It's Raining Proof!

It is suddenly raining proof that the UK's Coalition Government is doing something right. I've just read an editorial piece in the Financial Times this morning (March 11) stating that Britain needs an activist chancellor. With the utmost respect to my publishing alma mater, I take that as clear proof that the dreaded Osborne is on the right track, even if he is nowhere near extreme enough.

Personally, I'd privatise the National Health Service overnight, and get it off the books. Give the buildings and equipment to the staff, tell them they will be paid as usual for a year, and to get on with preparing for life once that year is up.

I'd abolish the welfare system as it stands, and start again from scratch. The measure of a civilised society is how it looks after those who are unable to look after themselves, not doling out allowances to young, fit people who do not have a job.

My nephew and his fiancée have just returned to the UK after two years working as English language teachers in South Korea. Within eight days they both had jobs.

Nor should the state be financing child care. At least one member of each couple makes a decision to begin having children. Why should the state shield them from the financial consequences. But then I'm a dinosaur who believes that, by and large, the best people to look after children are their parents.

Make education at all levels voluntary, but charge for it. Only those who want education will go to school. Parents shelling out hard cash will have a greater incentive for their children to maximise the opportunities on offer.

Scrap the armed forces. The name 'Ministry of Defence' is a misnomer. It should be called the Ministry of Attack. Take outsourcing to its logical conclusion and sub-contract defence, as and when it is required, to the USA. It kind of worked out OK in WWII.

These departments are THE big consumers of our cash. Fiddling around with a couple of million here and there won't bring about the change that is needed. We need to think big. Take health, education, welfare and defence out of spending, and you can make real inroads into reducing the role of the state in everyone's everyday life, and leave taxpayers with more of their own money to spend as they will. Not as the Government commands.

Dr Liam Fox is starting to make some of the right noises. But he goes nowhere near far enough.

ps I'd also scrap foreign aid. Not because charity begins at home. But because it creates welfare dependency. I've been guilted about Africa since I started school at four and a half years of age, and started donating precious pennies to the Black Babies. The imagery being used today to encourage the same giving looks strikingly familiar. Aid doesn't seem to have done much to change the way Africa prefers to work.