1: People with over £300,000 in assets should not get their pension.
This is ridiculous, as "assets" these days are probably not just considered as cash / savings, but estate values too... You'd be hard pressed to find a house in London costing you less than 300,000. What this is suggesting is stopping any form of pension. If you have paid into the state pension all your life you should be entitled to the same you put in. Otherwise, what was the point!?
2: Charge for Freedom of Information requests.
The point he makes is very valid. I would agree that charging here would seem to cut the gap generated. However, how is this implemented? remember that the freedom of information act is a piece of legislation that covers EVERYTHING... and charging for it would actually likely go against itself (as the information is no longer available freely!) Interesting, but probably unworkable.
3: Scrap Trident.
You get to a point where you have invested so much time and money into something that it would be more of a waste to throw it away than carry on. I'm not certain if scrapping trident would be the best answer... You do also have to consider the whole point of a deterrant such as this, and its use not only now, but in the future. There is an entire discussion here alone.
4: Stop smoking breaks. If seven smokers take four 15-min breaks in a day, that equates to a full time job!?
Smoking breask should NEVER be allowed. However, if smokers use their "normal" breaks to smoke then there is no issue. The problem comes when a person who smokes works less than someone who doesn't just because of their habit. An employer should not have to cater for a smoker not working, just as they would not allow a non-smoker to step outside for "fresh air breaks"... In this case, it's not actually discrimating against smokers, but a case of discriminating against non-smokers... Sorry chuckles, but if you have a habit, you can deal with it on your own time...
5: The elderly face the possibility of paying and contributing to the cost of care homes. I believe it costs approx £40k per prisoner per year. Charge prisoners for their upkeep.
Considering that point 1 suggests removing pensions, it would be interesting to also extract more money from them! However, charging prisoners for their own upkeep is not as stupid as it sounds. My favourite would be to put them to work, you know, making number plates and doing laundry, all that sort of American stuff!
6: Let's have fewer local councillors.
Perhaps this should be lets have a few better councillors. Barnet council councillors recently voted themselves to have a 100% pay rise. Only after a severe backlash from residents did they decide to "take a vote" to return to their old pay... These people should not be allowed to make up their own rules.
8: Tax foreign vehicles using our roads.
As long as there is road tax, it should be a tax for everyone using the road. Customs / border patrol or whoever deals with this sort of thing, should charge per car per length of stay, to ensure that although there will be a charge it would not be prohibitive.
9: The Civil Service is ludicrously bloated. There are 525,000 employees, all on incremental pay scales that rise automatically. There are also hundreds languishing in non-jobs, because of the crippling cost of making them redundant. Civil servants have one of the most lucra- tive redundancy deals in the country. For example, a 46-year-old earning £40,000 who had been a civil servant for 25 years could enjoy a cash payment of about 6.2 years' salary on retirement, or around £300,000. Cutting this to one year's salary as redundancy payment would save £6bn over 10 years.
Whilst great on paper this is exactly the sort of thing which the government simply wouldn't be able to get around. Talk of job losses never seems to go down well, and will always reflect badly. Regardless of how much we can agree with the above.
I'll be back with more interesting ones later...
