I think there has been general agreement in the silos of government since the 'mysociety No 10' fiasco that 'participatory' democracy is a bad idea because the public is too thick to understand the issues facing modern society. The public may stupidly associate the socialist party with outmoded ideas such as economic justice, freedom of speech and association, privacy, democracy, etc.
If you can manufacture evidence, ignore half a million people hitting the streets plus public incredulity from the Foreign Office as well as the concentrated opposition of the BBC before going ahead to invade Iraq, and then brazen it out without apology when the shit subsequently hits the fan, it's hard to imagine 20k letters to MPs would actually matter? And yet it's moats and porno bills that are held to have undermined our faith in our democratic processes - or perhaps yet another diversionary obsession supplied by the right-wing press. BTW, the petition against DEB is at #5 at the mysociety petition site below two petitions fulminating on behalf of the armed forces and one fulminating against Islam. Possibly does something to excuse the governmental contempt for petitions and emails from e-democracy sites? Paula / www.fossbox.org.uk pa...@fossbox.org.uk Tel: 020 7481 8479 Skype: bastubis / Thomas Ibbotson wrote: > On 9 April 2010 16:58, mac <ammonius.grammati...@gmx.co.uk> wrote: > >> Andy wrote: >> <snip> >> >>> 189 MPs voted Yes (Aye), 47 voted No (Noe). >>> There are 646 MPs so most of them couldn't even be bothered to vote. >>> >> Worse yet, according to press reports many of those who voted did not >> attend the preceding debate. >> >> mac >> > > Granted this is bad, but how bad is it? This is the only vote I've > ever followed closely so I have no idea whether this is normal or > whether it is out of the ordinary. > > Tom > > -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
