Threats, Weaknesses, Strengths & Outcomes of 25 year planning
Governance - 25 Year Planning Bodies independent from the political circus
Education - 'Fit for Life' providing life skills for every child with much improved learning by doing and modern effective aids from the BBC/OU
Energy & Transport - Clean energy, clean transport, plentiful cheap energy & transport for Britain while powering exports and jobs. The UK to become a net exporter of clean energy within 20 years.
Welfare reform - no excuses, training & jobs within local Job Hubs for all long-term dependent people whatever their situation, whilst fundamentally improving local communities
Prison reform - deterrence of a hard period in confinement - followed by training, full time employment (using Job Hubs from Welfare reforms)
BBC - Guaranteed 25 year funding along with a clear remit to inform and educate with key roles for educational aides, fact finding and dissemination of all governance information, (including the new planning bodies). A general remit to ensure complete openness in all information. Increased exports sales drive run on commercial lines, creating additional wealth for the UK
Exports - Direct export sales & marketing. Aimed at targeted UK companies utilising existing overseas infrastructure (Embassies) along with the existing Business Links. The required marketing research also creates a long term competitive edge for the UK in emerging economies
The proposed New Governance Bodies are the start point. But in themselves, even when they have the right people, they can only set-out the Basic Planning and make sure that is workable and comprehensive.
One of the defining issues within the UK over the last 30 years is our inability to implement change effectively. There are, no doubt, many reasons for this poor performance. However, one overriding issues that comes up again and again is that the people who are heading the changes are not from a background that helps them succeed in these endeavours.
By default, most implementation of public reforms falls directly to civil servants to complete. These people do not have, in general, the experience, the commercial awareness or the right mindset to carry out difficult change processes. Most civil servants are risk adverse, (that's why they chose that career path in the first instance), many are 'political' by nature, preferring the infighting and power structures to those that are focused on achieving excellence.
The implementation of the proposed reforms must therefore require a different path to the 'old ways' of presenting changes to the civil servants and letting 'them muddle through, (and failing badly). We saw this in Tony Blair's tenure - he (in the beginning) had some good ideas (remember education, education, education) and threw (too much) resource at them. The results - very little indeed. The reason - the funds were just given over to the same people who had already shown that they could not manage change (most had no idea of exactly what to do with the extra money anyway).
CST proposes that to enable effective reforms, working closely with the new Governance Bodies, there would sit a small but powerful group (people from business backgrounds), advising and overseeing the implementation. These people would have the power to immediately remove anyone who was considered to be too risk adverse, too 'political' or did not have sufficient skills or understanding to create the changes required. Their remit would be to ensure that Britain, as a whole, understood why the changes were required, (working closely with the BBC information group), and to make sure that the changes were implemented successfully.
