Good Sense Party Manifesto
The redoubtable Harry McQuillen has been considering starting up his own party. Here’s his manifesto.
- Think carefully before giving an opinion.
- Beware of siren voices.
- Work with the grain of human nature.
- Be aware of the needs and aspirations of others in your group.
- Look serious when you’re being serious, but remember that humour can be helpful.
- Think of the needs of others and be charitable towards people you don’t like very much.
- The hidden persuaders of advertising, including IT, call for a wary approach.
- I’m as prejudiced as anybody else. Denying that is a prejudice.
- Encouragement is a lot more effective than discouragement.
- Our environment needs to be considered in whatever we do.
- What services can we provide for us all, and who will pay?
- Can we help people NOT to fall through the net of public provision?
- Can we make arrangements which will help us all to avoid difficulties like BREXIT, population pressure and likely conflicts?
- We live in a Global Village. Other people really matter.
The points listed above, after thorough debate, could form part of the manifesto of the new G.S.P. Our party will be called the Good Sense Party. In line with the dictum of one of the philosophers, “Nature knows no leaps; we won’t do anything in a hurry.”
At last, some common sense. That is the essence of the problem with politics (something which personally I’m not overly bothered about as such) When a policy is working OK and there is a change of government they have to make huge reforms-not necessarily because they need to but because they need to be seen to be ‘improving things’ on behalf of the people they now serve. Usually, in truth, it just gets more over complicated.
‘Think of the needs of others…’ is admirable and how society should work. In my non political opinion though a major problem faced by any party, Good Sense or otherwise, is that we need to seriously clamp down on those who prefer to live outside of any reasonable law. I’ m tired of reading stories of how, for example, someone in Coventry ploughed their car into two children on a pavement – killing them both- whilst under the influence of drink/drugs/whatever only to discover they have a list of previous offences as long as both of their arms. Other offences today like burglary, car theft or assault are considered as a ‘minor offence’ in a sort of ‘we’ ll get back to you’ kind of way. We need to get back to basics and clamp down heavily on crime and persistent law breakers sooner rather than later.
Now that is common sense.