the price of democracy

Lost Seasider said:
Do you think that the conviction rate is a reliable indicator of the scale of the problem?

Also, if the government were trying to gerrymander the system, why would they implement a completely free and easy to access system to comply with the arrangements?
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Even Rees Mogg admitted it when he said it hadn’t worked.
 
gjr said:
Under the current system if you live in the Fylde and you will vote for anyone but Conservative there is no point in voting, but I might make an effort for none of the above.
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If I had a Labour candidate who stood no chance I'd still vote for them.
 
Lost Seasider said:
Do you think that the conviction rate is a reliable indicator of the scale of the problem?

Also, if the government were trying to gerrymander the system, why would they implement a completely free and easy to access system to comply with the arrangements?
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Explain why identical bus passes are acceptable ID for pensioners but not for 18-21 year olds?

I wonder which demographic tends to vote Tory?
 
1966_and_all_that said:
If I had a Labour candidate who stood no chance I'd still vote for them.
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Imagine how futile and demoralising that becomes when you live in an ultra safe seat knowing you will have a lifetime of your vote counting for nothing.
I'm not particularly a fan of Labour either but if it could unseat Menzies I'd probably vote for them.
Reality is that me and the 6% of people who vote Green don't get an equivalent amount of influence in parliament for our vote.
I've reached the stage of 'why bother!?'
 
gjr said:
Imagine how futile and demoralising that becomes when you live in an ultra safe seat knowing you will have a lifetime of your vote counting for nothing.
I'm not particularly a fan of Labour either but if it could unseat Menzies I'd probably vote for them.
Reality is that me and the 6% of people who vote Green don't get an equivalent amount of influence in parliament for our vote.
I've reached the stage of 'why bother!?'
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The Tories are so unpopular ATM that there is no such thing as a safe seat for them anymore. I'd vote in any constituency in the next election . The last opinion poll put them on 20%, their lowest result ever. Sunak is actually less popular than Truss was as PM according to other polls. With Reform on the ballot paper a virtual wipeout of the Cons is possible. This is perhaps the one election in your lifetime where your vote could count.
 
gjr said:
Imagine how futile and demoralising that becomes when you live in an ultra safe seat knowing you will have a lifetime of your vote counting for nothing.
I'm not particularly a fan of Labour either but if it could unseat Menzies I'd probably vote for them.
Reality is that me and the 6% of people who vote Green don't get an equivalent amount of influence in parliament for our vote.
I've reached the stage of 'why bother!?'
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There's one small crumb of comfort. The national vote is published, meaning that a rising trend over a number of elections (as per the Green Party), can shift opinion. It certainly worked for UKIP who, like the Greens, only ever had one (two?) Parliamentary seat.
 
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1966_and_all_that said:
Hang around in your local supermarket at the newspaper stand and watch those who robotically reach for the Daily Mail.
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Anyone under 50 wouldn't buy a newspaper anyway when it's all available online where the news is actually upto date and not from the previous day. The Boomers still like a hard copy of the Daily Mail don't they.
 
ElBurroSinNombre said:
The Tories are so unpopular ATM that there is no such thing as a safe seat for them anymore. I'd vote in any constituency in the next election . The last opinion poll put them on 20%, their lowest result ever. Sunak is actually less popular than Truss was as PM according to other polls. With Reform on the ballot paper a virtual wipeout of the Cons is possible. This is perhaps the one election in your lifetime where your vote could count.
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Believe me the Fylde is as safe as they come, always surprised that none of the Tory big hitters stand here but then they would have to nominally live in Lancashire and pretend to be interested!!
 
ElBurroSinNombre said:
The Tories are so unpopular ATM that there is no such thing as a safe seat for them anymore. I'd vote in any constituency in the next election . The last opinion poll put them on 20%, their lowest result ever. Sunak is actually less popular than Truss was as PM according to other polls. With Reform on the ballot paper a virtual wipeout of the Cons is possible. This is perhaps the one election in your lifetime where your vote could count.
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Down to 18% overnight. Another percentage to Labour and 1% to Reform.
 
Look, Labour are gonna get in with a landslide majority but then nothing will change. Our lives aren't gonna become significantly better with regards to the NHS, pay, pensions and everything else that you associate as being wrong with this current Tory gov't. And of course Labour will blame everything on the Tories and maybe they are right. But we just then go thru the same old cycle and along the way Labour will make plenty of mistakes and in time people will be fed up of them and vote them out. That's the way it's always worked. That's why so many people including the younger generations are switching off to politics and turns outs are so low. Very few people care anymore.
 
hertfordseasider said:
I'm very much for having "None of the candidates" on the card. There should then be a campaign the vote for that so all the politicians can see no one actually likes any of them.
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"None of the above candidates" is available (to some extent" through spoiling the ballot paper, but there is no mechanism for that vote being considered. Something I've proposed to a foundation I deal with is where less than 50% of the available vote goes to a single candidate then a lottery similar to jury selection be used and a random person is drawn as the sitting member.
 
20togo said:
Look, Labour are gonna get in with a landslide majority but then nothing will change. Our lives aren't gonna become significantly better with regards to the NHS, pay, pensions and everything else that you associate as being wrong with this current Tory gov't. And of course Labour will blame everything on the Tories and maybe they are right. But we just then go thru the same old cycle and along the way Labour will make plenty of mistakes and in time people will be fed up of them and vote them out. That's the way it's always worked. That's why so many people including the younger generations are switching off to politics and turns outs are so low. Very few people care anymore.
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It’s that they have allowed themselves to become marginalized and then disillusioned. Thus the minority controls the majority under the auspices of being a democracy. This scenario never ends well.
 
20togo said:
Look, Labour are gonna get in with a landslide majority but then nothing will change. Our lives aren't gonna become significantly better with regards to the NHS, pay, pensions and everything else that you associate as being wrong with this current Tory gov't. And of course Labour will blame everything on the Tories and maybe they are right. But we just then go thru the same old cycle and along the way Labour will make plenty of mistakes and in time people will be fed up of them and vote them out. That's the way it's always worked. That's why so many people including the younger generations are switching off to politics and turns outs are so low. Very few people care anymore.
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Probably, but I don't think that's a given.

There's still the Galloway/Corbyn question, if they were to form their own party that might peel away 20% - 30% of Labour's vote.

Also, I think Labour's lead is soft, people are unhappy with the current situation, but that doesn't mean they're happy with what Labour are offering, which at the moment is precisely zero, so what the polls show, and how people vote might not be the same thing.

The biggest problem is Sunak.
 
20togo said:
Look, Labour are gonna get in with a landslide majority but then nothing will change. Our lives aren't gonna become significantly better with regards to the NHS, pay, pensions and everything else that you associate as being wrong with this current Tory gov't. And of course Labour will blame everything on the Tories and maybe they are right. But we just then go thru the same old cycle and along the way Labour will make plenty of mistakes and in time people will be fed up of them and vote them out. That's the way it's always worked. That's why so many people including the younger generations are switching off to politics and turns outs are so low. Very few people care anymore.
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Nail on the head with that post
 
Lost Seasider said:
Probably, but I don't think that's a given.

There's still the Galloway/Corbyn question, if they were to form their own party that might peel away 20% - 30% of Labour's vote.

Also, I think Labour's lead is soft, people are unhappy with the current situation, but that doesn't mean they're happy with what Labour are offering, which at the moment is precisely zero, so what the polls show, and how people vote might not be the same thing.

The biggest problem is Sunak.
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Labour 47%
Tories 18%.

That's what the polls are showing. Boris got an 80 seat majority with a smaller percentage.

You can say what you like but people have sussed the Tories for what they are.
 
Democracy needs a right good shake up. I think there's two key problems with using an archaic system in sci fi times.

1) There's almost no meaningful debate. It's all about 'winning and losing' - whenever you hear politicians, they're mostly spouting complete shite that they don't even believe. They'll slate the government or opposition regardless. The media is really hollowed out - so there's not really that same level of 'holding to account' as papers and telly are far less likely to run with 'serious' analysis pieces. It's kind of just a shouting match. Everything is 'true' and nothing is 'true'

2) It's palpably really slow. Life has sped up - people can give opinions, collaborate, make decisions way, way quicker with technology - and yet politics is visibly stuck in not just the previous century, but many centuries before. It feels ludicrous. It feels like they're taking the absolute piss. It makes them look totally detached from any actual reality of life.

Not sure how that really relates to local elections of any kind. I suspect local government and interest therein has steadily waned since tax raising powers were limited/removed in (I think) the 80s - so essentially rendering it a layer of government that can shuffle deckchairs, but not really make any massive impact.
 
20togo said:
Look, Labour are gonna get in with a landslide majority but then nothing will change. Our lives aren't gonna become significantly better with regards to the NHS, pay, pensions and everything else that you associate as being wrong with this current Tory gov't. And of course Labour will blame everything on the Tories and maybe they are right. But we just then go thru the same old cycle and along the way Labour will make plenty of mistakes and in time people will be fed up of them and vote them out. That's the way it's always worked. That's why so many people including the younger generations are switching off to politics and turns outs are so low. Very few people care anymore.
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Pretty much spot on.
 
td53 said:
Democracy needs a right good shake up. I think there's two key problems with using an archaic system in sci fi times.

1) There's almost no meaningful debate. It's all about 'winning and losing' - whenever you hear politicians, they're mostly spouting complete shite that they don't even believe. They'll slate the government or opposition regardless. The media is really hollowed out - so there's not really that same level of 'holding to account' as papers and telly are far less likely to run with 'serious' analysis pieces. It's kind of just a shouting match. Everything is 'true' and nothing is 'true'

2) It's palpably really slow. Life has sped up - people can give opinions, collaborate, make decisions way, way quicker with technology - and yet politics is visibly stuck in not just the previous century, but many centuries before. It feels ludicrous. It feels like they're taking the absolute piss. It makes them look totally detached from any actual reality of life.

Not sure how that really relates to local elections of any kind. I suspect local government and interest therein has steadily waned since tax raising powers were limited/removed in (I think) the 80s - so essentially rendering it a layer of government that can shuffle deckchairs, but not really make any massive impact.
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yep. wholesale reform is needed, parliament is no longer fit for purpose, MP's representation of their constituents is probably their third or fourth consideration after; party, donors, self (and political career). The Lords became not fit for purpose at least 150 years ago. Local government as you infer has little if any power because of centralisation, and the power it does have is often wielded as a stick to beat national government with or to highlight policy differentials purely for political purposes.

Democracy has simply become the ability to put a cross or a tick in a box (of it was ever anything more than that, I'm not sure) for a least worst set of candidates.

I'd disagree on life speeding up. We get the perception of rapid reaction, the projects I'm involved in (big corporate and government transformations) take as long or possibly even longer than when we did everything on paper. Decisions are often taken without consideration, opinions are instantly given without thought, actions undertaken in the understanding of changing it multiple times at a later date, because we have technology that enables us to respond immediately and often do the work quicker but without the thought necessary to do the work properly.

My own opinion is that parliament needs to be a representative body of constituents, with my aforementioned ideas around lottery selection, and that responsibility of constituent representation somehow enshrined in law. The office of PM should be separated from Parliament so that there is a proper process of parliament holding the executive responsible. A second elected body to replace the Lords would carry the role that the Lords s supposed to carry of being the legislative oversight.

England probably needs to be broken into about 5 or 6 regional assemblies as well. No government can create and implement policies for 60 million people, it just doesn't work. There's a book from the early 20th century i read when i was at college that made the claim (with I remember good justification) that cities of 1 million people are about the limit of governability (because of humanistic factors) and nations over 15 million become impossible to govern, system and entity hegemony become the predominant forces, and people (or at least 95% of them) are simply the resources of those systems and entities.
 
Costero Poderoso said:
yep. wholesale reform is needed, parliament is no longer fit for purpose, MP's representation of their constituents is probably their third or fourth consideration after; party, donors, self (and political career). The Lords became not fit for purpose at least 150 years ago. Local government as you infer has little if any power because of centralisation, and the power it does have is often wielded as a stick to beat national government with or to highlight policy differentials purely for political purposes.

Democracy has simply become the ability to put a cross or a tick in a box (of it was ever anything more than that, I'm not sure) for a least worst set of candidates.

I'd disagree on life speeding up. We get the perception of rapid reaction, the projects I'm involved in (big corporate and government transformations) take as long or possibly even longer than when we did everything on paper. Decisions are often taken without consideration, opinions are instantly given without thought, actions undertaken in the understanding of changing it multiple times at a later date, because we have technology that enables us to respond immediately and often do the work quicker but without the thought necessary to do the work properly.

My own opinion is that parliament needs to be a representative body of constituents, with my aforementioned ideas around lottery selection, and that responsibility of constituent representation somehow enshrined in law. The office of PM should be separated from Parliament so that there is a proper process of parliament holding the executive responsible. A second elected body to replace the Lords would carry the role that the Lords s supposed to carry of being the legislative oversight.

England probably needs to be broken into about 5 or 6 regional assemblies as well. No government can create and implement policies for 60 million people, it just doesn't work. There's a book from the early 20th century i read when i was at college that made the claim (with I remember good justification) that cities of 1 million people are about the limit of governability (because of humanistic factors) and nations over 15 million become impossible to govern, system and entity hegemony become the predominant forces, and people (or at least 95% of them) are simply the resources of those systems and entities.
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I think it depends on what the work is. I think it's indisputable that you can gather ideas or refine a proposal quicker than once you could. I take the point though, that can be illusory in terms of genuine achievement. Otherwise, yes, really interesting post. I remember reading a massive book when I was about 19 - it was a huge history of communism - and the central point was that communism was many things, not one thing. It made a similar point - the most successful of the eastern bloc states were the ones who might have lacked national democracy, but had a sophisticated and highly devolved local system in which, you could argue, there was a lot of democracy.
 
td53 said:
Democracy needs a right good shake up. I think there's two key problems with using an archaic system in sci fi times.

1) There's almost no meaningful debate. It's all about 'winning and losing' - whenever you hear politicians, they're mostly spouting complete shite that they don't even believe. They'll slate the government or opposition regardless. The media is really hollowed out - so there's not really that same level of 'holding to account' as papers and telly are far less likely to run with 'serious' analysis pieces. It's kind of just a shouting match. Everything is 'true' and nothing is 'true'

2) It's palpably really slow. Life has sped up - people can give opinions, collaborate, make decisions way, way quicker with technology - and yet politics is visibly stuck in not just the previous century, but many centuries before. It feels ludicrous. It feels like they're taking the absolute piss. It makes them look totally detached from any actual reality of life.

Not sure how that really relates to local elections of any kind. I suspect local government and interest therein has steadily waned since tax raising powers were limited/removed in (I think) the 80s - so essentially rendering it a layer of government that can shuffle deckchairs, but not really make any massive impact.
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You make some reasonable points. However, politics is a two-way street and it can't all be about what the politicians need to do to pique our interest. Coming out of WW2 our country was united as never before - and I don't just mean through the propaganda news reels. Between 1945 and 1970 I would argue that the three main liberal democratic parties were mass participation parties. The electorate got involved. Today, party membership is very weak and all too often we hear the refrain, "I can't be bothered." How can that be when technology has given us mass communication? Our forefathers would find it counter-intuitive.

It is my belief that the privatisation of nearly everything in the public domain - and here I include the privatisation of thought (check out a group of friends on their phones and not conversing), has alienated us from each other in a manner that is not wholesome: church attendances have dwindled; the use of public transport has dwindled (London aside); we no longer have a communal response to televised events - Top of the Pops, gone; professional boxing on free to air TV, gone; ditto live cricket. The people of the War generation would be dumbfounded at the extent to which we no longer mix as much as we did - albeit we talk about the demolition of class barriers.

Democratic politics is a social activity or it is rule from afar - the democratic deficit, you might say. Those beliefs have destroyed our integration with Europe. Let us not allow the same aloofness to destroy our British democracy.
 
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1966_and_all_that said:
You make some reasonable points. However, politics is a two-way street and it can't all be about what the politicians need to do to pique our interest. Coming out of WW2 our country was united as never before - and I don't just mean through the propaganda news reels. Between 1945 and 1970 I would argue that the three main liberal democratic parties were mass participation parties. The electorate got involved. Today, party membership is very weak and all too often we hear the refrain, "I can't be bothered." How can that be when technology has given us mass communication? Our forefathers would find it counter-intuitive.

It is my belief that the privatisation of nearly everything in the public domain - and here I include the privatisation of thought (check out a group of friends on their phones and not conversing), has alienated us from each other in a manner that is not wholesome: church attendances have dwindled; the use of public transport has dwindled (London aside); we no longer have a communal response to televised events - Top of the Pops, gone; professional boxing on free to air TV, gone; ditto live cricket. The people of the War generation would be dumbfounded at the extent to which we no longer mix as much as we did - albeit we talk about the demolition of class barriers.

Democratic politics is a social activity or it is rule from afar - the democratic deficit, you might say. Those beliefs has destroyed our integration with Europe. Let us not allow the same aloofness to destroy our British democracy.
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Yes, there's a lot of truth to that - but equally, having been a member of a political party, I found it a quite limited experience - i.e. they were only really interested in membership in terms of the subs paid and the ability to canvas. Actually developing policy from membership was an arcane and archaic process and I felt, not particularly well managed as the voices of the established members dominated and there were few, if any, attempts to engage views in any other ways (i.e. outside of the classic 'constuency party meeting'

I couldn't agree more on the general gist though. Have you read Owen Hatherly? He writes a lot about that idea in the context of city planning and architecture and such. It's one of the reasons I love football so much. We might be a weird rabble but we're all sharing the same thing and it sort of brings us together. We're all so much private algorithm driven experience otherwise.
 
td53 said:
Yes, there's a lot of truth to that - but equally, having been a member of a political party, I found it a quite limited experience - i.e. they were only really interested in membership in terms of the subs paid and the ability to canvas. Actually developing policy from membership was an arcane and archaic process and I felt, not particularly well managed as the voices of the established members dominated and there were few, if any, attempts to engage views in any other ways (i.e. outside of the classic 'constuency party meeting'

I couldn't agree more on the general gist though. Have you read Owen Hatherly? He writes a lot about that idea in the context of city planning and architecture and such. It's one of the reasons I love football so much. We might be a weird rabble but we're all sharing the same thing and it sort of brings us together. We're all so much private algorithm driven experience otherwise.
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I can't help but chuckle. My experience of Party membership has been exactly as you describe
 
Wizaard said:
Labour 47%
Tories 18%.

That's what the polls are showing. Boris got an 80 seat majority with a smaller percentage.

You can say what you like but people have sussed the Tories for what they are.
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What a ridiculous statement for a grown man to make. A party is its people. Those people are supposed to have values but in reality how many politicians have principles be they labour or conservative? What people are being led to is a lack of considering another's viewpoint and switching off their brains to either become apathetic and not voting or running to vote like a pavlovian dog when the election bell rings. It should be that you look at the leader, look at the team around him /her and vote for who is better for the country irrespective of party. When people as you say suss that then we’ll all be better off.
 
Theoneandonly said:
What a ridiculous statement for a grown man to make. A party is its people. Those people are supposed to have values but in reality how many politicians have principles be they labour or conservative? What people are being led to is a lack of considering another's viewpoint and switching off their brains to either become apathetic and not voting or running to vote like a pavlovian dog when the election bell rings. It should be that you look at the leader, look at the team around him /her and vote for who is better for the country irrespective of party. When people as you say suss that then we’ll all be better off.
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Some might say that nowadays the Conservative Party is its sponsors.
 
I would say 'Don't count your chickens yet'
It's not over 'til it's over'.
Millions of 'Die-hard' Tories might be upset at present, but come the General Election there will be many who will support Tories.
They would never dream of voting Labour at a General Election.
Unfortunately.
 
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