Blog 8 - We need more of a say (3)

Standard Header - In these blogs, current political events are illuminated by reference to the basic relationships explained in ‘Us, Politics and The System.’ To give readers an idea when to look for a new post, the initial plan is to do a new one at least once a week, on Fridays.

I’ve spoken about what little say we have, even in countries said to be democracies, on the issues we vigorously go on about on social media. In the UK at present there’s Gaza, there’s raising the tax income that’s needed for the public spending needed to satisfy people’s expectations from government, and many more issues, where people feel utterly frustrated and alienated from politics by their lack of influence.

There’s a lot of ways we could get more of a say, from making MP’s more accountable, to Proportional Representation, citizen’s assemblies, things like ‘town halls’ in the US, referendums and more. But before all that, let’s confront why we get so little say. In the UK, there’s an often-stated argument that we can’t be trusted with any more democracy and we can only have representative democracy – where we just get to elect people who then make up their own mind on everything, on our behalf.

Some always quote bringing back hanging as something unwelcome that people would probably want doing if they had more of a say. Right now, there’s people, not interested in tackling those who run the country, the business class, and the big issues that come from their dominance, who are very agitated about a relatively small issue, migration and asylum. Then there was Brexit.

The answer has to be, well we’re not happy with what our representatives are doing and we do want more of a say. You can’t be having referendums on every issue so what we need is ways of getting the representatives to actually represent us more faithfully. More on those methods in future ‘We need more of a say’ blogs.

But to deal with the overall argument that people can’t be trusted - along with more of a say, we need to develop better-directed, more civilised political views amongst ourselves. To do that, to address, vigorously, our whole understanding of the system and the basics. And to talk each other more on that basis. As argued in ‘Us, Politics and The System’, to get a shared basis for our various views by recognising the existence and dominance of the business class as the main problem, as summarised in ‘The Essential Us and The System’ at https://www.uspoliticsandthesystem.org/_files/ugd/e8d212_7a38c84e326f41508a42fc351d94c66f.pdf

Standard Footer - Comments are not being offered in this blog right now. Reader’s reflections are best spread outwards, to somebody else the reader knows, as written about in ‘How To Talk Politics With Each Other’ at https://www.uspoliticsandthesystem.org/_files/ugd/e8d212_1f348918923e4f33bac1b09b314affbb.pdf