People should be more angry with politicians

[tractor]

...

Bullsh**t. What they say and what they mean are worlds apart. They may well kid themselves that they are doing what they do for the benefit of others and on certain levels this is probably true. However once they have the power of influence and the attention of the electorate they become their natural selves boosted by the sense of importance they gain and usually embodies itself in satisfying their own prejudices, issues and attitudes.

Because they have a mandate of power bestowed upon them they develop a sense of divine righteousness, developing an opinion on everything that they think they can impose upon everyone else. one of the advantages of privileged people such as etonians coming to Parliament is that they tend not to suffer from the feelings of inferiority that drives many MPs (particularly lefties). the downside of these people is that they believe that they were born to rule and give jobs to their mates.

The ones who are driven by a genuine desire to do good rarely make it to the top. the ones who we have to listen to are in their position by virtue of the fact that they are single minded politicians. By this stage they have shed the yolk of wanting to change the world and exchanged such principles for self interest.

You only have to look at a golf club to see how this manifests itself on a smaller scale. decent people join golf clubs on the basis of wanting to enjoy themselves and enjoy the company of others. Sucked in by the power of the committee room their worst characteristics emerge turning many a well meaning "decent bloke" into a petty little Hitler.

And you will never sway their opinion however much evidence you provide.

[Unix]

I liked Hitchens point about politicians being selected rather than elected. So you get a choice between 3/4 politicians pre-choosen by the party who must toe the party line and promote the party policies, which mostly have failed to work. This is why new parties such as UKIP are going to take big slices out of electoral cake.

[speling bee]

I wish someone would ask one of these lefty liberals if they think that we should criticise FGM on account of if we do we are being racist?

Yes. It is right to criticise FGM and it is not racist to do so.

HTH

[DodgyAgent]

I liked Hitchens point about politicians being selected rather than elected. So you get a choice between 3/4 politicians pre-choosen by the party who must toe the party line and promote the party policies, which mostly have failed to work. This is why new parties such as UKIP are going to take big slices out of electoral cake.

I disagree with the premise that the Political system is giving us the wrong politicians in the first place. The politicians we have reflect entirely the politicians we want. You may not like them but today we are all comfortable, there are no wars and we all get by in our wishy washy self interested manner. This is perfectly reflected by the politicians we have

[Batcher]

I liked Hitchens point about politicians being selected rather than elected. So you get a choice between 3/4 politicians pre-choosen by the party who must toe the party line and promote the party policies, which mostly have failed to work. This is why new parties such as UKIP are going to take big slices out of electoral cake.

This is why I don't think we have a democratic government. The three line whip / party system is not democratic when the will of the people can be ignored.

[DodgyAgent]

This is why I don't think we have a democratic government. The three line whip / party system is not democratic when the will of the people can be ignored.

How else will anything get done without some sort of consensus? Do you suggest every MP be his own individual party?

[speling bee]

How else will anything get done without some sort of consensus? Do you suggest every MP be his own individual party?

We can change from representatives to delegates who can be recalled. The government bottled the bill to allow recall of MPs.

[tractor]

...

We can change from representatives to delegates who can be recalled. The government bottled the bill to allow recall of MPs.

IIRC it was part of their manifesto which means next time you see a manifesto bin it and don't let it cloud your judgement.

[BrilloPad]

How else will anything get done without some sort of consensus? Do you suggest every MP be his own individual party?

It would be nice to have 10 downing street accountable to HoC and not behaving like an executive office like the White House.

[speling bee]

IIRC it was part of their manifesto which means next time you see a manifesto bin it and don't let it cloud your judgement.

They can dodge manifestos because it's a coalition government. But this was in the 2010 Coalition Agreement. And UKIP simply want to get out of the EU and hand powers back to this lot.