Your 5 policies

[MungoChutney]

38 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

Dunno. Poor kids with cheaper clothes always suffer with this. What I’d do is say if there is a uniform, it has to be provided free of charge. I’d also make all school dinners free. If it’s the law that children have to be in a place for 8ish hours a day, they should be fed. 

Agree completely on school dinners but there's inequality in school that goes beyond the uniform with shoes, bags and jackets etc. Its main function is compliance but if we can introduce UBI the equality side of things is reduced further. 

[westlondonmist]

1 hour ago, MungoChutney said:

1. Universal basic income. It's been explained by others already but it's something that could address many of the issues we see in the UK today. 

2. Ban school uniform. The argument that it helps fight inequality is nonsense. So is the idea that it somehow helps children learn. It teaches them compliance and we need less compliant young people. 

3. Anything relating to health, social care or education will be free and delivered by the state or not for profit organisations. Private enterprise profiting from care and education will be banned. 

4. Private rental will be allowed but only if the landlord passes strict licensing exams, regular inspections and uses 50% of their profits to improve the property. Rents will be capped based on a figure related to the universal basic income. 

5. All chippies must declare whether they are 'Chippy only' or 'Chippy plus'. The former cannot sell anything hot that does not come out of the main fryer. 

I actually believe in school uniform. However I think it should be badgeless. The school just does grey trousers/skirt with a red/blue/green jumper. Sadly this isn't what schools generally do. 

I've seen schools were you need to buy bags, pe shorts, pe trousers, pe jumpers and shirts. All with logos and totalling over £100. We just used to wear white shorts and tees.

[Keith Houchen]

24 minutes ago, westlondonmist said:

I've seen schools were you need to buy bags, pe shorts, pe trousers, pe jumpers and shirts. All with logos and totalling over £100. We just used to wear white shorts and tees.

Yep, was shocked when my girlfriend’s sister was telling me how she had to get specific items from specific shops. Rotten. 
 

When I were a lad, we were povvy and got money from the boot fund. You know how Heartbeat signalled the end of the weekend? Well us all getting marched into town to the Co-Op to use the vouchers to get uniforms for the new school year told us summer holidays was over and hell was about to begin. 

[Donald J Trump]

Christ knows how I'd have survived school without these little bits and pieces of financial help and support we got. Me and the rest of the urchins had to queue up daily for a dinner token, which we could redeem in the canteen for the school dinner equivalent of prison loaf. I ended up falling in with a middle class crowd, who always came to school with enough cash to hit the shops and spend big at lunchtime. Rather than get left behind, I had a regular buyer who took the token off my hands for a reduced percentage of it's trade in value. In some respects it was a bum deal but it felt like a win-win. He was able to get more prison loaf for his buck from the canteen and I got actual money I could spend in a shop. There were always more prospective buyers than there were dinner tokens on the market and an entire stairwell was dedicated to this illicit trade in school dinners. My buyer paid well, and between us we ensured that that we didn't get pulled into the undignified spectacle of a token auction. The authorities largely turned a blind eye to it, perhaps knowing that a crackdown would fuel a shoplifting epidemic when scroats like me found ourselves without a bean. 

[Merzbow]

It's probably far too late and they'd all just laugh at us now but joining BRICS would be a legit thing I want to do, I'd always said we should have bowed down to Emperor Xi the moment we left the EU instead of whatever US deals that don't do shit.

[MungoChutney]

12 hours ago, westlondonmist said:

I actually believe in school uniform. However I think it should be badgeless. The school just does grey trousers/skirt with a red/blue/green jumper. Sadly this isn't what schools generally do. 

I've seen schools were you need to buy bags, pe shorts, pe trousers, pe jumpers and shirts. All with logos and totalling over £100. We just used to wear white shorts and tees.

I wouldn't mind that as a compromise but I don't think it addresses the central issue of controlling children.  It's a short step from you must wear uniform to you cannot have a certain hairstyle, which also happens a lot in the UK. I do agree the primary justification for it would be as an equality measure. However, if we address that in other ways, uniform is not needed.

Countries like Finland who have a well performing education system think we're mental for enforcing uniform. It hinders children's development and reduces freedom of expression to fit in with school expectations. 

[LEGIT]

Legalise pot to pay for the potholes.

Free to park anywhere unless you're being a prick and encroaching on a pavement or driveway etc.

Shopkeepers can sell anything legal (bevvy, fags, vapes etc) without having to fight tooth and nail for licenses.

Abolish VAR.

Subsidise kids football tops so they can get their country's top for no more than 20 quid, not the £100-150 it can be, encouraging all the kids of England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland to wear their country's top with pride.

Edited May 5 by LEGIT

[SuperBacon]

11 minutes ago, LEGIT said:

Subsidise kids football tops so they can get their country's top for no more than 20 kwid, not the £100-150 it can be, encouraging all the kids of England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland to wear their country's top with pride.

Sounds more like a punishment if I'm honest.

[LEGIT]

23 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Sounds more like a punishment if I'm honest.

There's no better character building than supporting a club or country that plays shite on a regular basis.

[SuperBacon]

Just now, LEGIT said:

There's no better character building than supporting a club or country that plays shite on a regular basis.

That's exactly what I tell my 11yo every time we watch Spurs

[westlondonmist]

4 hours ago, MungoChutney said:

I wouldn't mind that as a compromise but I don't think it addresses the central issue of controlling children.  It's a short step from you must wear uniform to you cannot have a certain hairstyle, which also happens a lot in the UK. I do agree the primary justification for it would be as an equality measure. However, if we address that in other ways, uniform is not needed.

Countries like Finland who have a well performing education system think we're mental for enforcing uniform. It hinders children's development and reduces freedom of expression to fit in with school expectations. 

Yeah I get that it's treating the symptom rather than treating the cause. 

I think schools in general don't help creativity. Too many standardised exams. Im Not against standardised exams per say, but I think it's too heavy on them. I felt school asked you for correct answers based on what the exam board has decided what is right. Very little, if any, debate and argument. Even with literature, at least when I was at school, you were taught to interpret a book/play in a certain way rather than discuss what you yourself saw.

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

Quite simple for me:

 

Nigel Owens to be Speaker of the House 

 

All hospital visits are charged at £20. Refunded immediately if you're admitted. Non-refundable if you're taking the piss or wasting time. £10 for GP appointments with the same caveat as above.

 

ALL public sector workers to get a payrise of 2% above inflation every year. If providers are allowed to raise their prices every year, then wages need to go up too.

 

Nationalise all utilities and transport.

 

Ban non-competitive sports and events in schools. Once you leave school you need to be ready to fight your way through life and having a 'soft touch' approach won't usually work. 

[WeeAl]

Since I'm just back from a run on the local back roads and this first one is in my head;

1) Compulsory purchase all old/vacant/rundown properties, that let's be honest, are usually on farmland. These could be renovated into either social/affordable housing, or sometype of outreach centre, or shelter.

Without even having to add to the amount of buildings that are already in, say, greenbelt areas, if that's part of the issue. I passed this morning at least 14 such places. Just rotting away, probably the original farmhouse, son/daughter moved away, Inherited the farm and house, but already had their own place so the homestead gets boarded up. Or someone has passed away with no will and no obvious next of kin, so again, it just sits there. 

2) If we must have insurance, for whatever, car, travel, home, whatever we need it for. There has to be a tier, if that's what it would take, that you can pay where there's zero wriggle room for them to get out of paying up. 

3) Nationalisation obviously. Of it all. Electric, water, heating, transport etc. 70+ years ago the rail system here was so far advanced compared to what it is now. You would have had a hard time going more than a mile to a station, and the old railway network covered the whole of the country. They ripped it to bits and now there are hardly any trains and they only service the coastal area. Backwards. 

4) MLA'S/MP's can't be paid more than the average of the local area they live in/represent. Nor can they get a pay rise unless other public sector workers do. 

5) A full time working week being 30-33 hours. No loss in pay. I need some extra free time to waste on the bog flicking through this place. 

Edited May 6 by WeeAl

[SuperBacon]

2 minutes ago, WeeAl said:

5) A full time working week being 30-33 hours. No loss in pay. I need some extra free time to waste on the bog flicking through this place. 

Agree with this, but you should be pooing on the company dime my friend.

[WeeAl]

19 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Agree with this, but you should be pooing on the company dime my friend.

Well, that happens too. But the amount of time the work mobile rings just after I hit the toilet seat, I'd swear they're waiting for it on purpose. Would mean less "sorry I missed your call because . . ." Excuses having to be come up with.