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Product Description
The UK is in an appalling state. The effects of the great recession lumber on. Public debt, public services and public pensions are bloated after a decade of ill-placed optimism. The country is burdened by regulations and laws that have undermined basic freedoms. What needs to be done to remake Britain as a first-rate country? In The Alternative Manifesto, Dr Eamonn Butler interviews the best political thinkers in the UK including the heads of all the leading think-tanks to create a twelve-step plan to rescue the UK from its government s longterm addictions. He tackles the most crucial areas from the economy and politicians, to regulation and taxes with detailed solutions that can easily be achieved over the next Parliament. Drawing on the ideas of some of the brightest people in Britain, Eamonn Butler puts forward a comprehensive programme to cut government back to a healthy size. The twelve steps will stop the UK s decay, before it becomes terminal.
About the Author
Eamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute, one of the UK s leading policy think tanks. He holds a a doctorate from the University of St. Andrews. His expert opinion is sought by UK and international newspapers, magazines, radio and TV. He divides his time between London, Cambridge and Scotland, and is the author of several books - most recently The Rotten State of Britain (2009).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Goes the extra step,
By
This review is from: The Alternative Manifesto: A 12-Step Programme to Remake Britain (Paperback)
With his characteristic fluency and good sense, Eamonn Butler sets out the issues facing Great Britain two months ahead of the election which--whatever it does for our government--will at last bring the "rotten parliament" of 2005-2010 to an inglorious conclusion. Dr Butler writes from the perspective of the libertarian Adam Smith Institute, but he does so without knee-jerk attitudes or remedies.
Instead he goes through the big issues of what have come in the lifetime of the baby-boom generation to be the principal concerns of national policy: education, healthcare and welfare, pointing out that we would do better without the withering hand of central government upon these services. He reminds us that the State has undermined its legitimacy by taking on responsibilities which it cannot discharge and that in consequence frustrated politicians have become acutely victim to their deformation professionelle for mindless (and invariably ineffective) regulation. Thus the bully and surveillance state, which all too often fails in the State's original objective of keeping the peace. Possibly in despair, Dr Butler is silent on defence. He reminds us that the perpetrators of the financial crisis were governments and the cheap money they pressed upon unqualified borrowers, and touches on the politicians' squalid campaign to avoid their responsibility for the mess they have created. This takes us to the distinguishing character of the book, by comparison for example with the Policy Exchange's otherwise excellent "Renewal of Government" (in a bad night for London's policy-wonks, their launch parties coincided on the evening of 10 March!) Dr Butler wastes no paper, but finds space to take the extra step from defective policy, through the unintended consequences of political hyperactivity, to constitutional reform. This is the elephant in the car park of British public life. Party leaders of every stripe are encouraging the electorate to sleep-walk toward the May election, as though the political class and the arrangements underpinning it were not utterly discredited. Perhaps they will pull it off. Dr Butler's book shows what they instead ought to be doing.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
At last, a truly alternative manifesto,
By
This review is from: The Alternative Manifesto: A 12-Step Programme to Remake Britain (Paperback)
This book is a must for anyone with an interest in the role of government itself and the extent to which it can, and does, detach itself from the purpose of serving the population over which it presides. James Madison, the USA's fourth President and the "Father of the Constitution" must be turning in his grave, having been able to say at the time "Hitherto charters have been written grants of privileges by Government to the people. Here they are written grants of power by the people to their Governments".
Today, all three of the UK's main political parties believe in the first template above as regards the size and reach of central government. Yes, one may prefer a little more of the Welfare State and a little fewer military exploits around the world; another may prefer to shave a penny or two off taxes and rely a little more on state regulation instead, while another may prefer to make a small move towards decriminalising drugs and prostitution and to spend more on greenery. The common thread is that the overall size and reach will not be significantly reduced, even though it has multiplied by a factor of at least ten in the past 100 years. The unique qualities of The Alternative Manifesto (apart from Eamonn Butler's feat of putting it together in an incredibly short time-scale) are firstly that it is a genuine alternative, and secondly that it includes nearly all the major issues across the traditional (and bogus) Left versus Right spectrum. It shows that every single one can be downsized to a level well beyond anything that the politicians can begin to contemplate. The issue is Small versus Large and not Right versus Left; this is truly refreshing. Thus, as one might expect, there are chapters covering The Economy, Finance, Education, Healthcare, Welfare, Crime & Justice, and Taxation. (In several of these fields it would be more accurate to insert the words "Lack of" before the descriptor!) But Eamonn also examines Politicians (and their role) Bureaucracy, The Bully State, and Regulation. In each case there are the relevant facts and figures, presented crisply, aided by interviews with specialists in the various fields. There is no shortage of solutions either, all pointing to very substantial reductions in the government's role. The simple fact is that big government means huge areas left without market price signals and therefore open to pure whim as well as waste. It also means big taxes which destroy great swathes of the division of labour and thus of living standards. The UK government now spends more than 50% of GDP. Since 100% would mean the total absence of trade and exchange, internally as well as externally, it doesn't take a genius to realise that halfway to the obliteration of all exchange (i.e. to individual autarky) means a huge devastation of the aggregate living standards which would be available under low taxes. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is that on Politicians; naturally the ongoing scandal of inflated expense claims is dealt with, but more important is a significant examination of constitutional issues. Both in the UK and the USA, Madison's claim has reverted to type. Thus the ultimate issue lies with immediate constitutional reform or an inevitable decline into dictatorship. Thank you, Eamonn Butler for pointing this out so clearly and forcibly.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Too sensible to be taken seriously by politicians,
By Non-economist (Bradford UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Alternative Manifesto: A 12-Step Programme to Remake Britain (Paperback)
The new intake of MPs should be made to sit down and read this as their second task as public servants (the first being to fill in their initial expenses claim, obviously). Butler has trawled through the best ideas of the current political classes and filtered out most (though, pleasingly, not all) of the looney tune gimmicks. The result is a thoughtful agenda for running the country that does not trip itself up by having to shoehorn ideology into the mix. The ideas are so sensible they have no chance of being adopted by the gurning sound-bite automatons who extraterrestrial powers have inserted into the festering carapaces of our elected representatives.
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