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Public consultation on UK's Digital Economy Act was a sham

torrentfreak.com

32 pointsomh27 comments

I know, I complained to my Member of Parliament when she didn't show up to the meeting in Westminster when it was being passed, and explained how important that I felt that she should not allow this act to pass and then I realised she was Labour and didn't give a shit and probably ignored my email.

I got the same brush off from my Conservative MP.

and I got the same treatment from my LibDem, the reply back said they lacked the numbers to stop the bill, so he was not even going to turn up for the vote.

Tell him you'll make sure he'll lack the numbers to get elected.

I would have if boundary changes had not made my vote moot in terms of getting him reelected

I got exactly the same response from my LibDem MP - he felt it was more important to be out campaigning. Guy lost his seat, which made me happy.

I feel that with the public having voted against AV, the opportunity to improve the situation has been lost. MPs simply don't care about individual voters unless they form the majority. Therefore they currently care about less than a half of the electorate, and this is only to be expected.

What does the word 'democracy' mean in a society where an unelected member of the cabinet is allowed to force through legislation unopposed? Setting aside the debate over the electoral system, what does your vote count for when so much power is held by unelected peers, civil servants and 'advisers'?

Isn't everything that comes out of the government in the last few years, regarless of Labour or Conservative rule?

Same agenda, different face.

That's how I felt in the last election: Which middle-class twat do I vote for...

I know what you're feeling. I have never exercised my right to vote in a general election for the simple reason that, since I have been old enough to vote, the mainstream political parties have all been close to the center idealogically. I didn't see any point in using my vote. If I ever do it will probably be a tactical vote to try and prevent an extremist party (right or left) from gaining traction.

Our government pretended to listen to us while it decided with business, behind closed doors, what law to pass. Then it ignored what the public said. Then it passed the bill at the very last minute, without any real debate, and without even pretending that most MPs had read it.

But the most worrying thing is that nobody thinks this is unusual. Apparently this is just the way things have to be.

Same agenda, different face

That seems to be the common pattern in democracies these days. You either vote the devil you know or the other devil you know... And if they do promise change it's forgotten as soon as the election is over.

Seems to be common in two-party democracies anyway.

I say scrap political parties, it's not like they stick to their roots or make sense anyway.

Edit: by two-party democracies I mean democracies where there is only a real choice between the two main parties, and these two main parties pretty much never change.

Seems to be common in two-party democracies anyway

The UK has three parties, in fact we have a coalition government (albeit perhaps only technically)

The UK has 16 political parties represented at national or international levels:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_th...

This is common in all styles of democracy, parliamentary or two-party. Remember, worst system of government possible, except all the others.

Really? I think a no-party system would be a better style of government.

I always thought this. Sort of like a Star Trek "council" of elected members instead.

It might be somewhat better with multi-party democracies, instead of two pretty much equal options you have 3 or more...

I think Iceland's experiment in (somewhat more) direct democracy is very interesting.

if they do promise change it's forgotten as soon as the election is over

I largely agree with your sentiment but I think it's important to consider that with our current government it is not reasonable that we should expect them to adhere to election manifesto promises.

We have a coalition government because no single party was elected with a majority vote. The government results from a compromise between the two parties and thus their election manifestos should be considered void.

It's because of this that I feel a little sorry for Nick Clegg over the student tuition thing - the public have held him accountable for a promise that should be considered void since he wasn't elected.

Treating as void the election manifestos of coalition parties could be quite interesting given the Salisbuty Convention which limits the extent to which the House of Lords will oppose legislation that was in a manifesto.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury_Convention

Agreed! I was aware of the salisbury convention but hadn't really given any thought to how it might come in to play with coalition governments.

Thinking through it, I guess the logical expectation is that the HoL will have bigger teeth under a coalition.

That is interesting in itself because the government is currently looking at another round of HoL reform.

By the way, if your interested in all this check out channel 81 on freeview. They seem to be replaying a documentary on the history of HoL reform every few days at the moment.

I think that is down to the way the votes are counted which is, statistically speaking, bollocks.

The "majority" should simply be the most votes retained for a party across the entire voting populous, rather than divided up into political wards and with silly rules over the top. It's intentionally broken at the moment to favour the top two parties and always has been. Alternative vote is the same turd with a different jacket on.

There should be no possibility for a coalition.

You do raise an interesting point. There are certaintly problems with splitting the country into different constituency areas. For example, an MP representing a constituency with a small number of residents has the same voting ability in the commons as an MP representing a constituency with a larger population.

Your solution is problematic too though. If we simply voted for a party then we would no longer be electing local representatives which would mean that local issues would not have representation in the house of commons. It also creates the difficulty of deciding who would actually compose government - if we just voted for a party then does the party decide itself which individuals form government?

It's also important to keep in mind that the government and our elected MP's are two different things. MP's are elected to the house of commons, not to government. Whilst all members of the government are MP's the vast majority of MP's are not members of the government. Although they are constrained in voting by the whip system they do frequently address issues relating to their constituencies in the commons.

Maybe a delegated voting system, as discussed in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2484995#?

Thanks for digging that up, I hadn't seen it the first time it came around. It seems obvious now but I really hadn't given any thought to how fairness in voting systems would ultimately come down to math. I'm not going to dig into it now but I've bookmarked it for reading on a rainy day. Cheers :)

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