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LGO

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.