BANKING

Many of the recent problems of banking (credit crunch etc) were caused partly by deliberately engineered over-complexity. Few people even understand the complexities of pensions and investments - and get taken for a ride as a consequence. Ordinary people could be much helped and their lives made more secure if this whole sector was simplified and better regulated.

In particular I would support re-introduction of the Glass Steagall divide - a technical term but in essence to separate out retail (everyday) and investment banking. This was removed in 1999 following lobby group pressure. Ever since, banks have played 'fast and loose' with depositors' money knowing that if they won their 'bets' they would gain huge profits and if they lost, the taxpayers would ultimately have to pick up the bill - it happened in 2009. If the Glass- Steagall firewall was reinstated, bankers would once again have to risk losing their own money.

Bank bonuses are obscene but the Conservative proposal for taxing banks is not the answer - the costs will just be passed onto consumers. No scheme for controlling these gloating parasites will work unless it is applied globally - but I would support such schemes. Much of the 'financial services' industry is not socially or environmentally useful - it is merely shuffling money around in circles and creaming fees off the top at every rotation. The UK Conservative Party has so many 'banker' contacts and supporters I have to doubt their resolve in dealing with the excesses of recent years. The rich Tory George Osborne (Little George in the Press) seems particularly useless.

I wish to see a vastly simplified banking and financial services sector as well as a sizeable decrease in the 'welfare state'. This has got to the stage under Labour 'tax and spend' policies of handing out benefits to about half the households in the land. It is all quite ridiculous, absurdly complicated and open to widespread fraud and abuse. It needs radical overhaul. Frank Field MP produced some sensible ideas and was promptly sacked by Blair.

We have a large number of 'problem families', those in which no-one has ever worked. Many are either involved in or on the fringes of crime and the whole sad spectacle is costing BILLIONS in social benefits. Fraud is also a massive problem, as with any system that becomes so complex that even those administering it cannot fathom the intricacies. This really has to stop. It would be far more cost effective and environmentally friendly to limit the production of children into households and to parents who were the least well equipped to raise them. Of particular interest here is a small American organisation (add link).

I would like to see an end to HUNDREDS of quangos - these seem to be created just so the friends, spouses and political acquaintances of MPs can have jobs for life shuffling paper around in circles and producing hundreds of glossy reports - which no-one ever probably reads. Local Government produces far too much paper and has grown fat on overstaffing but it is quangos that need cutting first and foremost. I would start with the Campaign for Racial Equality (or whatever it is called these days). These 'do-gooders' have achieved little other than discrimination against the white working class of the UK - one reason why support for the BNP is now so strong from these voters. Even the dolts in the Labour party have at last woken up to this fact!

'Big government projects' especially with computer systems have proven grossly expensive and often not fit for purpose. They are popular with politicians in part because so many can earn money promoting them or taking directorships. They are also good for 'kudos' and 'making a mark'. The NHS computer system costing BILLIONS of pounds is one good example. The world needs more small scale local projects, not incompetent grandiose monuments to vanity.

I wish to develop and publicise my method for illustrating how much wildlife has already been lost from the world and how much is likely to be lost if we continue 'business as usual'. Few if any environmental groups seem to know how to present data so it can most readily be assimilated by non-scientists. I have lectured on this - and wish to see my ideas more widely applied. I give an example below (at the bottom of this page).

I would wish to campaign against excessive NOISE everywhere - on roads, near airports, in schools, on housing estates, in shops, and in libraries.

I would argue for VERY RESTRICTED house building or other projects on green-field sites in the UK. Sometime, this simply has to stop and now seems a good time! The population of the UK should be gradually reduced to maybe 50 million or even fewer. Even at that level we would be 'overpopulated' by the standards of many other countries that enjoy a higher standard of living. There is employment to be generated in upgrading the existing housing stock of the UK to cope with more expensive energy in future years. Governments have given this and other important projects a low priority because they are not 'sexy' and do not generate headlines. Yet they are both essential and urgent.

I would campaign for 'slow transport' - in an age when the emphasis of all governments is on faster and faster transport - investing BILLIONS of pounds on reducing journey times by a few minutes or half an hour. What for? Energy use will usually be lower if you travel more slowly and this needs to be encouraged and made the norm - on roads, by rail and especially by air. I would argue there should probably be NO MORE motorways NO MORE airports or airport expansion or even no more major rail lines. We need to make better use of those we have already, improve them a bit where necessary and reduce the pressures by reducing population and the absurd expectation that people can and should be able to travel anywhere on the Earth many times a year and at high speed. A severe limit on immigration would be only one part of reducing transport demand.

I would like to see a determined and high level campaign against litter, along the lines of that advocated by CPRE - but with Local Councils acting responsibly and not as morons, fining people for dropping part of a tomato! It needs to become a part of every community simply not to tolerate litter. In Sidmouth and elsewhere along the coast, beaches are littered with plastic waste of all descriptions - waste that will not degrade for 10,000 years or longer and that will continue to kill wildlife long after it has been washed out of sight. All of this needs to stop. If it can be done in Singapore it can be done in England.

I would like to see the UK become more self sufficient in food - even the Labour party have got this message if you believe recent pronouncements by Hilary Benn! The future world will not be one of plenty and free exchange of all goods and services. It will be one where self-sufficiency in energy and food are priorities. Planning do achieve this needs to start now.

I support genuinely useful 'renewable energy' but more needs to be done to REDUCE use of energy in the UK (and elsewhere). This means reducing 'material' standards of living and questioning the onward march of waste that is inherent in the 'consumer society' that is applauded by most politicians - especially Tories who have fingers in retail pies (shops and manufacturing). No 'standard-issue' politician would be brave enough to risk the wrath of the Whips in Parliament to question the 'consumer society' - yet it needs to be said.

I wish to see a very firm line taken on all 'illegal' drugs and the phasing out of tobacco completely. I would also like to see alcohol consumption markedly reduced - although increasing tax even more seems unfair on responsible social drinkers. No government has admitted the scale of the illegal drugs problem and what is likely be be necessary to combat it.  As a part of this I would like to see that laws are changed to ensure that CRIME DOES NOT PAY. Present levels of confiscation of assets hardly prick the surface of the drugs trade -a more robust approach is needed both to the drugs trade and to other high-level economic crime - that driven merely by the lure of easy money.

Drug culture is responsible directly or indirectly for over 50% and maybe 80% of all crime. Legalising many drugs (as the Lib Dems have advocated) is a recipe for more misuse including an increase in road deaths and injuries. Many are now caused by people being under the influence of drugs other than alcohol. It is a large unseen problem.

For EVERY premeditated and deliberate crime where the motive was economic (stealing money, fraud, dealing drugs, corruption, etc) there should be a requirement for wrong-doers to forfeit and/or payback ALL of the money even if it means confiscation of ALL their assets and making them work for the rest of their lives with no benefit to themselves. If they refuse to work they don't get fed. Simple. And prison cells for these offenders would not include TV, drugs, mobile phones, central heating or internet terminals. At the moment crime pays - and pays well. That is why there is so much of it.

Different systems are needed to cope with otherwise decent people who just 'flipped' under pressure and maybe killed a nagging wife or bullying husband. There is little point in keeping them in jail for long periods - they are unlikely to re-offend. This example is included just to illustrate that prison reform is long overdue. It doesn't make sense to pay £50,000 to £80,000 to keep people in jail for a year when they are no risk to the community and when they could be working productively clearing litter or sweeping the streets.

Local policing needs to become far more focussed on the crimes that are difficult to deal with yet cause residents the most distress. Gangs of feral youths are a prime example - but (thankfully) not in East Devon. The lives of people on housing estates are made a misery for years, the police do next to nothing and when a decent person snaps and confronts the youths, he or she is either murdered by the yobs or arrested by the police for assault. The Police should be ashamed of themselves in the way they have handled many of the cases that have been publicised. Just as there should be an absolute right to defend ones home and possessions (using anything other than grossly unreasonable force) so there should be an absolute right to confront yobs - and litter-louts.

MY WEBSITE and CAMPAIGNING

I wish to update and expand my SeeRed website - this has already widely read for its coverage of Sidmouth Town Council and East Devon District Council.

I would like it to extend it to document 'life at Westminster' from the point of view of an 'environmental scientist'. Few MPs know anything about science and few really care a jot about the environment. They are more interested in short term votes. I believe it would be useful to document just how ignorant some of these people are. Also, the systems of Parliament need to be completely overhauled. People rush around the country claiming expenses just to be there to vote - quite absurd.

I have lectured on data presentation. Here is one of the methods I have used to show the scale of environmental destruction and waste of government money. Central government computer systems procurement is so chaotic that a conservative estimate of waste is £5 billion (the bright green area shown below). Yet more fuss has been generated by illegal and/or inappropriate MPs expenses that have amounted to maybe only £1 million - 5000 times less. These numbers mean nothing to most people. The diagram below is a much better way of explaining things - I would wish to see far more government data presented in this way.

If you don't believe your eyes, the green area was created as 1200 by 600 pixels or 720,000 area units. The black area was 12 by 12 pixels or 144 units. The area ratio is 720,000/144 = 5000, which is also the ratio between 5 billion and 1 million. Most people get more excited about small sums of public money that are misused - because they relate more to everyday life. Yet it is more important to address the much larger problem of waste at a higher level.

Now for an environmental example (taken from one or two of my ancient lectures).

How to present data to the public so they can better appreciate how much of Life on Earth has already been lost, and how much is likely to be lost within 50 to 100 years if we continue 'business as usual'? This would include further deforestation, more palm oil plantations, new airports and the like.

Most environmental groups talk in terms of hundreds of whales, thousands of dolphins, tens of thousands of seabirds, and so on. These numbers mean absolutely nothing - people retain no visual or other memory. Many people have trouble understanding a grocery bill, let alone spreadsheets.

Now consider what Sir James Lovelock has called 'the achingly beautiful world' that existed before mankind started to destroy swathes of it. Excerpts are from 'The Revenge of Gaia'.

In this world - a mere two hundred years ago, most contemporary animal and plant species would have been present at their 'equilibrium' or 'natural' level. Of course, individual species would fail, others would evolve to take their place, but as a snapshot of the natural world as it should still be, 200 years seems about right. This is long enough after the last ice age (10,000 years ago) for life to have moved back to all areas of the Earth from the tropics, where many species sought refuge.

Now imagine that each species is represented as a single vertical line as shown. If the line is wholly blue, the species is present in 'correct' or natural numbers. If half blue and half purple, 50% of its number have been wiped out. If the line is all purple, the species is extinct.

To represent all life adequately, there would be maybe 100,000 lines. Now arrange all the lines for small species (bacteria, insects) at the left and all very large ones (sharks, elephants, whales) to the right. As a snapshot of 'The State of the Earth' it would be easy to remember. Better still would be to have a separate diagram for all sea life, one for mammals, one for insects, and another for birds, and so on. On the birds picture, tiny hummingbirds would be at the left, golden eagles to the right.

Now you have an easily assimilated way of presenting a mass of data - and one that most people find easy to remember. Governments don't present much of their data in this way - perhaps because they would prefer that you didn't understand it! Few people know (or care?) that in large areas of the ocean, 90% or more of life has already been wiped out. A diagram like this for sea life across the world would already be almost wholly purple.

The new East Devon area - much changed from the last election. Details are on this page.

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