If You Were PM What Would You Change?

[ChronicOnVodkaAndTonic]

Just that really. If you had the power to change our country what would you change/do?

And what, in your opinion needs a compete overhaul?

For me it's NHS...

reform of social care system. Many of the NHS problems are as a result of people stuck in hospital unable to leave due to inadequate support.

Reform the NHS with a longer term vision to include far greater investment in preventative medicine & support and a decent social prescribing service across the country. Hand in hand with this include major work on obesity prevention across all age groups and demographics. Tax on foods, advertising of UPF, product and retail placement, investment in free/low cost sport and physical activity, decent food tech in schools with focus on healthy eating; better support & guidance for new mums on feeding.

Make all new build houses have renewable energy, build housing estates with active travel (walking/cycling) not car ownership at the forefront.

Reverse Brexit

Address the crisis in education. I do t have the answers but know it's at breaking point and is failing our young people which makes for a pretty bleak future.

Hmmm, Tricky.
Let me have a think about that.

I'll come back to you when I've read some of the suggestions. There might be some good ideas pop up with I could snaffle for the manifesto.

Let council build, massive massive house building programme for councils and housing associations. Cancel right to buy.

housing is a need, it shouldn’t be an investment

I’d call a General Election as I’ve failed to govern the country and lack credible plans.

Good thing you won’t be PM then!

For a start. £30k is not literally nothing. Literally nothing is nothing.

To address your point. A nurse starts on just over £28k and rises to around £34,500 assuming he/she stays on the same band. They work compressed hours so longer shifts when they are there but more days off.
I believe they are also paid extra for weekend working, even though this is part of their normal shift pattern (I don't know any other profession where this happens).

Being completely responsible for keeping someone alive is hyperbole. No nurse on band 5 will be completely responsible for keeping someone alive, unless you are referring to routine ward observations, which is a bit of a stretch.

There will be some nurses completely responsible for keeping someone alive, but they will be much further up the bandings and will earn a lot more.

You've swallowed the hype I am afraid.

I am happy to pay higher taxes but the last place I want it to go is to pay for higher salaries for people already paid decently. I am mystified thar this rhetoric of the poorly-paid angel still exists when the payscales are widely available for all to see.

I'd put a very high tax onto non-UK residents owning UK property, or perhaps ban it outright
I'd also whack up taxes on properties left empty for more than say a month in any year
And I'd reform tenancy law to give good tenants more security

Cross party working group to look at ways of funding the NHS, viability of alternative models, ending PFI contracts

Train as many doctors as we need.

Open genuine discussions with Europe about a more constructive relationship going forward

Prioritise food security, the security of our supply chains and the power supply.

I would make businesses pay decent wages. Why should we as tax payers have to top up the income of minimum wage baristas while Starbucks rakes in billions of dollars in profit? Surely they should be using some of that to top up the wages rather than the state having to do it.

I would also make it so that during maternity leave or childcare breaks the father's pension contributions get split between both parents' pots so the pension gap is reduced.

I would put the onus on men to be responsible for child support rather than on women having to ask for it (repeatedly!). I'd make non-resident parents legally obligated to inform their employer of any known children so that child support could be deducted at source rather than women having to jump through hoops to claim it or accepting less or erratic amounts than they should receive out of guilt, fear, pity, awkwardness or not knowing where the person has moved to.

This is EXACTLY what the nhs wants you think! The reality is that there is loads of social care,( in my area at least ) but hospitals are not organised and cannot discharge patients on time. Beds are blocked 90% of the time due to their inabilities NOT the social care system.

Fine the phone zombies walking around like gormless idiots.

Really crack down on driving offences, including antisocial parking. Increase fines and decrease the threshold for bans. No "hardship" leniency. Take poor drivers off the roads permanently.

Increase duty on cigarettes, vapes, and alcohol.

Increase corporate taxes.

Tax holiday homes / cottages and AirBnBs severely (exceptions if you're a genuine AirBnBer just letting a room in your house). Introduce limits on the amount of holiday accommodation per town / village in proportion to those who actually live there.

In theory (and without of course any costing so this is all pie in the sky) I'd then use the money to better public transport, bolster our agricultural industry, reform the NHS, and increase the police service.

Build more social housing. (Lots more). Reverse Brexit..

And introduce UBI.

Have you spent much time in hospitals? ! Often there will be one band 5 for a whole ward with just HCA to help. The situation is dire. It must be a horrible job.

£30k is far from decent. Especially with the cost of training etc required.

and I haven’t ’swallowed the hype’ I’ve got a job where all this kind of thing matters. So I’m basing on actual evidence thanks.

I also don't think it would do any harm to look at pensions and pensioner benefits.
I don't like the talk about boomers but that doesn't alter the fact that there are plenty of wealthy pensioners travelling on buses for free and getting hundreds towards their heating bills that they don't need just because they are entitled to it. Because of their 'boomer' luck, even people who worked in ordinary jobs are relatively well off if they bought property and have final-salary pensions.
I am a lot nearer retirement than the baby years, but it seems fundamentally unfair to me that young families struggling to make ends meet are being taxed to fund a triple lock on pensions going to people who probably have a lot more disposable income and assets but are seemingly untouchable

I am spending a lot of time in hospitals at the moment as my dad has been a patient for the past month. He has been in three so far and there has never just been one nurse per ward. You are talking rubbish

I’d limit the number of residential properties a person (or couple) can own to two. And no, you wouldn’t be allowed to get round this by putting properties in your young children’s names.

Corporation tax must be enforced for companies like Google and Starbucks etc who famously avoid paying it somehow

I agree. It shouldn’t matter which country you’re based in; if you want to trade in the UK, you have to pay the UK rate of tax on your UK income. We should send these corporations estimated bills and if they think the amount charged is too high, the onus is on them to supply the evidence to prove otherwise.

It’s also crazy that corporations which make billions of pounds profit every year (such as some supermarket chains) don’t pay their staff enough to live on, so that the benefits system has to top up their wages.

Ok. Well I hope your dad feels better soon and I also hope that you might be able to appreciate that sometimes not everything is as you see it! I see it every single day differently. It’s not rubbish. It’s factual.

You are forgetting other frontline staff. For example, an emergency care assistant (ECA) is band 3 (starting at £22,816) i.e. minimum wage, yet they work the same shifts, attend the same incidents as paramedics etc, and have an expectation on them that they can recognise the need for and initiate life saving interventions. They may have to manage a patient by themselves in an incident with more than one patient, given we work in a crew of two.

Their take home pay is around £1500 a month, after tax, NI, pension etc.

I mean this is the dream but it’s total pie in the sky

Our flood risk is really high and an increasing problem so are you sure you want to do that?

Agree completely.

Broadest shoulders and all that.

I would increase state funding for education, renovate the worst school buildings, reduce maximum class sizes to 24, reduce the amount of paperwork that teachers have to complete and stop the government from constantly tinkering with the curriculum.

I would also scrap Ofsted and replace it with a constructive, more frequent system of peer monitoring. It’s utterly ridiculous that a school might not be inspected for 13 years, then told it’s had serious safeguarding failings for goodness knows how long. The safeguarding failings could have been rectified within 30 days, but even if they are corrected before the Ofsted report is released, the one word verdict will still be “Inadequate”. It’s Ofsted that’s inadequate.

Stop judging schools on fixed term exclusions, accept that they are needed to fight the increasing numbers of badly behaved and badly parented children.

Fund support services around education better. But get everyone on the same page re parental responsibility. Stop giving parents a get out clause when their kids are dangerous, rude and disruptive in school.

Schools
make summer born legislation to tick box to defer a year and its permanent and allowed by any subsequent school.
Make it easier to drop back a year if there are spaces
Recommend one school trip per year minimum. Suggest art galleries or museum etc
Icrease minimum swimming requirements
Bring back levels
Require homework to be marked not ever had a piece marked at primary and secondary there are no marks on anything)
Allow more free choice on gcses (remove the history/geo many schools do)
I wouldnt add vat as think will make harder to get school spaces
Work harder to make all schools a similar level.
They do need to work on attendance -- but that should focus on say y5+.

Health
Bring back targets for a&e and treatments
Asd referrals may literally never be seen!
Build hospitals etc for the larger population.

Potholes

Actually I’m going to say something a little controversial. The first thing I would do is commission a public inquiry into why the special needs demand is increasing so rapidly and so many more children have special needs than in previous years. This needs to be done so we can have a realistic figure of what out of work benefits will be in the future and the impact on our workforce (because not all children with SEN will need unemployment benefits but many will).

I think this is an elephant in the room that needs addressing. And if you think it doesn’t, don’t come back on here in 20 years to ask why the government didn’t foresee the crisis with disability given it’s suddenly the norm to have 1-2 children in every reception class unable to speak at all and more with varying levels of need.

I would also commission an inquiry into mental health and the effect of the modern lifestyle such as screens. I think the two are extremely intertwined.