Censored comment: The Independent: Counterfeit democracy

[IandRgb]

It is curious and rather sinister that a serious news organ should 
repeatedly delay or censor responsible and relevant comments (such as 
the one below) but allow trivial and absurdly prejudiced items to be 
published at their web site.

INIREF comments

Ferdy Mount was a member of the Power Inquiry, which worked from 2004 
until 2006 to study political power, democracy and governance in the UK. 
Their report "Power to the people", still available on-line, (cited at 
<http://www.iniref.org/poWEr.prelim.html> ) identified and spelled out 
around thirty reforms of the ways in which we govern ourselves. To 
assess how much progress we have made, it is useful to scan the short 
version of this list.

Your assessment, that "to most UK citizens the link between a vote and 
what gets done as a result of it is so convoluted as to barely exist" 
would be confirmed by many.  One of the recommendations of the Power 
Inquiry was, not to abolish "them" (government, civil service and 
related) but to introduce *partial* direct democracy of the sort steered 
by citizens. The relevant section in "Power to the people" is, 
"Recommendation 24: Citizens should be given the right to initiate 
legislative processes, public inquiries and hearings into public bodies 
and their senior management."
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In reply to:

DJ Taylor, The Independent 14 Nov 2010
Whoever you vote for, the Government always gets in: We live in a 
counterfeit democracy, .... 
<http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dj-taylor-whoever-you-vote-for-the-government-always-gets-in-2133472.html>
"The fact that we live not in a parliamentary democracy but in a 
cunningly contrived counterfeit of one, where whoever wins an election 
the same kind of people are still working the levers of power, is not 
always appreciated by party activists."
----------------------

I&R ~ GB Citizens' Initiative and Referendum
Campaign for direct democracy in Britain
http://www.iniref.org/

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