UK Chancellor John Healey is walking a fiscal tightrope ahead of a crunch budget this week Tough choices, we’re told, are the only way to manage ballooning national debt and arrest the steep decline in public services.

Luckily, one already confirmed government policy offers a glimmer of hope that politics can bring us together over mild irritation. Specifically, a fine for antisocial behaviour targeting people blaring music too loudly from their phones in public and a crackdown on littering, vaping and threatening behaviour.

This small bit of statecraft won’t solve the energy trilemma or productivity pitfalls but it could salvage some consensus from the jaws (and bores) of national defeatism. Let’s call this the modest manifesto, or a nudge that petty policymaking people can understand and get excited about in a sea of big promises.

Talking property
House prices are exorbitant, supply limited and wages stagnant. Home ownership is unattainable for many. So let’s start with punitive taxes on estate agents who call damp basements “garden apartments” or cupboards “bedrooms”? Then a swift moratorium on the overuse of the term “up-and-coming” to describe grotty neighbourhoods, before a clampdown on those misleadingly describing unscrubbed graffiti as “street art”.

Tech tax
Customers shouldn’t need to register an account to buy anything and everything online. It’s a toothbrush not a mortgage.

End pissing around
Surely, it’s time that cities recognised the need for taxi drivers, delivery folk and the rest of us to find relief? The aggressive privatisation of public space has left many with nowhere to go. Literally. What say we build some pleasant public toilets and pay people to keep them clean?

Questionable practice
Let’s also agree today to ban the pointless end-of-transaction “customer survey” in all instances. “How did we do today?” Not well. Ditto a blanket ban on endless password prompts and the alarming irony of computers endlessly verifying our humanity online. Is this progress?

Nothing is ‘future-proof’
Anyone claiming to “future-proof” a business, particularly those flogging software, should be compelled to explain in detail exactly what the future looks like – in writing and for scrutiny at a later date. The tech industry seems incapable of predicting next Tuesday let alone what might happen in 2030.

Resilience in word and deed
We need a national campaign to prevent people from framing ordinary activities in Herculean terms. Changing your internet provider or getting a wardrobe delivered is not “a journey”. Also, a slow train, bad lunch or a little drizzle in no way constitutes a “perfect storm”.

Unhappy customers
Fines for companies that replace customer-service teams with an uncomprehending chatbot called Alice, programmed to tell you that she “understands your frustration”. She manifestly does not.

Over to you then, Mr Healey. Your work is important to us. We understand your frustration. But here’s some feedback. Maybe politics needs fewer grand gestures and more fixes for the little indignities that leave us wondering if there’s anyone in charge.

The post Brits rarely agree on government policy. Addressing the national shortage of common sense would be a start appeared first on Monocle.

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