I don’t think I can get on board with this budget thing at all.

To start with, there are more than 14 things the government spends its money on, 15% this year is expected to be Other and General Government, so they won’t get any allocation.

More importantly, it all seems backwards. You don’t decide that 10% should go to defence without knowing how much anything costs. If they under-allocate to education, being able to recall them is no consolation for the teachers who aren’t getting paid. Infrastructure projects need to undergo a cost / benefit analysis, and then receive the amount they need. Once they have been started, it’s difficult to switch out and cancel them because we forgot to account for something else.

At the moment, governments only tweak the way the pie is sliced, it’s based past spending, the public won’t necessarily do that. If the sun convinces a majority that everyone on benefits is a scrounger, the budget disappears and people start dying, fast.

There’d be no connection between ministries, and elections are cumbersome and costly as a way to keep the ministers in check. I think the debate that goes on within the House is useful, or will be when we remove the parties. If they want to get something done, they have to convince a majority of full-time MP’s it’s a good idea. No one’s going to accidentally halve the NHS budget because they didn’t bother doing their homework.

I know it’s very easy to point to the current bunch and ask how it could be worse, but I think it would be if we left it to daily mail readers.

Democracy is just a form of keeping the government in check, I don’t think the public should be making policy decisions. Directly electing the Cabinet, allocating budget, that’s too much democracy for me.