Let’s face it, the UK has a number of Sacred Cows that only exist only because most political parties are scared to do anything to/about them and whilst the career politicians avoid them to avoid a drop in their ratings they just get fatter and fatter draining the taxpayers money. Now I propose we start afresh, with a new perspective on the situation, where nothing is untouchable and therefore nothing is safe from cuts simply because it would be bad pr to slice off the fatty layer of waste and bureaucracy that encases so many of the UK’s services. Let’s not be afraid to look to other successful nations for inspiration and most of all lets not be afraid to put the good of the country above positive P.R.,it’s now time to change these sacred cows into that quintessinally British meal, Roast Beef

(Though I could write for hours about everything from transport to policing to farming subsidies I’ll limit myself to two points)

The first issue I want to tackle is that of Education: being in the third year of my university studies myself I beleive I have a reasonably level of first hand experience of the system and it’s downfalls. First of all I’m not going to deny that out educational standards are excellent compared to some nations, but it’s also impossible to deny they could be better, in fact I have a very strong feeling that we are selling the youth of our country pipe dreams, by ploughing people into university we aren’t doing them any favours. At the end of the day like any sort of market (for that’s what choosing a degree/university is comparable to for the prospective student) if you churn out a lot of degrees it makes them all worth a lot less (a sort of degree hyperinflation you could say), I mean think about it, if you are one of five thousand students with a law degree that degree will be worth more than if you’re one of fifty thousand (Oxbridge is the only real exception as it’s reputation protects it from most of these worries regarding employment.)

By putting students who have no chance of achieving a job that is worth their investment (which could be upto £27,000 for tuition fees alone) we are betraying our youth, in fact if it was a business you’d expect there to be some sort of investigation regarding misrepresentation, but the sacred cows of the public sector thrive on the naivety of our youth, they like to paint all degrees as ultimately useful and sell themselves on choice picked statistics (and they also reveal their true colours/worries when you see their hostile reaction to private and successful institutions such as BPP, which possesses a 94% employment rate). With some of the statistics you see some universities achieving regarding employment after one of their degrees, it’s a wonder that their degree is seen as a positive addition to anyone’s cv and not just a white elephant, indeed as an employer I would rather see that a candidate had gone out to work than got a degree in the philosophy of outward bound holidays from midlands metropolitan new university, judgement is a valuable skill in the jobs market and to have a poor judgement, that has taken up 3 or 4 years of your life and cost you up to £27k, hanging round your neck like a millstone is never going to be a good thing.

To me there seems to be a a few simple solutions,

• Suspend the universities that aren’t achieving levels of employment/teaching quality that should be expected for the time and money invested into studying one of their courses, 
• Tighten up entry requirements (I know students that only achieved a single E at sixth form due to lack off effort and yet somehow are now studying at university, in my opinion an E is not demonstrative of academic leanings)
• Offer a credible vocational alternative (I believe 60% of people currently at uni would be better doing some sort of qualify as you work scheme)

However obviously the education system isn’t limited to University, if we look at Finland which is one of the top countries for education we see a very different system indeed.

• Children start school aged 7 (2-3 years later than in the UK)
• Exams first occur in the mid teens (I remember being taught simply how to pass exams from Year 6 onwards, which is rather worrying in hindsight) meaning the children also aren’t measured/graded until they’re 6 years into their education.
• There is only one mandatory educational test which occurs aged 16 (a lot better than SAT’s every few years in my opinion, which in hindsight didn’t really affect my life/aspirations, especially not with regards to how much time was invested in them)
• All children, regardless of ability are taught together (with around 30% receiving extra help in their first 9 years of study.) 
• Science Classes are capped at 16 students so every lesson can involved practical experiments
• Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom (a hell of a lot less than UK teachers) and are given 2 hours a week for professional development (like most professions)
• All teachers have a masters degree (which is state sponsored) however these teachers have to come in the top 10% of graduates (with 10 people applying for every job)
• The national curriculum is only a very broad set of guidelines, allowing teachers to modify it to how they best see it working
• Aged 16 students chose from academic and vocational pathways, with only the top sector of the academic students going to University

When we look at the results

• 93% of students finish high/secondary school
• Aged 16 the gap between the weakest and the strongest is the smallest in Europe
• In a global student test regarding skills, Finland came towards/at the top in reading, science and mathematics.

Yet our bloated education system plods along with a huge gap between selective state schools and some inner city schools, ridiculous amounts of testing, well known low requirements to become teachers and vast amounts of low/middle achievers going to university. If the Finnish system doesn’t appeal to you, why not look at the Swedish system where students get a voucher of a fixed amount that they can take to a private or state school which means that state schools standards are constantly in competition with private schools as they are a real alternative for most people rather than the elite position they occupy in the UK where it can be a major financial drain to educate your child at a private school.

It’s hard to deny that we have real problems with our educational system yet politicians so far have only taken tiny steps towards changing things, mere tokens of intention just aren’t acceptable if we wish to remain as a viable player in the world economy and continue producing outstanding academics, scientists and thinkers

Now I’m going to tackle possibly the greatest sacred cow and biggest parasite of them all, the NHS

Created over 60 years ago with good intentions, like some awful laboratory creation it’s overgrown all expectations and has broken free of any sense of restraint handing out frankly unnecessary cosmetic procedures (see my previous post for details of women being allowed breast enhancement because the surgeons thought it was too much hassle to turn them down) yet not providing possibly life saving cancer treatments.  And yet as soon as anyone even glances at trimming off some of its ulcerated waste the unions are up in arms, do they not realize it’s wasting their taxes too?

Once again we could take notes from Scandinavia’s examples, by charging a small fee for GP visits you can cut prescription costs (e.g. you might pay £10 per visit and that includes anything you may be prescribed as a result) and time wasting, both serious worries. All people legally resident in Sweden have to pay fees when accessing healthcare. These range from 140 kronor for a visit to a doctor to 200 kronor (£18) for an x-ray. Costs are capped at 900 kronor a year for doctor’s visits, and similar low amounts for other medical care. Patients are issued with ‘high cost cards’, which help ensure they don’t cough up more than they have to. By charging amounts such as this costs on the whole can be cut meaning more freedom is created for recruiting nurses etc.

I could rant on for hours about how ridiculous the NHS is and how badly it needs to change but I’ve already done that in the article I previously mentioned. However I do want to make it clear that increasing opportunities for private providers does not mean that the NHS is being sold off, competition is good, as it encourages poor standards to rise and high standards to be everybody’s aim (otherwise the company/organisation cannot sustain it’s position) and I cannot for the life of me see why even the most rabid communist would be opposed to the elimination of poor standards within our health service.

I’m 21 years old and a Conservative and that makes me quite a rare breed, I see a number of my contemporaries are either advocating anarchist, communist or some other form of nonsense-ist revolutions, others like to see themselves as edgy and out there liberals simply because they support same sex marriage and like the idea of legalising cannabis. Whilst I’m not saying that they should drop those views and accept that they can’t change anything (a passion for change fuels politics afterall) I would ask them to evaluate their stance and try and think about the bigger picture, I don’t really think legalising Cannabis is a good enough policy to accept all the other policies that accompany it.

It’s not like I don’t get my views and stance challenged on a regular basis either if I didn’t believe that the Conservatives were the best party I wouldn’t be a member and I don’t blame those challenging me, the Tories are afterall seen as a party for the rich and out of touch etc. However I would ask people who throw these allegations around to look at the most recent budget. In this budget we see the people that need relief getting it, we see the lowest earners getting relief in the form of increased tax allowance which will take 1 million people out of paying tax, everybody earning under 100k will be better off too and when you combine this with the council tax freeze it’s certainly not a bad thing at all!. And yes the 50p rate was cut, but by 5p, thats not a massive chunk, but it’s a big enough chunk for the people avoiding it to start paying taxes again. So let’s face it, this isn’t a budget for the fat cats, this is a budget for the everyday man/woman. The core of Conservative Party thinking is letting those who want to do well continue doing well - “an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay” is an interesting summary of this view, the hardworking men and women of the UK should not be continuing to subsidise the laziness of those who can but choose no to work. 

The next point I want to talk about is trust: the Conservatives believe the people should be trusted to run their own lives free from unreasonable levels of government intervention and meddling in individual’s private affairs (the levels of personal freedoms proposed vary from those in the Libertarian camp to those who subscribe to somewhat more socially conservative points of view), we also believe that local people know best about local affairs, so we’re cutting back on London-centric government and putting power in local peoples hands via projects such as Social Action. We believe that the community is a important thing and should be preserved, supported and encouraged to flourish. That’s why the NHS Reform Bill devolves the centralized power structure and puts power in locals hands, cutting out the paper pushers and leeches. We don’t believe people are inherently bad and therefore not to be trusted (as demonstrated by Labours depressingly negative views towards humanity where they pretty much suggest that the state knows better) but we do believe that if people breach this trust and commit crime they should be punished and that’s why we support an increase in frontline policing

Another policy and philosophy espoused by the party is that of healthy competition, the public university system has become bloated and is just pulling people in for the money by creating semi-legitimate courses in things that don’t really require a university education. So by supporting ventures such as BPP Law & Business School we are challenging the Sacred Cows of education. Monopolies are always a bad thing and lead to stagnation and a strangle hold on the system so healthy competition from the private sector means that a) public universities will have to step up their game and b) the consumer/student has the freedom to chose what they want to go for whether it be a traditional public education or a specialized private one.

So I urge any doubters in the Conservative Party to go and have a serious look at the website and read about the policies. I vote Conservative because I want to live in a society and country where I’m rewarded and recognized for my personal achievements, a country where my hard work doesn’t fund the laziness of others, a country that I can be proud to hand over to my children and a country that recognizes the uniqueness of every individual!

Nick Griffin, the glass eyed, demagogic and slightly comical leader of the British National Party currently represents the North West of England in the European Parliament. The son of a former Conservative Councillor, Nick was educated at private school and studied Law at Cambridge, emerging with a 2:2, his childhood wasn’t that different from many of Britain’s finest. However add reading Mein Kampf aged 14 and joining the National Front the same year and you end up with a very peculiar child who unsurprisingly grew into a peculiar adult. However as the figure head of the BNP he represents a (supposedly) intellectual class in this party mainly comprised of thugs, lead by a group of “nationalists” who have a glut of criminal convictions between them.

Most reasonable voters would be put off already and I haven’t even mentioned their policies. This party is seen as dangerous enough for it’s members to be banned from working in the prison service and the police force. Yet over half a million voters wished to see them in Westminster were disappointed to see them receive no seats in 2010 and just under a million voted them into the EU Parliament in 2009. However the stance taken so far by major parties of villyfying their members and policies is in my opinion a rather ridiculous one, clearly a lot of people support their views and I propose we examine their reasons for this. To tar all BNP voters as racist bigots may seem accurate when you read their manifesto and conduct however I believe a lot of BNP voters are average Brits who see the salvation of this country in the policy of the BNP. These voters see a rise in immigration and a fall in jobs and therefore the solution offered by the BNP that is very similar to a famous quote from South Park “they took our jobs”. Just like Nazi Germany it’s easier for people to scapegoat minorities rather than face up to the cold hard truth that through a culture of waste and laziness where immigrants were the only people who would do certain jobs (often involving long hours in not particularly nice conditions) combined with a global recession mean that the jobs just aren’t there, So immigrants are in a lose/lose situation with the BNP policy makers, they find work and they stole the jobs off a “native” or they struggle to find work and are “benefit scroungers”.

The obvious issue here is the overwhelming stupidity of this logic. So rather than the current tactic of ridicule and put downs how about the political mainstream rise above this and provide facts and figures that are undeniable proof the lies told by the BNP. By listening to the BNP voters worries and not ignoring them and trying to provide a tolerant solution that does resort to “sending them back” I’m sure we can make a inroads into bringing their voter base back to the mainstream. Most of these voters are not racist just very scared people who see the need for a quick fix, what needs to be explained is that there is no quick fix. 

The other BNP myth that needs to be debunked is the idea of “anglo saxon natives” or whatever they call the white majority, the simple fact is that noone is pure white british, the white scots are celts mixed with norse and picts, the white english are a mongrel race of celts, anglo saxon, roman, norse, norman blood all blended together. So since our ancestors didn’t come from here what gives us anymore right to live here than say a carribean family who came on the windrush? Sometimes I’m tempted to bang my head on a wall,  since a lot of people don’t seem to understand that we’re all bloody descended from immigrants. Once you remove the idea of the rights of natives to live here BNP policy is quickly reduced to white supremacy.

So my suggestion to the powers that be is to defeat the BNP not by ridiculing them or putting them in the corner and ignoring them but by engaging them in intelligent debates, defeating them with facts and figures, by listening to their voters worries and explaining why knee jerk reactions suggested by the BNP will not work. The more we discriminate against the BNP and highlight them as racist bigots the more voters they will get as this just plays into their conspiracy theories that the powers that be are out to get them. Let’s use intelligence, humanities greatest strength that is shared by people of all colours to break down their policies of ignorance and scaremongering. Otherwise there will be a battle for Britain on our hands and whilst the mainstream parties have sat around painting the BNP as extremists unlikely to win anything, the BNP will be out their winning the hearts and minds of very worried people to their cause of hatred and supremacy. Let’s ride above their petty games and be the better people.

I remember asking my Father the differences between the various UK political parties when the ‘97 election was ongoing (a primary school near to mine was being used as a polling station and that piqued my curiosity) and two of his answers stuck in my head; Labour according to him were a party that “wanted everyone to be as equal as possible regardless of how hard they worked or how clever they are” and he explained that the Conservatives were a party that “wanted to give everyone an equal opportunity to work hard and do well”  now that didn’t sound so amazing to me, one party were offering me the same deal whether I worked hard or not and the other was saying they’d give me a chance to work hard?

 However as I grew older, the idealism and rose tinted spectacles soon went, I realised that it was impossible for a system to work without everyone pulling their own weight and I increasingly realised  how unfair a system where people that work harder get taxed more to pay for people that can’t be bothered to work? And that’s when I decided that I wanted to become a Conservative.  

Conservatives are often caricatured as out of touch, however the way I see it is rather than the optimistic delusions of the Lib Dems and Labour they’re real, and therefore very much in touch. Contrary to popular belief we aren’t all upper class hailing from an estate in the home counties with a private school education followed by a jolly time at Oxbridge. Personally I come from a very much working class area that sits on the border of the industrial sprawl that is Teesside and the rolling moors of North Yorkshire, one of my primaries was part of a Educational Action Zone intended to tackle deprivation in the area and unemployment in my home town is sky high. My family aren’t ridiculously well off, my father comes from a farming family and is now a very successful area manager for a large agricultural company, my mother had an army upbringing, living in Cyprus, Hong Kong and Berlin whilst growing up, she’s a high ranking teacher specialising in Special Needs, so no I’m not upper class at all, and the fact is I’m not an exception to the rule, there are a lot of very normal Conservatives, who like me see that this party is the best choice for the country.

I believe that the Conservatives are the best choice for this country for a large number of reasons however here’s a few that are possibly the most important to me

• Unionism - We are the United Kingdom, the emphasis should be on unity, devolution has shown that the devolved regions simply end up getting a better deal than the majority of Brits (who are English)this isn’t fair and it also isn’t very United.
• The EU - There’s a wide spread of views within the Conservative Party ranging from a UKIP-esque view of abandoning the whole concept right through to the softer voices who suggest that the EU is a good thing but not in it’s current form. I’m somewhere in the middle but the fact that most of the Conservatives acknowledge that the EU as it is is bad is a major plus point for me
• Economic Policies - The cuts put in by the current Government might not be ideal however last time I checked we were in a recession, that means the economy isn’t ideal either, and contrary to what you might have been told “spend spend spend” doesn’t seem to work as a recession easer. The fact that this Government has had the backbone to cut back the bloated system that flourished under Labour really cements the my X in the box next to their name on the next ballot paper
• Freedom - not only scrapping ID cards but comprehensive reviews into issues regarding civil liberties is a major plus point in my books, Labour seemed to want to propagate a surveillance culture fuelled by fear which is something I absolutely cannot stomach
• Big Society not Government - cutting back unnecessary jobs and spending in Government was well overdue, there’s a lot of suits that are unneeded in the national bureaucratic leviathan, the Conservatives have proved that they have the balls to cut those unneeded jobs and put their powers and money into the hands of the normal people, after all who knows better about what they want/need 
• Education and Skills -  The new fees system has come under fire but at the end of the day if people want to do that degree badly enough that won’t stop them, the fact is that they’re also fairer. Restoring an emphasis on leaning outside of the academic environment was also a much needed change, some people don’t enjoy reading books and writing essays and would rather learn hands on and the Conservatives acknowledge that that’s fine.
• Immigration - This subject is always a dodgy one as Racism is a term thrown around far too easily nowadays, but the Conservatives have tightened up loopholes for people wishing to exploit the system, they’ve put caps on economic migrants, they’ve cleared a backlog of nearly half a million asylum cases. All of these are good things that will help Britain grow
• Environment  - We’ve launched a scheme to bring back otters to British Rivers, that’s pretty good if you ask me, by cleaning up the landscape and rivers we can have a better, cleaner and greener country to hand over to the next generation. Importing illegal timber is now a crime, therefore you won’t find any timber harvested from at risk regions in the UK (unless it’s illegally here).  Animal welfare standards are now higher and food labelling is now clearer so you can be confident about the quality of food you eat.
• Crime -  Gone are the arrest targets that were present under Labour, now there is only one target- To cut crime. The police are now accountable to Local Communities for the job they do (or don’t do). By Cutting bureaucracy the government have ensured Police Officers spend a lot less time on paperwork and more on the beat. 

All of these reasons and many more are why I’m proud to be a Conservative and why I’m proud of the work the work Conservative MPs are doing.