More Ideas For Electoral Reform

This is the transcript for my YouTube video "More Ideas For Electoral Reform". 

Just over a year ago, I posted a video about mitigating the damage caused to our political system by Big Money.  It’s taken a long time to feel up to writing down more of my thoughts on electoral reform and rooting out the bad apples from politics but here I am with just a couple of ideas.

1. We don’t pay Members of Parliament.
        a. Anyone who becomes an MP will be allowed reasonable expenses to live on up to the average wage in the UK. 
        b.   If an MP lives in a constituency too far away from Parliament to travel, they will be provided a council flat to live in somewhere in London. 
        c.   They will be provided expenses for cheap breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  There will be no publicly subsidised meals or alcohol in the Houses of Parliament.
        d.   If the MP is single, their constituency home costs will be covered. However, if they have a partner who works, the costs awarded will be reduced based on means-testing.
        e.   MPs with private wealth will have that wealth frozen for the duration of their Parliamentary career and their bank accounts monitored to ensure that they cannot use their wealth or benefit from any information they gain from their work as an MP.  Transfers of money, stocks, bonds or shares between MPs and their family members or friends will be confiscated to prevent family and friends helping an MP to bypass the rules.
        f.     If an MP wants to have a second job, they are only allowed to have a job that pays minimum wage so that they are grounded in the world of the average worker.
        g.   MPs are barred from taking jobs in any business sector that their Parliamentary career may have intersected with when they leave politics to prevent using knowledge of government for the benefit of businesses or businesses capitalising on employing a former MP.

2. Any individual must spend at least 6 months living in a council property on benefits before they can even be considered for being put up for a Parliamentary candidacy.  This should be mandatory training for a prospective candidate. 

3. All prospective candidates must undertake mandatory mental health, neurodiversity and disability awareness training.  The training must be delivered by people with lived experience of mental ill-health, neurodiversity or other disability and any prospective candidate who fails to pass the final tests will be barred from standing in an election.  People with lived experience will mark the final tests. 

4. All prospective Parliamentary candidates must undertake a course of basic economics so that they understand how the economy really works and not how politicians have said that it works.  Failure to grasp the information will result in the prospective candidate being barred from standing in an election. 

5. No individual will be allowed to stand for public office if they have accepted any money from large corporations, lobbying groups, rich individuals or foreign States or any individuals with ties to foreign States.

These are just a few of the ideas I’ve been mulling over but ideas that I think might help give us representatives who are more fully rounded people and not going into politics simply for the power over people. 

Why not let me know your ideas in the comments below?