Suggested NY resolutions for No. 10:
1. Housing. In 1968, our first semi cost me one year’s salary. Today, it would cost 10x the average salary! People can no longer afford a standard house. In the post-war years, councils erected pre-fabs. Do the same now. Erect thousands of cheap, affordable modular homes, plus surrounding infrastructure, using narrow strips of land bordering parks (as they did in postwar Birmingham) and brownfield sites, but retaining green leisure spaces, to help desperate people onto that vital first rung of the housing ladder. First time buyers should be first in the queue.
2. Health. Introduce French-style NHS cards, embedded with each individual’s health history. Vital for first responders/pharmacists/hospitals, who’d simply insert them into an NHS machine to instantly read your med history. Save money on hospital food waste by getting consultants to not only prescribe medicines but also prescribe a specific hospital menu according to your condition, as they do in France. Makes sense.
3. Illegal migrants. When we lived in France, the people waiting to cross from Calais to the UK were asked why they didn’t stay in France (or any of the other safe countries they had crossed to get there). They said the UK was the only European country without an ID card requirement; in other words they could simply disappear once on UK soil. Solution: See (2) above. A new NHS card system could easily also work as an id system, the card proving legitimacy and acting as a vital key for all kinds of help, thereby solving two problems at once.
It remains to be seen if the government will listen to my words of wisdom, but I hope so.
A very happy and healthy 2023 to all my readers!
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