Why we need real 'People Power'.

Until we get real 'People Power', based on restoring our inherent right to the recognition of our sovereignty, no future political reforms will alter a thing apart from a rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic as our system of governance continues to deteriorate.

The trouble is that the gap between the views of our politicians and the 'People', they are elected to serve, continues to widen and will continue to do so unless the 'People' wake up and demand change.

While THA's six demands are revolutionary there is a nothing that a united 'People' can not achieve if they put their minds to it. To some extent the 2016 referendum and last years election showed what the 'People' can achieve. However with regards the election, and despite the size of the Conservative majority, I'm not holding out much hope that we will see many of the policy reforms I'm convinced the 'Silent Majority' believe are necessary and would readily support. If only this government would really listen to the 'People' and be radical I for one would be a very happy bunny!

We really should be under no illusion that our politicians still rule the roost and still act as our masters and not our servants.

So if we want to see real reform of our governance we, the 'People', are going to have to unite and demand the changes we want, as set out in THA's six demands, at the heart of which sees our inherent sovereignty returned to us and recognised in law.

The common sense of the mass of the 'People'.

It was Thomas Jefferson who said :-

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people ..........they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty"

An informed public is the very antipathy of epistocracy.

The trouble is on so many things those that govern us take us for fools and assume we are uneducated and only they have the answers.

It is time the 'People' demanded real power so that what they want happens leaving our politicians in no doubt they are our servants and not our masters.

A sobering thought at the time of a new parliament.

At this time of a new parliament, with a number of new MPs, it is worth considering these words of George Bernard Shaw.

"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career"

One of the main reasons we are so poorly served by our politicians is that they don't find the time, more importantly sadly even have the inclination to seek help from outside the Westminster bubble so that they can seriously get to grips with the real detail surrounding policy issues. 

The only way to increase the quality of the output from our politicians is to have our six demands in    place which gives the 'People' real power and the mechanisms to both direct and curtail government legislation between elections should a majority so desire.    

The election results.

The BIG question, as I thought on seeing the exit poll, is what will Boris now do with his POWER. What I notice is that when given POWER the 'People' know what they want as indicated by the 2016 Referendum, more recently the jury's verdict on Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield and now this General Election. Normal people, not those displayed on TV vox pops, know what they want and have more sense than many of our politicians and legacy media (especially the BBC) give them credit for. To improve the governance of this country the 'People' need real POWER all the time which is why we so desperately need our six demands. If the 'People' want permanent POWER then we are all going to have to DEMAND it.

Election leaflets.

I live in the constituency of Somerset and Frome with my partner, which was formed in 1983, and has been Conservative apart from between 1997-2015 when the Lib Dems won due to the votes that went from the Conservatives to the Referendum Party and later UKIP.   

 The rhetoric and propaganda in election leaflets is getting worse and we have had two each from the Conservatives and Lib Dem candidates and one from the Greens. As yet I haven't seen one from Labour unless I binned it without looking at it! We also each received a personally addressed letter from Boris offering to 'unleash Britain's potential' whatever that means?!

A summary of the actual leaflets tells us that the Conservatives are 'Delivering for Somerset'. The Lib Dems want to 'Stop Brexit.Build a Brighter Future' (not certain what wattage they propose using!) while the Greens say 'Yes to Europe. No to Climate chaos' which for sheer 'tosh' takes some beating as for starters we are being asked to say 'Yes' to Europe and not the EU?

What strikes me is that the parties are largely talking to themselves and not to the public at large. During the campaign they also want to close down the debate to their own pet topics and ignore the really difficult issues facing this country which need to be discussed, debated and of course resolved.

The simple truth is that once elected all governments ignore the 'People' they are meant to serve which is why one of the main planks of our agenda is to give the 'People' real power between elections to control and direct those that seek to govern us.

The aim of all of our six demands is the reform of our governance to give us real democracy being one that gives power to the 'People' along with the mechanisms that will prevent our politicians ignoring us.    



 

Honesty is the best policy.

As the old saying goes "honesty is the best policy" and while there are certainly occasions when you need to be careful, like answering the question from your wife " do I look good in this dress?", as a general rule of thumb I think it is true.

In the court room scene in the film 'A few good men' Tom Cruise ( the lawyer) demands of Jack Nicholson (Colonel Jessop) that he "wants the truth" to which the Colonel replies " You cannot handle the truth."

I believe many of this countries running sores are caused by not facing the truth and of course our politicians are completely culpable as they are often ignorant of the truth and also incapable of facing up to it when it hits them between the eyes. Another factor is that on the occasions when they do know the truth they fear that the 'People' won't be able to handle it.

Our six demands are built around the principle that the 'People's' inherent sovereignty should be recognised and that their collective common sense can not only handle the truth but demand it!

For far too long our politicians have based their decisions on the last lobbying group to sit on them and that is no way to run anything let alone a country of 66.5 million with our depth of history, culture and traditions.

For a long time I have felt that that the 'People's' views and desires trump those of the politicians that govern us who prove daily how out of touch with reality they are cocooned, as they are, in the Westminster bubble.

We demand and expect the truth from our politicians which is the only sensible way to be governed.        

The folly of believing PR is the answer.

When  a 'personality' is asked their opinion about the perilous state of our parliament and goverance they invariably suggest that things would be improved with the introduction of a PR voting system.

This was certainly the case when I caught part of an interview, on Newsnight, with the comedian David Mitchell.

The advocates of PR believe that it would produce a more representative parliament consisting, as it would, of a greater number of political parties being represented.

I have long believed that our FPTP system, for all its faults, is still better than the endless coalitions that PR tends to produce. For those who believe PR is the missing 'Silver Bullet' we need to improve our governance I list below the three key reasons why it very quickly, after its introduction, makes matters worse.

First and foremost, a system of PR gives no more power to the people over their politicians between elections than they have now.

Second, at the time of an election nobody can be certain what parts of any party's election manifesto will prevail.

Third, a level of corruption becomes inbuilt as the parties do deals behind closed doors which of course excludes any participation by the people. And there is absolutely no proof, in countries with PR, that they are better governed.

Also it should be remembered that our two main parties are in themselves coalitions with a spectrum of views and opinions so at least we currently know which coalition of views will likely form the next government while PR simply produces more division and uncertainty.

The solution to improve our governance is to recognise the inherent sovereignty of the people and give them real power over their MPs and other officials.

Our six demands, not PR, are what is needed to improve our democracy and system of government.