Thanks to everybody (nearly two hundred votes in four days!) who cast a vote in this week's Fun Online Poll, which I might as well shut down now that polling has closed. Results as follows:
How will you vote in Thursday's referendum?
Yes to AV - 51%
No to AV - 37%
I won't bother - 12%
I doubt whether the official result will be as favourable. Ah well.
This does not bode well for an In-Out Referendum on the EU. All They need to do is choose a few simple lies and stick to them, such as Three million jobs depend on our membership of the European Union (scroll down to the end of Channel4's Fact Check service) and that will be the end of that for a few decades
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Which brings me back to my favourite topic of "Lost causes". It seems that pretty much anything I campaign for (actively or otherwise) is pretty much a lost cause, so out of interest, how many of my favourite "Lost causes" do you support?
Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar, multiple answers allowed.
What have we wrought in the UK?
1 hour ago
13 comments:
If it's any consolation, consider my position. I want to abolish the government's legislative power. I think I might be the only person in Britain demanding that.
IB, that is a good place to start.
It's probably quicker to abolish all laws and start from scratch and work out which laws we actually need to function as a civilised society than to chip away piece by piece (I'm sure seventy per cent would support the fine work of HM Land Registry in deciding who owns what land, for example, for which I would demand a 'quid' pro quo).
So...we're going to get AV then. Personally I would have thought it would have gone the other way.
Mark, yes. I'm personally convinced that no incremental, er, decremental approach is ever going to achieve anything.
Anyway, there's no need for a legislature. I can't think of a single new law I've thought either necessary or desirable in my lifetime; anything they've done I've approved of has been a repeal/legalisation (rarities, but e.g. the sodomy law).
JJ, on this blog we are going to get AV, in real life, I doubt it. Similarly, on this blog we left the EU years ago.
IB, that's a good point. When the government introduces a new law, it's usually for the worse, but of the few laws they've repealed, has anybody ever been sad to see one go?
Well Mark, I think that dream of a repeal, the Town & Country Planning Acts, would raise a few howls of protest ;)
"It's probably quicker to abolish all laws and start from scratch and work out which laws we actually need to function as a civilised society than to chip away piece by piece"
I agree, the MOST important stuff like murder etc.. etc.. is covered under common law anyway which would obviously stay whilst the Statute book is torn up & re-written from scratch. Partially as a constitution giving basic rights to ALL and a basic tax law which is extremely difficult to amend in order to avoid stealth taxes, partially as an additional "bill of rights" granting extra rights solely to the law abiding and then beyond that, statute should be largely irrelevant and only deal with situations which exist only with the passage of time and could not have been envisaged and therefore accounted for at the time of a constitution being agreed.
Very good point about the referendum. I have no doubt that we would lose it in practice if it were held now - especially as the EU would pump tens or even hundreds of millions of Euros into the "stay in" campaign.
The only hope is for the whole of Europe to demand an end to it. Which may in fact happen.
IB, yup, that one is totally counter-productive.
SW, not quite. The Bill of Rights only spends a few lines saying what people's "rights" are, most of it is restrictions on what the government/the monarch can do.
e.g. it would be silly to have a rule somewhere saying "Women have the right to breastfeed in public" (there actually is such a law! I saw it on telly yesterday!), it's more important to make sure that it's not forbidden elsewhere (of course a landowner himself can forbid it on his own premises, for whatever reason he wishes).
AC, all empires implode sooner or later, as will the EUmpire (whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is irrelevant), it's just taking far too long!
Mark, the Roman Empire was around for 500 years, don't be impatient!
B, yes, fair point, but as history progresses, they are shorter and shorter lived, e.g. British Empire a couple of centuries, the Warsaw pact less than fifty years.
Wasn't able to comment on poll so I'll say it here.
I would legalise ALL drugs.
My favourite Other policy is multiple votes, ie some electors get extra votes. For example, an extra vote for each of the following:
- married for 25 years;
- Raised a child to 16 without criminal record;
- degree or similar qualification;
- having lived abroad for 2 or more years.
Choose your own criteria so that the more ideal the citizen, the more votes they get.
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