We need some convincing answers to the following: What difference will that make to anything? Will it make my job more secure? Will it stop my house being re-posessed if I lose my job? Will it stop my children – and theirs – being ripped off by the greedy people in positions of authority? If so – how does that work, then? Is it really so simple? If not, why should I get involved?

As I mentioned on a previous post I was once in PR and one of my functions was to put awkward questions to clients before they dealt with the media. So please don’t take this as negativity on my part.

We also have the following suggestions/themes”:

“Re-organisation and genuine regulation of the banking system and public sector financial institutions”.

“Increased accountability and responsibility from elected officials and other persons of public office”

“Investing and encouraging the re-growth of domestic industries, including but not limited to education in core skills in engineering, science and agriculture”

“A publicly honest appraisal of proposed policies detailing not only the advantages, but the disadvantages of a given policy proposal backed up by data.”

“Free from political influence/associations with political parties”.

I don’t have any objection to these but they all beg similar questions. Most importantly “exactly what are we going to do to make this happen?” Chatting amongst ourselves won’t change anything, will it?

Here’s a suggestion from me:

Big businesses will not change their ways unless forced to do so by the legal system. The legal system is controlled by elected officials (local and national). Elected officials are pretty much in the pockets of big business – there are some snouts in the trough. They will not change their ways unless threatened with loss of access to the trough. The only people who can deny this access are the electorate – but the elected officials are not really bothered about this because the electorate follow a fairly set voting pattern. In a way it’s a divide and conquer methodology because you can only decide the outcome in your own constituency. So why bother?

But what if someone in a very marginal constituency (the political party is irrelevant here) were seriously threatened with loss of access to the trough? Would they be prepared to change their voting habits to keep the status quo? Would they be prepared to ask the questions that their electorate wanted asking? It might just be possible that if one person – the easy target – could be made to do this then it would encourage the others. Otherwise they might be next!

We would then only have to convince a few hundred (or maybe a few thousand) people that what we are doing is right – and ask for their support in this.

Just an idea!

Would you all please post a comment about about yourself: background, political preferences (even if none of the above like me), what you would like to change in the UK etc. If in doubt let it all out – have a rant if it lets off steam!

Even tho who have put such info in other posts please do the same (just cut and paste it). I will delete your previous versions once I see the duplicate on here,

Thanks.

My understanding is “affecting of – or attempting to affect – the actions/decisions of the public sector by the private sector”. Clumsy I know but it’s a starting point for discussion.

The publication Lobbying: Access and influence in Whitehall by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee (First Report of Session 2008–09) has some good insights on how things work at the moment. It’s a bit heavy and 2.2MB download but if you can just read enough to get the gist of I think you should.

Economist Thomas Sowell defends corporate lobbying as “simply an example of a group having better knowledge of its interests than the people at large do of theirs.” (from Wikipedia)

So, people at large, are you happy with that? my response is post62′s old moniker!

“Most of us, I think, are posting from the UK. We are very aware of the global nature of the economic crisis, but are also aware of UK-specific problems.

Could you rate for us the magnitude of the economic problems being experienced by Spain – better than Britain, the same, worse?“
February 1, 2009 8:00 PM

I will try to answer this as best I can – but please bear in mind:

We have a couple of acres of land, our house & 2 cars (all paid for). I do a few odd jobs for others with land and houses that aren’t always here (Spanish and English) but most of my days (weather permitting) are spent on the land. So I am not really part of the typical economy.

What follows is only from my own experience. It’s off the top of my head with no research. If anyone knows more about it I’d welcome the input.

We live 2km from the local village (population about 80) and about 8km from the nearest town with a population of around 2,000. It is a very rural area where the older folk are still involved on the land but the young ones who got a chance to go to college/uni mostly never came back. What remained of the young ladies seem mostly to have been lucky enough to find a husband in a city. And the young men drifted towards construction.

Building has been the real driving force in this area along with tourism (a bit around this area will hill-walking, horse-riding & mountain-biking but more touristy down on the costas). And of course a lot of the building – whether on houses or hotels or on holidays themselves – has been financed by the housing/credit bubble in the UK. With that gone there are many people unemployed and struggling now with no obvious way out of the situation.

I understand that the limit for unemployment benefit is 2 years and that a good many are already reaching that point. There’s even the situation now where the young ex-builders are prepared to harvest olives and work the fields! But they’d be lucky to get 50 euros a day doing that. We used to have a good few Romanians building round these parts but most seem to have drifted back home.

I don’t think many people round here are too concerned about the Spanish banks. They didn’t seem to get into such a mess (or weren’t allowed to). In any case cash is king around here. Apparently the vast majority of 500 euro notes in circulation are here in Spain. The Spanish have a very serious distrust of large organisations.

“29. At 12:31pm on 31 Jan 2009, Jericoa wrote:

Jericoa “