The 2005 general election is nearly upon us. Which way will you vote, and you reasons why. Here is a brief list of the potential contestants, please add your own.


More tax!
Less tax!
Dont know!
Death to all infidels!
Who gives a shit?

The great pretender.

Evening folks.


standber.

I would go along with your comments in general. However I think you must put it in context.

Whilst the rules are the same for all schools, they are applied in different degrees, depending on where they are/who runs them etc. Most of the out of control schools are in traditional loony labour inner city/town controlled areas. Mix in umpteen different base languages, and you have a recipe for disaster...how do you teach someone who cant speak the lingo?

My daughter is now at uni doing a Bsc, there are NO remedial anglais readers/writers on her course or as far as she knows (i have asked) in this uni. They wouldnt stand a chance. The culprits i suspect, are the new (ex poly's) uni's who appear to take all comers...anything to keep the numbers up and keep the excess 18+ y/o's off the dole.

All governments spout the speel about education, but I wonder if that is what they really want? I think they would be far happier with a complacent electorate of sheep who will do as they are told.

In the meantime, the marching morons continue to swell the ranks.


I fear for my daughters future.

Excellent speech from Michael Howard today--can only guess that those who don't like him dont really listen to what he says. I believe he means every word and deserves his chance as PM.

Howard says that he will always tell the truth.
Blair says that he has never lied.
Do they really think that we are that nae?

On the other hand, why are the voters so surprised that politicians tell lies?

It has always been like that!
They have to lie to get elected!

That is the system that they have created & (given the choice) they wouldnt have it any other way.
But of course, it shouldnt be their choice to decide on the rules of our political system. The rules should be set by a written constitution that can only be amended by the voters.

Corruption is the natural state of politics, it is normal human behaviour, get used to it!

That doesnt mean that we have to give up & assume that nothing can be done to put things right.

We just have to recognise the reality of human motivation & behaviour & design a constitution where TRUST IS NOT REQUIRED.

It is fundamentally wrong to trust a politician.

When human beings get a taste of power, their lust for power & wealth will always override their sense of right & wrong.
This happens even if they start out as well meaning people.

Like I said, politics has always been like that, it is normal human behaviour. We have to get used to it & act accordingly to design a constitution that takes this into account in order to put things right.
Not only should it take this into account but anticorruption laws should be the bedrock of the constitution.

It is not difficult to design a constitution where trust is not a requirement of the system.
The most important part is that intensive monitoring of politicians must be built into the constitution.
This is the only way to keep them in line.

We have a right to know what they are doing.


Democracy is easily corrupted & degraded by the lack of constitutional laws to prevent rich people buying influence.

The corrupters want people to give up on it & not bother to vote because it makes it easier for them to have their way.

Only if voters have access to information can politicians be forced to abide by very tight constitutional anticorruption laws.



A constitution & a bill of rights are essential.


A truly democratic constitution would insist on :-

1.
Proportional representation, so that a party that gets 1/3 of the votes cannot get 2/3 of the seats.

2.
It should be illegal in any way give money to a political party that has got seats. (He who pays the piper calls the tune.)
Those with seats should be funded by the taxpayer with the top 2 parties getting 10million per year & the others getting a proportion of 10million related to the number of votes that they got at the preceding election.
(This would put end to such things as Formula1/Tobbaco donations to parties.)

A party without seats should only be allowed to raise & spend funds equal to the smallest party with seats provided that it has got a candidate for every seat in the country & will have the amount reduced proportionately for every seat without a candidate.
(This prevents a party pretending that all of its candidates are in different parties just to get more money.)

3.
Political lobbying by organisations should be illegal.
The only lobbying allowed is to be by individuals & all conversations & other communications are recorded & published.
The ordinary individual has a right to anonymity when these are published but the politician involved does not.

4.
Voters should have to pay a fine if they do not vote.
(Just like they do in Australia.)
They should also be able to vote early at a special polling station in the week leading up to the election & elections should be held all weekend instead of 1 day. There should be mobile polling stations in supermarket car parks.



5.
There should be an extra box at the bottom of the ballot paper so that voters will be able to vote for NONE of the above candidates.


6.
Political advertising should be illegal.
At the moment, this only applies to TV adverts.
TV progs must be accurate about giving equal time to parties & rights to reply.


7.
Any small group of voters that have never committed any crime & never been involved in politics before should have the right to check up on what any politician is doing or has done & where our money goes.
No information should be kept from these voters provided that they agree not to disclose information that would allow a criminal to escape or be the direct cause of harm to an innocent person or provide a weapon to someone. All other information should be disclosed & published. Action should then be taken so that the rest of the information can be published without negative consequences.

Any group of voters should have the right to investigate a politician but individuals should be disqualified as investigators for acting maliciously or criminally.

(Politicians love secrets.)
Secrets should not be permitted, the only thing that should be allowed is a delay of public release of information because it would compromise a current operation but they should have to prove that in a closed court if a voter requests the information.
As soon as the operation is over, further delay should be illegal as specified by the constitution.


8.
Elections should happen on fixed date.
4.5 years would be appropriate so that elections could alternate between spring or autumn, just in case a particular time of year gave an advantage to the party in power.
Any politician that resigns before the fixed date should be banned from taking part for 10 years.
Politicians should not be allowed to decide the date of an election.

(At the moment, they can call an election any time within 5 years of the last election but they can change that law whenever they like because there is no constitution.)

9.
Parliament should legally have to elect the PM after every general election & in the middle of each 4.5 year term & the cabinet every year but be able to take an extra vote in between if they want to.


10.
Currently, there are many decisions that ministers can make without the approval of Parliament & without even telling them.
Even if they do know, there is nothing that MPs can do about them. Some of these decisions do have a time limit on them in which Parliament can take a vote on them BUT these are usually taken during the summer recess to prevent Parliament from having anything to do with them.
This should be illegal.
Parliament must be informed about ALL decisions & 50 MPs should be enough to force a vote on anything.

11.
It should be illegal for a politician to benefit from anything unless specifically permitted to do so by the constitution.

Politicians who break the rules of the House of Commons should go to jail. (The register of members interests is just a joke. Currently, they are just excluded for a couple of days.)

12.
The house of Lords should be replaced by a house of experts.
These should be qualified people.
2 seats allocated to represent each area of expertise all sciences, branches of medicine, the arts, business etc. Currently, it is overstaffed with lawyers but we would still need to allocate a few seats for them.

Anyone who has ever been a member of a political party or has publicly supported a political party in the preceding 20 years must be disqualified from the house of experts.

These experts must be nominated by 1,000 members of the public (NOT politicians) signing their nomination when there is a vacancy.
They can of course refuse the nomination but it must be illegal for them to campaign.

TV programs must be broadcast giving information about them but politicians must not be allowed to campaign for or against them.
Only members of the public will be allowed to campaign for or against them unless they have a direct connection with them.

The voters will then vote to approve them or not at the same time as the council elections, which take place once a year.

If there is more than 1 nomination for the same seat then voters must list their 1st choice, 2nd choice etc.

Once approved, they can stay in the house of experts for a maximum of 25 years after which they can never return.

The only power that the house of experts should have is to delay legislation by amending it. The maximum delay should be 18 months after which, they cannot reintroduce the same or remotely similar amendment. After that, if they still insist on their amendment then they can call a referendum on it. Otherwise, the commons gets its way.


They must subject to the same rules of public scrutiny & anticorruption as MPs.

=====================

To any politician who objects to any of this, I say, What are you trying to hide?

As far as constitutional laws are concerned, democracy is pretty easy to fix.

The real problem is; how do we get there from where we are now?
Those in control will try to prevent change.

It looks impossible, but on the other hand, go back 400 years (The divine right of kings etc.) & look at where we are now.
Such change looked even more impossible from back then.
BUT HERE WE ARE!
The right to vote did happen!

In the nineties, the impossible happened again. This time it was South Africa, its not perfect but it was a big step forward.



Obviously, democracy is not the answer to everything.

There should be a bill of rights stating the rights of the individual. The bill of rights should enshrine the principle that individuals or minorities cannot be oppressed or persecuted by the majority no matter what the majority votes for.

A bill of rights must prevent someone being disadvantaged just because other people dont like them.

How about voting to torture a TV presenter or voting about who to lock up in a concentration camp & send to the gas chambers?
It would be democratic but it wouldnt be right.
Minorities must be protected.

That is why a bill of rights is essential.

A bill of rights must guarantee freedom & human rights.
The freedom to do whatever you want to do as long as it does not affect anyone else without their consent. If it does affect someone then there have to be laws about it & those laws have to be decided by democracy.
The only exception to consent is freedom of speech but
incitement to violence is not an exception.

The bill of rights should contain the right to privacy except in cases of hypocrisy, corruption, other crime or danger to the public.
When the media reports on someone then there should be an equal right to reply in the same media.

=======================================

You are probably asking yourself how I ever had the time to to come up with all this boring stuff.

Many years ago, I was on a long coach journey & I forgot to take a book with me.

Some of you probably think that I should go on another one & not come back, especially if you are involved in politics.
If so, what are you trying to hide?
Or are you rich & have grown accustomed to buying influence?

Oh well only another few days of watching politicians play jump the toilet before we vote.

Well thought out apple-trouble is politicians only listen to us leading up to an election after that-forget it!

Excellent apple!

moneyplus,
Thanks for the compliment.

Im sorry I cant say the same about your adoration of Howard in message 260.

How many times have I got to tell you, You cant trust a politician.

Howard is typical of the sort of hypocrite that becomes a politician.
Just like all the others, he is very selective with his use of statistics when talking about asylum seekers.
He fails to mention the fact that when he was home secretary & there was a rapidly growing backlog of asylum cases, HE gave amnesty to over 14,500 asylum seekers just to reduce the backlog & make the figures look better.

I dont agree with either side on this issue, they are both using it to get the votes of bigots.

Howard was found guilty of acting illegally when he was home secretary BUT there was no penalty. He wasnt disqualified from office, no prison sentence, no fine for him, nothing!

He was interfering in the prison system, Im sure you remember the famous Paxman interview where he refused to answer a question about it no matter how many times he was asked.
My theory is that he didnt want to incriminate himself.


In 1995 when the House of Lords ruled he acted illegally over criminal compensation. Mr Howard said "I don't wish to comment on that, frankly it is not a criminal matter."

April 5 1995 the Law Lords ruled that Mr Howard (the Home Secretary) had acted illegally in using prerogative powers to replace the 1964 common law scheme for compensation with a tariff scheme which slashed the compensation paid to the worst-affected victims.

The tariff scheme resulted in significantly lower awards for victims of crime. Many victims who suffered the most serious injuries, including police officers and fire fighters, had compensation slashed to just a tenth of what it would have been under the previous scheme. (Has this been put right since? Of course not, they found a way around it with amendments to other legislation passing through.)

There were quite a few occasions when Howard was found guilty of acting illegally.


He is not alone, many Tory & Labour ministers have been found guilty of acting illegally but nothing ever happens to them.

Howard brought in a range of repressive laws reducing the right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in the 1994 Criminal Justice Act & Blunket carried on in the same way.


moneyplus, Why do you believe he means every word?
Please DON'T be like most other people & believe what you WANT to believe.
So take those blinkers off & see him for what he is.


They are not all the same but they are all bad.
It will be like this until we change the system.
The best we can do on Thursday is look for competence.


Not long to go now.
As we keep on watching them all play jump the toilet, maybe one of them will fall in.

Thanks brianboru,

but it's only a statement of the obvious.

Political expediency is the name of the games for all the parties.

Not one has a single bedrock issue that cannot be negotiated...none!

Once the election is out of the way, it will be business as usual. ie, sort out the preferential pay and pension rises for pols, tax the hell out of anyone actually earning a productive crust (a vanishing species) muddle on as normal trying not to step on any minorities toes, majorities are fair game though, as long as they are white/middle class/male/add your own discription.


What a wonderfull world.

oh dear apple --we have to have some poor sod in charge unfortunately. I just think Howard etc are more competent and less corrupt than a lot of others!! However looking at it both ways I even felt sorry for Tony Blair on ITV tonight.

hi moneyplus//oh that nice honest competent and uncorrupted mr howard the same howard who put the boot into john major who ran off with someones wife??true and blue well they were ALLdoing it in that tory party at time //hi apple I COULD NOT AGREE MORE WITH WHAT YOU SAY THAN IF I SAID IT MYSELF YOU PUT IT MUCH BETTER THAN I//THANKS

Is our michael going to the match tonight,i belive so.

It is important to realise how most of the decisions on this planet are made.

They are not made by considering the facts & coming up with a logical conclusion.

They are usually made with personal self interest or sometimes with just a gut feeling.
(Jumping to conclusions also plays a large part in the positions that people take up.)

THEN the evidence is slanted to support that decision.

The person involved concocts whatever kind of story he/she can to back it up.

The person usually searches around for facts or half truths or unproven information or lies to back it up.

They often use things that they know have already been proven wrong & hope that you havent heard about them.

The other side of the coin is that they will do their utmost to avoid facts that prove that their decision is utterly baseless.

They will also do their utmost to avoid facts even slightly contradict them.

This is how decisions are made in meetings.
I have seen this occur wherever decisions are made or opinions are given. I have seen it in TV documentaries & news programmes. I have seen it happen in the daily life of families.
I have seen it happen in shops.
This is what lawyers do in court, they are not there to expose the truth, they are there to win.

This even occurs in industry including situations where large sums of money are involved. Yes, even then, reality is pushed to one side.

It wasnt until I recognised this, that I started to win the arguments in meetings instead of getting involved in a heated argument.

Somebody once said, Choose your facts carefully.

This is what people do but mostly not carefully.

Never take arguments at face value, work out what makes people tick.

Quite often, it just boils down to someone not wanting to learn a new software package but they never actually say what the real reason is. Indeed, the discussion in the meeting may be totally unrelated to software. Instead of saying what the real reason is they just become more & more inventive with their illogical arguments & their slanted & selective disclosure of information.


The classic example of this is (Yes you guessed it!) Blairs decision about invading Iraq.


Here is another example for you.

Standber, I accuse you of Choosing your facts carefully. In message 154.

You said:
PR? No way. Ask the Eyties. After WW II, they had an election and new Gov every 12 month for about 20 years.
Sheer waste of time and effort. The idea sounds good but it just does not work.

You chose Italy.

I think PR works in Scotland but your definition of works really depends on whether you agree with what they have done.
You may not agree with the abolition of student fees in Scotland, a compromise that they were pressured into by the liberals.
You may not agree with the long term state funded care for the elderly already in place in Scotland & now to be copied here.
(Well you never know, it might be.)

However, you cannot dispute the fact that hasnt been an election every 12 months in Scotland.

I think that PR has got an exceptionally good record in Denmark but YOU didnt choose Denmark.

Germany has got PR & Germany used to be the economic power house of Europe until it threw all it Deutchmarks into a big bottomless pit called East Germany.

Neither Germany nor Denmark has had its government fall every 12 months.


Lets get back to Italy for a moment.

Italian politics was distorted by the Mafia with the backing of the CIA from world war 2 up until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Many Italian politicians were bought & paid for by the Mafia.
I suspect that many of them still are because the depth of corruption was so great that it is very difficult to reverse.
Many Italian politicians have been put on trial, some have been convicted but I think that many have got away with it due to continuing threats, corruption & blackmail.

The US did this in order to keep the communists out of power.
The digging up of the arms caches was covered on Newsnight & Channel4 news at the time. If the communists ever took power then they were to be told the location of these weapons & to use them to overthrow a communist government.

This was openly admitted to by the Americans involved on Newsnight & Channel4 news at the time.

You can check this for yourself, go & ask the BBC & Channel4 for the records of their programmes. They may even dig them out of the archives for you & let you watch them.

If you wanted to select a biased example then you would choose Italy but the problems of Italy are just not relevant to PR.


Sorry to single you out Standber but you provided a convenient example of Choosing your facts carefully.


The other great clichis Being economical with the truth.

Politicians practice very hard at being economical with the truth.

Howard does it.
Blair does it.
Even Kennedy does it.

Kennedy needs more practice.


--------------------------------------

My suggestion for PR is an additional member system so that every constituency still has a link with an MP.

BUT NOT with a Party List for the Additional Members.

A Party List IS A STITCH UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I suggest an additional member system with A VOTERS LIST!

Here is how it would work:

1.
Double the size of the constituencies & thereby halve the number of constituencies.

2.
Directly elect 1 MP per constituency on 1st past the post.
So half the MPs will be constituency MPs.


3.
For each Party, make a Voters List of all the candidates that came second & put them in order of those who got the highest percentage of the vote in their constituency.
So top of the list would be someone who came so close that his voters could almost taste it but they felt robbed by just a few votes.

(In this way, it is the voters who decide who gets a seat in Parliament, not the Party Hierarchy who would give priority to arse-lickers.)
(This allows us to keep out candidates who we definitely do not want instead of having our wishes bypassed by the party.)


4.
Allocate seats for the additional members to top up their totals to match their percentage of the vote.
This would be done by taking the required number of candidates from the top part of the Voters List for each Party.

5.
Additional members must be disqualified from ministerial office.
(That will make some candidates try harder to explain themselves at the election.)

6.
MPs who sit on committees must also be disqualified from ministerial office for 5 years.

--------------------------------------------------


With PR, the politicians would not be able to coerce people by saying that they were wasting their votes.

They would not be able to con people into voting for them by saying that a vote for a smaller party would let the other big party in by the back door.

Almost every vote would matter, not just those of the floating voters in the marginal constituencies.

Currently, unless you are a floating voter in a marginal constituency then YOU DONT MATTER!

Bristles I am not quite sure what you trying to say.

Is it the following:- John Major ran off with someone elses wife. I dont think either participant seemed to have done much running.

I think Michael Howard, if he did run off with someone elses wife certainly at least seems to have good taste. However, I didnt think that a wife was somebodys property and also, it takes two to Tango.

Sometimes I wish somebody would run off with my wife. (I hope she doesnt find me writing this.)

I think also in consideration of illegal actions, there is a difference between Criminal Law and Civil law. Many of the actions of Blunket, Howard and other Home Secretaries, which have been appealed against were civil actions. (Like appealing against a decision made by a jurys, a hire court may overturn the decision and judges decisions. Neither the jury nor the judge has broken criminal law. )

The latter actions were done openly, not corruptly, in private discussion in private rooms behind lock doors.

I think in Blairs case of Iraq, he deliberately and knowingly attempted to deceive Parliament, the cabinet and the British public and possibly himself. (He now seems to believe his own flawed arguments.)

He has a case to answer. I think he is responsible for a large part of the disillusionment felt with politics in this country at the moment, by his disregard of international law and the United Nations, which will give others the right to go to war on a whim.

I think it is unlikely that you will have politicians in position of power who do not show the foibles of the rest of society, but in the case of Blair I would like to see his foible exposed and he humiliated.

I dont usually have such strong feelings or wish to see somebody destroyed, but I think his crime and the consequences of his crime has done so much harm that I think it is necessary, in an attempt to prevent reoccurrences by him, or similar actions of others of his ilk in the future.

There are no penalties for politicians who act illegally.

Consequently, there is nothing to hold them back so they go ahead & do it because they might as well try it & see if they can get away with it.

If there were penalties then they would take very careful legal advice before using prerogative powers.

They wouldn't want a tame, compliant Attourney General.
They would want one that was right.

apple
Proportional Representation............read about the Italian political scene
post WWll. Disaster.

That caught my eye. Don't know what else you had to say. Too long. Skipped to the next post.

Standber,

You didn't read it but I said that I accuse you of Choosing your facts carefully.

When you cite the Italian situation.

I have completely demolished your use of that example.

I know we are all financial giants on this bulletin board, and being so I would be grateful if someone could reveal to me the financial costs per week of the Iraq war and cost of sustaining the "peace".


Also, just as interesting to me, what gains we may have gather if the sums involved were use in Overseas Development? (even with all its problems of implementation.)


Again, why has no party discussed the ongoing economics of the war in relationship to pensions and hospitals costs, etc.?


Not all of the politicioans can have shares in Armaments or the construction industries.

Fred1new,

I seem to remember Blair being pushed into giving the cost on TV.

He said that the total cost of IRAQ to us so far was about 5Billion.

Whether you believe him or not is up to you.

As for the ongoing cost per week, he didn't say.

Has anybody noticed that our 'secret' vote isn't?

Check it out when (if) you go and vote this Thursday. You will notice that the ballot papers have an index number on their top corner, which is written down against your name when you present yourself at the polling station. Hence they (the men in grey suits) are able to determine which way you vote.

Don't believe me? I have been concerned(ish) about this for a long time now. At the last election I actually wrote on my ballot paper about my concerns that my vote was in fact not a secret. Several days later I received a letter from one of my local MPs (I won't say who) attempting to explain and becalm my concerns. The MP informed me that the only person who has cause to consult the ballot papers and cross-reference them against the electoral roll is the Returning Officer, and that this would only be done if there was allegations of double voting. So, its for security reasons. Sounds fair enough. But hang on just a moment - where did this particular MP get my name and address from - and how did they know about my concern? QED