Driving through London late on Saturday night I witnessed the last throes of the demo against the cuts, and it gave me pause for thought. How does one gauge the will of the people? There are frequent small demonstrations outside Parliament, and sometimes it is hard to figure out what the cause is, because the banners are illegible or hard to see and the shouted slogans impossible to make out. There have been huge demonstrations in Parliament Square, most recently the Tamils. The message was clear after one day and the continuation, bringing the traffic to a halt for days, turned me against the cause, rather in favour (I know, wrong reasons.) Everyone is aware that the cuts are unpopular and the message hardly needs reinforcing, especially as the demonstrators offer no alternative. The expense of mounting the demonstration and the inevitable arrests, injuries and clean up, all too predictable, must cost a considerable amount of public money that could be better spent. In the end the hangers on who do damage, such as smashing windows and setting fires, also damage the cause and for many, the pictures of the mayhem make more of an impression, usually negative, than the demand for no, or slower cuts. It may well be immoral, if not illegal, for businesses to avoid taxation, but why should their premises, staff and customers suffer broken windows and destruction? There are allegedly huge numbers of citizens who likewise evade tax by being paid in cash, or who cheat on benefits. Should there be crowds beating down their doors and smashing their windows too?
I prefer to take the measure of public opinion through their MPs, through the media, letters to politicians, opinion polls, internet communication and of course, by the responses to this blog.
Whether a demo is right and reflects the will of the people largely depends on whether you’re in government or opposition. I’ve seen plenty of references to the Countryside Alliance march which was of similar magnitude and dismissed by the government of the day, who continued along their path. That same government now finds itself in opposition and suddenly finds that the present government really ought to listen to all those protesters. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that it is going to take more than a few demonstrations to deflect a government committed to its path when it’s got a large-enough majority in the Commons.
As for not paying tax, if it’s tax evasion then that’s individuals or companies doing the wrong thing, if it’s tax avoidance then it’s the government that has done the wrong thing. It is within the power of government to change the law to close tax loopholes, given that government created them in the first place. I have no problem with those who arrange their tax affairs to minimise what they have to give to the government – provided they stick to the law. If what they do is unacceptable then the law needs changing.
Hear, hear, Dave H;
and the noble baroness ought to have been percentile-quantity & quality-clear, about the super-huge tax-avoidance and evasion she inflatedly-claims to be ruining Britain and its good-governance, alongside un-fair and criminal public-protestations that are in fact trying to communicate real-needs that the Law and Government has been denying, distorting, or diluting.
It should be evident that the brazen-face of oligarchical-profiteering, by the already business-super-rich and property-ensconced, has only itself and governments to blame for demonstrations that physically react against repressive and suppressive un-fairness and curtailment of any one of our necessary life-and-wellbeing supports.
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2327Sn27Mar11.JSDM.
Some constitutionally democratic assumptions, being out-of-date, are both vapid and sabotaging of democratic-progress:
e.g. of ‘the Will of The People’.
I quote from an excellent introductory book in the Human Development field, “Creative Visualisation” by Ronald Shone:
“The will is no match for a strong imagination. If the will and the imagination are in conflict then the imagination will win.”
“The will acts as a means of marshalling the body’s energies … into a purposeful and co-operative relationship. It has no obvious outward manifestation: it simply directs – like the conductor of an orchestra.”
“In Chapter 9 we shall discuss the method of bringing the will and the imagination into co-operation and not into conflict”.
Published in 1984 Shone’s “Creative Imagination” is still awaiting catch-up by our educational, civic, and parliamentary (governance) leaders and advocates.
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I would add here, firstly that in a real and validly-arguable sense, no money nor property, nor even life, is “private”.
All is ‘In-Common”; which is in civic sense is “Public”.
Your communication is of course welcome; especially since it is honest-to-God in being vulnerably outspoken, in this instance quite emotionally so to the disadvantagement of both right-reasoning and right-imagination.
Shone says that emotion provides the energy for transformation.
I would suggest that,
rather than passively waiting, listening, and watching for the “will of the people” and therein insisting that those people should have, prior-to-demonstration, succinctly submitted their Need and Cause in writing to the Parliaments and to the Media,
our MPs and Upper House Peers should be taking verbatim-notice of any and all serious citizenry questions and constructive-submissions, especially between elections, protestations, and demonstrations.
If any Peer, Representative, or Person believes that one’s MP, one’s media, one’s politicians, the opinion-polls, a plethora of internet-communicationism, and responses to Lords of the Blog blogs, have any of them a duty or a personal-and-jobplace-commitment to both acknowledge and verbatimly-advocate just what the citizen has submitted, rather than a dilution, distortion or denial of it, then he/she is living in a Fool’s Paradise.
Once Britain’s Governance-Workers show that they not only can but have committed-to verbatimly-acknowledging, and thereupon publicly and parliamentarily advocating, and verbatimly so, any citizen’s serious question and respectful or constructive submission, then they will have shown that they are prepared to pre=empt destructive-public pent-up energy, by proacting democratically and constructively ahead.
Then, Peer, you will become sustain-worthy as a democracy-advocate and peoples’-representative.
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This post of Baroness Deech’s alas! only comes across similarly to the historical tale of the Hapsburg royal children atop the city’s ruling-hill who, through the clear windows of a new extension to the Palace-complex, espied numbers of little dots moving to and fro in the valley far below –
“Chamberlain, what ever are all those deuced Dots down there doing ?”
“They are not Dots, highnesses, they are actually People”
“People ?” (incredulously);
“Well really they’re just the field-workers from among the People”.
“Hang it, they’re spoiling our View – get rid of them; d’you hear, get rid of them !”
…
Peer; Baroness; People: d’you hear ?
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1721Sn27Mar11.JSDM.
Groups such as the TUC or NUS should stop organising these large-scale protests. Now they know what’s going to happen, they will be entirely responsible for the thugs’ actions at future protests. It also does their causes no good at all. They need to find a different way to get their message across that doesn’t involve gathering a large number of people together in one place – something that’s bound to be hijacked by idiots.
I agree that benefit fraud is analogous to tax evasion. But then isn’t tax avoidance analogous to simply claiming benefits? It’s legal, but something they shouldn’t be doing (I’m thinking mainly of straightforward unemployment benefits here, not incapacity or anything else). Why should I have to pay for the cigarettes that those people outside the Job Centre are smoking?
I agree that benefit fraud is analogous to tax evasion.
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Big difference.
In the case of benefit fraud and expenses fraud, you’re stealing other people’s money.
In the case of tax, you’re keeping the money you earned and preventing other people from stealing it.
How does one gauge the will of the people?
the noble baroness puts up some hugely charming posts from time to time! This is surely one of the most endearing!
Some people orate and convince, and when everybody applauds loudly or cheers as they do at the Italian opera houses, all too rarely heard at the ROH or Coliseum, (Singing like Placido Domingo is oration, did you not know?) then you know what the will of the people is! They approve!
Jonathen’s suggestion is a bit dam silly, (with respect). Perhaps he should try the practice Demos, peaceful marches of the Durham miners or the Tolpuddle Martyrs, season for which is coming up before long!
On the slightly side topic of smashed windows, glass was always the exclusive possession of the Aristocracy, and since the noble baroness has probably joined the elite,
she may not appreciate that the common man
does not like glass, on account of it.
Smashing glass, ie windows is a blow against the exploitative ruling classes by a working man!
Heh! Heh! “How does one guage the will of the people!?” Highly amusing! The noble and charming baroness has made my day!!!!!
There are many creative ways to attract the attention of those at Westminster that don’t involve lots of people descending on London. Some were at least as successful as a protest march and were achieved at far lower cost.
One can fleetingly pity a civil servant suddenly receiving ten or a hundred times the normal number of consultation responses, especially when many of them arrive at the eleventh hour, or a larger than usual number of submissions to a select or bill committee.
Writing letters (preferably not a standard letter in conjunction with others) to MPs and peers can get a reaction, especially if they receive plenty of them. Of course, there will be a mix of rational arguments and green-ink ranting, but that’s going to be true on both sides of most debates.
A march is a one-off event, and when held on a day when MPs aren’t even in Parliament, can be mostly ignored, whereas a steady stream of letters and emails has to be dealt with and is much more noticeable by individual MPs.
Baroness Deech, I think the reason people take to the streets is because they feel as if they are not listened to otherwise, their ‘will’ ignored. I have written to my MP just to get passed around via the political avoidance technique and obfuscation leaving me feeling ‘what is the point’. I didn’t vote for that person and even if I did I doubt they would have listened.
Then there is the subject of high-level ideology. I do not know if you have been following the noble Lord Norton’s issue on drugs relating to the criminalisation of possession and use. But this issue crystallises just how much ‘the people’ are ignored, even when they have fact, science and evidence on their side!! Every lord agreed with what Lord Norton said, except, unsurprisingly, the government minister.
Ideology and vested interests appear to drive politics and policy. The media is saturated with more than enough of those. No one listens to opinion polls and our MP’s rarely listen to ‘us’.
Regarding the cuts, what are the real motives behind them (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/opinion/22krugman.html)? Are we just doing exactly the same thing that was done after the great depression without learning our lesson from history? Why is a large firm allowed to bail on £6bn of tax? Why won’t we separate casino and retail banking that led us to this crisis? Why does the government want to eliminate top-up taxes for foreign profits being brought back home only for the largest businesses? It is hard to feel as if the government acts in the ‘peoples’ best interest a lot of the time.
So “why should their premises, staff and customers suffer broken windows and destruction?” – they shouldn’t! But the government – our ‘leaders’, should be doing the jobs WE put them there for so that issues like this don’t arise or have some method of correction so they don’t get to this level.
If the government actually listened to sound evidence, science and the voice of rational people we would all be better off… but then being rational and willing to accept evidence that goes against your ideology won’t get you elected… just a viscous circle where few benefit and the many suffer.. there are ways to improve the situation, but they would be unpopular by those who wield the power…
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
— U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Why is a large firm allowed to bail on £6bn of tax?
It isn’t.
It only pays tax on its profits.
If it makes a loss one year, that loss gets carried over to the next year. That loss comes off its profits the next year when it comes to calculating tax.
[There are exceptions for the nationalised banks, where part of the deal was they would delay doing this for x years]
EDIT: link address should have been http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/opinion/22krugman.html
“How does one gauge the will of the people?”
One cannot, even at elections where perhaps only 30% of the electorate (not population) get their way.
Protest marches are fine in themselves but passed by peacably and little notice is took of them.We can make the excuse even with the 250,000+ at the weekend that they were the Union members who voted for Ed rather than David Miliband. There lies the crux, politicians always find a way around things and they cannot be wrong because there is no way of guaging.
So would the noble Baroness like to see a way of guaging ? Perhaps an electronic voting system put into place where the will of the people shall be done? No ? Didn’t think so.
The fact remains that even in our Democracy what we get is dictatorship for 4-5 years at a time. Of course certain Governments such as this take autonomy to a higher level and Thatcher did it before. I ask without the Poll Tax RIOTS would it have still been in place, the likelyhood is yes. Passion, frustration, violence are good guages no matter what the material people of this world feel.
The problem of course with the Baroness, being a professional and of the legal trade, is she is able to distance herself from the reality of people and feelings. This is like many others in professions and particuarly politicians. Evidence, people and their hardships mean little compared to their ideology.
In past posts I have shown that on Housing Benefit for every pound you earn you lose £1.07. Did anyone hear ? Was it rectified to help those in work but on benefit ? The decriminalisation of drugs lobby have given lots of evidence at least to have a reasonable case, result no change.
So peaceful demo’s don’t work, evidence doesn’t work infact little does except perhaps violent revolution.
There is very little evidence that politicians listen,this includes the Lords, except to that which concurs with their ideology.
People stated about Uni fees, that all Uni’s would end charging £9k and that is appearing to come true. Also about poorer people being unwilling to get their children in debt and the amounts. No one listens.
Politicians wonder why conspiracy theorists are all too often believed about the few people WHO DO actually control the world. How much control is actually the will of the people ? Or even our Government ?
Let’s face it the HoL is pretty much impotent and getting more so. This Government is making darn sure it gives more power to itself, less politicians but more Ministers as a percentage,more Tory Lords whilst they work on reforms that will ensure their ideology and much more.
The will of the people is merely an incumberant to be overcome or used such as Nick Clegg did in giving pledges to gain votes. He even stood up at his Party Conference when the party demanded a u-turn on NHS strategy and twisted the words in saying he agreed he won’t let it be privatised. And when it happens he’ll say that isn’t complete privatisation.
No Baroness the will of the people cannot be guaged, God help politics if it could. The things you say you use to guage, the internet, letters etc., don’t encompass the whole electorate nor could it so quite rightly you develop your own ideas that may or may not include some concepts from a few members of the public, but the ideology is yours.
Autonomy and democracy is a balance, this Government has it wrong and I’m not sure British politics has it right either. There are major issues where Government and people are far apart and the balance of evidence appears with the people. Some of these are the EU,immigration,drugs policy and there’s plenty more.
Just this morning I read Cameron stating about people leaving companies and setting up their own if they feel they can do better and every company owner looked at his list of clients and thought I’d best protect them from poachers. At a time of cuts and deficit our honourable leader wants people to take a chance and also steal other companies, possibly their employers work ? And this will solve what ? We’ve all got less, we’re trying to spend less.
Here’s one for Cameron, why doesn’t someone from his party listen to the will of the people, strike out on his own and take all the tory customers with him. Because I KNOW someone can do it better.
There are allegedly huge numbers of citizens who likewise evade tax by being paid in cash, or who cheat on benefits. Should there be crowds beating down their doors and smashing their windows too?
We have a Police force that do that. Most of the people that do that, do it to survive not live an opulent lifestyle. Capitalism sold them a dream of must have ipads and Mercedes cars, the bosses, the politicians scheme and line their own pockets whilst preaching don’t do as I do. How many totally honest, honourable people do you really know ? Glass houses and stones!
It is not up to the demonstrators to offer an alternative to gvt policy. Both the TUC and the Labour leader are paid by the demonstrators to do so and, since the Opposition receives a healthy chunk of taxpayer’s money, the rest of the country is also entitled to hear something other than the current vacuous protest.
One way to gauge public opinion is through the ballot box. It’s been less than a year since the general election, one in which the main battleground was public sector cuts. After significant job losses in the private sector there were plenty who felt they had shouldered their share of the financial crisis. I don’t remember any organised demonstrations for them.
Dear lady tizzy (et al)
There is so much ad hominem attacking of “the demonstrators” and others, going on in this matter of “peaceful pro-test-ation”, that I have been unable to find precisely what the respective Needs and Affordable-Hows are, on each side of the Matter.
One of the practical principles of peacefully-cooperative (Method III-type) conflict-resolution is
“Tackle the Problem, do not attack the Person”.
What was/is the pro-testers’ need, here ?
because the central generic need in this topic’s Greater Context is most surely
the Needs of People,
not the already-being-met ‘need’ of government-policy
(which may be legislated by narrow-blinkered, lopsidedly–budgeting armchair executives, be one-way enforced by bully-strong, mass-produced automaton muscle-men and their rubber-bullets, water-cannon, irritant-gas, tizers, truncheons, hard-edged shields, steel-handcuffs, costly armoured tumbrils, and iron-bar prison cells).
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Nevertheless, should you be able to show that the Need that these particular demonstrators were standing-up for
(standing up in favour of and in need of that is, not primarily demonstrating against)
had not been publicised nor notified to any authority, then your put-down of this protest as “vacuous” may have some minor substance;
otherwise, you need to retract.
——
Incidentally, some of us were given to see the election “battleground” as not simply of “cuts” but of survival-of-the-rich-in-the-manner-to-which-they-are-accustomed
versus
survival-of-all-of-the-British-People in genuinely healthy Thrift (= ‘thriving’).
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The lady needs to consult with some wise-adviser when she presumes that exhausted and suddenly-budget-topsy-turvied workers and other lowly-incomed People still retain sufficient energy, time, willingness, ability
and civic-support to mount formal and peaceful protestation of their Needs; or even to peaceably ensure that their complaint is both heard and tabled.
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The gauging of public-opinion through that lame-apology for Democracy the Ballot-Box (which remains deaf, dumb, blinkered, procrustean-embedded and daft)
is not a good way of finding the People’s Needs;
and is very evidently not a good way of determining the Affordable-Hows of those Needs.
Certainly you might have been intimating that there should have been strongly organised demonstrations, for (on-behalf-of) those who have already shouldered their share of the financial-crisis-burden,
but surely that should be by all or any representatives-of-people, including by parliamentarians of both Houses, if not inside their Parliamentary chambers then outside, where there’re plenty of suitable public grassy-places and stone-surfaces available for such peaceful-pro-test-ation.
And all over ‘Democratic’ Britain such public-places exist, not just in the capital London.
But as others have said, and much more cogently and plaintively,
were the British Establishment, Parliaments & Governments to have only done their jobs long-term affordably and sustain-worthily, such injurious and insidiously-debilitating legislation and regulation by the State would not have been passed and implemented, and people would not need to either complain-against deprivation, nor protest in-favour of an Affordable-How to meet their real need.
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1215T29Mar11.JSDM.
How many totally honest, honourable people do you really know ?
Curiously enough over the years most members of Parliament or Lords, on all sides, with some notorious exceptions.
I sometimes wonder precisely what a “national identity” is, that it motivates 1m people to come out on to the streets to demonstrate against for example the “Decision to go to war in Iraq”, whether it is a complete loss of communication between leaders and led, in such a way that all people who have a sense of what is right for “their” country/state feel obliged to show how they object.
It is surely self interest at all times which causes people to do so, and their perception of themselves as “pacifists” or “victims” or whatever, which is being abrogated by the state.
I also wonder whether it was pure self interest for power by Blair, the showman,
which pushed this particular state in to a completely unnecessary war, on account of stretching internal UK political tensions so far that something had to give. War was successfully pushed upon him because he had a 160 maj and did what he liked with the will of the people.
The war mongering establishment put a stop to that, an establishment of which he was nominally in charge, but practically, unable to control……
The will of the people!
With AV the majority would be reduced and the ruling parties would be weakened. This would decrease their ability to make radical changes of the type we have seen under Blair and which are taking place presently.
Did any of us vote for this? Were we advised in full of the path they were going to take, with any honesty? Or was it the old bait and switch lark?
There must be some way to change this undemocratic way of getting something we had no concept of when we put our crosses on that piece of paper.
We are told we are in financial trouble, yet, the banks are allowed to squander a fortune.
The decision for war in Iraq was taken regardless of the ‘no threat’ to the British people. We were lied to and the liar is walking free. Then we were eased into Afghanistan, now Libya, yet we are so broke our children cannot be educated free. Our elderly are being euthanized, our hospitals in chaos. Our food is being manufactured with science because the world needs more than we can healthily supply. Yet the knowledge of what this can do to humans is ignored because the money to be made is phenomenal.
Nuclear reactors are on the cards. And globalization at the forefront. Foreign Aid comes first and immigration is a necessity, regardless of the cost to our purse and the cost to our way of life. Yet, we are broke and our money is unavailable for our common needs.
The people are working more hours by the day, mothers no longer able to stay home with their children, whether they want to or not. Benefits being removed, pensions raided or stopped, work until you are seventy, because ‘we’ are broke.
Yet, the expense bracket for all in parliament is raised, quietly, to more than it has ever been. Company tax reduced. But, they have removed the child benefit from those on barely enough to support a family. Rampant inflation, another money spinner for those at the top. But, we are broke aren’t we?
I wonder what the daily cost of our wars are? And how much it will be to renew Trident? How much is it those with off shore accounts get away with? And how much of tax payers money will be spent on folly? Why do banks getting away with daily fraud? Yet a man who is starving sent to jail for eating a swan?
Add it all up. Something is smelling mighty fishy here.
What exactly are we paying tax for? Is it for these inept show offs to play war games whilst families suffer outrageously? The sick are abandoned and the disabled are called con men?
Indeed who are the con men?
For one, PM David Cameron is a con.
(In some de-facto sense, every one is a ‘conservative’
it all depends what meaning(s) of that word are holding-sway).
I have confidence in that – and of course most of the time in the good Maude herself.
@Miles:
I am what is known as a crossbench occupier. Or, a floating voter.
Now, I think they call it a red Tory. Only, the red parts are not my red parts, and the Tory parts are seemingly not Tory at all.
Blair’s definition of the will of the people was rarefied while considering how to persuade parliament to let him wage war. Democracy meant the votes of parliament, but not of the people, the will of the people having been delegated to parliament a couple of years before.
The will of the people is only expressed effectively every four or five years,but the will of parliament is expressed whenever it wishes to express it, by democratic vote.
“There is no such thing as the General Will of the People”-Robert Filmer.
Perhaps we ought have listened?
Then again, todays masses are entitlement junkies.