All The King’s Men 2: Diplomats

This is the second part in a series about the inherent ineffectiveness of certain government positions and the need to democratise their functions for the good of the country. The first part can be read here.

The decisions that emerge from diplomatic negotiations differ all too often from what the majority of people would have preferred if they had had their say. Imagine if the people had been consulted with regard to major foreign policy decisions in the past. Imagine if the British people themselves had decided whether or not Blair’s findings warranted an invasion of Iraq, for example. One could imagine a very different outcome. In fact generally speaking, almost any decision to initiate war stems from the concentration of power, and would be rejected by the majority. In most situations, people would rather we just minded our own business.

The vast majority of diplomatic duties, being negotiations about peacekeeping, business and trade links and energy deals, international treaties, foreign embassies, visas and tourism etc, are almost entirely in the hands of specialist ambassadors and their teams of diplomats.

Diplomats collect and report information about the foreign country in which they are posted and give advice to the home country on how best to set foreign policy. They are then tasked with conveying the views of their home country’s government, in the best way possible, so that the host country might act in ways that please the home country’s interests. Without a doubt, diplomats are highly trained and highly skilled individuals. Over many years they have honed their diplomatic style and long term strategy, and the combination of knowledge and experience gives them unique capabilities in their job that should by no means be belittled.

However, even with such highly respected ‘experts’ at the helm, much of our foreign policy even nowadays is contrary to common sense, and would be significantly different if the majority of people had their say in the matter. You don’t need to be a specialist in Persian studies to realise that trying to gently persuade the Ayatollahs into quitting Iran’s nuclear ambitions is a waste of time, though it took the government long enough to come to its senses. You don’t need to have done extensive research about Israeli and Palestinian relations to understand that if Israel is in the UN, then Palestine should be too, regardless of whether or not negotiations are ongoing or if conflict will continue, which it inevitably will. You don’t need to be a tri-lingual European historian nor a Colonial and Commonwealth specialist to realise that in today’s globally interlinked economy, Britain has closer ties with Canada, Australia and India than it does with Germany, Italy and Poland, and that spending a lot of time, money and effort on EU integration might just be a bit narrow-minded.

In fact, the high specialisation and specific expertise that these diplomats possess, and the fact that they spend so much time abroad and in the company of other diplomats, may actually impair their understanding of Britain’s true interests. Even in today’s twenty first century, with internet and TV allowing millions of people to take part in worldwide debates, our foreign policy is frequently misunderstood. So what changes need to be made to better align foreign policy decisions with public opinion?

The Case For Regulation: How To Tame The Banking Sector

Deregulation of the financial sector is widely accepted as one of the contributors to the recent banking crisis that reached a peak in 2008. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 permitted the formation of one-stop super banks. Many institutions held and traded enormous portfolios of complex financial securities, the risks of which were not even sufficiently understood, let alone adequately provided for. During this time there was a degree of uncertainty between the FSA and the Bank of England over whose responsibility it was to regulate the banks. Things got out of hand. 

Then again, over-regulation was also a contributing factor. As explained in more detail in a previous article, the government’s involvement in the banking sector to guarantee deposits for individuals, and the central bank’s involvement as a lender of last resort, creates an environment which incentivises excessive lending and debt creation.

However one weighs up the factors, it is generally accepted that the banking industry will always require regulation, or at least for some time to come, and many urge that strict rules should be put in place as soon as possible to prevent any of the calamities of the financial crisis from reoccurring. 

This article discusses the merits and limitations of the new bank regulations proposed in the UK and gives some thoughts about an alternative solution. 

Uprising

All bore witness this year to the unstoppable power of the people. From the moment that Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze in Tunisia last December, after protesting against police corruption and his personal mistreatment and denial of basic rights, a wave of unrest spread around the Arab world in attempts to bring about an end to their autocratic governments. Several other martyrs imitated Bouazizi’s act of self immolation. Many demonstrations escalated into violent rioting. Protest became full scale revolution. 

The rulers in Tunisia and Egypt were overthrown and a bloody civil war brought about the downfall of the regime in Libya. Sustained protests, civil disorder and governmental reform announcements have also taken place in various forms, and to varying degrees, in Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait.

Each and every country is unique, but the actions of the people involved were, on the whole, motivated through a desire to end human rights violations, government corruption, and the concentration of wealth and power among a small aristocracy. Most feel that this can be best achieved by replacing their longstanding dictatorships or absolute monarchies with a more democratic government.

The stalwart determination of the people in the Middle East, and the way in which the movement inspired neighbouring nations to break their silence and join the revolution, sent a message to the whole world, reminding us that the thirst for individual liberty and justice is shared by all mankind, and even under the most suppressive of regimes, the people will, in the end, rise up and demand that power be rebalanced to reflect the views of the majority. This message was followed by a joint response from the western nations, expressing solidarity and empathy for the revolutionaries and a unified international consensus that the unwanted dictators should either lead a transition to a more democratic rule, or get out of the way. We in the west went through these same struggles for freedom in around the 17th and 18th centuries, and many lives were sacrificed in order to establish a government for the people, by the people. 

Of course, every nation is different, and each will establish its own freedoms in its own way at its own pace. Such a move must ultimately come from the people who are directly involved, and not through international interference. Many peoples around the planet still seek the basic freedoms that we here in the west take for granted.

We can certainly say that democracy is much more popular than it was, say 300 years ago, and that the technology and ease of communication we have today makes it also much more feasible. However, democracy is not something that once attained is guaranteed. A wise man once said that ‘every generation must wage a new war for freedom against new forces which seek through new devices to enslave mankind.’ We can but speculate as to where, when and in what form the next push for democracy will be. 

All The King’s Men 1: Economists

The government employs numerous highly qualified academics to assist in the most important financial decisions for the country. These people have spent their whole lives studying economics and work each and every day on sophisticated economic models and forecasts to analyse the nation’s finances, assess the domestic and international economic climate and predict the impact of the government’s policy decisions. Yet, so far, how successful have these economists been? The UK owes near to a trillion pounds for which we, the citizens, are the guarantors. The government continues to run a budget deficit each year and last year it was around 170 billion pounds. If the country was a single person, she would be maxing out a brand new credit card every year. If the country were a business, it would long have been declared bankrupt. So why have these so called ‘experts’ failed so miserably in running the country’s finances? And why have they not been sacked? 

This post is the first in a short series about the inability of government to perform certain tasks and why we urgently need to democratise certain government positions so that they might act more in line with our interests. 

High Treason

A total of five national parliaments have recently been shaken up as a result of the ongoing crisis in the European Union. Most legislation from the EU is voted on in Brussels and presented directly to governments for implemention, thereby bypassing national parliaments. On numerous occasions however, and increasingly so during this period of crisis, the interests of national governments can conflict with the core EU agenda. When the stakes are high and measures must be executed swiftly and decisively, this creates a problem. 

Highlights From The Commons 24/10/11

This post is simply a small collection of four of the ‘best bits’ from the recent EU referendum debate in the House of Commons, in which many powerful speeches were made. The debate lasted some five hours before being put to the vote in which 111 MPs defied their party lines and voted yes to hold a national referendum on our membership with the European Union; 483 MPs voted no. The nos have it, the nos have it.

Monopoly Money 3: Fear Of The Unknown

If you or I were to print money, we would be thrown in jail. Why? - Because it is against the law! But the reason it is against the law is presumably because it is unjust for people to increase their personal wealth in relation to other people, without earning it. Yet the government and the banks do it all the time. It goes without saying that this is not fair. So why do people not complain?

A state controlled currency is widely accepted simply because people don’t know any different. It is deemed to be the norm. Every country has a government with a central bank that is in charge of the money. There is an unspoken trust for the government to act in the best interests of the people, and to act competently. But unfortunately for the majority of us, this centralised control of our money provides the means and the incentive to abuse the currency in order to indulge in human desire and create short term unsustainable economic growth at the expense of increased inequality in society and an inevitable future economic downturn, that is, when the boom eventually becomes a bust. So what can we do about this?

This post is the last in a three part series about money. In the first part we spoke of the rapid expansion of the amount of money in the economy. The money supply is going up, and the value of our money is falling. This has been happening on a huge scale in the last 40 years since the fall of the Bretton-Woods agreement when the last link to gold through the US dollar was severed. At this time an ounce of gold was agreed at $35, but since 1971 the price of an ounce of gold has soared, and peaked at $1900 in August of this year. The money that we use, however, buys nothing like what it did back in the day. The devaluation of our currency makes prices rise, and ordinary people bear the brunt. In the second part, we established that the root cause of economic discontent lies with the central bank, and hence with the government. We talked specifically about the system of fractional reserve banking and how it relies on confidence. If confidence was to be lost, everyone would attempt to withdraw their money from the bank and not everyone would get it back. We spoke of how the government and the banking sector are jointly involved in creating money. The Bank of England buys government bonds and other financial assets, using money created out of thin air, which in turn increases the money in the banks. The Bank of England also supports the creation of money and credit by the banks themselves in its role as the ‘lender of last resort’, which guarantees the credit worthiness of the banks so they can all compete by lowering rates in order to create and lend more money.

The sad truth is that so long as the management of our currency is left to government, it will continue to be debased at our expense. Depreciation of the value of our currency will continue indefinitely until one of two things happen - The government voluntarily changes its policy and embraces the subsequent recession, or continues in its money creating activities, artificially spurring growth until the economy becomes so reliant on monetary expansion to survive that the only possible outcome is total collapse of the financial system. Or is there a third option? Can we find a way to release our currency from its strict bounds and permit a free flowing stable monetary system, immune to the human forces that seek to manipulate it? In this post, I talk about the management of our national currency and some of the proposed solutions to break up this vast concentration of power.

The Emperor Of Europe And The Future Of Nations

The sovereign countries that exist today have not been around forever. In fact only very recently in the history of mankind, have we finally come to embrace the concept of the nation state; where political rule coincides geographically with ethnic or cultural identity. Before the nationalist uprisings of the 19th century, multi-ethnic Empires, and Kingdoms, were the norm on the continent of Europe. We have come a long way, and waged many wars, to achieve this common belief in nationhood, where people live in countries, side by side with other countries, and people chose to live with their own people and be ruled by their own people, whatever their definition of ‘their people’ may be. In some parts of the world, the struggle is not over, and it is quite possible that there are new countries still to emerge in the future. However, even when some peoples are still fighting for the basic freedoms that many of us have enjoyed our whole lives, there are some that think that it is time for change. These people believe that now we have achieved nationhood and cooperation, the way forward, or the next step from here, is to join our nations together again, but this time in a way where everyone is equal instead of one country ruling over many others. They may be right. But are we ready for this? - to expand our definition of ‘we,’ and alter our perception of who we call ‘our people?’

Κάνουμε το πατριωτικό μας καθήκον

Today has been a mighty day for democracy. The Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, announced earlier that he will put the new bailout and debt write-down package to the Greek people in a referendum. Finally, the people of Greece are being allowed to have their say in their future. "The command of the Greek people will bind us," says Papandreou.

In recent months, the country has been surviving hand to mouth from EU bailout financing in order to prevent a default on sovereign debt that would send a shockwave across the other European economies. But the bailout funding has not been without strings attached. Representatives from the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, who have come to be known as ‘the troika,’ have been making regular trips to Athens to evaluate and oversee the progress of austerity measures and public sector reforms designed to reduce the budget deficit but which so far have only plunged the country deep into recession. Athens and other major Greek cities have seen massive riots and demonstrations against austerity measures and most blame the current government for selling them out to overseas dictators. Without a referendum, a peace offering to the people, Papandreou will most probably be unable to avoid early elections.

The referendum will allow the Greek people to approve the latest deal proposed at the summit last week, details of which are still pending, but will provisionally be a new €100bn bailout loan and a 50% write-down of Greek government debt held by private creditors. The referendum may, in the end, boil down to whether or not Greece will remain inside the Euro or not. If they accept the bailout package, it will mean years of austerity and financial hardship. If they reject it, it will mean full default, chaos, and a serious reassessment of their European relationship. More importantly, it will allow Greece to regain some dignity and decide for herself what the next move shall be. 

Whatever the outcome, the fact that the government has finally realised it cannot go on ignoring the people, bodes well for democracy as a whole and greatly strengthens the case for referendums in other countries too. Let it be the first of many.

Monopoly Money 2: Don’t Blame The Capitalists

This is the second post in a three part series on money. The first part can be read here. 

The recent Occupy protests have mainly targeted the banking sector. Demonstrators have held signs saying everything from: “Capitalism in cancer,” to “You got bailed out, we got sold out,” to “No bears, no bulls, just pigs,” get it?

Protesters have camped outside Wall St. and the London Stock Exchange etc, where many of the wrongdoers can be found. However, this isn’t where the root of the problem is. The protesters should really be outside the Federal Reserve or the Houses of Parliament and the Bank of England.

The blame for the economic instability and unfairness that people resent is being laid on capitalism, and when people think capitalism, they think banks. Although capitalism does of course create inequalities and embraces greed as a positive driver of prosperity, it is not the enemy. Capitalism creates the wealth and jobs that we all want to see. It is the government’s involvement in the banking system that has entwined banking and politics and sown the seeds for yet another credit driven recession. 

In the first post we talked about how the central bank creates money through ‘quantitative easing’ and the reasons it gives for doing so. We asserted that inflation = people getting poorer, and I stand by this generalisation as being true for the vast majority. 


However, there are some groups of people who stand to benefit from the government’s money creation activity. In this post I talk about who these people are, how the government’s policies are designed to benefit them and hence why we are the 99%. 

Monopoly Money 1: The Predicament

This is the first in a short series of posts about money. Each will contain a little bit of economic theory, but I hope for it all to be comprehendible for those that have not studied economics.

Despite thinking often about our finances, the system of money in our country is not something that most people really stop to think about. You get your wages, spend what you want to spend and save what you want to save. But how exactly did our current system of money come to be? Our entire way of life relies so heavily on its availability and its value, yet the people that control its production, issue and usage are a small number of powerful individuals. In this series I attempt to explain the dire need for our country to democratise the management of our currency and how, when it comes to the future management of our monetary system, the whole world could benefit from a little bit more open-mindedness.

A Historic Opportunity

On October 27th, there will be a historic vote in Parliament about whether or not the British people should be given a referendum on our membership with the European Union. This subject is bigger than me or you, bigger than the prime minister and bigger than any one political party. It is about the future sovereignty of our nation and is an issue about which our generation has never been able to have our say. There are members of all parties that oppose the UK’s membership in its current form and the vote could be very close. Note that the vote in parliament next week has nothing to do with whether or not we should remain in the EU, it is merely to decide whether or not the people should be allowed to have their say on the matter. Quite unquestionably, we should.

The next eight days are crucial. It is an MP’s job to represent their constituents in parliament and they should, theoretically, vote according to the wishes of the people they represent. By writing to your MP (you can find out who she is and send an email here), and piling on the pressure over the coming days, then at the very least they cannot use the claim that their constituents do not care about the issue as an excuse to vote against the motion. Send an email, and urge them, politely, to vote for the motion. The very fact that we must campaign in order to get our say on something so important for the future of our country is, in itself, slightly disheartening. But now is not the time for self pity, it is the time for action! 

Please spread the word.




Link >> Some of the highlights of the debate.

Localism 3: Lessons From The USA

When you hear the word ‘sheriff’ you imagine a typical American local law enforcement officer wearing a brown uniform, a cowboy style hat and a gold badge, right? Well, it’s coming to the UK. In November of next year people in England and Wales will be able to directly elect the local Sheriff to govern the police force in your area. OK, their official title will actually be “police and crime commissioners,” but I’m hoping that the word Sheriff catches on. These new figures will be locally elected officials who are able to appoint and remove chief constables and set budgets and policing priorities. These radical new reforms being implemented by the government are part of their localism agenda to restructure the police force in order to develop the type of ‘more police on the beat’ zero-tolerance policing that the public have long desired. 

Daylight Robbery

The financial crisis of 2007/2008, aka the credit crunch, brought about some shocking events in the world banking industry. As I am sure you know, the housing bubble, inflated with the easy credit and the fashionable casino banking of the 21st century, burst spectacularly in 2007 resulting in plummeting values of real estate securities, a lack of liquidity for financial institutions, widespread evictions and foreclosures in the housing market, the collapse of huge financial institutions and, consequently, global economic recession. But we are still feeling these effects today. The banks still haven’t managed to shake off the bad debt and get back to doing healthy business. Why is that?

Democracy In The 21st Century

Once upon a time in England, the fastest form of communication between different towns was to send a messenger. The king would dispatch a young lad on horseback with a sealed scroll to deliver his mandate to the regions. “Here ye, hear ye, the King demands this that and the rest of it..” In these ancient times bereft of technology, it made sense to have a ruler sitting in his castle in the south, controlling a central location for meetings, discussions and decision making for the country. 

Jumping forward in time to fifty sixty years ago, even when the greatest forms of communication had advanced to the telephone and the fax machine, one could still just about make a case for a system of centralised decision making by the institutions of our central government. After all, democracy can never be perfect; it would simply be unfeasible for everyone to have their say in politics by sending letters or making phone calls. It made sense for each region to send someone to London to speak on our behalf, and then all of the elected representatives of the country would make the laws together.

Well, we are now in the 21st century, where anyone with an interest in the goings-on around them and an internet connection can take part in a worldwide debate. Just as digital cameras and mobile phones give potentially anyone the ability to be a journalist, the blogging culture has turned anyone into a potential writer capable of publishing and distributing opinion throughout the country. Through the internet, people can easily find the website, chat room or online society that can connect them with the individuals or organisations in the country that think in the same way that they do and that share the same opinions. It is now practically possible for the public to have some form of direct input into politics. We can have online opinion polls and the public consensus can be easily determined. It is simply unacceptable in this day and age for there to be a separation between the opinion of the public and the way in which we are represented in parliament. It no longer makes sense to have a ruling establishment in Whitehall that do not listen to, discuss and execute the exact will of the people. The people are out there right now, on the internet, blogging, debating and congregating, trying to make themselves heard.

We need to open up democracy. We need to get it on the internet, in a controlled way so that everyone can have their say in the issues that matter to them.

Now by this I don’t mean getting rid of representation. We can’t give decision making totally to the people. Most of the population don’t have an interest in politics and are not bothered about voting for everything. We can at least, however, open up the system of representation. We need to put it online, on a public website where you can log on and see the representative for your constituency, see what his or her policies and priorities are, and open up wider debates about them. This way, the person that represents us will be exactly the person who shares the views of the people and vows to uphold them in parliament. If he or she did not prioritise our views, or if she voted against the views of the constituency, we would be able to discuss why in online forums and vote to depose her. We could even have online candidacy for MPs, so that anyone who better suits the role of representing the people in a given constituency can challenge the current incumbent for the job.

This may seem radical, and indeed it is relative to our archaic system of democracy that fails to deliver on so many of the current issues of today. But the sooner we start thinking in the 21st century and revolutionise our democracy, the better it will be for everyone.


Read On >>>>>> Democracy in the 21st century: Part 2 

Localism 2: What Is A Quango?

Where does the power lie in Britain? Long gone are the days of the autocratic reign of the monarch. So too have the days of the Prime Minister and his inner circle of ‘chaps,’ sitting on a sofa in Downing Street running the country, right? 


Well we certainly have a functioning democracy now, but it is far from perfect. Our legislation is still read and amended by the unelected House of Lords, composed of hereditary peers born into power, chosen lobbyists and trade unionists and archbishops etc. The prime minister still possesses unprecedented powers through the ‘Crown Prerogative’ to appoint ministers and even take us to war without consulting the people. 


Additionally and most importantly, the role of parliament has slowly been eroded to the point where vast amounts of legislation no longer come from elected representatives but instead from a network of government organisations, a web of state bodies that exercise power outside of the democratic system.

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Quasi-autonomous non-Governmental Organisations (Quangos) have been an integral part of the UK public sector for many decades. There are lots of them. You probably know of a few by the acronyms, the FSA, the FCO etc. Most of them are worthwhile organisations that fulfill a necessary function. Many of them however, perform a function with no real need or duplicate functions that could be performed by other existing quangos. However, the most crucial aspect of the quango is the lack of accountability to the people who are affected by the quango’s decisions. This means that they have little incentive to do their job especially well.

Many governments have promised a quango cull and so far this government has at least made a start. As part of the deficit reduction plan, and as part of their broader localism agenda, the current government has pledged ‘a bonfire of the quangos’ to cut spending and abolish many of these unessential organisations, while simultaneously giving power back to local people and local authority figures. For example, RDAs (regional development agencies) promote economic development by enhancing business competitiveness and skills application. There are currently eight of them, for different regions of England excluding London which has its own development organisations. The government plans to reduce spending by dismantling these regional agencies and encouraging the formation of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) to carry out some of the functions currently carried out by RDAs.

The QCDA, Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority, that once monitored the national curriculum, and the GTCE, General Teaching Council for England, that once regulated the state school system, will too both be consigned to history. The government plans to reinstall their functions and responsibility with school headmasters and directors, giving them the power to set curriculums and regulate their own testing procedures. The idea is that the people responsible for the decision making should be in direct contact with the people affected by the decisions. This way when a headmaster is approached by an agitated group of parents demanding something be done about the school curriculum or testing, they can no longer reply with “I’m sorry, nowadays that’s all dealt with by the associate board for whatever, or the national council for whatever.” With power, should come responsibility and accountability to the people.

The quango ‘argument,’ i.e. the question of their usefulness and effectiveness stems from the age old left vs. right debate. Free marketers will proclaim, as demonstrated in history, that in general, government is poor at business; that public sector organisations are slow, wasteful, driven by compliance targets and lacking the fundamental incentive of personal profit that drives efficiency. Advocates of state interventionism will reinforce the necessity for centrally planned regulation and standardisation to ensure fairness and coordinated oversight of public issues. Both arguments have their merits but there is also a deeper underlying democratic issue that needs to be considered.

The delegation of power to these organisations and the growth and reach of their influence has allowed ministers to distance themselves ever further from responsibility and accountability by effectively passing their executive power to the quangos. Even without consideration of the economic benefits of a more competitive landscape for the people and organisations that run our country, one can at least appreciate how the existence of these organisations, and the wide range of responsibilities delegated to their control, separates the voter even further from the source of the decision making, undermining the democratic legitimacy of the regulations passed by these organisations. In other words, the law makers are not accountable to us. They have no obligation to the people. We cannot sack them.

In many ways, for reasons outlined here, the European Union is the biggest quango of them all, if you like, the quango to end all quangos. It proceeds to suck the decision making capabilities from accountable elected parliaments to unaccountable institutions funded by the EU itself.

We cannot let the democracy of the United Kingdom be constantly undermined by unaccountable bodies led by unknown unelected bureaucrats, legislating over the British people from the shadows. We need to transfer power back to elected representatives, those that are accountable to the people. We need to make sure that quangos are only created in cases where they are absolutely necessary, and even then, that their agendas and budgets are monitored and approved by parliament and that their continuation in the future is re-evaluated each year.

But this is just the first step, if you will, in establishing a better functioning democracy. Once the power is back in the hands of the elected representative, there is then the issue of making sure that the elected representative is a true representative of the represented and not a pawn to the many other forces at work.

Here Douglas Carswell makes the case for more direct democracy and more open competition in politics:

The Back Door To A Federal Europe: A Short Timeline

Many people in Britain feel frustrated about the decisions taken in their name with regard to European integration. Here we explain briefly the main events in the history of the EU, and the amount of input that the peoples of Europe had in these events, in the pursuit of European Union.

Our Glorious Leaders

Why vote? Does anyone trust these people that rule our world? They have made a bloody mess of things. The economy is in turmoil, again. But still these people cannot learn from their mistakes. It is pretty well established now that the problem is debt. As you are well aware, the world’s economies have been borrowing large amounts from each other to finance economic growth. Governments have borrowed to fund public spending on new state industry, infrastructure, administration, research and grand events. Banks have borrowed vast amounts from each other to finance their investments and lend on to other companies and entrepreneurs. Although this has contributed to much growth in the short term, quite visibly, it is not sustainable.

The Democratic Deficit Of The European Union

The European Union is increasingly playing a more significant role in the lives of the British people, but in the last European Elections in 2009, a mere 34.7% of British voters bothered to take part. This lack of interest is no doubt due to a lack of understanding about how the European parliament works and what effect it actually has on our lives. After all, only 65% of registered voters took part in the UK General Election, so it makes sense that not nearly as many people would interest themselves in an election of a far away institution of foreign politicians and political parties that no-one has ever heard of. The main UK parties all compete for our votes by explaining their views and intentions on the economy, jobs and education etc. but none of them really stress the importance, let alone their stance, on the European Union.

This post aims to expose some basic truths, particularly for those that may not aware of them, without getting into some of the more topical issues that are currently in the headlines. It serves as an introduction to what will be a reoccurring theme of this blog, a theme which I hope you will agree, if not least after reading this post, is by far the single most important issue facing us today.

Localism 1: The Break Down Of Society

The following post is the first in a series of posts about democratising and debureaucratising our country using the aforementioned idea of the dispersal of power. Although not directly related to democracy, this first post talks about some of the ways in which the current centralisation of power has changed our country.

Welcome

Welcome to Mighty Democracy. This blog aims to cover a range of interests concerning the power of democracy, the effectiveness of democracy, as well as the methods that we, the people, have at our disposal to make a change and overcome the forces that seek to undermine democracy.

Many of the posts will be primarily from a UK perspective. Comments, comparisons and criticisms from other viewpoints are nonetheless very much welcome.

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Who did you vote for in the last general election? Ask yourself why you voted for who you did. Perhaps you didn’t vote at all.

In fact only 65% of registered voters turned up to vote in the last election of May 2010. Voter turnout increases with age, unsurprisingly, and in the 18-24 and 25-34 age brackets these figures were only 44% and 55% respectively.

So why do people choose not to vote? Some people have little or no interest in political issues and therefore have no real basis to distinguish between candidates. This is likely true for most of the younger abstainers. Some do not see how their single vote can make a difference. This is perhaps due to flaws in the First Past The Post system used in the UK which tends to favour a two party system, meaning that any vote cast for any party other than the two most popular in each constituency, can seem wasted.

Many, however, have simply lost faith in the system. Many people don’t see that it matters who wins the election in their constituency. Many do not believe that the MP that represents them actually has much power in transferring the wishes of the constituents into change for the better. In other words, they no longer believe in the effectiveness of democracy, the same democracy that has long been a central virtue of UK government, the same democracy that our grandparents fought and died to protect from nationalist and socialist tyranny in the 20^th century.

Democracy is defined as – government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. To what extent, therefore, do you think that our system of government in the UK is a democracy? Do you feel like ‘the people’ can exercise power through their elected agents? Is the popular opinion of the people justly reflected in public policy? Or are decisions often made contrary to the wishes of the public? Imagine if a nationwide referendum was the norm for all significant decisions that would affect the lives of all citizens. Imagine if we had had our say in the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 or the UK’s participation in the ongoing European political union.

The government must have a fairly good idea what the outcome of a referendum will be before it is carried out. It is also plausible that the issue at hand requires a deeper level of understanding and political/historical knowledge to make a wise decision, and that perhaps those in power choose to involve fewer people in the decision making process for our own best interests. However, should it not be up to these very people to make us understand why a decision is being made, especially if it contrary to popular opinion? The definition on Wikipedia also includes the following sentence – Ideally, this includes equal (and more or less direct) participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law.

This suggests Direct Democracy as an ideal democratic model. Meaning that we, ordinary citizens, would have much more involvement in the law making process, people would have real power to elect and depose representatives and our elected representatives would hold real power to realise our desires for change. Power would be devolved to the lowest practicable level, or the most feasible local level, with a much higher focus on communities and local responsibility.

Now, this all sounds wonderful, but in reality it is not as easy as it seems. Power is never yielded so easily. Those with executive power may voice their support for local governments but it difficult to resist state interference when it suits their wider public relations agenda.

The practicalities and possible effects of giving power to the people, the differences between the UK government and other democracies in the world, and real examples of power devolution in the past, will all be future topics of Mighty Democracy.