<p>I hope the 60 people who go today tell the PM some home truths.</p>
<p>We are fed up with?? government by gimmicks and media stunts</p>
<p>We are fed up with a government that pretends to listen but ignores all our views which it does not like</p>
<p>We are fed up with the remorseless waste of our money on some public services that we do not want, and waste within?? services we do want.</p>
<p>The PM sees this as an opportunity to explain to people that they have got things wrong. He is not really planning to listen and learn from the public. We are told, for example, that the public are wrong to want police back on the beat, because that would mean they could not respond strongly to serious crime. I don’t remember them failing to turn up for a murder enquiry years ago, when we had police on the beat and a smaller police force. It’s a false choice of the kind this government often invents. What about offering people the choice of less bureaucratic interference in policing, and less political correctness to be enforced?</p>
<p>I saw some poll findings the other day which??reaffirm there is a lot of commonsense in the British people. Most people want lower taxes, because 4 out of 5 people think the government wastes at least ??1 in every ??5 they take from us. Most of my Parliamentary colleagues, and all government Ministers, would tell you that it is ridiculous, but I think from what I see the people are nearer the truth on this than the politicians.</p>
<p>The 60 at Downing Street should just keep telling the PM two things:</p>
<p>They want better public services at lower cost</p>
<p>They expect the government with all its advice and money to work out how to do it.</p>
<p>The private sector keeps on delivering more for less by good management. The UK public sector in large part fails to do this under this government.</p>
<p>If I were there as someone who does study these things professionally, I would add a list of things they could remove from their budgets to make government better, and to save us all some money:</p>
<p>??1. Scrap the ID cards scheme</p>
<p>2. Scrap all unelected regional government in England including the Regional Assemblies, the RDAs, the Regional Housing Boards and the Government regional offices</p>
<p>3. Scrap bogus consultation and propaganda exercises, like today’s at Downing Street</p>
<p>4.Cut the government’s PR and advertising budget</p>
<p>5. Employ fewer Special Advisers (political aides)</p>
<p>6. Start reducing civil service numbers back to the levels they inherited in 1997, by natural wastage</p>
<p>7. Stop all large centralised government led computer schemes - allow individual surgeries,??hospitals etc to choose their own IT from within their own overall budgets</p>
<p>8. Use more private capital to finance necessary transport infrastructure</p>
<p>9. Cut back on the many small but costly DTI grant schemes to business</p>
<p>10. Improve incentives to work to reduce the 5.3 million people of working age without a job living on benefit</p>
<p>11. Stop all unfunded index linked pensions schemes for new entrants in the public sector</p>
<p>12. Start cutting regulation by putting in regulatory budgets. As you repeal areas of regulation so you will need fewer civil servants and regulators to handle it.</p>
<p>13. Ask Welsh and Scottish Westminster MPs to double up as the members of the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament instead of having new elections to those bodies, leaving English Westminster MPs to handle English issues at Westminster when the Scots and Welsh are away in their home assemblies</p>
<p>14. At the next boundary review reduce the number of MPs, to start raising political productivity after years of reduction</p>
<p>15 Have a smaller House of Lords so there are fewer peers claiming expenses</p>
<p>16 Either employ fewer consultants to do public officials’ jobs, or employ fewer public officials where you think consultants are better value</p>
<p>17 Cancel all work on a national road pricing scheme which simply aims to take more??money off us without providing us with any better service.</p>
<p>This government never understand "No".</p>
<p>The people of the North East said "No" to regional government - so they still have it. They would much rather any useful spending by regional bodies was routed through their Councils, and the administrative waste was abolished.</p>
<p>The people of the UK would say "No" to more European integration if given the chance, yet this government goes on signing new Treaties which take powers away from us.</p>
<p>1.8 million people have said "No" to paying more for driving around. The government ploughs on regardless.</p>
<p>Any sensible elected politician reads the letters and emails and knows the public mood. You don’t have to spend a fortune on focus groups and polling to work out the obvious.</p>
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