I am up against it for work this morning and was, as usual, reading the news and thinking on what to blog when I read this, from Owen Jones in the Guardian:
The Paradise Papers underline, once again, the sheer rottenness, injustice, immorality and bankruptcy of our social order. One rule for those at the top, another for everyone else. Relentless austerity for hundreds of millions across the west, justified on the basis of “there is no money”, while a grotesquely rich elite hoard their wealth away in tax havens. We can't tinker with this system, it has to be replaced. A democratic revolution is surely coming in the western world, and this shameless, decadent elite only have themselves to blame.
Sometimes someone else says something better than I can. And Owen has here.
I am happy to be a part of that democratic revolution. It is precisely what we need now.
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Actually, for the first time in my life, have stopped believing in democracy. We have been utterly betrayed by our politicians at all levels, but especially in Westminster. They have introduced economic policies that have hamstrung the NHS, local authorities and impoverished even further the poorest of the poor, and have the imagination of camp guards, i.e. none, and therefore no compassion. Ship of fools.
They do not represent me, my family and my friends. We need to tear it all down, starting, as Nick Clegg proposed, with the House of Lords. Then, like Belgium, let the civil service run the country for the next couple of years with one proviso, they are not paid any bonuses at any level at all.
Then, when we allow the politicians back again, only those who can demonstrate that they understand basic economics (Murphy, Mason et al), especially the economics of organisations, will they be allowed to make policies again.
John, you want the civil service to pick up a huge amount of stress and bother and then want to give them no bonuses? On top of all of the nightmare of Brexit that they have to sort out?
Have you heard the saying, “if you pay peanuts…”
Civil servants have been under sustained attack on their pay and working conditions for the last ten years. They don’t have to work in the civil service, they can go and do other better remunerated work elsewhere, and they will.
Don’t confuse the vast majority of civil servants with the board of HMRC. I believe the vast majority want to work for the benefit of society, but they’re not martyrs or heroes, they won’t do it for nothing and we shouldn’t expect them to.
As a civil servant myself Benz0 who sees the strain we’re under, and the contempt this anti-public sector government holds us in, I agree with you 100%.
Neither I, nor other civil servants are going to ‘die in a ditch’ trying to do more and more with less and less, especially with the chaos and totally unplanned for madness of Brexit.
Remember, the self same Brexit cultists that have been laying into the civil service for not being more ‘optimistic’ about Brexit will be the ones expecting civil servants to work themselves into an early grave trying to sort out the Brexit mess.
But just as most civil servants will do their best in very difficult circumstances, there are physical limits to what anybody can do.
The Panglossian nonsense of people like Redwood and Rees-Mogg can’t alter the physical reality of far too much work for far too few people.
I can agree with your 1st para.
As for the second: MPs have never represented you – at least that has been the view since Burke (late 18th century) – they are not viewed as “citizen delegates”.
I do not agree with the idea of civil servants running the show – no matter how well intentioned. At the risk of sounding like a broken record the book “Against Elections” suggests various ways forward. These ways forward predicate citizen involvement – indeed, I would argue that a requirement for democracy is citizen involvment at least on a weekly basis (as opposed to vote once every x years & then do as you are told). My offer remains: to any any unemployed person (or pensioner) that has an interest in this subject (citizens & government) I will arrange the delivery of the book – free. Disclaimer: I have zero connection with the author (a Belgian as it happens) or the publishers.
We need an informed dialogue on how to involve citizens in government. The book provides very good pointers. House of Lords? replace by citizens selected by lot & replaced every 2 to 4 years – only possible to sit twice. Term limits on MPs etc etc. The move to more citizen involvement would be chaotic & messy but preferable to what we have now – which is an elected aristocracy.
Your’e right, we don’t have democracy. Politicians used to come from the aristocracy and the well-off and represented themselves and their interests. In modern times they no longer come exclusively from the aristocracy and now they represent the interests of the oligarchy. Plus ca change etc.
Agree with “Against Elections”; also “Utopia for Realists”.
Mike Parr,
I’d very much like a copy of ‘Against Elections’.
If it outlines alternatives to the broken and dysfunctional system of governance we have presently I’m all ears.
John Carlisle says:
November 8 2017 at 8:34 am
“Actually, for the first time in my life, have stopped believing in democracy. We have been utterly betrayed by our politicians at all levels, but especially in Westminster.only those who can demonstrate that they understand basic economics (Murphy, Mason et al), especially the economics of organisations, will they be allowed to make policies again.”
I’ve stopped believing in the effectiveness of democracy a good while back. We really do need a major overhaul.
I don’t however think that we need a government of economists. We need economists where they matter; in managing the economy. We don’t seem to have that.
We need people who understand health care running health and who understand education running education etc. We certainly don’t have that.
If I had the faintest idea how to solve the problem of the democratic deficit and abject lack of accountability I’d certainly tell you, and anybody else who would listen.
I think maybe a good start would be to stop paying politicians the sort of salaries that put them straight into the top ten percent of earners. Minimum wage would concentrate a few minds. (Allowable expenses would keep them comfortably afloat)
“Minimum wage would concentrate a few minds.” I disagree. MPs need to be paid a fair wage & expensese. However, we need term limits but leave it to others to hazard a guess at what these could be. Perhaps the Uk could also consider the Dutch model – where ministers are experts in their field & not often from the party(s) in power & often not even MPs. A problem in the UK, common to islands is insularity. The UK tends not to look outwards for potential solutions (it likes to re-invent the wheel). I can quote chapter & verse on real life examples (in politics & industry).
I have to say that the right to appoint ministers who are not MPs for fixed terms and who do not become Lords appeals a lot
They can always answer to parliament but not vote
The job of parliament would then be to choose a prime minister and some other ministers bu to concentrate on legisaltion and holding minsters to account
Ministers job would then be to fu;fil their brief properly
Mike Parr says:
November 8 2017 at 6:54 pm
“Minimum wage would concentrate a few minds.” I disagree. MPs need to be paid a fair wage & expensese…”
You agree then that a minimum wage is not a fair wage?
‘All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door.’ JK Galbraith
People won’t vote in huge numbers to get rid of a system which is unjust & immoral. But they will to get rid of one that doesn’t work.
Totally agree here. I mentioned almost a year ago that the civil service take over for a while to recalibrate the country’s direction and administrative efficiency so things get done in a priority that genuinely reflects the national need. Yes they have become politicised at the top but don’t let them run it, go 1 or 2 levels down – they will be the new blood eager to show their neutrality!!
ian thomson
To paraphrase Michael Flanders on a different subject:
The upper echelons of the Civil Service are strictly non-political – They’re all Conservative.
Completely agree about Owen’s piece yesterday. I came away thinking “I couldn’t agree more!”. I wouldn’t go as far as John to say I have lost my faith in democracy but I do fear that change, when it comes, will not be peaceful. I am reminded more and more of Kennedy’s famous words; “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
John Carlisle
Maybe it is not democracy that is the problem. Maybe the problem is the total absence of democracy. If our present system gives all the power to the people who have all the money then we should not be surprised if they exercise that “democracy” exclusively in their own favour.
John Adams wrote “if our present system gives all the power to the people who have all the money then we should not be surprised if they exercise that “democracy” exclusively in their own favour.” Mankind seems eternally doomed to repeat its previous mistakes. Around 1840 Frederic Bastiat wrote “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
Plus ca change…. (sorry, I’m completely out of cedillas)
I have just finished reading Garry Young’s article in the Guardian – My travels in white America, a land of anxiety, division and pockets of pain.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/06/my-travels-in-white-america-a-land-of-anxiety-division-and-pockets-of-pain?CMP=share_btn_link
Of course, a similar article could be written about many parts of the UK.
Not even mentioning other parts of the world.
Is it naive to suggest that these problems are linked/caused by tax cheats
I know it’s not that simple, but I can’t help making the link.
David Lucas says:
November 8 2017 at 10:24 am
I have just finished reading Garry Young’s article in the Guardian
Thanks for this link, David. The boy, Spencer is frightening.
This is just the wailing and gnashing-of-teeth of continuing liberal impotence. This democratic revolution will not happen any time soon and I say this out of pragmatism not lack of solidarity with the objective.
In the General Election this year, after 7 years of austerity economics in this country remember, the Tories, UKIP and DUP received 14.5m of the 32.2m votes cast and retain hold on the government machinery. Macron won the presidency in France, Trump in America, Merkel in Germany. The globalist neocons are still firmly in power.
However I’m far from pessimistic because the subsoil conditions are now firmly tilted in our direction, have been so since late last year. Trust in our political and economic elites is eroding smartly, trust in our news media is shrinking-away just as quickly (and about time to), transparency is being sought on our failed system of democratic checks and balances (including the risible notion of BoE ‘independence’), and far more people than before are questioning the fairness of our society. That’s all in our favour.
Many, many people will continue to have their lives harmed by current circumstances and none of ‘us’ on this side of the divide want that at all but we surely must accept that change will not arrive so completely nor so quickly as wishing would make it. We liberals still need to learn the basic lesson of power which is that while we have none we are helpless and unable to help others.
We need more democracy. One citizen one vote, not one tax exile effectively loads of votes.
Link number of MPs to party membership (locally and nationally). No more general elections just a constant flow of people joining, switching parties and MP numbers adjusted each year to reflect changing views.
Political donations would be banned as parties would be self financed by annual membership fees which would be more than covered by a UBI awarded to every citizen for their contribution to democracy.
I have a yen to see ‘sortition’ properly examined. I think it may be a way forward but already I can hear the objections being Loud and Many. The bully who looses the argument invariably resorts to shouting.
What does “sortition” mean?
Please got to my post at the beginning – it was all about “sortion” = selecting people by lot – lotteries – as used very effectively in Athens 500BC & latterly in a whole pile of other places down the centuries. You want change & citizen involvement – selection by lot offers a potentially useful way forward.
Re ‘Sortition’,
My initial reaction when I came across this idea recently was to regard it as fairly silly.
The more I think about it the better it seems as an idea.
It would establish a parliament. We seem to have lost our Parliament to a cabal of ministers and advisers who operate out of No10 and do what they like with scant reference to ‘The Mother of Parliaments’ This is particularly noticeable when a government has a large working majority and Parliament is held in complete contempt. We then are reliant on the Upper House to curb the excesses of folly that the governing cabal would foist upon us.
There would be objections that the process of legislation would be slowed down, but on balance that would be no bad thing. I’m quite sure the legal profession must struggle to keep up with the rafts of new laws which become more and more prescriptive and more and more finely tuned to the minutiae of everyday life.
I suspect that the would-be professional politicians would seek to infiltrate the Civil Service and mechanisms for preventing its takeover by narrow interests would need to be carefully policed.
The Second Chamber, which would perhaps become even more important with an ‘amateur’ parliament, would need to be selected or elected for the expertise and experience of its members and perhaps sortition could be applied again from a body of suitably qualified (I use the term in its widest sense) individuals with public approval.
How the incumbent political turkeys could be persuaded to vote for this particular brand of ‘Christmas’ remains to be seen. Perhaps they would need to be served on a big plate with appropriate trimmings. (Along with the vegetables that abound amongst the political class)
Sorry to sound pessimistic, but I remember, as a student, the same or similar sorts of things being said in the 70’s (they were probably always said in all campuses at all times), how things were ripe for change, how trust was at an all-time low, how the political classes were corrupt, about the inevitability of revolution.
What does history tell us? When was the last revolution when one vile regime wasn’t just replaced by another equally vile regime?
G Hewitt says:
November 8 2017 at 4:29 pm
“Sorry to sound pessimistic, but…..”
Yes, you do sound fairly pessimistic.
I think, though, that the situation in the seventies was far less potentially apocalyptic than the current situation. The past forty years of the neoliberal experiment has changed the game in significant ways. In the seventies talk of full employment was still plausible, it isn’t now – not without a radical reinterpretation of what we consider employment to be.
When Nixon (who probably had no conception of the consequences) decoupled the Dollar from the Gold price the world changed. Within the next decade we we will see the Dollar’s role as default World currency end. It could happen quite suddenly and quite soon.
Pax Americana was always dirty and dangerous, but it is in its death throes. The American Empire is dissolving from it edges and from its corrupt core as Empires always do. It will be messy and it will be gradual, but it is inevitable.
What replaces it is the business of the next few decades and we need to have foundations in place to prevent a ‘dark ages’ scenario engulfing us. I have no confidence that our present crop of politicians understand this or have any capacity to deal with the challenges.
Benz0, sorry this is so late a reply. I have been with with my delightful grandchildren.
To your: “John, you want the civil service to pick up a huge amount of stress and bother and then want to give them no bonuses? On top of all of the nightmare of Brexit that they have to sort out?”
I have dealt with many, many civil servants in what was the Grade 3,2, and 1 levels and tell you they never wanted bonuses. They just wanted the pay to reflect the seniority and responsibility of the job, and not to be bribed or threatened by the really, really stupid PRP policies.
“Have you heard the saying, “if you pay peanuts…””
SimplE: Don’t pay peanuts. That is what Junior Doctors work for, given the amazing work they do
You can only be tired of something that actually exists.
We have had not had proper democracy in this country since we decided to have a monarch as the head of state in my view (and that is why I want the monarchy abolished BTW). But we did try to get by without one for a while. But then again, I do not believe that we had proper communism in Soviet Russia either.
I see democracy as a process of formation, development and evolution and it is quite clear to me at least (and granted – I might be odd) that it has just undergone another period of development – this time centred on letting markets and voters have more freedom in order to ‘make things work’.
And that period has ended in failure. It is failing as I write; as I waited in a NHS A&E department recently and also explains why I cannot build enough affordable homes for people to live in.
Democracy has failed because a complementary system known as capitalism has become overly concerned with making money for its own sake to be used as power rather than making money for a reason other than making money. Modern capitalism is now destroying the means by which it used to survive – that is, enabling others to participate through wages, pensions etc., as they are squeezed out and fewer people benefit . Anyhow, that’s enough about modern capitalism.
The problem with democracy now is that despite appearances (all those MPs) too few people are calling the shots and the only answer is that we must widen participation and go towards PR. There has to be more involvement and oversight of policy by a broader range of interests. No more cabinet or ‘sofa government’, no more bloody ‘inner circles’.
I remain committed to democracy because we have not got there yet – democracy is still being formed. Maybe it will go on being formed forever. Maybe democracy is just a perennial power struggle – I do not know.
But I have to believe in attaining it somehow even if it is journey AND an objective. This is because the alternatives to change take us into some very dark places which can seem very attractive especially when we are angry and feel that we have had enough (and I consider myself to be in that category too). Answers do lie in the darkness but history tells us that they are too short term and can make things worse.
Thanks for reading – and Friends, it is deeply frustrating – no doubt about it.
But PSR, what is Democracy? You mention PR – it would be an improvement over FPTP but it will still result in Representative Government, where the representatives will represent only themselves and their Parties. They will still follow the Party line/dogma and will be whipped into compliance. This is not Democracy.
As mentioned above, and previously on here, Democracy is what occurred for a short time in Athens where the “government” was chosen by lot. The “Against Elections..” and “The End of Politicians..” review the history, how it would work today and discuss some of the trials that have been conducted recently.
The sortition idea, something like jury service where it is viewed as a citizen’s social responsibility seems to me a possible way forward. However, Democracy, just like Representative Government, is (As Wendy Brown in Undoing the Demos says) no guarantee that we would get an enlightened regime. We might end up with a collection of narcissistic individuals with delusions of grandeur or hard right racists who want to bring back the death penalty for the first-born. We need something more as well. And that’s another big question.
G Hewitt
As I said, democracy is a process – not just an objective. It is a living thing subject to change, success and failure.
Having obtained PR – or at least agreeing to it – all current structures of power in Parliament would have to be reviewed. In my view Cabinet/Sofa Government would have to end and the decision making power brought back to the debating chamber and division lobby for example.
PR is but the first step. Another angle is the local push for PR – there are groups now formed or forming pushing this agenda – these groups could form the basis of a new local presence in our centralised democracy going forward. They could be incorporated in some way.
Lot’s to do! But it is not impossible.
PSR
Presumably you are aware of the efforts being made by ‘Unlock Democracy’ to tilt the balance of power towards a more accountable democratic system of government.
They are rather a faint voice crying in the wilderness, but they do keep crying and they would probably benefit from more support and some additional experienced members.
Like wise DiEM25 is fighting the same battle on a pan-European stage.
I recommend that anyone reading this get the old search engine buzzing and take a look. Both organisations operate on shoestring budgets and ultimately will almost certainly need to address the finances of their operations if they are to take on the big players who currently dominate the political field.
Without having discussed it with him (with either of them in fact) I would venture to suggest that Yanis Varoufakis (nominal leading light of DiEM25) and Richard have many views in common in the economic and political arena.
No Andy – I’ve never heard of DiEM25 but if Varoufakis has anything to do with it then it is worth a look-see.
Thank you.
But remember when you are trying to make progress, you have to push on a number of fronts – not just one.
PSR
“But remember when you are trying to make progress, you have to push on a number of fronts — not just one.”
Yes, I think you’re right, think that’s how you get a hernia isn’t it all the strain in one place.