General Election

[stevet678343200]

What we need is a total shakeup of the system. Sweep away the current corrupt political structure and replace it with something else. It's had a fair crack of the whip but it clearly doesn't work. Time to try something else.

Betty! i am really surprised. i agree with the notion that the current political system is corrupt however i am surprised that you have not proposed a different system.

the current system of government rests upon a core of capitalism, a corrupt system run by the corporations who fund their political servants.

the fact is that we are no longer living in democracy but an effective plutocracy whereby the rich influence the political parties or in the case of america are fully embedded within the party (BUSH)to form a government not run for the people but run for the companies.

i believe that the only way that we can overcome the current state of tyranny (company and state enforced and financed wars) is by establishing a new world order, nothing NWO or Illuminati but a world government based on pure socialism, only then can we ensure fair standards and conditions for people all over the world.

Coincidentally i believe that the Lib dems should have a go because labour and the conservatives are fully invested in by the big companies which means that their policies must be corporate friendly which is really quite ironic for Labour seeing how the Labour party was setup by the trade unions to combat corporate power.

UKIP although i am a member of the party i only agree with the one policy which they currently hold which is withdrawl from the EU to combat tyrannical Federalism which is more a kin to imperialism than a truely democratic govt. aside from that UKIP are the scum of the earth, a core of hardline conservative extreemists whose only chance of winning the election is a large following of neo-nazi extreemists hell bent on the repatriation of law abiding citizens.

[Betty_Swallocks]

Betty! i am really surprised. i agree with the notion that the current political system is corrupt however i am surprised that you have not proposed a different system.

Oh, I do have an idea for an alternative but I didn't want my post to turn into War and Peace.

I was thinking something along the lines of jury duty.

Putting it simply every non criminal adult citizen of sound mind would be potentially liable for parliament duty. Employers would be recompensed for the loss of their employee for the period of service, (a year I thought) but would be legally obliged to keep the job open, and the person serving would be paid their normal salary. Accomodation would be provided. This way there whould be no financial advantage to being a member of parliament.
Intakes would be staggered over the course of the year so that you wouldn't get a sudden influx of confused people arriving all at once not knowing what to do.
You would end up with a parliament making decisions where they could follow their own minds without orders from party bosses and if there were enough of them the effect of people voting in their own best interests would be minimised.
At the moment MPs either follow their party line or make their decisions based on what they think will get them either re-elected or a better directorship.

Obviously administrative details would hve to be worked out. I don't have all the answers and I'm sure there would be weaknesses in the system that would have to be worked out and safeguards against corruption that would have to be put in place, but I feel it would be a better starting point than the system we currently have where members of parliament are effectively chosen by a small group of men in grubby raincoats and women in silly hats (thank you Yes Minister") on selection committees.

[Saracen]

What about people that don't want to serve? Do you force them against their wishes?

What do you do if they just refuse to go?

What do you do if they just go along, sit at the back and sleep, because while you can force the horse to the water trough, you can't make it drink?

What about the self-employed? If I got pulled off my work for a year I doubt I'd have a business to come back to.

Nor, for that matter, is it easy to quantify the earnings of some self-employed. What about those that work part-time because they don't want to or don't need to work full-time? Do you force them to work full-time in Parliament, or do you have constituents represented by part-time MPs?

[Betty_Swallocks]

As I said, i don't have all the answers and I'm not proposing it as a fully fledged system with all the bugs ironed out. Just as an idea for a more effective starting point for discussion without a lot of the inherant disadvantages of the current system

Think about it. There are currently 644 MPs in the House of Commons. We don't have the opportunity to choose these people. That is done by the local selection committees. All we do is choose between the candidates put before us and in the majority of constituencies that is really not much of a competition. Can you really imagine a Labour candidate getting elected in Reigate or a Conservative in Hull?

If we assume for the sake of argument that these committees consist of around 30 people ( I really have no idea of the actual figure but I can't imagine it would be more than that. Please feel free to correct me if you know better.) then there are around 19 thousand people out of a population of just over 60 million choosing our lords and masters.

That doesn't sound like democracy to me and yet we go to war to impose our form of "democracy" on other nations.

We've all been conned. They tell us we have a democratic society and that's it's so good that it's our duty to make sure that the rest of the world works in the same way and we don't question it.

[JPreston]

It's an absolutely terrible idea, totally without merit, not just a few bugs.

Why would putting 600 average people in a debating chamber result in better-than-average decisions being made? Is there some kind of 'wisdom of the herd' that makes people more capable when they band together? People can be very stupid. Do we really want our entire criminal justice system rewritten by a randomly selected shelf stacker with an I.Q. of 70? The average reading age among adults in the UK is 12 years old. Why ask a functional illiterate to decide whether or not the country should adopt the latest iteration of the EU treaty? May as well just flip a coin 600 times....

And, why assume that a person off the street will not have his own interests to serve even more so than elected officials who do in fact have to answer to their electorate someday? Put me in control of the country for one year - and exactly one year, regardless of how good or bad a job I do, and leave me completely unaccountable to anyone for my decisions - and I would go on a Supermarket Sweep trolley-grab of bribery, kleptocracy, and nest-feathering. It would be several orders of magnitude better than winning the lottery for me.

What about carers, teachers, surgeons, or any other profession who will likely prefer to carry on in their day job, helping others or saving lives? What about the people on the surgeon's waiting list?

Why absolve government of any accountability, and effectively wipe the slate clean every year? Why let some faceless bloke in the pub decide to invade Iraq, and then slink back to his call centre job three months later leaving an electrician to command the army? Should we replace Trident? Oh I don't know, just let Sharon from Kidderminster have a guess. Who authorised the CIA rendition flights to fly into UK airspace? I dunno, it was probably like that when I got into office mate.

Every govt would spend half its tenure trying to reverse the heinous damage done by the previous rabble, before giving up and spending the second half making self-serving, ill-informed and disastrous policies of its own. There is not a single point in favour of this method of government!

[TeePee]

I'm a big supporter of proportional representation, and so my vote is Lib Dem, simply because it's another wasted vote.

[Saracen]

.....

That doesn't sound like democracy to me and yet we go to war to impose our form of "democracy" on other nations.

We've all been conned. They tell us we have a democratic society and that's it's so good that it's our duty to make sure that the rest of the world works in the same way and we don't question it.

I agree with all your reservations. Our form of government stinks in many ways. But Churchill supposedly put his finger right on the problem, and summed it up succinctly :-

Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.

And James Madison described our current political masters :-

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

But the most apt and succinct definition of all was by Arthur Seldon :-

Government of the busy by the bossy for the bully

The problem with the fact that our current system is badly flawed, and in no way represents any form of real democracy (the ability to vote for what we want being almost entirely illusory) is actually coming up with anything that it both better and practical.

There's one more old adage .... "crap floats". (substitute a more specific term for effluent)

The occupants of positions of power in our current political hierarchy (on all sides of the political spectrum) are stunningly clear evidence of the accuracy of that old walnut.

[pp05]

None of the above.

Nothing short of overthrowing them would make people have faith in the process.

You need a "None of the above" option on the poll.

There's no point in voting for any of them. All it gives you is a feeling of having some say in the running of the country whereas anyone with a brain and two eyes can see that we don't have anything like that.

They are all self serving, lying, manipulative, devious and corrupt. All the parties have their own agenda and the only time they do anything that we, the people want them to do is when it coincidentally falls in with their plans.

To be perfectly honest the whole system of "democracy" that we allegedly have is deeply flawed.
Merriam Webster defines democracy as "government by the people"

I agree. These guys are debating 1p off here, 1p added there, token politics. Pantomine. There is no vision. Soon it will all be done from Brussels.

At the sametime the advantage of such system is we generally have consistent politics. Things move slowly, nothing too radical apart from a new party logo or different colour canvas.

[Barrichello]

Staunch blue blood here, will be voting again likewise. Should they get in? I see no valid alternative, and seeing the back of "nu-labour" i will be very happy.

[Salazaar]

Don't like the Tories, don't like Labour, so I guess I'll be voting Lib Dem again. Plus, since our current (Lib Dem) MP has done a pretty decent job so far I wouldn't mind seeing him carry on.

But I imagine the Tories will win overall.

[Phage]

Radical idea here.

Read what the policies of each of the parties are, then make an informed decision. As a natural Left voter, I will not be voting Labour as I cannot stomach the destruction of civil liberties, habeas corpus, the unnatural growth of the public service, whilst simultaneously selling off public assets.

I now have to do some research of these and other issues important to me, such as Energy production, Foreign and Fiscal policies etc. and what each party presents.

NB - It's still going to be very hard to deal with the idea of voting Conservative. That Bullingdon Club photo looms large in my mind. To mis-quote Goering, every time I hear 'Bullingdon Club' I reach for my revolver...

[Salazaar]

Read what the policies of each of the parties are, then make an informed decision.

What kind of damned communist are you...?

[Lucio]

Always wondered if it was better to run the country like a company, run more akin to a co-operative than one that seeks to gouge the maximum profit. Make the people who run the country be the ones who prove they're up to the responsibility. Half the country is already run like this anyway (the Civil service), and all this does is stops the illusion that our vote matters.

[SeriousSam]

I’ll be voting Conservative primarily because they are the party that I have the least issues with from a policy perspective. Now you could argue that’s because nobody is really sure what they are, but considering the state of the country that they will inherit not making bold promises is probably a good idea. I’m not totally happy with all that they stand for but at least they won’t tax us to the hilt and fritter it away on pointless quango’s and handouts. “Help a man in need, but don’t spoil him till he’s needy”.

Personally the only reasons I can see for voting labour are (1) You’re happy being treated like a child and nannied to death whilst at the same time being fed handouts to keep you “sweet” and (2) It’s what you’ve always done and you see no reason to change despite the fact that “New Labour” is more fascist than socialist. Their utter disregard for the freedom of the individual is horrifying and the sooner we can oust them the better. Sadly Brown will try and hang on as long as possible, though that’s probably just as much to do with him wanting to “fix” things as anything else, I’ll give him that.

The Lib Dems are an odd one, some of what they propose has merit and then on the other hand they come out with well meaning unworkable nonsense as well. One plus for them is that on an individual basis some of their MP’s are worth voting for as they actually want to do a reasonable job. So were I in an area where the only way to oust the incumbent Labour parasite would be to vote for them then I’d give it serious consideration.

On the subject of Democracy then I agree that Churchill pretty much had it spot on, it is the best system of a bad bunch and all of the others have failed, quite spectacularly in some cases. Where it falls down is in relation to the notion that individuals make reasoned decisions. This is clearly not the case as people vote based on a whole host of irrational beliefs, as well as self serving ends. Now the hope is that as a nation the general consensus comes out as being for the “good of the country” but sadly that’s not really the case either. Part of that is down to the system where political parties base some of their decisions on appeasing the masses, irrespective of whether they are right or not. However, the larger part is that the whole basis of our civilisation is untenable in the long term. Our blind faith that we can “invent” our way out of trouble and just keep on consuming to create sustainable growth and thus elevate the people of the world to a better quality of living is arrogance of the highest order. Not least as money merely buys you a better class of misery.

Now don’t go thinking that I’m some radical eco-mentalist as I’m not by any means, quite the opposite in many respects. No matter what we do life will still exist on the planet, yes some species will die out but that happens anyway, and others will evolve to take their place. The only benefit in getting our house from humanities perspective is that we may survive in high numbers than if the proverbial hits the fan. Personally I think the only way we are going to learn these lessons is if we do end up staring death in the face, but I may be proved wrong we will have to wait and see.

Anyway getting back to politics and democracy, you would think that the obvious way to improve the system is to increase the education level of the average man in the street. That way people would overall make better decisions based on having a better understanding of the world they live in. However, does any of us really think that people would vote any less emotively or irrationally just because they were a bit better educated? We can't even agree in here on the best way forward and I would bet that our average education level is significantly higher than average...