Skip to main content

Deckchairs on the Titanic

As Helena Kennedy finally publishes the independent report on measures to improve British democracy, I must confess to being pretty disappointed. Frankly, I do not believe that lowering the voting age to sixteen is anything more than a gimmick. It is, I think, clear that the government has far too much power visa-a-visa Parliament. MPs in the government party can be tempted to abandon their independence, when faced with a new, more lucrative role as government ministers.

Meanwhile, opposition parties struggle to defeat the government unless a significant rebellion does take place. The whips, both government and opposition blackmail, threaten and cajole their charges into doing what the party leadership requires of them. Yet, in many ways it is only the independence of MPs that can challenge government power, and that independence is compromised from the start by the demands of the system. Parliament is not taken seriously, and as a result, the Executive branch has too much power- and unchecked it is making some serious mistakes.

One major example is the emerging crisis in public sector pensions. It now appears that the deficit in public sector pensions is four times larger than previously estimated: £81 billion is simply unsustainable- it is beyond a crisis. Unless this deficit is tackled, we will either crush our economy under massively higher taxes or drown it in debt. The only alternative is very radical reduction in the burden. State employees must not be permitted to retire early, and indeed the retirement age will have to rise sharply. This crisis has been long predicted, but the scale is now overwhelming, without immediate, urgent action, the consequences to the future of the British economy will be catastrophic.

Perhaps votes for 16 year olds might be justified after all- they are the ones who will have to pay the gigantic bills that a basically unfunded state employee pension scheme has created for the rest of us.

Comments

The POWER report lists more than 30 recommendations, of which votes at 16 is but one. Unfortunately, both the media and Gordon Brown have chosen to single this one out, but that doesn't make it the most significant proposal by any means.
Peter Pigeon said…
I read the executive summary last night and found it rather disappointing.
Tristan said…
One thing the POWER report does say is that the reforms are all needed, and we cannot pick and choose...
What does Gordo do? Pick and choose...

The other thing is that this is all pretty much bread and butter to LibDems so it will be disappointing, but they do have a lot to catch up on...

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch