Election 2010: Eureka! At last, I can see what David Cameron is on about

Benedict Brogan, of the LabourGraph, thinks he can vaguely see the point of David Cameron. Well, good for him. This was my response:

Jack Maturin on April 01, 2010 at 09:36 AM

"the training of 5,000 community organisers, who will fan out across the country to encourage local involvement; requiring civil servants to take on community service"

Will they all be wearing red bandanas, holding hands, and singing the Internationale, while they diffuse through our "communities" (or should I say, "soviets"), spreading spiritualist joy and brotherhood?

And Cameron wonders why nobody is going to bother voting for him?

I know. How about this for a speech opening, instead. Let's see how this resonates:

"On my first day in office we will start shredding all of the records that the state holds on individuals. We shall abolish income tax, entirely, for everyone, and pay for this by halving the number of civil service employees in Whitehall. Similarly, we shall halve the number of government departments.

"We shall keep the cutting going, until the income tax bill is paid for.

"We shall also make a bonfire of government regulations, and hold an immediate referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

"If, as I suspect, the treaty is rejected by the British people and the EU refuses to release us from its bonds, I shall unilaterally remove this country from the EU.

"To put further funds back into the pockets of the people, from whence it came, I shall immediately abolish the BBC licence fee and privatise this grossly over-staffed and over-paid organisation. I will divide out the proceeds from the privatisation and send the entire sum out as individual cheques to every household in the country which currently pays a licence fee.

"We shall also abolish all of the following taxes - death duties, inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, stamp duty taxes, and corporate taxes. All of these tax cuts will be paid for by cutting all local authority salary bills in half and by putting salary caps on all government and local government positions.

"Under my government, no public sector official of any kind will receive a salary greater than £100,000 pounds a year, which I think is generous enough by anyone's standards. All salaries, for all public servants, will also be published each year on the Internet, along with job descriptions, and all other employment benefits.

"We shall introduce Swiss-style control of local authorities. Should anyone see a local official's salary as being too high or their job description being too vague, they will be able to initiate a local referendum to have that official removed from their position. A simple majority vote will suffice to carry this out. This measure will ensure that from now on, all local authority employees will act in a way which best serves their salary providers, rather than behaving as officious tyrants.

"To establish a strong and diverse education for the people of this country, it will then be my ambition to entirely remove the state from the provision of education.

"To kick-start this programme, we will immediately introduce rebates to all parents who take or keep their children out of the state education system. For each child kept out of the state system, parents will receive a cheque of £5,000 pounds per child per year. There will be no conditions attached to these rebates. It is not our intention to take over what remains of the private system through the stealth of education vouchers.

"There will also be no taxes of any kind imposed on any business starting a new school. So as well as enjoying zero corporate taxes, along with every other business in the country, thus stimulating enormous growth in wealth and employment, all fee-paying schools will also be exempt from VAT and any other government tax.

"Any business which has a school building plan rejected by any local authority will also be able to appeal to directly to my office at number 10 to have these rejections overturned. All local authority planning officers who reject such school building plans will then be invited to explain to me personally why they are blocking the education requirements of British children.

"We plan to give back this country to the people of Great Britain, by shredding as many regulations and as many taxes as we can. We shall keep reducing government interference in business and the employment of government regulators, until we are left with a hard-core of civil servants who actually do something useful. We do not think there will be many left by the time we finish.

"So let me make my intentions clear. I do not see government as a solution. I see it as the problem. For too long it has sucked the life-blood out of the British people, growing larger and more incompetent with each generation, feasting upon the energy and talents of the tax-paying majority, and feeding this wealth into the immoral hands of a tax-eating minority. Now is the time to reduce this monster and to turn it back into a servant rather than a master. I am the man to do this job. Give me the power and I will get the job done.

"In short, I will get the government out of your lives."

That would certainly give me something of a 'Eureka' moment. Until Cameron delivers a speech even anywhere near that above, don't bother talking to me about bothering to vote conservative until either Daniel Hannan or Boris Johnson take over the party.

At that point politics will get interesting again, assuming that Mandelson hasn't gerrymandered the whole thing sufficiently to make elections worthless soviet-style jokes.

Until then I've got more important things to do than worry about voting conservative, such as getting rid of the moss from my lawn.