Mark Thomas Presents the People's Manifesto Read online

  Who will they rob? I would recommend the banks. ‘You can’t have pensioners stealing from banks,’ you may cry. Why not? The banks started it. We have subsidised them by over £1.3 trillion, public money that could be paying for pensions. Indeed, I would advocate the hunting of bankers by pensioners. Hordes of pensioners should descend upon the City (after 9.30am so they can use their bus pass).They will roam the streets of London’s financial enclave, dishing out death from trolley bags. They will tie one end of a rope to the back of their Shopmobility scooter and throw the noose end over a lamppost. Bankers will hand over their bonuses or dangle like marionettes.

  The pop of champagne corks in the City bars will cease at the sound of the click-clack of knitting needles and the gentle hum of a Dame Vera Lynn song.

  And pensioners will get an increased pension, by all means necessary.

  10

  THERE SHOULD BE

  A MAXIMUM WAGE

  SAY THE WORDS out loud, ‘maximum wage’, and that popping sound you hear will be Daily Telegraph readers’ capillaries bursting like blood-filled bubble wrap. The poor souls thought the world had ended when the minimum wage was reintroduced, so a maximum wage should finish them off.

  ‘You can’t introduce a maximum wage,’ they cry, ‘or the wealthy will leave the country.’ Really? Can we have that in a legally binding contract? It’s just that a lot of people have made these promises in the past and then let us down, so I propose a further amendment to this policy: anyone who says they will leave and then doesn’t can be sued for breach of contract.

  Amidst these empty threats of departure it is worth noting that the UK loses £18.5 billion a year in tax revenue to offshore tax havens – in corporate tax ‘efficiencies’, rich individual tax avoidance and tax evasion – so when the bankers start saying they will leave the country, feel free to point out that their money has had a head start.9

  ‘Oh,’ the bankers will moan, ‘you can’t have a maximum wage. If I don’t get my bonus I won’t feel motivated enough to work.’ Most people manage to get out of bed and do a day’s work without the promise of a Learjet at the end of a year, so what makes them so fucking special? ‘We should get our bonuses,’ they reply, ‘because we are worth it,’ thus confusing want with worth and reality with L’Oréal adverts. Push them a bit further and they will say, ‘I’m only getting the market rate for the job,’ forgetting that they set the market rate.

  The maximum wage rate would be set using a formula, with the most anyone could earn set at ten times the national average wage. The national average wage is about £25,000, meaning the maximum wage would be £250,000, a quarter of a million. The joy of this is that if someone at the top of the salary scale wants to pay themselves more money, they have to pay everyone else more to raise the national average wage.

  11

  WINDSOR TO

  BE RENAMED

  LOWER SLOUGH

  THE ORIGINS OF this policy lie deep within the twisted hearts of the inhabitants of Windsor, some of whom took exception to the fact that the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead shares the initials for its postcode with Slough. Part of Windsor has the postcode SL6 and part of Maidenhead has the postcode SL4, the SL in both instances coming from Slough. Those who took exception decided to start a local campaign to give Windsor and Maidenhead their ‘own’ postcode, which would be WM.10

  Such is the importance of a postcode that some believed the SL of Slough was lowering the tone of Windsor and possibly, horror of horrors, lowering property prices! A simple SL bringing down the price of a house – how fantastic is that! If it’s that easy let’s start putting SL on other postcodes: Ascot for starters, then Henley, Chester, St Ives and Chipping Norton. Let’s get those house prices down.

  In response to the madness of snobbery, one of the good citizens of Slough decided we should change Windsor’s name entirely and replace it with Lower Slough. This policy was adopted by the diverse and overly excited audience in Slough, who cheered the result so loudly that their whoops of joy could probably be heard in Windsor, thus knocking a few more quid off the asking price.

  But the success of this policy is entirely in your hands, dear reader, as a place name only really exists in the minds of those who use it. Therefore let us eradicate the name of Windsor. If you have to send a letter to that area, address it to Lower Slough. Tell American tourists visiting our shores that they really should visit Lower Slough Castle and that if the flag is flying at full mast it means Elizabeth Lower Slough is at home.

  And as the famous public school Eton College occupies the area between the castle and Slough itself, technically it is in central Slough. It only seems right, therefore, to rename Eton Slough Central College. It would be worth it just to see the number of their pupils getting in to Oxford or Cambridge plummet.

  As John Betjeman should have said:

  Come friendly bombs fall on Windsor

  It isn’t fit for nought but whingers

  To rid of them we do avow

  So rename it thus: Lower Slough

  12

  MPS SHOULD HAVE

  NO JOB OTHER

  THAN THAT OF MP

  WHENEVER A MEMBER of Parliament is challenged on the issue of MPs having jobs outside Parliament, they throw their hands up in horror. ‘No,’ they cry, ‘if you banned politicians from outside work you would end up with professional politicians with no experience of life.’ There are few other jobs in the public sector where people are encouraged to moonlight as part of their job description. You don’t see many teachers abandoning a class to give a speech for Swiss banking conglomerates, declaring, ‘If all I did was teach you’d end up with very bland teachers.’ Or bin men leaving work halfway through a shift declaring, ‘I’ve got to write my weekly column.’

  It is worth reminding ourselves that MPs are there to represent thousands of constituents, hold the government to account and run the country, which doesn’t sound part-time to me. Are they really suggesting that managing a banking crisis, a recession, mass unemployment, troops in Afghanistan and a massive national debt of around £200 billion doesn’t require their full attention?

  Let us consider a few examples:

  Ann Widdecombe, MP for Maidstone and The Weald, has a publishing contract, writes columns for the Daily Express, does numerous speaking engagements and presents the odd documentary. All of which, with her Parliamentary salary, earned her well over £244,000 last year.11 That is quite a lot of ‘life experience’ to bring into Westminster. So it is a real shame she only managed to turn up and vote on less than half the votes held.12

  George Galloway, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, presents and appears on radio and TV shows and writes newspaper columns. That earns him, including his Parliamentary salary, over £229,000 a year.13 All of which was so exhausting he only managed to speak three times in Parliament last year and turn up for 8 per cent of the votes.14

  Alan Milburn, MP for Darlington, spoke at an Avail Consulting event in June 2009 and was paid £9,200.15That same month he spoke in a debate in Parliament, and as that is the only time he spoke in a Parliamentary debate in a year, his earnings for that speech were £64,766.16

  13

  IF MPS WANT A

  SECOND JOB IN ORDER

  TO GAIN A GREATER

  UNDERSTANDING OF

  LIFE OUTSIDE

  GOVERNMENT, THEN

  THEIR CONSTITUENTS

  SHOULD CHOOSE WHICH

  JOB THEY THINK WOULD

  BEST EXPAND THEIR

  MP’S HORIZONS

  SO IF MPs are to keep their other jobs, claiming it gives them greater experience of life, then we should be able to choose which job they get. If a democratic vote is good enough to vote them into one job, then it should be good enough to help them choose another. As the original proposer of this policy wrote: ‘They could end up as a non-executive director for an oil company, a classroom assistant or a prisoners’ plaything.’

  Here are a few suggestions to be going
on with:

  Ken Clarke: Hod carrier. This is a kill or cure option.

  Nick Clegg: Children’s entertainer and balloon modeller. Not dissimilar from his day job as leader of the Lib Dems.

  Harriet Harman: Community Support Officer. She deserves it, they deserve her.

  Peter Mandelson: Pizza delivery boy.

  Jacqui Smith: Avon lady. She’d enjoy having a good nose around other people’s homes.

  George Osborne: Dental nurse. Don’t know why, it just seems right. Perhaps because he’d suit those blue disposable gloves.

  David Cameron: Holiday rep in Faliraki.

  Gordon Brown: Traffic warden in Lambeth.

  14

  THE POLICE SHOULD

  WEAR BADGES WHICH

  DISPLAY THE WORDS,

  ‘HOW AM I POLICING?’

  AND ‘I’M HERE TO HELP’

  IT STARTED WHEN signs appeared on the back of thundering great 20-wheeled lorries, asking ‘How am I driving?’, as if the hairy-arsed truckers gave a monkey’s for what some twat in a Prius two cars back thought of their signalling skills. And from there it exploded: every company, profession, government department and public body wanted to get ‘feedback’.

  I want to see ‘How’s my clowning?’ badges on children’s entertainers, with an 0800 number attached. Traffic wardens should be forced to wear badges saying, ‘Ask me where the free spaces are.’ I keenly await the cold-calling questionnaire that begins, ‘On a scale of one to ten, where one is really dreadful and ten is utter shit, what number would you give Noel Edmonds?’ I want bankers walking around the City with ‘Thanks for the wages’ or just ‘My flash suit, paid for by you’.

  Getting the police to wear ‘I’m here to help’ badges would serve as a reminder for all concerned. They would only have to catch sight of themselves in a shop window for a handy aide-mémoire, and protestors would feel able to approach them to ask if they can facilitate their legal rights to protest.

  ‘How am I policing?’ badges will then enable the public to provide feedback. So the facilitated protestor could phone and say, ‘I’ve just had a very positive encounter with a police officer and I wanted to register my appreciation.’ Unsatisfied customers (for instance, off the top of my head, those outside the Bank of England at the G20 protest) would be able to phone and say, ‘Illegally’.

  Finally, if the police are forced to wear badges saying ‘How am I policing?’, it might encourage them to actually display their numbers too.

  15

  AS TASERS ARE SO

  SAFE, EVERY TIME THE

  POLICE USE THEM ON

  A MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC THEY SHOULD

  TASER ONE OF

  THEMSELVES

  WHEN TASERS (the electro-shock dart gun used by British police) were first used here it seemed that every other chief constable was lining up to get darted for the regional news, proving that electrocuting citizens was safe and that convulsing police officers make good television. One minute they would be twitching in agony and the next they would be explaining to the cameras that there was no long-term harm, while a PC discreetly burnt the soiled pants. All that’s changed now, as the police have guidelines recommending they no longer Taser each other – for health and safety reasons. It’s political correctness gone mad.

  There are several clues, strangely not picked up by detectives, that electro-shock weapons might not be as benign as first thought:

  Clue one: the description of Tasers changed. They used to be called ‘non-lethal’. They are now called ‘less than lethal’, hinting that the weapon is not as ‘nonlethal’ as first suspected.

  Clue two: the UK government regards electro-shock equipment as torture equipment if it is sold abroad.

  Clue three: most UK weapons for export are categorised as ‘controlled’. Electro-shock weapons are categorised as ‘restricted’ alongside WMD and long-range missiles. Let’s be clear: electro-shock weapons are in the same category as anthrax and the plague.

  Clue four: Amnesty International reported that between 2001 and 2008 370 people died after being Tasered in the US and Canada. In at least 50 cases, examiners listed being Tasered as a causal or contributory factor in the death.

  Clue five: the standard for the police to use Tasers is ‘just below lethal force’ according to Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions. So they should be used where shooting someone dead is the only other option. But increasingly Tasers are being used as a tool of first resort. In Leeds, a 25-year-old man on a bus was slumped over his rucksack in a diabetic coma – the police Tasered him as they thought he might be a bomber, even though the Taser could have set off a bomb.

  This policy will cause officers to be more thoughtful when deploying these weapons. This should reduce the misuse of Tasers and potential harm. However, when the weapons are regrettably used we at least get to see the return of the jolting PC to our TV screens.

  16

  TO INTRODUCE THE

  1967 ABORTION ACT

  INTO NORTHERN,

  IRELAND

  NORTHERN IRLAND IS no newcomer to fighting progressive legislation, homosexuality being a case in point – legalised in 1967 in the rest of the UK but illegal in Northern Ireland until 1982. The delay was due in part to Ian Paisley’s fantastically named campaign, ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’. (Paisley had nothing to fear personally: the picture of him screaming the word ‘sodomy’ immunised him from any such eventuality.)

  But I confess to being shocked when the Belfast audience voted for the policy to introduce the 1967 Abortion Act into Northern Ireland. Until then, I thought that Northern Ireland operated under the same rules as the rest of the UK. But no, the law that applies in Belfast is the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act,17 a statute

  that was created before women could even vote, let alone voice concerns over their reproductive rights. This law is so antiquated that Section 26 of the Act makes it an offence for a master or mistress to inadequately feed and clothe a servant.

  Although women can get an abortion in exceptional circumstances, about 40 women a week travel from Northern Ireland to England for the operation. They can’t get the procedure on the NHS, so have to go private and pay between £600 and £2,000.

  Dawn Purvis, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, says that ‘the Labour government had a chance when they were putting through the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act [2008]. An amendment was put down to introduce the ‘67 Act but that didn’t happen. Leaders from the Northern Ireland Assembly wrote to the PM and said if they forced abortion into Northern Ireland it would damage the peace process. How can affording women reproductive rights threaten peace?’18

  Westminster unfortunately took the Assembly’s threats seriously, rather than enjoying the irony that former supporters of terrorism have become ardent defenders of the ‘right to life’. Neither did they see the irony of the Department for International Development’s paper of October 2009, outlining their position on safe and unsafe abortion. It reads: ‘In countries where it is legal, DfID will support programmes that make safe abortion more accessible. In countries where it is illegal and mortality and morbidity is high, DfID will make the consequences of unsafe abortion more widely understood, and will consider supporting processes of legal and policy reform.’19

  So the British government is willing to support the fight for abortion rights around the world – just not in Northern Ireland, the one place where they could make most progress really, really easily.

  17

  EVERYONE SHOULD BE

  ENTITLED TO PHONE

  IN WORK ONE DAY A

  MONTH AND CLAIM

  A ‘FUCK IT’ DAY OFF

  IN BRITAIN WE lose an incredible 27 working hours per person per year as a result of thinking of excuses for not going to work.20 Inevitably, a distracted workforce lacking in focus and concentration has a direct effect on productivity and efficiency.21

  Across Britain this amounts to significant reductions in profitability on
a company level and a lowering of the Gross Domestic Product on a national level. This policy seeks to redress this by removing the obstacle to efficiency. Instead of wasting time thinking of ways to avoid work, we should simply provide employees with a viable and all-encompassing excuse: the ‘fuck it’ day.

  Unlike the ‘duvet day’, the ‘fuck it’ day offers employees the option of leaving the house instead of remaining on the sofa, as there is no fear of being caught playing football or being found drunk in a pub at lunchtime.

  What’s not to like?

  18

  EVERYONE SHOULD

  BE GIVEN THE DAY OFF

  ON THEIR BIRTHDAY

  EVERYONE DESERVES THIS policy. Consider the occasions when we do get days off. We have bank holidays – and frankly, if ever there was an industry that deserves to have its nose to the grindstone, it is banking. We celebrate Jesus’s birthday and it’s not as if he’s around to have any cake. Then there is May Day, international workers’ day, where we celebrate working people by not working. There are even days off to remember Jesus’s death. We have holidays for all sorts of nonsense, while the one thing we don’t get to celebrate is our individual selves.

  Any sane and decent land would give folk the day off on their birthday. We therefore declare any employer who opposes this policy to be a flint-hearted curmudgeon of such Dickensian proportions as to make Sir Fred Goodwin appear a kindly Quaker by comparison. We further declare that such a person will more than likely have shunned the joy of love, family and friends in an obsessive vision of work-obsessed tyranny. They will die alone, their final gasps will be to an empty room, and their laying to rest will see no tears or sorrow. And just to really rub it in, we will declare the day they die to be a public holiday.