Yes, of course they wouldn't; they are politicians. This is a classic case of "stepping in a pile" only to realize that the pile happens to be sitting on top of a gold mine.

Let me preface this with one observation. The Classic Greek culture may have given us the promise of a free society composed of citizens with equal rights; but it was England that turned that hope into a reality. Simply trace the evolution of English culture and jurisprudence. The conclusion is self-evident.

With all of the inevitable missteps along the way, British evolution IS democratic evolution. Yes, democratic evolution was a product of the natural evolution of the whole of Western civilization; but only in England was the cultural evolution and the evolution of this “democratic ideal” virtually synonymous.

Consider how many nations with fully democratic governments, and only fully democratic governments, are direct descendants of the English culture and system of law in today’s world. Talk about having a revolutionary impact upon the world …

So, if I sound out of turn here I do apologize, but you Brits really do appear to have the extremely rare opportunity to peacefully and intelligently reinvent your government during a period of unparalleled rapid global transformation. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, it does not appear that the average citizen fully appreciates the enormity of this opportunity.

You may remember bb, that in an earlier post I had stated somewhat “tongue-in-cheek” that: “I could see a way in which Great Britain, at least, could actually successfully reinvent itself at this time in history.” Little did I realize at the time …

If there ever was a good time to slow the political process down to take a good long look at what you’ve actually “managed to snag in this net”; this has got to be it.

How simply incredible!

Well, the White Papers on the Reform of the House of Lords, was terribly uninspiring. You are obviously correct, bb, this whole affair caught New Labour entirely unprepared. This, however, could be yet another instance of a blessing in disguise. This lack of preparedness may just buy GB the time it needs to have a good long look around before it pulls a "Dick Cheney."

Besides, let's face it. Asking the Parliment to restructure the HL is like asking the fox to design the hen house.

I can only repeat myself. What an extraordinary opportunity for the people of GB to begin the process of reinventing their government. As I made perfectly clear earlier, in my opinion this process could occur only in GB.

The fact that the HL of GB's Parliment has already been virtually entirely and peacefully dissolved in it's traditional form and structure, while no new institution has yet replaced it - and while the public debates it, is proof that this reinvention could take place in GB - the conditions are, after all, currently in place.

The other part of my conjecture is that it could only take place in GB. For this you must take a long and hard look at the character, the culture and the physical structure of GB and the British people. It is not logically demonstrable, but intuitively self-evident. But it is rather obvious that the world does not appear to be in any imminent danger that this same fortunate event is about to happen anywhere else, that we know of. (Fortunately, this is a mute point since the opportunity is in place.)

Suffice to say that systems of government evolve along with the entirety of civilizations. Being conservative in nature, governments by nature are almost invariably "a day late and a pound short." This severe insitutional conservatism coupled with the entirely novel growth in the economic/social structure of the world strongly implies that there must be a better way; in fact a much better way.

The complete lack of discussion aimed at the possibillity of reengineering government is both surprising and dissappointing. Perhaps if we did not already possess the requisite model, knowledge and resources this lack of constructive vision could at least be justifiable. But we do.

Again, I apologize if I come accross as "out of turn," but it seems such an incredible opportunity that I can not content myself to simply sit silent.

Actually in the UK we do spend an inordinate amount of time discussing the re-engineering of government, but it is more about evolutionary rather than revolutionary change, though Marx did just a little revolutionary thinking whilst he lived here publishing as he did Das Kapital .

One of our great advantages is that we have no written constitution. Actually that is a lie, we do have a written constitution, but it is not a single document as the US Constitution, but a collection of statutes passed, amended and repealed over several centuries. What this does mean is that we can make it up as we go along , we are not stuck with a straightjacket that fitted at the time it was produced but now chafes and creaks at the seams. It is also why so many other countries systems of government fail: they do not have the history to backup their contistution nor the sense of democracy that has become almost genetically embedded in the pschye of UK society.

One might at this point raise the issue of Northern Ireland in an attempt to destroy this line of reasoning, but it is actually the exception that proves the rule. Here we have ostensively the same governmental system, however where the on the mainland we have relegated religion to the House Lords and the parties in the commons are divided along the lines of political ideology, in Northern Ireland the parties are split along religious divisions into which are bound issues of nationalism and history. Latest attempts at powersharing to solve previous issues of discrimination are currently failing because the people have chosen parties from the extremities of the divisions. IMHO the problems of NI will not be solved until the major UK parties drop their affilaition to the NI parties and start campaigning in their own right, thus giving people the opportunity to really take part in democratic politics, rather than taking sides in an religio-nationalistic argument.

Looking to Iraq and we see the same situation that we have in NI, only this time rather than two, we have three religio-ethnic groupings, all with significant amounts of historic animosity, attempting to share power. As a result whilst the elections may have been free and fair they cannot be considered, in my view, as being democratatic. As a result the whole political situation in Iraq is IMHO inherently unstable, and is currently only holding together because of the current shared objective of getting rid of occupying forces asap.

Drawing together a couple of themes running in this thread; despite its convaluted political system, I would consider the elections in Iran to be more democratic (though not necessarily as free and fair) as those in Iraq, in that they include a multiplicity of political parties with apparently differing political ideologies.

Today religious leaders in Iran ordered a Fatwah for Muslims to use nuclear weapons against their enemies if Iran is attacked.

The networks also showed clips of how Iran has opened terrorism schools to teach students how to become suicide bombers. Over 80% of the students interviewed at the school by reporters expressed an eagerness to be trained as suicide bombers.

Feeling like I'd been "Muslim clubbed" yet one more time, an insight flashed through my mind. Perhaps this is what ns meant when he repeatedly admonished us to realize just how incredibly destructive and dangerous Islam (not Muslim extremism) really is?

So, ns, I must ask you directly: Is it really possible that Muslims have been conditioned by almost 1,500 years of accumulated religious/cultural pressures into believing that their true destiny is to use a "holy war" as nothing more that an excuse to annihilate themselves in a blood-bath of anyone who dares to disagrees with them?

Yes, this hypothesis sounds just as bizarre to me as it does to you, but I honestly can see no other rational explanation for this insanity.

Look what I found :


The answer to this is yes and no, but I would say the the Baldock Festival is typical of many towns.


Well the local authority relaxed the rules some years ago and there are pubs in LGC. However the quoted passage is an over simplification of the facts, and indicates a lack of historical knowledge by the author. Whilst I was not born in Baldock and I am the first of my family to live here, there are strong family ties, and even I can remember the the Maltings, for Baldock was at the heart of the local brewing industry, being situtiated in an area of predominently arable farming.

On to more serious stuff:

Hmmm, by the same arguement the use of the Electoral College system in the USA to elect the President cannot be said to be truely Democratic. Voting for someone to vote for president, when they might ignore your wishes and vote for the other guy is not my idea of democracy.

But turning back to Iran and Iraq, the fact that a huge proportion of people abstained during the 2003 elections is as mark of democracy. The right not to use a vote is as important as the right to vote.

You are correct, and I would agree that the banning of candidates by the Council of Guardians was undemocratic, but I would draw a parallel with the action of the UK government in increasing the cost of becoming a candidate. To be a candidate you have to have a party (£150 registration fee), to register as a candidate you have to place a deposit (£500 UK elections, £5000 European elections) if you do not receive sufficient votes (5% UK elections, 2.5% European elections) you loose your deposit. Thus whilst the Government is not actively banning candidates, it is effectively restricting them to the more mainstream parties with significant funding. Also one has remember that the European Elections are based on list based proportional representation, thus there is a higher chance for independant candidates to be elected than there is in the general and local elections. So you have the juxtaposition of the Iranians who are being on the whole fairly open about their actions, and the British who are being underhand .

In the 2001 elections we had the Commission for Racial Equality's (CRE) Election Pledge. Whilst the pledge itself was bad enough in its aim to supress free speech, the way it was used to vilify those who refused to sign it was wholly undemocratic.

However my original point was on a wider concept of Democracy, where people are presented with options of political ideology, rather than ethno-religious ones. The entho-religious options being in effect no option at all and where you can predict the outcome of the vote before it has even happened. In my view there is little difference in Iraq between everybody having the right to vote for Saddam, and everybody having the the right to vote for a Shia grouping, Sunni grouping and a Kurdish grouping , other than the fact that the counting was probobly a little more accurate.