Dear Mr Blair (and whoever sees that you actually get to read this - he says, hopefully),

Thank you for your letter encouraging me to vote Labour at the coming general election, and for the “pledge card”, containing 6 Labour pledges.

I would much rather have you as Prime Minister than either Mr Howard or Mr Kennedy (Heaven forbid! on both counts) and would like to give you my vote. However, the local candidate I wish to vote for - whom I know and whose support I have for a number of issues close to my heart - is a Conservative. I am in a dilemma - and it is YOUR fault! You’ve had 8 years in which to introduce a fair and representative voting system which would have allowed me to vote for both the candidate and the party of my choice.

You are fond of appealing to “British fairness”, yet we have one of them most unfair and unrepresentative electoral systems in the Western world. Why? Because it suits YOU politicians (and the two main political parties) for it remain so.

Don’t give me any spin. Please, just change it! Make it fair and representative. Most Muslims, I am sure, will want to be represented by a fellow Muslim, were as I certainly don’t (because I have a very different history and world view). We just need a mechanism which counters small parties holding the balance of power having too disproportionate an influence.

My qualms about voting Conservative (and I certainly do have them) are reduced by the consideration that it will increase the chances of a hung Parliament, which the Liberal Democrats would hopefully use to force through electoral reform. Which is about the only thing they are good for.

Now to Labour’s “6 pledges”. Not one of them mentions the environment or sustainability. Yet without sustainability all your pledges (except perhaps in the short-term) are completely worthless.

It is not enough to give them a high priority. They have to be given absolute priority. Otherwise there is no future (prosperous or otherwise) for our children and coming generations on our finite and vulnerable planet, Spaceship Earth.

I realise, however, that you cannot give them absolute priority, because, like all governments, you give that to the economy – which provides the money for all your good intentions, including those for the environment and sustainability.

What we have is the most serious case of mistaken priorities imaginable, which you politicians are not even aware of, because the experts who advise you are not aware of it either (or are in denial).

Please, allow me to explain. My "Uncommon Sense " may not be easy to understand at first, but that is often the way with new insights and ideas.

Man’s social behaviour evolved over millions of years to serve the survival and advantage of individuals and family groups in the natural environment; there has been no time for it to adapt to the much larger social units of human civilisations. This same behavioural programming is now focused on the struggle for survival and advantage (everyone set on maintaining or improving their position) in the "socio-economic environment ", which in the modern, "civilised " world largely boils down to making money in the local, national or global economies. This is why, at terrible peril to our children and future generations, we persist in giving the economy (the household of man) priority over ecology (the household of our planet).

Our capitalist, free-market economy has developed and been honed to exploit our primitive, animal nature (fear, greed, competitiveness, the desire for a free or cheap lunch, for power, social status etc.), which is why in many respects it works so well. Unfortunately, apart from being inherently unjust and inhumane, it is also fundamentally unsustainable.

You obviously believe that New Labour can tame the dragon (of our capitalist, free-market economy) and steer it towards creating a just, humane, prosperous and sustainable future for our country (and the world). But you are terribly mistaken. The dragon has a mind of its own (rooted in our primitive, animal nature) and is carrying us to our doom - rich and poor, capitalist and worker, exploiter and exploited alike!

If we want our children and grandchildren to have a future, we have to get off.

But we depend on the economy, you protest. We cannot just get off.

True. So we have to create an alternative economy, and a whole new socio-economic order to go with it, rooted in our more enlightened, human nature. As it grows we can transfer our activities and dependences to it. We don’t have to overthrow (Heaven forbid!) or even change, the existing order, which will shrink as the alternative expands.

It is a massive challenge. But one we must rise to. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

How?

You could start by taking a look at my homepage at www.spaceship-earth.org, where I'm working on ideas relating to the kind of alternative I have in mind, and of how to realise them before it is too late.

Yours sincerely

Roger Hicks