people will not be given a vote on membership of Europe, probably. Thought they could be given a
vote under certain circumstances so he could have said no vote on membership possibly. However
given that both political parties have, while in government, turned a blind eye to bureaucratic
manipulations which granted the EU more power over us its more likely to be never than possibly.
He has been roundly turned on from every side for not saying what he was supposed to say or for
not saying anything at all.
The Tories have jumped in quickly with this somewhat laughable effort given that “Call Me Dave “
has lied once about allowing people a referendum and is basically waffling on the subject now:
you that vote I have a bridge to sell you, good views of the Thames.
So now both of the major parties have clearly stated that they may, may not, probably will not but reserve
the right to consider if circumstances, will consider, will but only if you vote for them and wait another
three years, give the people a vote on membership in the EU.
MPs and public figures on both sides are lining up to quote lies and statistics.
We hear the usual doom and gloom that without being in the EU we will be powerless, that our trade will
suffer and we will become a nobody on the world stage.
Nick Clegg says that we must have a foot in the door in order to make changes. Given that we have had
that foot in the door for so long that people were born after we joined, have had children who have grown
up and are now having children of their own could he say exactly what changes the UK has managed to
make over the last 40 years?
Others say that there is no point in having a vote because people don’t care, it’s not important and only a
few would bother to vote. Well if that is the case why not have the vote and get it done with.
Why is it that after 41 years we are not allowed another vote? After all the organisation that the UK
joined in 1973 was very different to the undemocratic Eurocratic super state that exists today.
The EU does a lot of good, yes it does, try not to faint that I am saying this.
But it also does a lot of very very bad. It is slowly and steadily turning into a totalitarian bureaucracy
(a terrifying concept), in terms of income it is at the top of the list of multi national organisation and
companies but if any of those had refused to produce audited accounts for last year they would have
been rightly condemned and action taken against them. The EU has not turned in an audited accounting
for decades and yet its just business as usual as Billions vanish without trace.
The bottom line here is, of course, democracy. Or more correctly the lack of it.
The will of the people made manifest by the counting of ballots cast to decide a measure. The expression
of the majority to be honoured and obeyed by all. That old fashioned thing called democracy.
Give people a vote and you give them a voice. That seems to terrify far too many MPs.
What if they are allowed to vote on membership of the EU. What next?
Will they be wanting to vote on spending between £50 and£100 billion on a white elephant railway
that will allow a handful of people to shave a few minutes off a train trip while devastating the
countryside and communities.
Will the population want to start having an input on all those hugely expensive things that MPs have
proved themselves so inept at handling. Public sector IT bills for example, or employing G4S. In both
cases the organisations behind the work have failed again and again and yet they are called back for
the next job.
People given the opportunity to influence such choices may just start to ask why their hard earned
and easily taken taxes are being spent to provide retirement jobs for those MPs who are so helpful
to these inept companies.
Once you open that door and allow people to make the choice for themselves you have opened
Pandora’s box and who knows where it will go from there.
MPs claiming that such matters are too complex to be voted on by the general public who would
not understand are invariably less educated on the subject than the bloke down the pub in the
corner who can explain it in great detail because he has been working in that area for thirty years.
The MP took five minutes to read the paper before voting that same day.
So why are people not going to be given a vote on having the EU ram its laws down our throats?
Why are people not given the opportunity to voice their opinion on the fact that our so called
parliament is nothing more than a rubber stamp for unelected Eurocrates who seem to have such
a prominent place in running our lives.
Why are the people lied to again and again to string them along on the hope that just once, maybe,
the leader of this party or that party is telling the truth and there will be a vote. Aside from the fact
that the population falls for the lies again and again that is.
Where is the Democracy in our Democratic nation?
What power will the proles be demanding next. Recall?
Once they start to think they can vote and influence the decisions that the MPs make then perhaps
they will start to think they should have some control over those MPs that they employ.
Give them the power to recall an MP or to sanction one and they may just get upset with the lies, the
broken promises, the corruption, the self serving, the political games and putting self or party over
constituents or country.
A system where you drag yourself out to tick a box on a sheet of paper once every five years then go
back to sleep till the next election is hardly the will of the people made manifest.
As my good friend Hoz says, name another job where once you are hired you can do what you want,
lie, cheat, break your promises, ignore the wishes and orders of your employer, and generally do as
you like safe in the knowledge that your employer cannot do a damn thing about it for five years.
Our current system is not democracy, it is an elected Oligarchy where once every five years we are
presented with a choice of candidates, each party presenting one candidate for each area and we get
to pick which Oligarch will spend the next five years ignoring us.
Actually democracy is not so hard with current technology. It's not that difficult to register the smart
phone numbers of interested constituents and block votes by anyone not on that MPs list, publish a
list of next week’s matters your MP is going to vote on. Text yes or no and away you go.
Software does the rest.
Is it vulnerable to manipulation? Yes of course it is, as is our good old fashioned system of bits of
paper. When the dead come out to vote, when households have a dozen registered voters living
there and when the representatives of certain MPs are found with piles of pre ticked voting slips
you can hardly say that the old ways are not open to trickery.
But the old way takes time, it takes organisation. All those voting offices and counting offices and
keeping the boxes safe and all that manual counting. All of that can be handled in seconds by some
half way decent software and by restricting it to registered phone numbers it is actually harder to
fake than those voter slips that don’t require and ID to use.
A proper private sector job to set it up should be a lot faster than the usual public sector IT disaster
and it will be a lot cheaper and will even work afterwards.
But that means that MPs actually become accountable. Because those annoying voters can actually
say “We sent you texts, 10,000 of us said yes, 1,000 said no so why did you vote NO?
That combined with the ability to take an MP and shake his cushy little five year plan of doing what
he wants while taking home a reasonable salary, expenses, pension and benefits package would put
the population in an interesting situation.
That of actually being back in charge.
Which is exactly why we will never see a vote on membership of the EU or ever see that Recall
process enshrined in law. The Oligarchs would no longer be unchallenged and they would never
allow that.
Members of Parliament should Serve the People NOT rule them.