Time for Meiji reform in stagnant Kent

Time for Meiji reform in the UK too.

With less than two years to a general election UK governance has simply ground to a halt.

Nothing.

HS2 hi-speed rail is not such a bad project - now it’s starting from the North rather than minor improvements to London-Birmingham rail.

But 15 years before it’s finished.

The economy has barely scraped back to 2008 pre-recession levels and no substantial growth in sight.

A few Budget tweaks or blaming Romanians are irrelevant.

And we now have the collapse of the national Parties into regional groups: Labour in the North and Tories in the South and SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales.

And not one Climate Change policy.

The greatest threat to humanity.

Nothing.

A Georgeville 20,000 housing estate in Kent is as random as Boris Island – especially as nobody in Kent has even been consulted and there are 23,000 empty houses already.
So much for voting for Carter or anyone else in Kent.

While the collapse of Kent and certainly East Kent is almost total. Decades of failure at Chatham Dockyard. Bloated quangos refusing FOI. Geriatric governance riding the decline down. Or tarmacking everything in sight.

And rampant corruption and civil service fraud at Manston, Thor, Pleasurama and EKO.

Such blatant and ongoing corruption as if the councillors and civil servants and MP’s are revelling in stealing and lying and failing us.

And perhaps worst of all over 20% youth unemployment.

Here’s various rather excellent award-winning videos by a mate of mine, Phil at Bedlam TV, on the importance of Apprenticeships and NEETs: http://www.bedlamtv.com/
A difficult subject to do well - and a measure of how seriously the 14-19 agenda and apprenticeships are being taken and driven forward in other parts of the UK – Doncaster in this instance.

And, to show how serious this Wasted Generation problem is, at a recent conference I met a Taiwan delegate who mentioned their concerns and work over, wait for it, 6% youth unemployment.

6%.

6% in Taiwan.

We need Meiji reform.

Japan has shown how substantial and deep and organised reform can turn around societies and economies. And worth remembering they did it not just once 100 years ago - but then again in the nuclear ashes of their country.

The blazing growth of ASEAN and China is notable by how far Britain has fallen behind investors such as Germany and USA.

(Before I forget here’s a link to the first Surin School in Thailand – can you help build more? www.surinschoolcharity.org)

And in Thailand - in a policy of sparkling genius – the Yingluck government are providing every schoolchild with a tablet PC. We wouldn’t dare do that in Britain. We couldn’t. Imagine the committees. The procurement workshops. The form-filling. The delay and dithering.

In Thailand and China they are turning the whole rail network into hispeed rail. All of it.

Cambodia has one of the world’s most modern telecoms and free wifi networks.

Australia has overhauled its Asian language learning: 20,000 students learning Japanese. UK? 300. And only 3,000 learning Chinese in UK.

Does that mean everything in Asia is better than Britain. Of course not that’s silly. But there is much we can learn.

Half the world is simply invisible to us. And George Osborne has rightly overhauled Chinese visas that prevented half the world’s tourists visiting us.

Time for Meiji reform not rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Hi-Speed rail. Hi-tech industry. Government and Business and Academia working together.

It was called Great Britain for a reason. It’s not now. And it won’t be in future.

A future your children and grandchildren will live in.

We need Meiji reform.

Deep and substantial and sustaineed reform to reverse the stagnation and rot of decades and a Lost Generation.

If you’d like a copy of my manifesto please email me: timgarbutt@yahoo.com
Many of the points are in the blog posts below.

Kent has failed.

Time for Meiji reform.

Time for Change.