British Democracy

@Colin

Personally, I would like to leave the U.K. behind, completely and utterly. If we chose to exist as a crown dependency, Westminster would want to be fed by our oil - and they'd want our fish for their dinner.

Does democracy really exist? 2/3 parties, all with the same overall agenda, choose one or the other but neither will abide by pledges or do right by the people. All sponsored by the wealthy. History repeats.

Does democracy really exist? 2/3 parties, all with the same overall agenda, choose one or the other but neither will abide by pledges or do right by the people. All sponsored by the wealthy. History repeats.

No, democracy doesn't exist in reality. However, there are a lot of liars in Westminster.

@Colin

 

Personally, I would like to leave the U.K. behind, completely and utterly. If we chose to exist as a crown dependency, Westminster would want to be fed by our oil - and they'd want our fish for their dinner.

Well, then they would have to PAY for our oil and fish.

Well, then they would have to PAY for our oil and fish.

They should, in my opinion, have paid for our oil and fish from day one, but they didn't. They paid for nothing, they did no more than take what they wanted to take - and they didn't even say, "Thank you."

We are an international laughing stock.

^ Its time UK Government/Politics was on pay per view only to international audiences, it criminal to be giving away for free the quality of comedy that they're producing lately.

The inherent challenge with any political system with aspirations of democracy is how to effectively translate the 'will of the people' into effective governance.

'Pure' democracy (whereby people are directly engaged in discussions and decision-making processes) only works on a very small scale (villages, tribes etc) and/or on local issues.

When attempts are made to upscale the principle (to regional or national level) it isn't practical to involve everyone directly, so we move to a 'representative' democracy, whereby 'the people' elect someone to represent their interests. These representatives are (usually) knowledgable in the legislative processes and 'the people' generally leave them to get on with the job of representing them.

If the democratic processes are working as well as can be reasonably expected, and reasonably well informed and skilled representatives are appointed, then this system is reasonably effective.

The current turmoil we are witnessing in British politics can be attributed to the use of an insufficiently well-considered referendum, which is an example of an attempt at 'pure' democracy. It abandoned the customs and norms our long-established representative democracy and gave the decision on a very complex body of international legislation to a population who could not reasonably be expected to understand the complexities of the question (I include myself).

Furthermore, the government made no prior provision as to how the referendum result would be enacted through the processes of representative democracy. As you may recall, they simply tried to bypass our representatives and resisted attempts for the EU withdrawal to even be debated. Currently, it seems, after abandoning the long-established (and imperfect) standard processes, the government are making up the as they go along.

Democracy is an imperfect solution, but as Winston Churchill said "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."