Dear Dominic
I hope you’re feeling better.
We sat round the kitchen table at supper last night, and tried to imagine, instead of the ‘new normal’, which is an increasingly annoying expression, what the ‘new wonderful’ could look like once Covid-19 recedes. After all, how can the taxi driver take you to the right station if you don’t even tell him were it is? Understanding that you are the ‘taxi driver’ these days, we thought we’d send the list to you.
In general, we want a kinder, gentler, cleaner and slower world. Vague concept? We don’t care; it’s what we want. Less growth at any cost, and more cuddliness.
We want sustainability to be at the heart of everything you organize for us. You know, carbon taxes up, cycle lanes everywhere, travel limited (for all of us, not just the poor) and agricultural chemicals down. Personally, can I have lots of curlews, please.
We want a more equitable society. Vague concept again? Yup, but we actually want it. We kind of see a direct link between the taxes we pay, and the suffering in society, so, whatever we earn, you can have more of it, if it helps.
We think we would like a Universal Basic Income, but we would certainly like an upper moral limit of £5 million on the annual pay packet.
Get Brexit done, by all means, but leave us with some friends. The reality is that people deal with people they like, and 2021 won’t be a good time for isolation. We can live with another year, if that’s what it takes.
We want no government contracts whatsoever to be awarded to, or state aid given to, any company that minimizes its tax payments to the point that it is taking the mickey. You know exactly who and what we mean, so just do it. And while you’re doing that, we don’t want dodgy oligarchs owning our capital’s best housing, laundering money, and taking up valuable court time with their pathetic divorce battles. Make there be a real price for dishonesty.
We are reluctant to believe that there isn’t some connection between the 320,000 homeless people and the 1.4 million second homes. Come up with some ideas. Build houses and rent them out yourselves. If you must build towers, put vertical gardens on them, so that they breathe, and are a pleasure to be in. Maybe some curlews here, too.
Make school fun. Yup, fun. Not some joyless wheeze through a changing forest of targets, exams and greyness in the name of God knows what. Bring back sport, (especially cricket), add in natural history and useful stuff like eye contact, filling duvet covers and soft, human skills. Test students no more than twice, and don’t start them at school at all till they are six. In fact, get rid of targets from everything, for ever. Be like Estonia.
With our health service, we would just like a grown-up national debate that makes a basic assumption that we are all able to understand that we can’t have everything, and thus allows us to tell you the things we feel are most important. And get cross-party consensus, however hard, and then take it out of politics. DE-football it, for once and for all.
We want a new settlement for the old. We are embarrassed and anxious at what Covid-19 has exposed, and the fact that it turns out that lots of old people had been self-isolating for years before all this kicked off. I volunteer to be Minister for the Old, as I gently become one.
Ban rolling 24 hour news in our national broadcaster. Anywhere else, if you can, as well. Very quickly, you will stop wanting to close it down, because it will now be doing a mix of stuff like it used to, and making gorgeous films about otters. And, in turn, you will stop making policy on the hoof to satisfy each journalist who asks the next question.
And don’t even think of applying VAT to Jaffa Cakes.
With best wishes
Roger
PS Did Boris chat to Prince Andrew about making bad situations worse before he did that Sunday broadcast, by any chance?
PPS Someone out there sent me a catering pack of Jaffa Cakes, which were delivered yesterday. Please reveal yourself. I love you. In about 175 blogs, it is the first payment I have ever had. I repeat, I love you.
Comments