Mark Thomas Presents the People's Manifesto - Mark Thomas [16]
This policy aims to balance the rights of religious freedom and the rights of the child by setting an age limit on religion. We cannot prevent parents from teaching their children about religion at home, so we should treat religion in a similar fashion to the old laws relating to pubs: children are not allowed into church, but parents can – perhaps with a meal or on a social occasion – allow some religion in moderation.
This policy will prevent children entering mosques, temples, synagogues and churches until they are 14 and will be enforced with a height bar, just like those at funfairs and adventure parks, with a little sign outside the church saying ‘You have to be at least this high to go on this attraction’.
26
THOSE IN FAVOUR
OF ID CARDS SHOULD
BE BANNED FROM
HAVING CURTAINS
THOSE WITH NOTHING to hide have nothing to fear.
27
ANYONE FOUND GUILTY
OF A HOMOPHOBIC
HATE CRIME SHALL
SERVE THEIR ENTIRE
SENTENCE IN DRAG
THIS POLICY IS guaranteed to make homophobic criminals go straight … or not, as the case may be.
28
WHENEVER THERE IS
A BARNEY IN THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS,
THEY SHOULD PLAY
THE BENNY HILL
THEME TUNE
THIS SHOULD ALSO be applied to council and regional assemblies. The Greater London Authority could play Chas and Dave’s classic ‘Rabbit’, the Scottish Parliament gets ‘Hoots mon there’s a moose loose aboot this hoose’, the Welsh Assembly Abba’s ‘Fernando’ and the Northern Ireland Assembly could go for Black Lace’s ‘We’re having a gang bang, we’re having a ball’.
29
PRIVATE HEALTH
COMPANIES THAT USE NHS-
TRAINED STAFF, DOCTORS,
NURSES, CLINICIANS, ETC.,
SHOULD PAY A LEVY
WORTH 25 PER CENT OF
THE STAFF PAY TO THE NHS
TO REIMBURSE THEM FOR
THE TRAINING COSTS AND
HELP WITH TRAINING IN
THE FUTURE
PRIVATE MEDICINE IS fundamentally un-British, as the only reason to use it is to jump the NHS queue – and the one thing we pride ourselves on as a nation is our ability to queue. It is what distinguishes us from the French. Therefore there is no greater social gaucherie or display of ill breeding than ‘going private’, as it is based upon an ability to push to the front shouting, ‘Let me through, I have money.’
To compound this faux pas further, private health companies use NHS-trained doctors and nurses. Until private hospitals train their own staff, in their own medical schools, and corporate students push corporate beds around the West End to raise money for corporate rag week, the use of NHS-trained staff will always amount to a subsidy from the taxpayer to the private companies. It costs the state approximately £42,000 to train a nurse and approximately £240,000 to train a doctor, costs that the private companies do not appear to shoulder. So we should charge a levy on the private health companies to cover the cost of state training.
Everyone is a winner with a levy like this. The NHS gets funding for future training but the private health companies benefit too. By their very nature these companies are entities in the free market, which is at odds with a reliance on state aid. Sponging off the state in this hypocritical fashion must weigh heavily on their souls30 and discarding it would have enormous therapeutic benefits for them, for which we won’t charge them extra.
NB: Modern politicians really should take a glance at 1945, when Britain had the highest rates of national debt and yet, instead of cutting public services, created the National Health Service. Bloody marvellous.
30
TO INTRODUCE
A TOBIN TAX
ON CURRENCY
TRANSACTIONS
EVERY AUDIENCE, WITHOUT exception, had policies on what to do with bankers. In Bath one of the policy suggestions was simply ‘Hang a banker every day of the year’. What struck me was not the orgy of violence but the orderliness. Underneath it was written ‘and allotments for everyone’. How very British: a quaint mixture of bloodlust and gardening.
The most compelling banking