally ill

Just one thing? I guess sort out the NHS to provide the service it was intended to when it was begun. However a close runner would be rejoin the EU.

Call a general election.

Rejoin the EU.

Get rid of exorbitant ’admin’ and postage fees for online ticket sales

Decent long term local government funding settlement so my mum could get proper care and I could do my job more effectively.

Give free tuition and restore grants for Uni students. We need a well educated population to help growth. I am in my fifties, worked for 30 years in stressful jobs and want to save to retire slightly earlier than 67 so I can have a little bit of a life before me or dh become too unwell to do the things we want to ( dh already unwell with 2 progressive illnesses). Yet also trying to help 2 kids through Uni, having already got one through Uni - he is now living back at home, low paid job no chances of moving out. Crap Uni experience due to covid but still saddled with god knows how much student debt to pay back at some point. many young people cannot afford to go to Uni and certainly can't afford to rent or buy. I honestly feel it is dire for young people at the moment. Much as I love having them at home I can't see how they can afford to move out for a long time yet.

Short term:

• investigate extent of greedflation in current cost of living crisis & take steps to curb it
• stop interest rate rises: it's not going to curb inflation just now and instead is just making all those with mortgages poorer
• bring in VAT on private school fees
• repeal the voter ID legislation
• re-join the single market and customs union
• ban domestic flights for journeys which can be done by train in less than 3 hrs

Medium term

• Rejoin the EU
• Massive reform of council tax so it's an effective land value tax that means those sitting on massive housing wealth pay their fair share (including a much higher rate for second / third home ownership)

with income from above . . .

• give all public sector workers including civil servants a decent above inflation pay rise
• actually invest in our public services
• slowly but surely (piece by piece so it costs less) re nationalise the railways and utilities

*They are all being passed as separate bills. So not cancelled.

If it had been kept as one bill opposition parties were going to turn it into a political protest over hunting.*

How @mellongoose?

Abolish council tax. It's crippling me

Fix the anomalies in the tax system so that the effective tax rate doesn't go like this, and massively penalise single parents.