English Parliament

Democratic fairness for England is needed, via a referendum on the creation of an English Parliament, Executive and First Minister with at least the same powers as the Scottish Parliament, Executive and First Minister within a federal UK and a reformed Second Chamber at Westminster. There should be fiscal devolution so that the English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish parliaments become responsible for financing their own expenditure. This will save the taxpayers of England a substantial amount of money.

Scotland and Wales have been recognised as countries and their people given the opportunity to vote in referenda for devolved government. In contrast, the people of England have been denied the opportunity to choose an English Parliament. England should be a political entity with its own parliament and executive.

Gold Standard - How it worked

The gold standard was a domestic standard regulating the quantity and growth rate of a country’s money supply. Because new production of gold would add only a small fraction to the accumulated stock, and because the authorities guaranteed free convertibility of gold into nongold money, the gold standard ensured that the money supply, and hence the price level, would not vary much. But periodic surges in the world’s gold stock, such as the gold discoveries in Australia and California around 1850, caused price levels to be very unstable in the short run.


The gold standard was also an international standard determining the value of a country’s currency in terms of other countries’ currencies. Because adherents to the standard maintained a fixed price for gold, rates of exchange between currencies tied to gold were necessarily fixed. For example, the United States fixed the price of gold at $20.67 per ounce, and Britain fixed the price at £3 17s. 10½ per ounce. Therefore, the exchange rate between dollars and pounds—the “par exchange rate”—necessarily equalled $4.867 per pound.


Because exchange rates were fixed, the gold standard caused price levels around the world to move together. This co-movement occurred mainly through an automatic balance-of-payments adjustment process called the price-specie-flow mechanism. Here is how the mechanism worked. Suppose that a technological innovation brought about faster real economic growth in the United States. Because the supply of money (gold) essentially was fixed in the short run, U.S. prices fell. Prices of U.S. exports then fell relative to the prices of imports. This caused the British to Demand more U.S. exports and Americans to demand fewer imports. A U.S. balance-of-payments surplus was created, causing gold (specie) to flow from the United Kingdom to the United States. The gold inflow increased the U.S. money supply, reversing the initial fall in prices. In the United Kingdom, the gold outflow reduced the money supply and, hence, lowered the price level. The net result was balanced prices among countries.


The fixed exchange rate also caused both monetary and non-monetary (real) shocks to be transmitted via flows of gold and capital between countries. Therefore, a shock in one country affected the domestic money supply, expenditure, price level, and real income in another country.


The California gold discovery in 1848 is an example of a monetary shock. The newly produced gold increased the U.S. money supply, which then raised domestic expenditures, nominal income, and, ultimately, the price level. The rise in the domestic price level made U.S. exports more expensive, causing a deficit in the U.S.Balance of Payments. For America’s trading partners, the same forces necessarily produced a balance-of-trade surplus. The U.S. trade deficit was financed by a gold (specie) outflow to its trading partners, reducing the monetary gold stock in the United States. In the trading partners, the money supply increased, raising domestic expenditures, nominal incomes, and, ultimately, the price level. Depending on the relative share of the U.S. monetary gold stock in the world total, world prices and income rose. Although the initial effect of the gold discovery was to increase real output (because wages and prices did not immediately increase), eventually the full effect was on the price level alone.


For the gold standard to work fully, central banks, where they existed, were supposed to play by the “rules of the game.” In other words, they were supposed to raise their discount rates—the interest rate at which the central bank lends money to member banks—to speed a gold inflow, and to lower their discount rates to facilitate a gold outflow. Thus, if a country was running a balance-of-payments deficit, the rules of the game required it to allow a gold outflow until the ratio of its price level to that of its principal trading partners was restored to the par exchange rate.


The exemplar of central bank behaviour was the Bank of England, which played by the rules over much of the period between 1870 and 1914. Whenever Great Britain faced a balance-of-payments deficit and the Bank of England saw its gold reserves declining, it raised its “bank rate” (discount rate). By causing other interest rates in the United Kingdom to rise as well, the rise in the bank rate was supposed to cause the holdings of inventories and other investments expenditures to decrease. These reductions would then cause a reduction in overall domestic spending and a fall in the price level. At the same time, the rise in the bank rate would stem any short-term capital outflow and attract short-term funds from abroad.


Most other countries on the gold standard—notably France and Belgium—did not follow the rules of the game. They never allowed interest rates to rise enough to decrease the domestic price level. Also, many countries frequently broke the rules by “sterilization”—shielding the domestic money supply from external disequilibrium by buying or selling domestic securities. If, for example, France’s central bank wished to prevent an inflow of gold from increasing the nation’s money supply, it would sell securities for gold, thus reducing the amount of gold circulating.


Yet the central bankers’ breaches of the rules must be put into perspective. Although exchange rates in principal countries frequently deviated from par, governments rarely debased their currencies or otherwise manipulated the gold standard to support domestic economic activity. Suspension of convertibility in England (1797-1821, 1914-1925) and the United States (1862-1879) did occur in wartime emergencies. But, as promised, convertibility at the original parity was resumed after the emergency passed. These resumptions fortified the credibility of the gold standard rule.


Performance of the Gold Standard


As mentioned, the great virtue of the gold standard was that it assured long-term price stability. Compare the aforementioned average annual inflation rate of 0.1 percent between 1880 and 1914 with the average of 4.1 percent between 1946 and 2003. (The reason for excluding the period from 1914 to 1946 is that it was neither a period of the classical gold standard nor a period during which governments understood how to manage monetary supply)
But because economies under the gold standard were so vulnerable to real and monetary shocks, prices were highly unstable in the short run. A measure of short-term price instability is the coefficient of variation—the ratio of the standard deviation of annual percentage changes in the price level to the average annual percentage change. The higher the coefficient of variation, the greater the short-term instability. For the United States between 1879 and 1913, the coefficient was 17.0, which is quite high. Between 1946 and 1990 it was only 0.88. In the most volatile decade of the gold standard, 1894-1904, the mean inflation rate was 0.36 and the standard deviation was 2.1, which gives a coefficient of variation of 5.8; in the most volatile decade of the more recent period, 1946-1956, the mean inflation rate was 4.0, the standard deviation was 5.7, and the coefficient of variation was 1.42.


Moreover, because the gold standard gives government very little discretion to use monetary policy, economies on the gold standard are less able to avoid or offset either monetary or real shocks. Real output, therefore, is more variable under the gold standard. The coefficient of variation for real output was 3.5 between 1879 and 1913, and only 0.4 between 1946 and 2003. Not coincidentally, since the government could not have discretion over monetary policy, unemployment was higher during the gold standard years. It averaged 6.8 percent in the United States between 1879 and 1913, and 5.9 percent between 1946 and 2003.


Finally, any consideration of the pros and cons of the gold standard must include a large negative: the resource cost of producing gold. Milton Friedman  estimated the cost of maintaining a full gold coin standard for the United States in 1960 to be more than 2.5 percent of GNP. In 2005, this cost would have been about $300 billion.

Gold Standard

PROS

• limited physical supply of gold helps to restrict a government's ability to inflate the money supply
• the money supply naturally tends to grows at a rate to help keep prices stable
• With the gold standard, high inflation is extremely rare. In theory, our money would retain value and we would get a higher level of goods and services for our money.
• Money are actually spending REAL money and not debt.
• democratises money supply

CONS

• At the current price of gold the UK does not have enough gold to back all the ££.
• Gold is not intrinsically connected to our standard of living. Gold is theoretically disconnected from our standard of living.
• The theoretical disconnect between the value of money and living standards doesn't necessarily have to cause problems, but drastic changes in the purchasing power of money definitely has the potential to wreck havoc on an economy. For example, the hypothetical golden egg laying chicken scenario would be a complete economic disaster to any country on a gold standard. Obviously chickens won't start laying golden eggs, but things can happen such as one day other countries might find it in their interest to lay thousands of tonnes of gold on the markets which can have a similar effect as the hypothetical golden egg laying chickens.
• valuable resources that could be used to produce useful things are instead redirected and used to dig gold out of the ground
• gold is purchased by creating new money which effectively devalues existing money.
• Limits to the money supply could cause money to become scarce in some areas, at times. 
• It would also do little for global inequality when it comes to distribution of wealth.

Manifesto- independent.

I will concentrate mainly on three main topics. Those topics are the economy and economic reform, Parliamentary Reform and Welfare Reform.

Brief Oversight:


Economics and Economic reform:

• Consultation, with a view to return to gold standard. 
• Banking Reform to include full fractional reserve.
• Capital projects, esp housing and national infrastructure
• Direct spending on ‘deprived’ areas
• Tax Breaks and deregulation for small and medium business
• Consultation, with a view to reduce Corporation Tax by 3% from 21% to 18% on SME.
• Retraining of workers to encourage high tech manufacturing
• Simplification of Tax System
• Increased Tax Inspectors aimed at high profile, high end tax invasion
• Consultation, with the view of replacing council tax with a more representative tax.

Parliamentary Reform:

• Within first 6 months of Parliament a referendum will be held on changing the voting system. All mainstream voting systems will be included on the ballot.
• A 'Constituency Contract'
• Within the first 6 months of Parliament a referendum will be held on the UK’s member ship of EU. A straight yes/no question.
• On both these referendum, I will not campaign but give the electorate as much facts and info as possible.
• Devolution of political power to lowest level
• FOI request to be widened to include all info except private info and national security.-This transparency will build trust.
• House of Lords to be reformed to include non-party elected members and sector stakeholders appointees.
• Consultation, with a view of England having her devolved Parliament.
• Consultation, with a view of devolving powers to local levels

Welfare Reform:

• ALL Sickness and Disability benefits to be dealt with NHS rather than DWP
• ALL sub-contracting of medical assessment to be stopped and returned to NHS(With money that would have been paid to ATOS being invested in NHS)
• Voluntary Work placements are to continue but reformed so that there will be no sanctions involved and that the placement and training will be flexible so that the correct people are placed in the correct ‘job’. For period of placement, ‘wages’ shall be paid. The placements are to be in the charity sector or a specific business which suits the client’s specific circumstances.
• Claimants on JSA who are actively re-training and looking for work will be entitled to JSA+(To be explained later)

These will be financed by reducing the investment into the British Military from 2.6% GDP ( £37.5B/$57B) to 0.95% GDP ( £14.8B/$22.8B).

Consultation, with a view of scrapping Trident.