Maybe it will get closed. Anyway:

The older I get the more I get tired of the idea of a 'ruling class' and the prevalence in Parliament of millionaires with considerable private business interests, and dynastic political families propped up by tycoons.

Yeah it's an old complaint, but the situation is becoming firmly entrenched (compare the occupancy of the Commons today to that of 30, 20, 10 years ago) and I suppose now is a better time than ever to try to change it.

There have been some quite successful smaller parties campaigning on single issues (UKIP for example) that reflect the public mood. I wonder if a political movement, not necessarily a party but potentially a coalition of independents, campaigning on a policy of parliamentary reform, might be a popular movement.

It's easy to assume that apathy would prevent a campaign like this from being effective, but I suppose that's an apathetic assumption in itself. What would we have to lose but a £500 deposit?

1. I haven't got £500.

2. I'd just be really bad at doing it.



But yes, the traits that allow people to get into positions of power are precisely the reasons they shouldn't be allowed it at all.

UKIP isn't really a single issue party anymore, although most of their standpoints are related to poor EU decisions. Take a look at some of their youtube channels: europarl, ukipmedia and ukipmeps.
I do think they rely a bit too much on Nigel Farage. He's great, but the other members don't seem to say much. Or at least it doesn't appear on youtube.

It's not only a UK issue, take a look at the US for a prime example. In the UK though, there's been a (long) history of parliment being filled with the rich.

Try actually reading the Magna Carta, it was actually the aristocracy being pissed with the king, certainly not the peasants ! Who probably were too, but they would have been pissed with the aristocracy first, then the king.

Ever heard of 'rotten buroughs', and look at who actually could vote.

The UK system is infinetly better than the democratic farce that is the US, but, the NZ experience is that the only way to get something approaching genuine democracy is MMP.

First past the post only rewards major parties, MMP gives minor parties with a bit of sense in how to get their message across to the electorate and groundroot support for this message a chance of being represented.

Then they get to deal with the 'system' which dislikes such parties and puts as many obstacale's in their way as possible to avoid the 'system' being disrupted.

Changing your electoral system is my politically correct answer, ( and the one that avoids arrest ! ) looking at a system that gives genuine representation to all the electorate and allows a range of parties to be represented is, in my opinion, the best way to have a democracy.

The view I would never support, ever, really, is the anarchistic revolution style supported by the Guy Fawkes, V for Vendetta approach. ( Please note NSA, I said this was completely wrong ! )

However, I can understand how when people are living under a totalitarian regime that this may well appear to them to be the only way to achieve a democratic state.

I think it is just natural evolution of democracy that when people are doing well and there are no huge wide spread problems in the society people become apathic about politics. Politics is seen as a laborious tool of balancing, micro managing and is more about keeping itself going instead of being about trying to make things better for everybody. It in turn means there are dozens and thousands of small issues that are competing and are decided based on how the problem can be micromanaged and balanced with some other problem instead of actually solving ALL problems.

That leads to situation where the main goals and interests in politics are mainly economical in nature because business and economics are still one of the few areas of politics where such things as groups with common goals and interests to make those goals exist.

Of course part of the problem is that people are not really interested about solving problems. When people vote they look for ideological generalizations instead of facts. That is as much a problem of ignorance and prejudice as it is a very basic problem with democracy. We are not voting experts to handle and solve specific problems. We are voting people based on their grey ideological opinions about very broad questions.

So in another words unless you can get people's moneys they will never vote for your party.

wow.....I am reading the above and expecting a point when it stops making sense...but heck make sense it did! nice post.

Quote from Hyperactive :

I think it is just natural evolution of democracy that when people are doing well and there are no huge wide spread problems in the society people become apathic about politics. Politics is seen as a laborious tool of balancing, micro managing and is more about keeping itself going instead of being about trying to make things better for everybody. It in turn means there are dozens and thousands of small issues that are competing and are decided based on how the problem can be micromanaged and balanced with some other problem instead of actually solving ALL problems.

That leads to situation where the main goals and interests in politics are mainly economical in nature because business and economics are still one of the few areas of politics where such things as groups with common goals and interests to make those goals exist.

Of course part of the problem is that people are not really interested about solving problems. When people vote they look for ideological generalizations instead of facts. That is as much a problem of ignorance and prejudice as it is a very basic problem with democracy. We are not voting experts to handle and solve specific problems. We are voting people based on their grey ideological opinions about very broad questions.

So in another words unless you can get people's moneys they will never vote for your party.

D'accord.

another big issue in my eyes is the type of person you have to be to make it to the top in politics. You need a lot of energy and effort to make it to the top, and motivation. And in most cases that motivation is not idealism but power. You could see that in what happened in the german Pirate Party, once their leaders got into media focus their attitude changed.
So while one of the parties main goals is a weakening of copyright laws, one of the higher members started suing a publisher for printing thinks he said without an agreement. And some of their members left the party once they realized how much they had changed themselves.

Well I was thinking of a few simple rules that would make parliament more representative, and I thought excluding the independently wealthy and those with large private sector investments would be a good start, and excluding anybody who has a parent or partner who is/was a parliamentarian (whether an MP or a peer). I suppose the question of heredity in the house of lords would have to be brought up as a secondary consideration. We could also make it illegal for MPs to sit on the boards of private companies.

Naturally we'd have to get rid of the monarchy, and - while probably a bit impractical - it would be nice to abolish political parties. That would mean there would be no large political bodies for private interests to get their claws into. Campaign funding would need to be reformed too, with very low limits on the maximum size of donations being the very least you'd have to do.

I can't see any other way of reversing the current trend of the commons becoming a playground for the wealthy. Is there anyone from a working class background in the current Labour shadow cabinet? Something's very wrong.

Just curious, but what is your take on alternative voting then?

I think the whole systen needs a major reform, but having elected politicians in London is not the answer. They are so out of touch with the general population that it is frightening. I can't think of anyone from a working class background who is a front bench MP at all, and Google is no help on this.

Ideally, I would like to see all the rich people shoved to the Lords, but their power reduced (If John Prescott can get in then that shows anyone can), and the Commons filled with.....commoners. Or you may as well rename it the House of Riches, for that's what it is. It is filled with Eton schoolboys who have no clue what is really going on outside their ivory towers, who don't understand what the average person is going through one bit.

Voting reform on its own would change the proportions of each party's representation but in most seats you'd still get a candidate put forward by one of the three major parties. The ability of the major parties to dominate control of the commons is the big problem, and they clearly can't be relied upon to reform their own club.

While I think a PR system would be good to have just because it's a very honest way of selecting a government, but it's difficult to put into practise. As an ideal I like it though. First job though would be to take the power back from the major parties.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Well I was thinking of a few simple rules that would make parliament more representative, and I thought excluding the independently wealthy and those with large private sector investments would be a good start,

Well, that sounds like thr beginnings of communism/socialism to me... and yh.. no thanks!

Quote from Intrepid :

Well, that sounds like thr beginnings of communism/socialism to me... and yh.. no thanks!

I suppose it would sound like that to someone who doesn't know what communism or socialism are.

I'm proposing a more democratic house, so if you were unhappy about the government leaning to the left you could actually do something about it. Y'know - how it's supposed to work.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I suppose it would sound like that to someone who doesn't know what communism or socialism are.

I'm proposing a more democratic house, so if you were unhappy about the government leaning to the left you could actually do something about it. Y'know - how it's supposed to work.

Imposing a ban on wealthy business type individuals from holding positions in government sounds a lot like the path to socialism to me. You want a more democratic house yet you want to ban a certain section of society from running for office? doesn't sit right with me. The current system isn't perfect, but banning someone from running for office because they've happened to make a success out of their life is ridiculous to me

Banning people from participating in politics is a dangerous route. Opening that door would make it possible to ban anyone for any random reason.

The real question is, why do people keep voting for the same parties over and over again? Lots of people complain about their government, yet every time the same parties get elected. It happens basically in every western country.
The same goes for the EU elections. Lots of people disagree with how the EU is developing (as seen by the rejection of the EU Constitution by several countries), but we still ended up having a communist as the president of the European Commission who managed to remove the elected governments of Greece and Italy. Also he didn't care too much about the rejection of the constitution, so he just renamed it, called it the Lisbon Treaty and forced it through anyway.

As long as people keep voting for the same old parties, things won't change.

I think it has something to do with how the media interacts with politicians. During the campaigns you only see the politicians speak about their ideology, but that's not necessarily what they're about to do when they get elected. It would be nice if the media would dig trough the programs and find the hidden caveats instead of hosting those useless show debates. The hidden caveats are usually far more important.

When you're looking for a new TV you can find everything about it easily including independent reviews, but when it comes to something important as voting for your government there's hardly any in-depth information presented at all. Suddenly you'll have to read the fine print in the 300 page manual to find out that the VGA input of your TV doesn't support HD resolutions.

Quote from Intrepid :

Imposing a ban on wealthy business type individuals from holding positions in government sounds a lot like the path to socialism to me.

How is that in any way socialism? Lol. Next time before you use those fancy words at least check wikipedia. You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is. You just use it to label stuff bad you do not personally like.

Quote from Hyperactive :

How is that in any way socialism? Lol. Next time before you use those fancy words at least check wikipedia. You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is. You just use it to label stuff bad you do not personally like.

anti-wealth & anti-business rhetorique is very much a 'path to socialism'.

and I know what socialism and communism is... I was once a naive Che Guevara t-shirt wearing teenager too

But, and yes, youth is the place for those wanting change, can't an electoral system reflect the desire and requirements of the electorate ?

Age, and experience says, when government represents the desire of the monied group, they, after all, buy the representatives.....

To reform parliament properly you have to reform the money - as it is the money that corrupts.

To get elected you need money, to get money you have to entertain lobbyists, and it is the lobbying that leads to corruption and stupid laws like the Digital Economy Act.

My approach would be to ban private financing of political parties. Airtime would be given on television, radio and print automatically for a political campaigner - with some proportion of airtime division based upon size of the vote at previous elections.

The next problem is the party whip system. With every member of a party voting the same in accordance with their party whip the problem is that the MP's no longer represent their local population. This is not the purpose of having a regional representative.

I would make the party whip system a criminal offense, and all parties using a whip subject to heavy custodial penalties. MP's should represent the people who voted for them and not their party political line.



The recent years of British politics have left me very disillusioned. Every time I vote for a left of centre party (and most of the British populace are left of centre) they go and swing to the right the moment they get in to power. It happened with Labour, and it happened with the Lib Dems.

Currently I am considering a vote for the Green party, their manifesto is the only one I can bring myself to vote for ethically - although I know some of it is impractical and would not be financially viable, the spirit of it is good.

All the 3 major parties in Britain are right of centre, they are part of this new breed of "social Conservatism" where on the face of it they promote this "social" frontage - pretending to be ethical and interested in the people, and yet behind the scenes they abolish things like the NHS equalities commission for being "too much red tape" and replace it with an organisation that ensures the interests of equality and diversity do not hinder with the "fairness" of the white wealthy man to make money out of the system.

I voted for AV in the referendum but only because PR was not an option. We should have been offered PR. A coalition is not a weak government, a coalition is a government that has to consider the views of others before getting it's own way on whatever it wants, and that is a good thing.

Quote from Intrepid :

Imposing a ban on wealthy business type individuals from holding positions in government sounds a lot like the path to socialism to me.

It's simply a proposition to keep people who may be (or you could say 'who demonstrably are') tempted to govern with their private financial considerations in mind, out of office.

Quote from Intrepid :

You want a more democratic house yet you want to ban a certain section of society from running for office? doesn't sit right with me. The current system isn't perfect, but banning someone from running for office because they've happened to make a success out of their life is ridiculous to me

There are already people who aren't allowed to be electoral candidates. Police officers and soldiers for a start. I think it might extend to all civil servants actually.

You also have an odd definition of the word 'success'. It's used by rich people to glorify rich people and skip over the bit where they exploited a lot of poor people and kept them poor in order to make a massive financial gain for themselves. And you're ignoring those who inherited their wealth or made their money by using inherited wealth. And you're ignoring the fact that these independently wealthy people were all fiddling their expenses and arguing that there should be no regulation in the financial system. I wonder how they arrived at that decision...

Becky's right - it's the private interests getting their claws into public servants that create a crooked government that doesn't serve its people. Party funding is a big problem but when a minister arrives in the commons and he comes replete with his own private financial interests it's not a good place to start. They should not be allowed the power to govern because they cannot be trusted not to use it to further their own interests.

The current crop of MPs are the least trustworthy I've ever seen.

Becky's point about party whips is another accurate point, but personally I would rather go further and abolish the formation of political parties in the first place. The whip is a problem but party politicking is made much easier when the party dictates which candidates will stand in every seat - you rarely need to coerce your MPs to vote to support the party when you've hand-picked your MPs in the first place.

As I said earlier, the only way to achieve what most of you are talking about is to reform your electoral system.

In a democracy, you shouldn't look at stopping people from standing, you should make it easier for all people to stand and actually get into parliament, then people have a reason to be involved.

We have mmp, which took years of fighting for but achieves a lot of what we believe was needed, it's not perfect at all but we now have a range of parties who have to work together to get laws past.

Currently our govt is National, ( centrist right ) act ( looney right ! ) Maori ( socialist left ) working with the greens and independents. Sounds wierd but actually works pretty well, with the odd blip !

It does mean that most groups get a voice, no one party can easily bulldoze things through, they may be able to on one bill, but risk alienating the others for the rest of their term isn't worth it.

We had first past the post previously, which just led to 3 year dictatorships, it was a major effect to get the change but achieved without bloodshed, but NZ is fairly small and politicians have to live next to someone.........

Your current system is designed to support politicians, not voters, reform the system as without changing that, you won't change the parties thinking, and you won't get genuine people, rather than career politicians standing.

How you do this, there's your challenge !

I dont know if I agree that self employment should be a disqualifying factor in getting elected.

I'm self employed but my business is small. I have a day job too, and I employ a part time member of staff. My business interests represent somewhere around 30% of my income. I don't think my business interests are likely to ever change my view on policies, if anything my political views are more likely to result in me organising my own commercial interests as a co-operative rather than a top-down model.

More specifically, most of my income comes from a day job - I am a middle class worker not too dissimilar to most of you.

What if my business grew, is there a point at which we say that my business is now too much for me to be political?

That just doesn't add up - although I would accept and agree with Kev that being on the board of a corporation is a definite conflict of interest. But how do you define that point at which it isn't okay to be in business? Or do you just say that places in government are only for the working class?

I'm not being funny, but there is a sizable proportion of the working class who actually read and believe what it says in the Daily Mail and think that it is a newspaper - and that illegal immigrants get houses, cars, don't work and have luxury lifestyles and cause cancer in the rest of us.

I'm not saying the working class can't or shouldn't be in office, I am just saying that I politically disagree with some view points prevalent within the populace... Who would represent me? Well most likely it would be a politician who is a socially responsible member of the middle class - where I am...

By the same token isn't it fair then that the wealthy also have some representation? I grant you that the current system disallows anyone without substantial wealth or anyone who does not plot policy from those with substantial wealth from getting in to power and that is wrong - but in the ideal DEMOCRACY the government should be representative of the people, and you just cannot ban a class of people from being represented.

I think 1% of the seats should go to the 1% of the population who are posh twats, so that they get their voice. I don't want to ban them, I just want them proportionally represented instead of being in control.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

You also have an odd definition of the word 'success'. It's used by rich people to glorify rich people and skip over the bit where they exploited a lot of poor people and kept them poor in order to make a massive financial gain for themselves. And you're ignoring those who inherited their wealth or made their money by using inherited wealth. And you're ignoring the fact that these independently wealthy people were all fiddling their expenses and arguing that there should be no regulation in the financial system. I wonder how they arrived at that decision...
.

The financial system and regulations is a pointless discussion because we live within a fiat currency system. It's inherently exploitable. I am big into gold, and well, it's proved fair more stable for me than fiat money. I think a few years ago I told you lot to buy it when it was 800 USD and ounce... now it's 1700 But that's the inner libertarian in me speaking out.

This idea 'workers' are exploited... that's very socialistic a-level student talk. There are plenty of businesses that provide thousands of jobs and provide excellent products and services. i don't think people who start businesses, and provide jobs and growth should be activiely punished, especially when they are the ones providing most of the tax revenue. Don't forget the top 1% of earners in the UK pay over 25% of all income tax. But I guess they are all evil

Quote from Becky Rose :

I'm not being funny, but there is a sizable proportion of the working class who actually read and believe what it says in the Daily Mail and think that it is a newspaper - and that illegal immigrants get houses, cars, don't work and have luxury lifestyles and cause cancer in the rest of us.

On the flip side there are plenty on the other side who don't recognise the problems with the social system in this country. I know a couple state workers. one specifically in social care who tells me repeatedly how dillusionally left-wing everyone is. The system is exploited and goes un-noticed, hence why the Daily Mail can run (though obviously exaggerated) stories that catch the nation's mood. It's the Guardianista viewpoint to just say DM readers are all idiots and should be taken with a pinch of salt. that fuels people's anger, especially when fair points are raised. The DM is only a product of an ignored and ridiculed viewpoint.

And the majority of people in the UK being centre-left? Really?

Quote from Intrepid :

Don't forget the top 1% of earners in the UK pay over 25% of all income tax. But I guess they are all evil

Are Britains top 1% of earners actually paying UK taxes then? Or is the top 1% of payers actually comprised of the nearly-elites?

Or put another way, is our tax system taxing those who reap the biggest rewards from our economy even remotely accurately?

A large proportion of people earning 7 digit and higher incomes have paid less tax than me. Jimmy Carr to name but one...

Quote from Intrepid :

This idea 'workers' are exploited... that's very socialistic a-level student talk.

In a free market you pay your labour force as little as possible - they're just another supplier. If you don't realise this then you are very naive. Why do you think Tescos were taking on 'apprentices' to work in their warehouses for £2 an hour? Is that the trickle-down in action? That is one slow ****ing trickle.

Quote from Intrepid :

There are plenty of businesses that provide thousands of jobs and provide excellent products and services. i don't think people who start businesses, and provide jobs and growth should be activiely punished,

I don't either. I also don't think they should be given the keys to the UK and told to do what they want with it.

Quote from Intrepid :

especially when they are the ones providing most of the tax revenue. Don't forget the top 1% of earners in the UK pay over 25% of all income tax. But I guess they are all evil

Do you actually know anything at all? Anything?

When the 50p rate was introduced, the most right-wing tories argued that this would put the burden of raising over 25% of income tax on the richest 1% of the population, and declared that this was unfair.

Did those people actually pay over 25% of income tax revenue for that year? Was there ever any likelihood that they would even if the exchequer required them to? Of course not. The top earners in the UK take the vast proportion of their incomes through dividends, leaving their businesses to pay corporation tax to cover their profits instead at a considerably lower rate (24% at most), and indeed they are unlikely to even pay that - look at how the tax affairs of the multinationals have been exposed in recent months.

If you want to talk about what's fair: The fact that a few hunded thousand people are even capable of paying a quarter of the income tax for a given year is unfair.

Anyway, you've got enough threads that you've turned into a soapbox for your half-baked ideas about how the super-rich are doing us all a massive favour, maybe you can **** off to one of those threads so I don't have to call you an idiot in this one.