The LGO manifesto on the constitution will be developed below.
Suggestions for new points and debate about existing ones is encouraged. The list will be periodically updated according to the consensus view.
As a starting point the following baseline suggestions for debate are offered.
LGO MANIFESTO – THE CONSTITUTION AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
The LGO , following debate recommends the following consensus of constitutional change to be adopted at this point in time:
No.1
The sum total of all elected politicians (Westminster and local bodies) to be reduced by 30%.
No.2
Upon the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, the Royal Family is to become the ceremonial head only of the UK and the Commonwealth. An office of an elected president is to be established to be elected mid parliamentary term.
Note this does not appear popular and will be removed if no support is shown soon.
No.3
Radical reform of the House of Lords is proposed. House of Lords appointees must obtain a 2/3rds majority recommendation from the Commons to enter. The following categories of experience are to be filled in the House of Lords expressed as a percentage of total available seats in the Lords.
- legal background 15%
- Financial background 15%
- Armed forces 10%
- Clergy 15% (spread accross all religions)
- Politics 15%
- Science and Engineering 17.5%
- The arts / special recommendations 12.5%
House of Lords appointees can be de-selected at any time by a simple majority in the House of Lords and require re-appointing by the commons after a maximum 10 years service. life peers will be abolished.
No.4
Suitable and secure accomodation is to be purpose built in London for all politicians who live outside orf reasonable commuter distance. No expenses for second homes will be permitted.
No.5
All politicians administrative staff are to be provided by the Civil Service to a set budget depending on the office held and will not be funded by expenses claims.
No6.
A system of proportional representation or a preference system is to be introduced for all elections….TBC
N07.
Only ministers whom have served in the armed forces are allowed to take the position of secretary for defence.
No.8
Undertake a review of all the honours bestowed in the last 15 years. If you are a knight of the realm and have not been a selfless servant to society or provided some great innovation they should be stripped of all honours. Honours should mean something to aspire to in terms of a descent moral code and a role model. How can Sir Fred Goodwin and numerous knights of the realm in the boardrooms of the banks and elsewhere others be held up as model citizens?
Hopefully that will be enough to get your teeth into..
Got any suggestions ?
Lets start the Debate.
LGO
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by goldtop
27 May 2009 at 13:15
Jericoa, some comments below.
No. 1- Agree that we could do with fewer of them but the number that remain would have to be far more efficient and effective than they are/are not at the moment. Therefore should MPs not be allowed second jobs? Also, how did you decide on 30%? Finally, reducing the number of MPs would entail reorganising the constituency boundaries again. This needs to be done in a way that will not skew any regional demographic surely.
No. 2- Isn’t this the case already? The monarch doesn’t wield any real power anymore I thought. How would the office of an an elected president be any different from the PM?
No. 3- “Radical reform of the House of Lords is proposed to bring it back to its original purpose”. Which was?
Not being picky, just curious!
by Nick Taylor
28 May 2009 at 13:01
Here’s a random idea:
How about any new law is only passed if there are a set of measurable criteria by which its success can be gauged. If there isn’t any empirical way of measuring the success of a law, it isn’t passed.
Then after a given period, if the law isn’t successful, then it’s automatically repealed. No debate, no prevarication… if it’s not performing, it’s axed. The criteria for measuring success, and the measuring of it are open-sourced.
Then we retroactively go through all existing laws – give them criteria for success, and repeal them if they’re not doing anything, or making things worse.
by Jericoa
29 May 2009 at 11:15
Like the random idea, society is so stifling now. I will add it to the manifesto
GT
30% no maths behind it..just a gut feel for what may be a reasonable cut. I was hovering somewhere between 30 and 40%. Got to start the debate somewhere!
Elected presidents, I think that is what we have at the moment. Without any tangible ‘ideals’ to vote for between the main parties it seems to come down to a charm contest between party leaders..party leaders whom we dont elect directly and they can change them without our permission.
personally i quite like the rich tradition of this country and would like to keep its ceremonial role. But i think a presidential race would get people interested in politics again and ( depending on how it was set up) act as amoderating influence on the commons activities.
i think a president could be a moderating force on government.
Concerning the lords…well my impression is it was meant to be a place where wise old heads could reside and provide some checks and balances on the party political and wip dominance of the commons.
I think that is a reasonable concept except the lords is now staffed by hand picked cronies of the worst kind. hence the idea of making it a ‘house of wise men’ to an extent detached from politics. Just like executive directors in a company. I think that is sensible but it just does not work that way now.
jericoa
by goldtop
19 Jun 2009 at 10:05
A fixed term parliament? I believe the main argument for this is to stop the party holding power from using the timing of a general election to their advantage. Apart from that, I’m not sure if this is a good idea or not- any thoughts anyone?
by Jericoa
07 Jul 2009 at 22:57
Goldtop,
I think a fixed term parliament is, on balance a good idea, maybe there can be (say) 2 months flexibility in the date or something. Not enough for anyone to be able to use it to advantage but enough to be able to react to any crisis.
lets park it for now and once the site is promoted see what the consensus view is and decide whther to include it.
Jericoa
by marksmith1981
14 Jul 2009 at 23:54
I agree with much in this manifesto. Fixed-term parliaments remove the political advantage that incumbents enjoy and I can’t think of a significant downside so a sensible inclusion IMHO
Disagree with the following: I see a presidential system as very similar to what we have now – essentially a popularity contest between party leaders that is quite tightly dictated in most part by the media. Unneccesary change in my opinion that brings little democratic gain – do we really want to emulate the political structure of the United States, which to be fair was very good in principle and practice initially but has long since been corrupted.
We would benefit far more, democratically, if we had tighter rules on media coverage of political parties, and indeed our system would be strengthened immeasurably IMO if we had tighter, sector-specific monopoly prevention rules for the media sector – more diverse ownership would decentralise power wielded by the strongest organisations, and whichever people happen to control those organisations at whichever time – which history has shown tends towards the status quo and favouring established interests thus stifling the creativity that is one of a capitalistic systems best traits – and also strengthen our creative industries through increased competition – one of most valuable and vital exports. I take this through to what I see as a logical conclusion by also including the splitting up of the BBC – although this is a massive subject in itself and worthy of much debate as to how best to do it.
I believe these sector-specific changes to the competition rules would deliver immeasurable benefit by encouraging increased political debate and diversity, strengthening British representative democracy which has the potential to be a fantastic system.
I’m also unconvinced of the benefits of PR and of not having a role for the Clergy in the House of Lords – would very much like to hear the arguments in favour as I can’t see how either change would bring net gains.
by Jericoa
18 Jul 2009 at 20:09
Mark,
Thanks for this.
lots of value in what you say I think. I threw the presidential thing in there, not because I am a huge fan of it but I was not totally against the idea either and wanted to hear some opinion to determine which way to go with it.
Your arguments seem quite convincing to me and if supported further it will be removed from the manifesto.
I am not so sure about the PR aspect. I dont know agreat deal about it but there is a ‘preference’ system also where you vote for more than one candidate in order of preference.
Potentially that sounds better to me than PR but someone will have to convince us, I dont know enough to have much of apoint of view at this stage.
i am also not against the clergy being part of the make up of ‘the house of the wise’ so to speak. Again, it was simply amatter that the clergy were not on my radar for some reason when i wrote it.
I will amend the manifesto in line with some of your comments and await further debate.
The manifesto will appear as rev 1 now.
Thanks mark.
jericoa
by goldtop
26 Jul 2009 at 15:59
Some ideas on PR and other voting systems here-
http://www.politics.co.uk/briefings-guides/issue-briefs/legal-and-constitutional/proportional-representation-$366642.htm
A simple overview I suppose but is food for thought and somewhere to start.
by Jericoa
26 Jul 2009 at 17:12
Thanks for that GT.
I like the sound of the ‘additional member system’ as far as I understand it you have 2 votes, one for a political party and one for an individual candidate whom does not have to be from your preferred party.
The party vote gets counted nationally and the candidate vote locally so you can both express astrong local preference (and get him / her elected) and anational ideology preference which will also be counted.
I never knew there were so many systems out there.
by Berko
28 Jul 2009 at 15:31
So, let me get this straight, 45% should be made up of lawyers, bankers and politicians and these should be “selfless servant[s] to society or provided some great innovation” with “a descent moral code” and should be a “role model”.
Houston, ….?
That aside, and in my completely inexpert and layman musings, I often think that some problems relate to the rise of the career politician with the inevitable career-centric interests, narrowness of experience, disconnect with “real people/families etc” (as evidenced by the need to use phrases like that). Could there be a minimum of, say, two (fixed) terms of serving as an MP?
Strongly agree with #4
Even more strongly agree that peerages should be summarily stripped for “inappropriate” behaviour.
and a point of order.. It might be nice to have the response posts numbered in some way so that they can be referenced responded to.
by Jericoa
28 Jul 2009 at 20:54
Thanks Berko, i have to admit I had not added up the %tages 45% is just enough to keep them out of the majority but 30% for that lot combined sounds better
.
As for numbering the posts, now that you mention it i dont know why we never did that earlir (Golttop / Nick if you are listening can that be done easily..it is badly needed actually..glad someone pointed it out.
Completely inexpert and laymen musings is exactly what we are looking for by the way…
More of the same please.
jericoa
by goldtop
08 Aug 2009 at 18:30
“It might be nice to have the response posts numbered in some way so that they can be referenced responded to”
Speaking personally, I don’t like that. Scrolling up and down to match up the original comment and the reply on the BBC blogs gets right on my wick. I find that it is better to quote what you are replying to (like I have done here), keeps it all encompassed in one comment.
If some one wants to work out the numbering thing I have no objection to it, although I will carry on using the quote method.
by BobRocket
11 Aug 2009 at 23:35
Here’s my ha’pennys worth.
1. Fixed term of 5 years for all assemblies and 5 tiers of government – Euro, national, regional, sub-regional and local – every September 3rd (whatever day it falls on) to be Election day and a national holiday, voting to be mandatory.
2. Elected representatives at whatever level to represent and be answerable to their electorate not to any party, vested interest or their own agenda.
3. Representatives can be recalled by their electorate upon sufficient numbers of registered electors signing a petition.
4. Abolition of ‘candidates deposit’ to be replaced by requisite number of electors signatures.
5. Given No. 2 then stick with first past the post system as PR favours party (vested interest) system
6. House of Lords – The un-elected second chamber is supposed to be able to highlight problems with first chamber proposed legislation – A mirror chamber to the commons but drawn from the electorate at random like a jury for a fixed term of 5 years, commons to retain ‘royal perogative’ but must be validated by referendum.
(ie. the commons wants a piece of legislation but the lords strongly disagree, the commons can take it to a higer authority – the people)
7. Open Government 1, by that I mean everything, if a civil servant buys a paperclip I want to know where, when and how much. All decisions and all information pertaining to those decisions must be published as and when they are received (ie. before the decisions are made so that objections may be heard)
8. Open Government 2. every bit of research and knowledge gained using any kind of government (at any level) money or resources must be published under GPL open source terms. (big pharmaco. won’t like that, using the NHS like a private experimental testbed as they do)
Thats probably more like tu’pence worth
by John-Musca
21 Aug 2009 at 02:19
Hello,
Need help resetting my password.
Thank you,
John Musca
by admin
24 Aug 2009 at 18:43
Hello John,
According to the registration logs, a registration in your name has not been received. It is possible that the registration process was not completed for some reason. We can only suggest that you try to re-register.
LGO