Fuji_Abound wrote:
but you cant have a vote on everything, some might say you shouldnt have a vote on any one policy decision.
Well. The way it works here is that you have Initiative and Referendum. Referendum is obligatory if there is a change in the constitution or it is about joining multinational institutions such as the EU or the UN. For all other laws parliament releases it can be forced if more than 50’000 people or 8 states demand it within 100 days of passing of the legislation. Initiative is always a change in the constitution and requires 100’000 signatures within 18 months of launch. That is on a national level. The same goes with less signatures required within the states legislation.
That means not everything gets a full popular vote but parliament is well aware that the risk always is there. That means they can not ignore the public like it is done in many countries for 3.5 years and then just sweet talk them into re-election for 6 months, but with every law they pass they run the risk of referendum or, if they hack people off sufficiently the launching of a popular initiative. On those, parliament has only consultative voting power, they recommend passing or not, but their vote has no consequence on the outcome. Initiatives need to achieve both popular vote and majority of states to become law.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
I dont see any democracy can operate on a basis other than giving the ruling party a mandate.
Well, it works here. We have no Prime Minister, the executive is in the hands of 7 parliament elected ministers which come from currently 4 parties amongst which 2 left and two right. One of the 7 ministers takes over the role of President for a year in an administrative form, it does not give him additional privileges but representative duties. Parliament itself is split about 50/50 left and right too, alliances are forged on a issue base rather than other considerations, the strongest party holds around 28% of the popular vote.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
we know that both sides mislead the electorate in the Brexit referendum.
Yes and due to the fact that referendums are a very rare thing in Britain many of the obvious misleading issues were not reckognized by the voters. All the referendums I can think back in the UK were on existential matters and far far apart. How do you want a public to become savvy enough to exercise their rights with due diligence if you don’t trust them to vote in the first place? This is the big argument I hear in most countries which have representative democracies, but it does not bite. I do trust a quorum of the people MUCH more than I trust any politician let alonge a bunch of them.
Fenland_Flyer wrote:
The problem is the polititians far too often ignore the fact that they are voted in as a REPRESENTATIVE and then vote as a delegate.
Very true. I would say this has been the reason for most of the recent small revolutions around the world. It can threaten to make countries ungovernable if it is allowed to carry on too long.
Fenland_Flyer wrote:
Perhaps a couple of legal changes would also help
1) If you do not pay taxes then you cannot have a vote
Vote must be linked to citizenship and civil rights. In Switzerland for instance voting right starts at 18, where many voters are still in school or university. Exclude them from voting because they have no income yet is unacceptable imho. You’d end up getting those who are intellectually barred from higher education to get an overweight in the youngsters votes which we would not really want, that is only one scenario. However, people who have comited felonies are exempt from voting for the duration of their sentence.
Fenland_Flyer wrote:
2) Make the manifestos have the force of law behind them instead of being able to be ignored.
I am not sure I understand that, but it appears to me that is pretty much what we do.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
If I were in Government the first thing I would do is introduce a similar visa for anyone wishing to come here as it seems to me it is a lovely little earner that would put no one off and wonderfully easy and inexpensive to adminster.
Some governments have done that following the US introducing ESTA. Funny or not, but actually travelling to the US since ESTA is quite a bit easier in my experience, but you are right about the tarif for it, but it appears to me that the procedure entering the US at the port of entry has become much faster since ESTA was introduced. I actually felt that it was easier than entering the UK last time I did.
Timothy wrote:
For a country which is dependent on tourism and international trade to put up an upfront barrier to entry seems mad to me.
In the end it depends how desirable the country in question is to visit whether people will take it upon themselfs to apply for Visas and the likes. Obviously in the US, the desirability is way higher than the resentment to the hassles involved.
It isn’t necessarily possible to compare the political system in different countries, because different countries face different political challenges.
Taking the widest picture, in the “free world” nobody is really voting on anything of earth shattering importance. If communist Czechoslovakia (which I remember well, having been there 1957-1969) got a vote on whether to throw out the commies, they would have voted about 90% OUT. That’s what I call a real issue.
In free countries, people vote on relative trivia the whole time. One may think Brexit is a major thing, and it is major on the scale of UK politics, but it still won’t change the life of somebody who just wakes up, eats breakfast, goes to work, goes own the pub etc. If you never watched the news, read the papers, etc, you would likely not notice anything.
Then you have some countries which rarely do anything controversial. They never participate in wars / peacekeeping missions / etc so they make few enemies. And if their internal language is something difficult to learn, and perhaps they are perceived as relatively closed societies, they will naturally attract little immigration, so again they face few issues on that front.
Peter wrote:
Taking the widest picture, in the “free world” nobody is really voting on anything of earth shattering importance.
Really? I don’t agree, obviously, we have had some rather consequential votes in this country and stuff like Brexit is also no walk in the park, particularly if the very guy you quote later on will end up loosing his job or having to pay for the immense reparation costs the EU wants in this ugly divorce.
Actually, for me, in order to get a meaningful result of any referendum, you can’t just do them every 30 years. Voting your concience on political issues is not as easy as going to the bathroom in the morning and doesn’t come as natural either. It’s an educational process which begins in school and continues throughout one’s political life. If you are used to vote on even trivial things such as school projects in your community or whether to buy a new jet fighter for the air force or not, then you will eventually be fit to take educated decisions about larger stuff like joining the UN, whether to abolish the armed forces, whether to join the EU, whether to abolish public radio and television services e.t.c.
I disagree that there are totally apolitical people. They may believe that they are but unless they are really totally brain dead then consequences of politics have a huge impact on their lifes. So they better participate in it rather than just nag about what they don’t like.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
as I say at the first mention of an ESTA for UK citizens I would have immediately returned the favour for US citizens!
The UK already has something like that. It’s called air passenger duty.
huv wrote:
If UK leaves EASA
Not if, when ! EASA is THE light tower for the 4 freedoms. Free movement of goods, capital, services and labor. If the UK don’t leave EASA, then Brexit is the biggest joke in European history.
Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Lichtenstein want the 4 freedoms, but nothing else. The UK voted to leave because they did not want the 4 freedoms, especially free movement of goods, services and labor, which are the fundamental building blocks of EASA. GA legislation have just come along for the ride (and for the worse).
The UK is odd, even among the other oddballs.
LeSving wrote:
The UK is odd, even among the other oddballs.
Not odder than others. The only difference is, they were allowed to vote. The tragedy is how that vote was perverted by the pro Brexit side into something shameful rather than being conducted as a powerful campaign for the real issues. The result of this will only become visible after the UK actually has left and the people will realize how much of tosh they have been served by those people. This however can happen anywhere, provided that previous governments have allowed a nations condition to deteriorate to a state where revolt is only a question of time.
Look at Italy. Look at Greece. Look at the Catalan problem in Spain. Look at the US of A. The problem that their people finally get enough of governments which ignore them have brought us folks like Berlusconi and now Grillo, Trump and so on. Or remember what happened in Germany in the 1930ties, which would never have happened if the victors of WW1 had not tried to suffocate the rump state left to the point where enough people were sufficiently pissed off in order to vote for Hitler. It is rather worrying to see that similar tactics of “reparation” is now suggested by the rump EU towards Britain even under different name, but with the same goal, to destroy Britains economy and make the country ripe for take over and of course “pour encourager les autres”. Leave and we shall destroy you is a serious threat. If Britain shows them the finger, maybe this kind of behaviour will finally stop.
LeSving wrote:
The UK voted to leave because they did not want the 4 freedoms, especially free movement of goods, services and labor, which are the fundamental building blocks of EASA
you mean fundamental building blocks of the EU, not EASA?
But nevertheless, the UK voted out only partially because of that but primarily because they felt that they were getting less from the EU than they put in as well as that they were constantly overruled by the EU when it came to their national interests. It was also a statement against the going dogma in Brussels that the people are too stupid anyway and it should be left to them to dictate what was best for everyone, which, as we all know, is the beginning of dictatorship. The 4 freedoms were part of it because several UK governments had used them to blame unpopular decisions on it rather than to admit it was themselfs who caused it.
Unfortunately, in the course of the campaign, many of those issues were abandoned in favour of ridiculous lies such as that money saved would go to the NHS or British Steel would re-emerge in old glory (did it ever have one) or that they would kick all the evil foreigners out, which will prove difficult in the instance of those who came to the UK from the Comonwealth e.t.c. That most of those issues were blunders of previous governments never occured to the yes crowd. The pity is, that the real issues would have been more than enough to make a case for exiting an organisation thus composed, but the statement would have been different: not that the Brits are oddballs and racists but that they choose freedom over bureaucratic opression.
BTW, I see a very similar pattern with EASA and the “what has EASA done for us” discussion. A lot of CAA’s blamed their own pet hate decisions on EASA which, in return, got a very bad name (and in the beginning justifiable so), only to now realize that EASA with recent initiatives like part NCO, ELA, e.t.c. is taking all that away from them. As in the EU discussion, which is not limited to the UK at all, some CAA’s today struggle with their consticuency who have finally found them out and now turn against them in justified disgust.
What would you think would happen if referendums were held in other countries about whether to stay or leave? Whey were the French so scared of LePen? Because the result of a referendum in France would be the same, as it would in other places too. The EU has a huge image problem as well as a very fundamental democracy problem and right now, I’d say at least half of the populations would vote with their feet.
So careful what you call odd, it may as well be the other way around.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
and of course “pour encourager les autres”. Leave and we shall destroy you is a serious threat.
I’m a Europhile but the EU’s actions since Brexit I think have been playing right into the hands of the Brexiteers with a lot of their actions and generating a lot of “told you so” comments. The above is also profoundly anti-democratic.
yes
alioth wrote:
the EU’s actions since Brexit I think have been playing right into the hands of the Brexiteers with a lot of their actions and generating a lot of “told you so” comments. The above is also profoundly anti-democratic.
Did anyone ever expect the EU to react any differently? They are waging an economic war of secession against Britain. First of all to discourage any others but also because they are genuinely pi$$ed off.
Of course it is anti democratic. Did the EU ever encourage referendums? Not to my knowledge, they are scared of them because they know the outcome. But eventually this will turn against them, as they can’t avoid other nations having them.
