In the United States, angry old white folks are the backbone of the Tea Party. In Canada, they're Harper Conservatives. In Britain, angry old white people have the UKIP movement. Here's the sort of Britain Ukippers crave:
• Merge income tax
and national insurance into a flat 31% for all starting at £11,500.
Scrap employers' NI with revenue recouped from corporation tax, VAT or
reduced welfare.
•
Cut state spending to 1997 levels with loss of two million public
sector jobs, replaced by one million new manufacturing jobs and at least
another million created because of Ukip's lower tax environment.
• Five-year freeze on immigration for permanent settlement followed by 50,000 annual cap.
• Work permits to be time-limited and overstaying made a crime. No amnesty for illegal immigrants: all returned to home country.
• Minimum five-year wait for British citizenship with no rights to benefits and all asylum seekers to be held in secure units.
• Life sentences mean life.
• Deport dangerous imams, terror suspects and wanted criminals more easily by scrapping the Human Rights Act.
• Double prison places and create "boot camps" for young offenders.
• Increase defence spending by 40%, double the size of the Territorial Army and increase total armed forces numbers by 25%.
• Buy three new aircraft carriers and 50 more Lightning fighter jets.
• Arm four new submarines with US nuclear missiles.
• Franchise out key services including hospitals and GP surgeries to companies and charities.
• Create voucher system to allow people to opt out of NHS system entirely.
• Smoking rooms in pubs.
2 comments:
This is a puzzle. As an old white person I am disappointed with the ultra conservatism of so many of my peers. The racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, militarism and lynch-mob attitude to crime tells me that the driving impulse is fear.
Anon, old age is indeed a time that, for many, is dominated by fear and powerful resistance to change. Mark Twain wrote that many men die at 27 but we bury them at 72.
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