Assistant World Policeman
The UK will continue to decline as a Nation of International Importance unless we decide to radically redefine how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen by others.
Out must go the role of assistant world policeman to the USA, misguided ambitions to be a major, global financial centre and consumerist aspirations for an ever increasing GDP.
We can no longer afford the current defence and Foreign Policy expenditure budget and need to stop seeing ourselves as one of the 5 leading nations of the world with a major International role and we must give way to stronger, emerging nations and live within our means.
Sector Rebalance
The UK reliance on income from providing financial services to the world must also be scaled back. The sector is both unsustainable and corrupt and has distorted our economic activity. We should not be seen as the leader in the creation of dubious financial products and the experts in international tax avoidance that helped create the financial crisis of 2007 + nor allow a return to those practices and bank generated over lending for short term bank gain that disadvantages the majority of people in Britain.
New Economic Measurement
We should reject any national policies to increase GDP based on the current definition that leads to insane consumerism, pollution and rising debt.
Instead we must consider adopting the role of the world’s most well adjusted nation, embracing new ways of living in peace and harmony, valuing justice, well being and greater economic equality over greed, envy and materialism.
Our ambition should adapt to being the leading nation in the world in terms of Citizen Contentment, multicultural harmony based on a genuine acceptance of sensible diversity and a desire for Quality of Life rather than Quantity of Life.
This would include a new focus on education and personal development that values our individuality and promotes the idea of us each becoming the best we can be based on our natural talents and choice balanced against the needs of a well functioning society.
This society would exhibit a new understanding of the purpose of life and the acceptance of death and a new relationship between man and the natural environment, a new approach to balancing the enjoyment and consumption of the current generation with that of the generations that will follow, accepting a goal of making the future a better place to be than the past or the present.
It is likely to want to see a fairer distribution of wealth and a closing of the gap between the excessively rich and excessively poor.
Change
The transition to a society less focussed on possessing and consuming things to one more focussed on enjoying the environment and the company of others will not come without change .
Change not only in what we seek to be and have but also in how we get this and sustain it.
I would hope that 2014 will see the start of this process at both a national and personal level.
Successful Solo 