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Do we really have the stomach for "Real Reform"
Copyright: Carl Battie March 2024
Are we prepared to do what is going to be necessary
There can be no doubt that our country finds itself at a crossroads in history. We cannot continue to allow our Prime Minister’s, Chancellor of the Exchequer’s and Members of Parliament to carry o printing money like it’s going out of fashion.
As we stand today, each of us are now in debt, thanks to their recklessness to the tune of £39,300.00 per person. The UK’s tax to GDP ratio was 35.3% in 2023, ranking us 18th out of 38 OECD counties. Tax income in 2023/24 totalled £282 Billion with £181 Billion in National Insurance contributions.
We now more than ever before in our great history need “Real Reform”. I’m not talking about Nigel (let me suck up to Tump) Farage’s make belief political party. Their nothing more than a joke, just four seats in Parliament. That puts them firmly in the bottom six parties in the house. They are behind Sinn Fein with seven seats. The HM Revenue and Customs employs 66,000 people at a cost of Billions. Why do we need 66,000 people to police a tax system, simple, they, our MP’s have made it so complicated to manage. The first thing we need to do is introduce a straight “Flat Rate Tax” for both the citizens and companies. You pay tax on revenue, just like our VAT system, no deductions whatsoever. You make it a “Graduated” tax system, the more you earn the more you pay. Increase the starting level to £15,000. Then from £15,000 to £25,000 you pay 10%. From £25,000 to £40,000 you pay 15%. From £40,000 to £50,000 you pay 17%. From $50,000 up you pay the highest rate 20%. You only pay the higher rate on the salary that falls between the two levels. If you were to earn £32,000 you would pay 10% tax on the first £25,000 then 15% on the next £7,000. Companies would pay a flat 10% on revenue up to £200,000. From 200,000 to $500,000 it would rise to 15%. From 500,000 upwards they would pay the highest rate 20%, once again “Graduated”. HM Revenue and Customs would need less than 20,000 staff to police this system. This tax benefits from this system would attack more foreign investment onto our shores. It would stop all the legalised cheating done by the larger corporations, all those expensive lunches and corporate entertainment cost. If they want them, let it come out of their profits. After all, we can’t claim anything, if we want to take our wives and girlfriend’s out we just bit the bullet.
Now this is where is gets sticky, this must be a two-way road for it to work.
As it stands now (WE) the citizens always get the messy end of anything that our parliament passes. What other job in the world allows you to continue to grow our debt, mess up our Health Care system and cripple the living standards of our old age pensioners with absolutely no recourse whatsoever, NONE. We have 650 MP’s all earning £91,346 per year. A Cabinet post take that up to £163,891. How about we do something real novel and pay them on their achievements, just the way the rest of us get paid. Their starting salary could be £50,000. A balanced budget gets them another £20,000 a reduction in the debt gets them another £7,500. The remaining £13,846 could come from Health care waiting list reductions and reducing the number of potholes we must endure every day.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves came into power on promises they have not only broken, they have smashed them out of the ballpark. They and their colleagues in the house of Parliament love to talk about “Their Life in Public Service”. The strange thing is, they all seem to leave this so-called life of public service far more affluent than when they started. Most are financially secure for life by the time they leave, unlike their poor constituent’s.
For Keir Stamer there will be nowhere to hide from his and the Labour party promises that they have not kept. All those poor old pensioners he promised so vigorously to look after have very long memories.
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Where had all the "Real Politicians Gone"
Copyright; Carl Battie March 2025
Where have all the “REAL POLITICIANS” gone
By Carl Battie:
Author, Convicted Felon, Concerned Citizen, Podcaste
Where have all the “Real Politicians” gone? I’m old enough to remember when our House of Parliament was full of larger-than-life characters. It really didn’t matter if you agreed with their views or policies, as soon as you saw them on the TV or heard their voices you knew what was coming. They all had one thing in common, no matter which party they belonged to, the courage of their own convictions. They didn’t bend or change direction no matter what the latest fad was. They didn’t care about political correctness. They all stayed faithful to their core beliefs. Winston Church (The British Bulldog) a Liberal at heart who spent most of his career in the Tories, after the Liberal Party fell to pieces after the war. Margaret Thatcher (The Iron Lady) a Torie who said what she meant and meant what she said, and who wasn't for turning. Tony Benn (the darling of the far left) Labour, far too outspoken to ever become the party leader. Enoch Powell, a man who was never afraid to say it as he saw it, a Torie who most of the other Tories wished would go somewhere else. Which is what he finally did. He joined the Ulster Unionist Party and became the MP for South Down from 1974 to 1987. John Prescott, a no-nonsense man with a killer smile, who never wavered from his grass roots beliefs. Tony Blair was smart enough to make him Deputy PM his very own (Pitbull), he kept the party rebels in line. He also gave some much needed colour to Blairs very gray cabinet. I arrived back in England a week before the General Election of July 4th, 2024. This enabled me to witness the final frantic push for power. Those who wanted to hold on to it (the Tories). Those who wanted to take it away from those who had it (Keir Starmer’s Labour party). Plus of course those who had no real chance of ever getting anywhere near it (The Liberal Democrats and to a much lesser extent Nigel (let me suck up to Trump) Farage’s Reform Party). Having spent the previous twenty years or so watching those American ruthless politics with all its brash, crazy showmanship. The first thing I noticed was how polite (in relative terms) the TV adverts and contestants were to each other. Nothing much seemed to have changed, even after all those years. Nobody was taking responsibility for the mess we were in. Each side is blaming the other for all the problems we are now facing. The real difficulty and much more worrying for me, after being away so long, was trying to understand and work out what any of them really stood for. Their messages were almost the same, a little twisted here and there but basically, they were all promising to do the same things for our country. Look after the pensioners, fix the broken health service and get it working the way it should, get our school system into something we could be proud of and last but not least, increase our standard of living by making us all better off by ensuring we would get to keep more of those pound notes we work so hard for in our pockets. All of this could be done, they all promised, without raising our taxes. Their favorite go-to-word was crisis, they had all become merchants of doom and gloom. Any setback, however small, rendered that situation hopeless. By the time we had reached the polling day I had concluded that we don’t have real politicians anymore. What we now have is a collection of very polished and slick “Public Relations” professionals. All the party campaigns were very much the same, extremely vanilla. How can we know what they truly stand for? If anything at all. Where’s all the passion gone? They all seem to be following their party line, which during this election campaign seemed to be the middle ground. They all worked very hard not to upset or isolate anyone, telling everyone what they wanted to hear. They all made sure they had photos and sound bites with all the hot topic groups, The Waspi ladies, the Pensioners who can’t afford to heat their homes and so on. I fully understand why these so-called politicians will do whatever they need to do to win or keep their seat in Parliament. It has nothing to do with “Public Service”, something they all like to shout about. The truth is, it's all about money and nothing else. All you need to do is look at the vast improvement in the net worth of these people after they have held their seats for ten years or more, and for those smart or lucky enough to get a Cabinet position the sky’s the limit. Most have made themselves financially secure for life. And what have they given back to us, their constituents and taxpayers, little or nothing. The country's financial situation continues to decline annually, as evidenced by the increasing national debt each year. They all seem to believe they are dealing with some form of magic money; they keep introducing more and more lavish programs, with no regard whatsoever for how we (the British taxpayers) are going to pay it back. They just don’t understand the very basis of finance, no one ever grew richer by ordering another credit card. No country ever solved its debt problems by taxing its citizens beyond their capability to pay. Eight months have now passed since that election night. Keir Starmer’s Labour party had cruised to a landslide victory. No real surprise there, history has proved repeatedly that any party who had held power for two or more parliaments was more than likely going to get their ass handed to them. It’s just what us Brits do. But we do it well, no mercy, thanks but no thanks time for a change. Starmer and his cabinet have already had their share of scandals and ministers resigning. He, like all the opposition leaders that came before him, has begun to learn a harsh lesson. It’s a massive leap from talking the talk to walking the walk. As the PM there’s nowhere to hide, the buck stops at his door, but on a brighter note for him personally and his colleagues in parliament, they are all getting richer by the day. Which is more than you can say about most of their poor constituents, including all those poor old pensioners he promised so vigorously to look after.
Copyright: March 5th, 2025
Author, Convicted Felon, Concerned Citizen, Podcaster
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Life as a Deported Criminal Alien after a Decade of Incarceration.
Copyright: Carl Battie March 2025
Life as a Deported Criminal Alien after a Decade of Incarceration.
By Carl Battie:
Author, Convicted Felon, Concerned Citizen, Podcaster
My name is Carl Battie, I’m sixty-eight years old. On April 12th, 2024, having completed a little less than eleven years from a fourteen-year sentence for financial crimes in America, I was finally released. As a criminal alien I was handed over to I.C.E (Immigration, Control and Enforcement) for processing. Having agreed as part of my plea deal with the two DA’s (District Attorney's), Federal and the State of California, that I would not contest my deportation, this should have been a simple process. My lawyers had led me to believe that this would take somewhere between seven to twenty-one days. I had the pleasure of spending seventy-one days in conditions that made the Federal and State prisons where I had served my sentence seem like heaven on earth and that takes some doing.
It truly was like living in a primate centre. Unlike prison there are no real rules of how to behave between the detainees, it’s everyone for themselves. Finally on Wednesday June 26 I was driven to Dallas Texas airport for my flight home to London Heathrow where I would at long last become a free man. The flight home was, to say the least, weird. For the first time in almost eleven years there were no handcuffs, no shackles and no guards. I could get up anytime I wanted, walk to the bathroom or get a drink without asking for permission. The last time I was in England was more than twenty-five years ago. Due to my own stupidity, I had burnt a lot of bridges when I left for the States. I have three children, all in their forties now. One, my daughter has shown far more compassion than I deserved and had made the effort to keep in contact with me during the last six years of my sentence. We would speak on the phone once or twice a month. We also emailed each other from time to time. My middle son sort of kept in touch. But this was better than nothing and I had no right to expect anything after the way I treated them. My youngest refuses to speak to me at all, and that's his right. This was all made possible by their mother who worked hard to make sure I at least had a chance of building relationships with them upon my return. I was returning to my place of birth with little more than the clothes I was wearing. Nowhere to live and no money, the FBI had taken everything I had the day I was arrested.
Thank God for a British Charity called “Prisoners Abroad” who had been a Godsend to me during all those years. They regularly send me Newsletters, resettlement books, newspapers, books, birthdays and Christmas cards. They also supplied freepost envelopes that allowed me to keep in touch with my family back in England. Over the years I have read every page of their resettlement book more times than I can remember. Whenever my anxiety levels would rise, which became a regular occurrence as I got closer to the door (my release date). My main concerns were about what would happen to me, whether I would survive, where I was going to live when I got home. I would get that book out. There were very clear and precise instructions on what you could expect from “Prisoners Abroad”. It also included what they expected of you. This was very much a two-way street, and I would be expected to play my part. I arrived home at Heathrow airport at 5.45am on Thursday 27th of June 2024. My first port of call was the “Travel Care” center at the airport, another English charity that looks after people who return to England with little or no support. They work closely with “Prisoners Aboard” for British Citizens returning to the UK upon their release. The people there were extremely kind and very helpful. I was given some food and coffee while they worked on setting me up with a cell phone and accommodation for the first few days. They arranged for me to stay in a small hotel in Kings Cross for the weekend. I was also given a £50.00 Tesco gift card for food which was to last me a week, along with an Oyster Card that allowed me to use the tubes and buses. They set up an appointment for me to see my Prisoners Abroad resettlement officer, Rob, at Prisoners Abroad at their offices in Finsbury Park. Rob, like all the staff at “Prisoners Aboard”, was kind, welcoming and polite. I never once felt like I was being judged for my crimes. Rob worked hard to ease my concerns and fears of what lay ahead. None of what was going to be required over the coming months was going to be easy, but his experience of the system and the plan we laid out together during our meeting was achievable and made sense.
First, we worked out where I would be staying and how I would manage when it came to money until I could get my pension sorted out. By the time I left their offices I had a bag of new and used clothes as well as hygiene products. More important than those, as nice as they were, I had a real sense of excitement over my future. It was going to be alright; I had a plan and the support of some wonderful people; I was not on my own. Dealing with any government agency is normally never easy and can be at times a real pain. When it comes to dealing with the Department of Wages and Pensions, I soon learnt that you need to be patient, tolerant and very polite when communicating with them. They have their own timetable and nothing you can say or do will change that. Making sure you have all the required paperwork and documents is very important. Having read the resettlement book, I had stated the process of getting many of the documents together six months before my release. With the help of Prisoners Abroad and my children's mother I had almost everything in place. Just as well because it still took fourteen weeks and the help of Age Concern and Citizens Advice to get me my first payment. As well as working on my pension application with Rob, we were also working on my health and accommodation needs. Shortly before my release I was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer. The Federal prison service in the US refused to give me any treatment except pain killers. I was too close to my release date. Their excuse being not enough time to set up appointments. I was to see my own doctors upon my return to England. The 71 days I was delayed at the Immigration center in Dallas did little to help my health problems. By the time I landed at Heathrow I was desperately ill, in constant pain, and losing weight at an alarming rate. Rob made an appointment for me to visit a local homeless healthcare clinic in Mornington Crescent the following day. The doctors and nurses were wonderful. They did the best they could to help stabilize my condition with painkillers and antibiotics for a bladder infection. Treatment for my Prostate Cancer was going to need me registering with a local GP. I was going to need the GP to put me forward to a consultant. Due to the strain that local GPs are under these days it took several days to even find a GP that would accept my application to join their practice. It then took six weeks before I was accepted and could book an appointment to see the doctor, which was another two weeks out. During this time, I was living in small hotels or B&B’s. I moved four times. Rob did his best to keep the moves down to a minimum. The length of the stay depended on the deal he could get with the hotel or B & B. They have limited funds and must keep the cost down as much as possible.
On the day I had my doctor's appointment I was feeling terrible; it was difficult to function. The pain was off the charts. The doctor prescribed some stronger pain killers and promised to get me an appointment as soon as possible with the consultant. Shortly after leaving the pharmacy, I collapsed. I came too as they were putting me into an ambulance. I spent a few hours in A&E and was then taken to a ward. Later that night when I had begun getting some of my senses together the doctor told me, another two to three hours and I wouldn't have made it. My kidneys were closing down to under 5% capacity and I had chronic urine retention. I spent the next eleven days in hospital. The NHS gets a lot of bad press but regarding the treatment I received I can only say, they were marvellous. On the day I left the hospital I was feeling better than I had for years. There was still a lot of treatment needed but I was going to be OK. Due to my medical problems and the fact that I was homeless Rob was able to get a local council to work with me. On September the 5th I moved into a small bedsit. The room had its own bathroom, which was very important due to my medical needs. I had a kidney bag that needed changing every 3 to 4 days as well as other dressings. The room was in a house that had just been renovated. So, everything was new, no one had used the bathroom or slept in the bed. It was the first time in over a decade that I finally felt like a real person again, I had somewhere to call home. I could come and go as I pleased, eat what I wanted when I wanted.
Three weeks later I received my first pension payment. They (DWP) had decided due to the number of years I had paid in I was entitled to £125.50 per week paid every four weeks in arrears. £502.00 per payment. Rod helped me complete my application for Pension Credits which I received on March 6th, it took twenty weeks. I will never be able to thank Rob, Prisoners Abroad, the staff in the local housing department along with the nurses and doctors for all their compassion, help and kindness. After my eleven years of living in a sub world of darkness, ruthlessness and the relentless dehumanization that inmates are subjected to, as was my experience in the US. It never occurred to me not even in my wildest dreams that I could possibly be this fortunate.
Copyright: March 2025
Carl Battie
Author, Convicted Felon, Concerned Citizen, Podcaster
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