The time for political reform in the UK is NOW!!!

a reply to: djz3ro

other names for project fear/remain : white flagists maybe , or nanny statists . Gravy train remainers (see a previous post this thread) or
the white featherables
just some suggestions since you asked

ETA I keep hearing how Britain has her hands tied by the EU. The UK was a leader and rule maker of the EU. We haven't exactly been a wallflower nation who sits and does as they are told, otherwise we'd have been using the Euro. Some of the very laws Leavers are opposed to have been brought to the EU by the UK. I'm really not sure why people think this way. Just like the comments about the unelected EU officials. The problem is, we have a say in tbe EU MP's in the European Elections, which are pitifully low in turnout compared to other elections in Britain but they are there.

This is the issue which most people dont understand and I dont fully either , but it calls in the real reasons why we're leaving . Europe is currently run by a majority party the EPP , who control the council the commission and to some extent the parliament . The Commission is where policy and decisions get made . We are not quarreling with the EU per se , but the fallout is with the EPP . The EPP (and the PES which includes the UK Labour Party) had the Lisbon Treaty altered to gain control in the Council . Cameron and Victor Orban were then the only Council seats to oppose Junker as President of the Commission . They found themselves backed into a corner (quite literally) and they were forced to agree . Various decisions the European Council (which is the heads of member states) can make , were changed from being purely unanimous decisions into being enabled by QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) . Now , effectively in short , you've got all the individual nations of Europe being controlled by the EPP . In some ways they've controlled smaller political parties (including uk Conservatives who were EPP members until 2009) who govern nations across the union too, and in other ways they've manipulated the Unions mechanisms to get control , as demonstrated . All in the last 10 -15 years .

The EPP now has so much power having been in majority control for 10 plus years , that there is literally nothing the UK can do about it . Except leave . It's got to the state where Junker does whatever he likes on behalf of the EPP , and all of Europe just goes along with it .. partyly because the people dont understand it , and because they have to . This is a massive problem , do you see that ? While we have to argue it out (that's what democracy does)... are the people we have to negotiate with to buy and sell in Europe (the EPP) , having any issues with dissent ... at all ? No . That should help explain to you how far this has got and why it has to stop . You can't have unelected political manipulators running 740 million people's affairs from the top down . It's national suicide to allow that state of affairs to fully develop . It'd be outright failing our citizens at least to give them up to that fate .

In the second world war, were we fighting Germany , or Hitler's Nazi State ? We need to provide some defintion to our points of view . Are we really going against Europe itself by leaving the Union , or against the EPP ? The answer has to recognise both of course , but must emphasise the latter . But there is clearly a reluctance to bypass the facts in various news media and hence the public lack proper education about the EPP . Then again it's a complicated business , but the truth generally is recorded on wikipedia files . What to make of those truths is up to us of course , but Brexit itself is being guided by a very powerful new grouping designed to firmly counter the EPP . It's because it has to be done , and oddly enough for history's sake the lines are roughly drawn the same as the first and second world wars - the EPP's powerbase is Germany and the ACRE are the allies . The ACRE remit appears to honestly be the 'proper' constitutional reform of European affairs . Because at the moment the EU amounts to something like a successful empire created by foreign partisans who've requisistioned our previous governemnts powers along with their democratic legitimacy , for their own ends . They had been looking to requisition our armed forces on that basis too , and that's where a vote to leave becomes quite welcome , and a no deal seems a fair response ... fair to ourselves of course . We can't be made of paper about this

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Question;

What do people actually mean by political reform???

we could start with a citizens oversight panel with teeth to scrutinise all parliamentary business instead of the void between elections. remove the eu from our layercake and expand citizen participation.
f

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

Well, what I would like to see eventually, is a situation where the elections as we know them are completely changed, in order that the people gain direct editorial control over policy and agenda setting, a situation where every human being in the country who is above seventeen years old, and not dead, gets to make their voice heard by way of some kind of system or site on the net, which permits them to not only select policies that they like, and have the ones which garner the most support enacted without delay, but also to table suggestions themselves, rather than having to get the attention of an MP by way of their surgeries (which are a joke, because the MPs are rarely present at their local offices often enough or for long enough to actually make it possible to gain a meaningful back and forth conversation with them), then get that MP to forget which hand is feeding them long enough to get them to agree to pass on an idea as a suggestion to their party HQ, or indeed as a statement in Parliament or whatever, THEN have that suggestion batted around the commons for ten straight years, while very often, the person who originated the idea becomes a victim of the problem they were trying to solve with their idea in the first place.

I would like to see a situation where the people only select representatives for the purpose of having people in Parliament who are capable of doing the paperwork, to make the MP a mere functionary, rather than a driving force, and to make the Prime Minister a mouthpiece and right hand of the people, rather than being the one who sets agendas purely based on loyalties given not to the people as a whole, but to the donors who have provided the most illicit funds to their war chests over the years.

I would like to see business leaders banned from communicating with any member of government or opposition, without a public recorder being present, and for any meetings which occur to be put through a citizen led, anti-corruption oversight panel, made up of people who have a fundamental hatred of corporatism and a determination that the only influence a government may be touched by, comes from the streets not the board room. I would like to see Whitehalls operations become subject to the peoples oversight in a far more rigorous way than they currently are. I would like to see the people have editorial control over circumstances that might see our nation go to war, in such a way as to prevent fiasco fabrications like the Iraq and Afghan wars, and indeed the intelligence service involvement in the maintenance of groups like IS and others over the years. I want our people to be the nations leaders, I want leadership from the bottom up, not the top down.

That would be what I would like to see in eventuality, but for now, a nation led by the party which has the most pro people policies, would be sufficient, and a far more likely entity to permit the changes I would like to see, to come to pass in years to come. I certainly cannot imagine the Conservatives backing an agenda which seeks to neuter Parliament and place power in the hands of the broader and more worldly wise hands of the people.

a reply to: TrueBrit

my good fellow, I award you the fakedirt golden-rant award for jan 2019.

I do hope one day to chug a yard of ale in your company.

f