How To Reduce The Cost Of Living: Some Proposals (That Are Better Than What The Cabinet Can Come Up With That's For Sure)

 The Beleaguered Boris Johnson, desperate to do something to keep his position, has asked his cabinet for proposals on how to deal with the cost of living crunch.

Predictably, the suggestions were dreadful, and including such big brain ideas as reducing the frequency of vehicle inspections (because it's not like malfunctioning vehicles can cause any problems) and relaxing the standards around childcare.

Labour, of course, want to tax the oil companies, as they apparently lack any sense of where the oil companies get the money from that they wish to tax, or any idea of what is driving the price increases.

Not that it will help -- though it may help some people on an individual level, or maybe even catch the eye of someone with a small amount of power and influence -- but I figure I will throw my own ideas out about what we can do to help people affford to live. Some I have already suggested here.

1. Legalise E-scooters. The fact that you need a driving license to legally ride these in most of the country does not appear to have come up in the cabinet discussion, despite the transport committee already recommending they be treated no differently to E-bikes. As the committee said in their report, this has a lot of potential for reducing transport costs for the poorest members of our society. It would literally take only a few days to do this.

2. Encourage people to use mist showerheads. This will, alas, require some development -- there do not appear to be any commercially available yet. But it should not take long to develop these and begin manufacturing, since we already know how to build them.

3. Zero rate VAT on all necessities. At present, no VAT is charged on food, childrens clothes, and feminine hygeine products. This, of course, is not a list of all basic necessities for an individual and household. Soap, cleaning products, clothing, toilet roll... all these things should join the list of products exempt from VAT. We need to end the Soap Tax.

4. A basic allowance of power. Energy use is not equal across households; the richest households consume far more electricity and gas than the poorest ones. Having a two tariff system, with a subsidised allowance and market rate charged on use above that, would cut bills in a way that would be targeted at those who can least afford to pay them, whereas a blanket subsidy would mostly go towards the wealthy.

5. Limit planning permission to permanent alterations in the land. In other words, extend the current 28 days rule for camping on land without planning permission to year-round, and loosen restrictions on density. This would be best paired with a permit system that requires people taking advantage of it to pay a fee to the local council, in lieu of the Council Tax that they would be paying if living in a permanent structure. There would need to be some discussion of course around the exact limits, but the current system is a violation of the (negative) right to housing -- whether or not the state has an obligation to house you, it should at least not get in the way of you housing yourself.

6. Get some famous chef, or a supermarket, to team up with Jack Monroe to develop a range of easy to cook meals. It should not take much effort to make a healthy meal if the ingredients come pre-prepared. Perhaps give everyone a slow cooker, though to really be effective this would need to paired with subsidised electricity (see above).

7. Build more railway platforms. Far easier than rebuilding lines, there are many places around the country where the trains run (or could run... parts of our network are majorly underutilised) but do not stop. Usually places where they used to stop until Marples (may his name be forever accursed) removed them to force people to use the motorways constructed by his (wife's) company. This would go well with intermediate transport like electric scooters, which massively extend the range and so area that can be serviced by a stop.

I'm sure I can come up with far more ideas, but seven is not a bad number to start with. Most of these would require central government to actually do something, and so are probably dead already, but a couple could be done without their permission.

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