The Citizens’ Charter:

A Manifesto For Twenty First Century Living

Our freedom is being eroded on an almost daily basis. Our freedom to travel, to control our own lives, to invest our savings as and where we want and even to discuss issues with one another privately have all been badly affected in recent years.

Most people are not aware that their freedom is disappearing. Those who are aware of what is happening are unhappy about it but don’t know what to do about it.

The time is right for a revolution but western governments have taken a leaf out of the book written by repressive, dictatorships in the third world and have given the state, and therefore the police, unprecedented powers to stifle any sort of protest before it can become a serious threat to the individuals who control the institutions which govern us.

Most citizens in the western world are dissatisfied, resentful, bitter and unhappy with the quality of leadership on offer – and with the way our leaders are choosing to rule our lives in an increasingly oppressive and autocratic way. There is a widespread feeling that nothing can be done to persuade politicians to do what the people want – even though it is, of course, the people from whom the politicians claim to have obtained their power and authorisation.

Maybe it is all too late.

Maybe the politicians who are now in charge (is it a coincidence that the vast majority of them are lawyers?) have stitched us all up very tightly. Maybe there really is nothing we can do. Maybe we are doomed to a life of perpetual servitude to a distant and uncaring world government.

Or maybe it isn’t quite too late.

Maybe if enough of us say what we want then we might just stand a chance of making ourselves heard.

Maybe if we publicise our views there will be a public uprising.

And so here is my wish list. My Manifesto for happier and more peaceful twenty first century living. My friend and expert analyst Chevalier Harry D Schultz, editor of the Harry Schultz Letter (website address www.hsletter.com) has contributed to this list of goals and joins me in a joint support for the list.

• Privacy should be given greater priority. Governments do not have a right to listen to private telephone calls, read private e mails or to peer into citizens private bank accounts unless they can prove that a citizen has acted illegally.
  

• The abuse of animals should be halted. Activities – such as hunting and vivisection – which are barbaric and indefensible should be halted immediately.
  

• State employees should be held personally responsible for their own incompetence or fraudulent behaviour. Why should taxpayers have to find the cash when policemen or nurses or civil servants make mistakes? Civil servants (of all kinds) should take personal responsibility for their actions – and should pay privately for any insurance cover they want to take out.
  

• League tables should be published showing the effectiveness (or otherwise) of schools, hospitals and other public institutions. This information is available to government officials but it is suppressed. Citizens should have the right to use the information available to help them choose a suitable school or hospital.
  

• A crackdown should be introduced to control the number of state employees taking early retirement on the grounds of ill health. Many such employees claim to be ill when they aren’t – getting massive pensions from taxpayers.
  

• There should be a cash limit (say $10,000) on compensation payments for discrimination.
  

• When lawyers share in the ‘profits’ from legal action they should be limited to 10% of the proceeds. This would dramatically reduce the number of cases brought. At least three quarters of the costs of cases thrown out of court should be borne by the plaintiffs.
  

• The Euro and the European Union should be abandoned and all Euro bureaucrats should be made redundant – giving them a maximum of three months’ compensation.
  

• Severe automatic penalties should be introduced for policemen who lie in court.
  

• Compulsory retirement should be abandoned.
  

• School teachers should be told that the priorities for education are reading, writing and arithmetic. Schools do not need social studies or computer departments.
  

• Spending on social services should be slashed. Most of this money is wasted.
  

• Research funds should be slashed and money used to take advantage of the knowledge we already have. For example, we know how to prevent 80% of all cancers. Funding for preventive medicine programmes should be dramatically boosted.
  

• There should be a possibly permanent moratorium on genetic engineering with severe penalties for those who break the moratorium. We don’t need it and the risks are too great. It should be a criminal offence for companies to sell genetically engineered food.
  

• Xenotransplants should be halted immediately.
  

• Governments should fund genuinely independent research into the hazards associated with electrical appliances (including telephones and microwaves).
  

• Expenditure on fashionable diseases such as AIDS (which may not even exist) should be cut in favour of expenditure on unfashionable diseases (such as cancer and heart disease) which do kill vast numbers of citizens.
  

• The principle of innocent until proven guilty should be resurrected – and upheld in all courts.
  

• The public should have an inviolable the right to demonstrate.
  

• The police should get back onto the beat – on foot or bicycle. The police should be accountable to local communities – and chief police officers should be fired and possibly fined or imprisoned if crime levels rise.
  

• Capital punishment should be banned by international law.
  

• Proportional representation should be introduced in all elections.
  

• There should be complete freedom of information on all government matters except military ones.
  

• No one in any institution should be paid more than 25 times the pay of the lowest paid employee.
  

• International arms sales should be banned on the grounds that this activity is immoral and reckless (and there is a risk of citizens being bombed by bombs they themselves have made and subsidised.)
  

• Decriminalise and tax drugs and stop the ineffective, expensive and deadly War on Drugs. If the money wasted on policemen and drug enforcement agencies was spent on education there would be far less drug abuse. The War on Drugs is an excuse to remove more and more of our freedoms – it keeps drug prices high, encourages crime rewards drug barons and does nothing whatsoever to prevent drug abuse.
  

• There should be referendums on all major questions – as there are in Switzerland. Referendums give citizens a chance to have a voice on big issues.
  

• All income taxes should end and be replaced with a sales tax. Sales taxes would bring in the same revenue but free citizens from audits, bureaucracy and false accusations. Income tax puts governments and citizens at loggerheads.
  

• Tax revenues can be steadily reduced and central government expenditure reduced. Many government departments are unnecessary and many government employees are paid by the public to perform political duties.
  

• Returning to a gold standard would give currencies more stability and help control inflation.
  

• God should be put back into the law. With God having a hand in justice (and, in particular, in oaths and pledges) it is more difficult for politicians to interfere and remove human rights.
  

• Power should be returned to local communities. Federal powers and control should be reduced and kept to a minimum. Federalism should be avoided and resisted. As a general rule small is better than big. Local leaders tend to be more accountable than distant ones.
  

• Bank privacy should be sacrosanct. Citizens have a right to put their legally earned money wherever they want to put it – without governments snooping.
  

• Post offices and broadcasting groups should all be privatised – to remove government control.
  

• Welfare should be put back into the hands of voluntary groups (who deal with it better and more fairly) and taken out of the hands of government agencies.
  

• Racism – euphemistically known as affirmative action and ‘quotas’ – should be stopped immediately. Racism is racism, whatever it is dressed up as.
  

• Passports used to be a right. They have become a privilege. They should be a right. Passports are a 20th century invention. They should be uninvented.
  

• Identity cards are an infringement of human rights.
  

• Criminals should be forced (by law) to make restitution to their victims. Criminal punishment is too often revenge not justice. Prison sentences should, in many cases, be replaced with community service. Prisons should be smaller and tougher. Prisoners should make financial restitution to their victims (and to the State for the costs of their trial) through their prison earnings.
  

• Inheritance (estate) taxes should be ended. (Why should governments re-tax money that has already been taxed?)
  

• In cities the police should get back on the beat – on foot, bicycle or roller blade. In rural communities the police should patrol in cars.
  

• Company directors should be legally responsible for what they do. Directors should go to prison when companies break the law (e.g. when polluting rivers etc.).
  

• Independent research should be funded into electrical appliances (such as microwave ovens and mobile telephones) and overhead power lines.
  

You probably won’t agree with every item on this list. But I hope you will feel that much of this list makes sense – and that the principles are closer to your own ideals than the policy statements made by the major political parties.

Remember that all revolutions (and revolutions can be peaceful) are based on a shared, common cause. If you believe in the general tone of the items on this list then please copy it and pass it on to friends for discussion.

This Citizens’ Charter has been created because Harry Schultz and I believe that we need – and deserve – a better world, and a better civilisation.

We have been betrayed by our political leaders. They have let us down time and time again. They don’t have any solid principles of their own. They have replaced passion with expediency.

But this isn’t the way it has to be. And it isn’t the way it should be. As freedom fighter Thomas Jefferson said in his inaugural speech: ‘Still one thing more, fellow citizens – a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labour the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.’

To regain Jefferson’s basic principle of good government you and I have to stand together.