Despite all the excitement of England’s preparation for the world cup there are slightly more important things happening today, The Coalition (Sounds like an unseen enemy from a cheap sci-fi series.) had their first Queen’s Speech as parliament was officially re-opened. In all 22 Bills were mentioned as the Queen set out the next 500 days of legislative programme. (This is longer than the normal 12 months as the next one isn’t until autumn of next year.) Most of what was announced was not exactly a surprise.
Schools will be offered the chance to become Swedish Style Academies free from state control, this is a long term goal which gets very mixed reactions. The Teachers Union are, of cause, against it – as they seem to be of any change. Most parents I have spoken to are either in favour or don’t care. I would guess the in favour ones are the ones who see it as a real chance to try and increase the education of their children, personally I am still slightly unsure as to how this would work but I am in the very fortunate position of having over 4 years for it to bed in before I need to worry about it.
Although that will be the first bill to be raised, the speech underlined that the first priority would be to reduce the deficit and try to restore economic growth. This will obviously be no small measure as the state of the economy is still far to shocking for anyone to contemplate (How many zero’s in a trillion anyway?) obviously as I said below Child Trust Fund Vouchers have gone but that will save half a billion which is still shockingly a tiny amount of what is needed.
A large part of the legislative agenda will be taken up with passing power from the government to the people, the so called “Big Society” several measures were introduced including the ability to force by-elections to remove a corrupt MP. I have a good friend from California who has always been shocked that we have no ability to remove our politicians, recall elections being a way of life over there.
ID Cards have been scrapped, as I have spoken about previously I am not against these, but the way they were to be introduced – having to carry them and your other ID and pay through the nose for the privilege. – So I am happy for them to be gone. CCTV and the DNA databases will be reduced, again I have to admit that my feelings are not strong either way on this as I am of the “Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Worry About” school of thought. However I had lost all faith in the last government to manage these systems so perhaps it is better for the coalition to not even leave themselves open to be as atrocious as Labour were at keeping our details secure.
It also looks like we have a lot of referendums in our future as well as they have pledged to have a referendum on any further transfer of power to Brussels, I think this effectively puts the brakes on our integration with the EU as I can not imagine it ever passing a referendum. We also look set to get a referendum on Alternative Vote; I think this is a very interesting point as the coalition could easily be split on either side.
It could be that Labour took power before my 18th Birthday but I really have no idea what a referendum would look like as I have never seen one, I assume it would be just like the normal polling arrangements with a Yes or No box? But would they hold a special vote or have it at the same time as local elections? I guess time will tell.
Final Item of interest that I have seen is that the Coalition currently has over 50% of support of the public which I hope will mean that the country will get behind them, we are in an almost unique scenario but I think if the country can support the coalition we can have the type of government we need. Also my own poll (Just to the right) shows that 100% of people think the coalition will last a full term in office, now that is only 6 people and 1 of them is me but it still shows overwhelming support.
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