Food supply and consumer goods do not need to be transported around the country – we need to develop a structure which enables people to buy local. Somerset is awash with apples at the minute, yet supermarkets still stock Chilean and elsewhere – crazy.
With higher wages hopefully people will, or should be encouraged to, buy quality goods which last rather than disposable.
Energy supplies and generation should use local resources wherever possible -solar, wind, wave, HEP, geothermal. This would remove customers from the vagaries of the global market.
The EU are introducing standards that ensure that consumer electrics can be repaired for a set number of years after manufacture – we need the same.
Manufacturing needs to be encouraged.
Above all we need to adjust the economic model so that growth is not the key driver. All firms should adopt the John Lewis model of profit sharing, unions should be represented on the boards of all companies. Massive wage bonus’s related to share price increases should be banned. If some high flying ruthless company directors flee to other countries, let them. I have had a couple of building projects in the last few years here in Somerset. The skilled practitioners were local and the work of a high standard. What was notable was the start time of 9am to 9.30 when a cup of tea was needed, lunch was short, but packing up started at 3pm to 3.30 and gone by 4pm. But they were happy – the price was not the cheapest but competitive for the quality. Above all their quality of life seemed good.
So do away with league tables for schools and hospitals. Inspections still need to be made, but should not be onerous – informative and if problems are found consultation and training/help put in place. I know teachers live in fear of the judgements made on them personally on the basis of an hours observation of one lesson on one of the 190 days teaching they do every year.
The pandemic has legitimised working from home for many, although some firms with control freaks in charge are trying to force workers back – with encouragement from the government which sees tax income from city centres diminishing.
Change, especially for control freaks, is not embraced easily. Opportunities for large changes in society are rare, and less often taken. The post war government of Clement Attlee was perhaps the greatest in the last hundred years. I am not a historian or an economist, but the NHS was founded, railways nationalised, new towns built, national parks created. All at a time when large swathes of Britain were bomb sites and our debt was huge. I need to research this more. MacMillan oversaw the demise of the Empire. Thatcher in destroying the unions, also destroyed manufacturing and wasted billions of North Sea Oil income on funding the unemployment caused. I suppose Brexit could be another moment, but having engineered the change the government spent too much time gloating and self congratulating, rather than planning for it! Blackadder could have done better, even Baldrick would have had a cunning plan!
Leveling up – each ministry should create a panel of experts to report on the changes needed socially, economically, environmentally to make Britain a better place in the future, by November. This could be publically debated and then implemented in next Aprils budget.
Finally a thought. It is impossible to be always right, the trick is to know how to get the best advice to arrive at the best possible decisions.