As anyone who knows me or reads my blogs on a regular basis will know, I am a huge advocate of something that has seemingly become old-fashioned in this modern age. It’s called common sense. And it’s demise has not simply weakened this country, it’s made it a laughing-stock.

I know, for example, that coffee is hot and that heat burns therefore I don’t need to have a label on my cup reminding me of that fact (although if you think I look so dense that I do, maybe you shouldn’t be selling it to me in the first place). Similarly, I can work out for myself that peanut butter contains nuts, fish fingers contain fish and that vegetables are suitable for vegetarians.

Common sense is, of course, most notably lacking in those who we have charged to run our country and this week that has been brought home in the most brutal way possible by news that the aircraft brought to replace the Harrier, in my humble opinion the greatest fighter aircraft of modern times, is not fit for purpose. A simple fact almost everyone with links to the Royal Air Force could have told them years ago saving billions of pounds. OUR pounds.

So, with this madness in mind, in the extremely unlikely of my assuming power over my country of birth, I thought it time to compile a list of 50 things that would sit high up on my ‘to do’ list. All of them seem to be perfectly reasonable to me yet for whatever reason, none seem to feature in the minds of the current government. In some cases, quite the opposite. Which kind of proves my point.

They are listed in no particular order and I’ll publish half now and the rest tomorrow but if you think I’ve missed anything off, please feel free to suggest it and if it’s sensible, I’ll add it to my manifesto. Come the revolution, I may even offer you a job.

Similarly, if anything here offends you, then maybe you should consider why and how your feelings are being hurt because as far as I’m concerned, you’re part of the problem. Remember, you can’t be offended, you can only take offence. A simple truth that political correctness seems to have eradicated from this once great land.

1. Make it illegal for anyone under 25 to stand for parliament. How can anyone be an effective MP if they have no genuine experience of either life or working?
2. Equal pay and rights for women. It’s 2017, not 1917.
3. Actively target the big tax avoiders. They’ve had a decent run, now hit them, hard.
4. Scrap HS2. It has it’s merits, but the cost outweighs every single one of them.
5. Enforce random drug and alcohol testing for anyone on unemployment benefits. If people have to undergo them at work, why shouldn’t those who are seeking work?
6. Pay the public services a decent wage. Not just as a reward for the amazing service they give, but to encourage people to look seriously at them as potential careers. 
7. Scrap car parking charges at hospitals. Full stop. Yes, I know they raise money but where does that money come from? Staff, patients and people visiting patients. I mean, FFS.
8. Make everyone carry a photo I.D card which has to be produced on request. Ok, I know that this is a contentious issue but let’s face it, we have to do something to find out who should or should not be living here and using our precious resources.
9. Limit the number of Uber drivers in London. They’re flooding the capital with shit driving.
10. Make all Taxi and Uber drivers display photo ID at all times.
11. Schools should be teaching the following: basic manners, courtesy and respect, the notion of personal responsibility, basic money handling and basic first aid.
12. Wind down Overseas Aid to zero over the next five years and use the money saved to fund proper mental health care and support for pensioners needing care. If individuals want to fund projects overseas, there are plenty of charities they can hand money to. 
13. Scrap the practice of pensioners having to pay for their care in later life. The majority will have paid taxes all their lives and so we have a duty to look after them. Period.
14. Stop the practice of benefits being sent abroad. 
15. Stop the practice of refugees bringing their families to the UK.
16. Anyone who has been granted asylum in the UK who returns to their country of origin for any reason within five years should forfeit their British passport immediately. If they can visit a place they supposedly fled from, it can’t have been that bad. 
17. Carry out an urgent review of train fares and limit them as appropriate. They’re madness.
18. Voting to be made compulsory. We should also have a system of online voting or if voting in person, be required to produce photo ID to prove we are who we say we are.
19. Ban the sale of any meat killed to satisfy some warped religious idealism. It’s cruel and barbaric.
20. Anyone who has been on employment benefits for over 6 months has to carry out some kind of community work to earn their money. 
21. Set up a system where anyone who has been out of work for a year has to accept jobs offered to them or they lose their benefits. As long as those jobs offered are on or above the minimum wage, why not?
22. Campaign actively to remind people that every penny the government spends or gives away is OUR money, not theirs. Some people seem to have forgotten that simple reality.
23. Make it an offence to have your face covered in public unless it’s either cold or you’re riding a motorbike.
24. Let the police actually and actively enforce the law of this land rather than force them to try and be everyone’s mate.
25. Make the desecration of the national flag or national monuments a criminal offence.         

    @dougiebrimson

As some of you may be aware, I’ve been beavering away on the sequel to Billy’s Log for some time now and am currently publishing extracts online in ‘Billy’s Blog’.

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