New kinds of governments.
Discussion
digimeistter said:
Whole heartedly agree with the sentiment and idea, a government for the people by the people - what happened?
Political parties, centralization, and corruption, mostly. Ironically one of the successes has been the House of Lords, which was created intentionally to not represent the people at all, but has proved partially immune to the weaknesses of the Commons.grumbledoak said:
Political parties, centralization, and corruption, mostly. Ironically one of the successes has been the House of Lords, which was created intentionally to not represent the people at all, but has proved partially immune to the weaknesses of the Commons.
You think the HOL is a success? rscott said:
Maybe we need to adopt the Swiss system, where the population regularly has the opportunity to vote directly on individual policies?
Been suggesting similar to this for years. When a decent online system is created it would be a great tool to overthrow governments.Democracy these days could easily become digital, example, council tax:
How much of £1000 do you want to spend on, police, waste, education, hospitals, fill out until the £1000 totals.. job done, not rocket science!
The people currently deciding our fate are all like the senators who grilled Zuckerberg, clueless.
I live in Indonesia, a democracy but still a hotbed of corruption etc.... although this is reducing; with lots of high profile politicians and civil servants now serving long sentences in prison.
One thing I do like here is ministers actually having expertise in the area for which they are responsible.
For example the minister for fisheries....left school and started running a fish stall, bought some more, then a plane, then a fleet of planes. Actually knows fish industry inside out. Tattooed, smokes like a trooper and swears. I like her!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susi_Pudjiastuti
Finance Minister, strong international track record and head hunted back to serve in the government here. This is her:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Mulyani_Indrawat...
She designed and led the world's most successful (as I recall) tax amnesty, in 2016/17.
Nice to have people with some knowledge of what they're talking about.....
One thing I do like here is ministers actually having expertise in the area for which they are responsible.
For example the minister for fisheries....left school and started running a fish stall, bought some more, then a plane, then a fleet of planes. Actually knows fish industry inside out. Tattooed, smokes like a trooper and swears. I like her!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susi_Pudjiastuti
Finance Minister, strong international track record and head hunted back to serve in the government here. This is her:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Mulyani_Indrawat...
She designed and led the world's most successful (as I recall) tax amnesty, in 2016/17.
Nice to have people with some knowledge of what they're talking about.....
El stovey said:
True democracy needs the population to be more empowered and involved in descision making, the ancient Greeks who started democracy knew this and used sortition as a part of the political process.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition..
Should people be more involved in descisions like in a jury or are people stupid and we should just have political parties making decisions on our behalf?
Yes people are stupid but not all of them, the problem is that the stupid ones don't see what's happening and this stupidity is creating big problems for the more knowledgeable ones
Penelope Stopit said:
El stovey said:
True democracy needs the population to be more empowered and involved in descision making, the ancient Greeks who started democracy knew this and used sortition as a part of the political process.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition..
Should people be more involved in descisions like in a jury or are people stupid and we should just have political parties making decisions on our behalf?
Yes people are stupid but not all of them, the problem is that the stupid ones don't see what's happening and this stupidity is creating big problems for the more knowledgeable ones
The Scandinavian countries plus New Zealand and Switzerland all, apparently, do things better than the UK.
rscott said:
Maybe we need to adopt the Swiss system, where the population regularly has the opportunity to vote directly on individual policies?
Funnily enough the Swiss had a referendum to restrict EU migration and the EU ignored it and told the Swiss leaders if they wanted to keep their access to the single market they should ignore it too. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/16/swit...
Also as we have seen with the reaction to the Brexit vote direct democracy is great until the "uneducated" vote for something the elites don't want
Representative democracy may be heavily flawed but its all we have got really. The general public don't have time to properly consider most issues. The EU referendum was heavily debated and was a once in a lifetime sort of issue. Would you really want the same multiple times a year?
What we need therefore is to improve representative democracy. A starting point would be legally binding manifestos. As long as a party is elected with a majority if it breaks a manifesto commitment it has to seek re-election. Manifestos are a contract with the people and must be honoured.
Beyond that the sense of disconnect the OP feels will no doubt be resolved over time. Parties will realign to reflect the current political divides rather than those of the 1970s. Corbyn has merely delayed that realignment.
digimeistter said:
Whole heartedly agree with the sentiment and idea, a government for the people by the people - what happened?
It is funny you think that is how the British political system was designed to work.The uk has never had a government for the people by the people it is not called her majesty's government for nothing.
JagLover said:
What we need therefore is to improve representative democracy. A starting point would be legally binding manifestos. As long as a party is elected with a majority if it breaks a manifesto commitment it has to seek re-election. Manifestos are a contract with the people and must be honoured.
Fully agree with that.This would then bring an end to the bullshyte politics that takes place in the UK, promising everything to everyone to win votes and then delivering nothing.
Atomic12C said:
JagLover said:
What we need therefore is to improve representative democracy. A starting point would be legally binding manifestos. As long as a party is elected with a majority if it breaks a manifesto commitment it has to seek re-election. Manifestos are a contract with the people and must be honoured.
Fully agree with that.This would then bring an end to the bullshyte politics that takes place in the UK, promising everything to everyone to win votes and then delivering nothing.
It would lead to the most wishy-washy, broad, Edstone-type 'policies' that would be incredibly timid and (at best) incremental so they could be achieved or, at least, easily defended. The continual cycle of denial of facts and different sides substituting their own facts, statistics, definitions and interpretations is bad enough now, let alone when there's £millions in legal cases and the potential collapse of the government at stake.
It would just lead to a redefinition of what a manifesto was. The official manifesto would be crammed with generalisations that won't come back to bite anyone ('a focus on x', 'increased funding for y', 'reform of z') and then every party would produce reams of 'policy studies' or whatever to spell out what they'd do in an ideal world and as a presentation of their ideological vision for the country (which is pretty much all that a manifesto ever should be prepared or read as). So then everyone will start picking over those while the official and legally-binding manifesto gets lip-service. And what if the electorate refuses to vote for a party whose official manifesto is just wishy-washy, timid nonsense? Well they won't get a choice because it's in every party and candidate's interests to be as (small c)onservative as possible for fear of overreaching themselves and getting slung out and sued. And can you imagine how bad political discourse would get if all anyone had to do to collapse a government would be to prove that they had broken a manifesto promise? Every PMQs would be quibbling over every word of every sentence, plus every interest group and lobby would be continually bringing breach-of-contract cases against the government. Any party that did get in on a manifesto consisting of actual formulated policies would quickly be undone by a thousand cuts of lawsuits, or just by the unpredictability of future politics. What if there's a recession caused by, I dunno, a trade war between the USA and China, so suddenly all your costings and focusses are no longer valid? Does the government get chucked out because it dared to push the boundaries, fully commit to something or even just write down an actual idea? Or are there get-out clauses for unforeseen systemic problems? In which case you just introduce another way for lawyers to get rich nitpicking over definitions and statements, or there's be so many clauses as to make the entire idea of legally-binding manifestos useless.
Of course, a lot of on this thread seem to yearn for timid, (small c)onservative, wishy-washy politics that doesn't upset the socio-economic status quo at all, so that may be exactly what you are after. Hence the poster on the first page yearning for the bold, innovative leadership of political giants such as...Morgan, Chuka, Clegg, D. Milliband and Macron. Gotta love the 'radical centrists' yearning for change by committing to an ideology that, by definition, seeks to retain the way things are right now and not an iota to the right or left.
Edited by 2xChevrons on Monday 11th June 10:10
I have an idea for a modern twist on democracy.
We have the technology now to create a national rating system for politicians that runs constantly (not just during an election). And it's driven by the public.
Each voter has a binary vote per politician, either positive or negative. You can change it at any time, so if you see a good stint on Question Time, you can give them an instant boost.
Then we could track our politicians on a sort of stock market. The BBC graphics department would love it.
You could even define a minimum "value" required for them to be considered for a cabinet/shadow cabinet post.
So that's it. I've fixed democracy. Any questions?
We have the technology now to create a national rating system for politicians that runs constantly (not just during an election). And it's driven by the public.
Each voter has a binary vote per politician, either positive or negative. You can change it at any time, so if you see a good stint on Question Time, you can give them an instant boost.
Then we could track our politicians on a sort of stock market. The BBC graphics department would love it.
You could even define a minimum "value" required for them to be considered for a cabinet/shadow cabinet post.
So that's it. I've fixed democracy. Any questions?
This seems interesting, certainly as a solution to reforming the house of lords:
https://www.ted.com/talks/brett_hennig_what_if_we_...
Could it work?
https://www.ted.com/talks/brett_hennig_what_if_we_...
Could it work?
2xChevrons said:
Do you really think this would be an improvement?
It would lead to the most wishy-washy, broad, Edstone-type 'policies' that would be incredibly timid and (at best) incremental so they could be achieved or, at least, easily defended. The continual cycle of denial of facts and different sides substituting their own facts, statistics, definitions and interpretations is bad enough now, let alone when there's £millions in legal cases and the potential collapse of the government at stake.
It would just lead to a redefinition of what a manifesto was. The official manifesto would be crammed with generalisations that won't come back to bite anyone ('a focus on x', 'increased funding for y', 'reform of z') and then every party would produce reams of 'policy studies' or whatever to spell out what they'd do in an ideal world and as a presentation of their ideological vision for the country (which is pretty much all that a manifesto ever should be prepared or read as). So then everyone will start picking over those while the official and legally-binding manifesto gets lip-service. And what if the electorate refuses to vote for a party whose official manifesto is just wishy-washy, timid nonsense? Well they won't get a choice because it's in every party and candidate's interests to be as (small c)onservative as possible for fear of overreaching themselves and getting slung out and sued. And can you imagine how bad political discourse would get if all anyone had to do to collapse a government would be to prove that they had broken a manifesto promise? Every PMQs would be quibbling over every word of every sentence, plus every interest group and lobby would be continually bringing breach-of-contract cases against the government. Any party that did get in on a manifesto consisting of actual formulated policies would quickly be undone by a thousand cuts of lawsuits, or just by the unpredictability of future politics. What if there's a recession caused by, I dunno, a trade war between the USA and China, so suddenly all your costings and focusses are no longer valid? Does the government get chucked out because it dared to push the boundaries, fully commit to something or even just write down an actual idea? Or are there get-out clauses for unforeseen systemic problems? In which case you just introduce another way for lawyers to get rich nitpicking over definitions and statements, or there's be so many clauses as to make the entire idea of legally-binding manifestos useless.
Of course, a lot of on this thread seem to yearn for timid, (small c)onservative, wishy-washy politics that doesn't upset the socio-economic status quo at all, so that may be exactly what you are after. Hence the poster on the first page yearning for the bold, innovative leadership of political giants such as...Morgan, Chuka, Clegg, D. Milliband and Macron. Gotta love the 'radical centrists' yearning for change by committing to an ideology that, by definition, seeks to retain the way things are right now and not an iota to the right or left.
Interesting points. It would lead to the most wishy-washy, broad, Edstone-type 'policies' that would be incredibly timid and (at best) incremental so they could be achieved or, at least, easily defended. The continual cycle of denial of facts and different sides substituting their own facts, statistics, definitions and interpretations is bad enough now, let alone when there's £millions in legal cases and the potential collapse of the government at stake.
It would just lead to a redefinition of what a manifesto was. The official manifesto would be crammed with generalisations that won't come back to bite anyone ('a focus on x', 'increased funding for y', 'reform of z') and then every party would produce reams of 'policy studies' or whatever to spell out what they'd do in an ideal world and as a presentation of their ideological vision for the country (which is pretty much all that a manifesto ever should be prepared or read as). So then everyone will start picking over those while the official and legally-binding manifesto gets lip-service. And what if the electorate refuses to vote for a party whose official manifesto is just wishy-washy, timid nonsense? Well they won't get a choice because it's in every party and candidate's interests to be as (small c)onservative as possible for fear of overreaching themselves and getting slung out and sued. And can you imagine how bad political discourse would get if all anyone had to do to collapse a government would be to prove that they had broken a manifesto promise? Every PMQs would be quibbling over every word of every sentence, plus every interest group and lobby would be continually bringing breach-of-contract cases against the government. Any party that did get in on a manifesto consisting of actual formulated policies would quickly be undone by a thousand cuts of lawsuits, or just by the unpredictability of future politics. What if there's a recession caused by, I dunno, a trade war between the USA and China, so suddenly all your costings and focusses are no longer valid? Does the government get chucked out because it dared to push the boundaries, fully commit to something or even just write down an actual idea? Or are there get-out clauses for unforeseen systemic problems? In which case you just introduce another way for lawyers to get rich nitpicking over definitions and statements, or there's be so many clauses as to make the entire idea of legally-binding manifestos useless.
Of course, a lot of on this thread seem to yearn for timid, (small c)onservative, wishy-washy politics that doesn't upset the socio-economic status quo at all, so that may be exactly what you are after. Hence the poster on the first page yearning for the bold, innovative leadership of political giants such as...Morgan, Chuka, Clegg, D. Milliband and Macron. Gotta love the 'radical centrists' yearning for change by committing to an ideology that, by definition, seeks to retain the way things are right now and not an iota to the right or left.
Edited by 2xChevrons on Monday 11th June 10:10
Had the pleasure of watching the Honourable Kinnock S [M.P.] presenting the reasons of his insistence for a Police investigation of Mr Arron Banks on BBC earlier.
It was that embarrassing that even the totally impartial BBC and their presenters basically told him to shut up.
The MP then stated at length about the importance and unquestionable need to uphold the democratic principle from any subversion [sic].
I think it was at that point someone pulled the metaphorical plug....
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