Friday 2 December 2011

A case made beyond dispute!

Richard North, EU Referendum, has kindly linked to a short post of mine - although when he writes that my point is one insufficiently expressed and that this is another of those issues where the UK incurs substantial expenditure, but the people have never been consulted as to whether they wish to make such payments, I am unsure whether the criticism is directed at me or commentators generally. Suffice it to say my wrists are now 'stinging'!

Never one to miss an opportunity (I hope), one section of Richard's post is worth repetition:
"The more one looks at the conduct of the government, the more apparent – and glaring – these anomalies become. Inherent in the result of the general election is the assumption that, in electing one or other party to government, we automatically and necessarily approve the budget plans for the next five years, or authorise our MPs to approve them.

But, as anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the system knows, the budget approval process has become a meaningless rubber stamp. The annual budget is barely scrutinised, and approved automatically along party lines.


It is thus the case that included in the budget each year are payments, such as to the EDA budget, that few people would approve, and for which no meaningful approval has ever been sought.


But there are also some payments of which most people actively disapprove, and given the opportunity, would actively vote against them. One such is the aid given to India......
"
Not just the budget - although Richard's point is well made - but in every aspect of 'government'; when we elect one or other party to government we automatically and necessarily approve, in advance, whatever decisions that they decide to impose on us - and we can do nothing to stop that process!

Now, if anything demonstrated that the present form of 'representative democracy' is wrong, wrong, wrong; that surely is it. And if ever a case was made for 'Referism' and 'Direct Democracy', again, that surely is it!

12 comments:

TomTom said...

It actually comes from the Salisbury Convention that the House of Lords will not oppose what is in a Party Manifesto.

the Uk has the most emasculated Upper House in the OECD barr Canada, and that means it cannot block legislation in a Party Manifesto in addition to not blocking Money Bills.

We need an elected Upper House with the ability to reject Budgets

Richard said...

My Goodness! Absolutely no criticism of you intended ... when I wrote "insufficiently expressed" I meant by the world at large, and especially the MSM.

Stuart said...

Tom Tom,

We have an elected lower house for what good that does us. Why do you think electing an upper house would do us any good?

TomTom said...

Why do you think electing an upper house would do us any good?

Because it would abolish the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1959 which prevent the Upper House opposing the Budget or any Money Bill

TomTom said...

1949 Parliament Act

Anonymous said...

I too WfW did not read Richard's post as a criticism of your post, though I did have to read it twice.

@TomTom, I reckon you make a good observation, though I would differ in the way that it is assembled. I reckon that the reason for those "parliament" acts was because the hereditary system gave too much scrutinising power to a section of our population, that has a good education, has a huge variety of opinion based on the vaguaries of sexual reproduction (there's nowt more variable than a gentleman's tadpoles), and what is more, because there is a tendency for these people to be reasonably wealthy, they can devote a lot of energy to their task.

The problem with representative elections, is that they will inevitably end up being drawn on party lines, and any legislative veto would be applied accordingly. If this was an alternative, it could not be elected, or appointed, it would have to be born that way.

Which is why I prefer direct democracy (with referism), WE are unelected… If we can be persuaded to devote as much of our spare time on our political welfare, as we spend on the voyeurism of fictional situation comedy, like Corrie/'stenders or the like, and likewise devote a little bit of our time casting a free vote, as opposed to paying Simon Cowell for the privilege, we might start to progress further than we have since we handed our destinies to a bunch of aresewipes in the HOC.

TomTom said...

Actually the reason for the Parliament Acts is well known. It is that the Conservative peers represented brewing and landowning interests and resented a Liberal Government with a landslide in 1906 with a Labour LRC grouping.

It fell into Lloyd George's trap in 1910 in rejecting his Budget and he forced King George V to flood the Lords with new peers if the Upper House did not back down in the face of TWO elections in 1910, even though Conservatives won most votes both times, Liberals won most seats

It was sheer naked brute force politics against a very stupid Upper House

TomTom said...

oh, and for good measure, the US Senate was first ELECTED in 1913 to reduce Corruption that was endemic in State Government appointments to the Senate

WitteringsfromWitney said...

TT: The last thing I want to see is another grouping of elected politicians! Any 'money bill', to use your term, should be put to the people under the principles of 'Referism'

R Thank heavens for that!

S & TT: By adopting DD, we do away with both Parliament Acts and the HoL!

r_w: Pleased to see you still with me.......!

TomTom said...

Any 'money bill', to use your term, should be put to the people under the principles of 'Referism'

Fine, you will be voting daily on every single Bill from the Commons and every single Standing Order....don't forget to give up the day job.

"Money Bill" is not my term but that of Parliament itself to describe any Bill authorising Expenditure or Taxation

Anonymous said...

@tomtom…

" the US Senate was first ELECTED in 1913 to reduce Corruption that was endemic in State Government appointments to the Senate"

Er…

Wasn't that the year that the Fed was created? We couldn't have unelected politicians stopping that sort of thing, could we!

TomTom said...

Actually, the first proposal to elect the Senate came in 1826 and the Bank of the United States might have been at the similar time.

You forget the Financial Crisis of 1907 when the US Copper Company was besieged by speculators leading to a banking collapse. James Pierpoint Morgan had to rescue the banking system - but essentially one man could not do so in an expanding economy.

They also created Harvard Business School as a result of this panic funded by George F Baker of Citibank.

Right-Writes would do well to note that some States did not return "Unelected" Senators because they couldn't agree on candidates. Those unelected Senators had to be nominated by parties just as in the current House of Lords