Ben Bradshaw hadnt a good word to say for AV less than 18 months ago. He is now heading up Labours YES campaign.
As for Huhne - there are no words which begin to describe the utter stupidity of the bloke. Rumour has it he is after Cleggs job, hopefully that will finish the Limpdems off once and for all.

the problem with any democratic  system-leastways this is how it seems to me-is that of large minorities and how their views can be taken into account. At a simplistic level say you have a million people voting for either A or B , even if 90% or whatever vote for A that still leaves a considerable number of people who want B. The real nubb of the matter though is that when it comes to voting most people either are either apathetic or else do not know where to get reasonably unbiased information from in order to help them to make a more informed decision when voting. Throw in the fact that the majority of people will obviously only vote for something that only benefits them personally and no wonder it gets complicated. After all its not like its only a small group of people having a meeting where each person can actively participate in the discussion, its all sort of done by proxy with the issue about how accurately a particular party or person will represent your views being the moot point

bigegg wrote on 03. Apr 2011 at 23:36:


Yes I can see the allure in that following the travesty that was the New Labour experiment.

I can foresee one problem in that if it were left to parliament as a whole to draft new legislation there may well be considerable slippage - too many cooks and all that.

I think it's fair enough for the individuals duly elected on a clear mandate to choose the legislation their ethic dictates (or alter existing legislation to better reflect their ideals) but in essence, governance needs to have a clear driver and that, for me at least, really needs to be the party and, by extension, the leadership chosen by the voters.

I’m not fully discounting your suggestion as I need to think about it a bit more, but I would agree that there is something lacking in the parliamentary system at the moment that allows abuse of process to be practised with impunity.

Such abuse has devalued the sanctity and moral content of this Parliament where personal gain, avarice and lust for power seems to have overridden standards of propriety and good judgement.

Albs wrote on 04. Apr 2011 at 00:01:



Quote:



This suggests to me that the overall quality of those duly elected is questionable.

If that were to be the case (and I think it is sadly) would they, as a group acting in parliamentary session, have the nous, skill and determination to raise, debate and vote for proposed legislation with any hope of attaining a meaningful result?

6oo (or so) morons - morally challenged, mendacious or generally there for everything but serving the interests of the country - meeting to choose legislation (howsoever apparently democratic) - doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the end result will be worth enacting.

Albs wrote on 04. Apr 2011 at 00:37:


I don't know how to approach this as a lot depends on the content of those elected - as with much nowadays, the number of people in possession of morals, concern for others and the willingness to do the job they said they'd do seems to be rapidly diminishing.

In the case of your own manifesto, I can say only one thing - Vote early - Vote often.