I have read your New Year message and am, well, not convinced. Not that it was any worse than any of the others - you could have all got them at the same shop. I didn't expect any stunning new policies to have been prompted by the jokes from your Christmas crackers but I thought you might acknowledge that something new is needed. Or even that we would review our progress so far and do anything new that looked as if it could deliver more than the current policy set.
Unfortunately, the message from you seems to be to keep faith, to enjoy the Olympics and footie and try to forget that we are poor. If the rest of the world comes to visit we might be able to earn enough money from them to keep the wolf from the door for another year or two.
That's a long shot and will see you out of government if not in the next 12 months then at the end of the coalition, guaranteed. People are bored. They know that capitalism has gone to too with its 'free' market and that government and capitalism between them are squeezing the substantial, tax-paying, population until it is entirely disillusioned with politicians and big business, of all colours and types. This is the way to disaster. Not just for the coalition but for the whole country.
The Big Society, and its commercial twin social enterprise, are not going to singlehandedly drag us out of the mire without some help from you. The Big Society must equal Little Government. The stunning rise in overall taxation over the past 15 years has been largely to drive ever more state spending, much of which is with foreign companies. No other country willingly hands over as much of its turnover and therefore profit as we do. That is why we are shrinking relative to the rest of the world.
I am sorry to harp on about it but the Unofficial Big Society Green Paper took a long hard high level look at our strategic direction and found it flawed. We need more investment, we need a proper national balance sheet, and we need proper national insurance and pension arrangements which are affordable and fair. Creating these, and funding them by the dismantling of the many machines and layers of government, is what will solve our problems.
If you have not done already please read the Green Paper (www.bigsocietygreenpaper.org). I sent you one in early December. It shows how social enterprise, in a new and strategically constructed form, can help to solve all of our problems. Done in the right way, and genuinely for the benefit of the largely silent, tax-paying majority who fund this country, it will energise and engage the people far more than any sporting success or any temporary bubble of income which we gained by spending billions on hosting sports events. It will cure our budget deficit and solve the pensions and healthcare funding crisis.
If you seize the moment to offer people a New Deal as in the Green Paper you will ensure that the feelgood factor of the summer is not transient and you will give the investment in those events a clear cut opportunity to provide a greater legacy than prettying up parts of the East End. A true legacy which enhances national wealth and builds a big society for generations to come. One which tips the poison out of the chalice that we are about to hand to our children, and affords the opportunity to refill it with clean, healthy water.
So please, for 2012, give social enterprise a real chance at capitalism's top table, re-take control of our spending and strategically create a real legacy based around growing national wealth and a truly big Big Society. One in which we all understand our role and the scale of the opportunity.
Happy New Year!
Gareth
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