Quote: sootyj @ October 31 2013, 10:27 PM GMT

Thats why voting is only part of the solution, being politically engaged, even if its just doing surveys or occaisonally emailing your local MP.

No one said it was easy.

Seriously working in the charity sector, it's amazing how hard an MP will work to track down a few votes.

And they'll listen to any coherent voice with the ability to have some swing in elections.

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Yes but they just say stuff to get in then never do it, or do other crap things that they didn't mention.

Quote: Aaron @ October 31 2013, 10:22 PM GMT

It's a pity, of course, that (most) trade unions have been only about furthering the interests of their leaders at the expense of the workers for, oooh, 40 years? 50? At least. See: Grangemouth, for only the most recent and most obvious example of this.

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See last year's big news: Ellesmere Port Vauxhall Plant for evidence of the opposite.

Also, the leaders are democratically voted in on a regular basis. Trade unions are under much stricter regulations than other organisations when it comes to maintaining their membership lists and all members are sent a ballot form to vote. If they don't vote - well it's the same argument, their loss.

The workers are the ones who vote the leaders in. If they weren't doing what the workers wanted, they wouldn't be voted in.

Oh and collective bargaining means trade union reps negotiate for the good of an entire workforce regardless of whether or not they are trade union members. The right to wider collective bargaining (it was a right until Thatcher anyway) is by and large the BIGGEST demand of the trade unions. That won't even raise money for the unions.

I'm not 100% pro trade union as they are now, because I think they also don't really represent the younger generation (probably because they don't have many young members...), but the principle of trade unionism is extremely important in a democracy, I think.

Quote: Stylee TingTing @ October 31 2013, 10:30 PM GMT

I know it's a media cliché, but just for once, just to see what would happen, I'd like to see 'None of the above' added to the voting roster.

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Absolutely!

Then you'll just get a nun with a pilots license as MP.

And politicians do not all lie, some of them, in fact most do a bloody good job.

I blame reality TV for creating this ideas, that I cast my vote and I see an imediate result.

It's denegrated democracy to the state of a plaything.

Quote: sootyj @ October 31 2013, 10:32 PM GMT

Then you'll just get a nun with a pilots license as MP.

And politicians do not all lie, some of them, in fact most do a bloody good job.

I blame reality TV for creating this ideas, that I cast my vote and I see an imediate result.

It's denegrated democracy to the state of a plaything.

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*nods sagely*

Quote: Aaron @ October 31 2013, 10:22 PM GMT

. Vested interests always have their weaknesses.

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And that is the problem with the career politician. They see a way to money and power. I suggest that even those who get into Parliament with the right intentions get wobbly when told to tow the line. Threats like withdrawing the whip, sending shitty letters to your constituency chairman etc. all designed to kill any true independent spirit (unless you're an independent).
Even my hero Aneurin Bevan lined his own pockets in the end. He used to park his Rolls Royce in Monmouth golf club jump into an old banger and drive up to his constituency in Tredegar. Probably the last true believer with any real power was Thatcher. Although she stood for everything I hated (unfortunately) before that Michael Foot who was also probably the naivest.

George Washington didn't

Quote: sootyj @ October 31 2013, 10:32 PM GMT

a nun with a pilots license

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She's going in my NaNo.

Is he standing in the next election? I want to touch his wig.

Quote: sootyj @ October 31 2013, 10:36 PM GMT

George Washington didn't

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Quote: roscoff @ October 31 2013, 10:35 PM GMT

And that is the problem with the career politician. They see a way to money and power. I suggest that even those who get into Parliament with the right intentions get wobbly when told to tow the line. Threats like withdrawing the whip, sending shitty letters to your constituency chairman etc. all designed to kill any true independent spirit (unless you're an independent).
Even my hero Aneurin Bevan lined his own pockets in the end. He used to park his Rolls Royce in Monmouth golf club jump into an old banger and drive up to his constituency in Tredegar. Probably the last true believer with any real power was Thatcher. Although she stood for everything I hated (unfortunately) before that Michael Foot who was also probably the naivest.

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And Micheal Foot was so principled he killed the Labour party stone dead for nearly 20 years.

Principles are little more than priggish selfishness.

A massive project like the NHS involved all sorts of compromises, not least of all acknowledging that senior medics intended to make even more money out of health then they were before.

But it was worth it, wasn't it

Quote: sglen @ October 31 2013, 10:31 PM GMT

Also, the leaders are democratically voted in on a regular basis. Trade unions are under much stricter regulations than other organisations when it comes to maintaining their membership lists and all members are sent a ballot form to vote. If they don't vote - well it's the same argument, their loss.

The workers are the ones who vote the leaders in. If they weren't doing what the workers wanted, they wouldn't be voted in.

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Except it's the same problem as AngieBaby and Russell Brand are complaining about in national politics: that those who stand for election are increasingly of a certain political class with varying shades of differentiation between them, but no truly huge ideological gulfs.

You only have to glance at the comprehensive polling conducted in recent months by Lord Ashcroft to see that trade union leaders are massively out of line with their hard-on-benefits, Daily Mail-reading membership.

Quote: AngieBaby @ October 31 2013, 10:18 PM GMT

Hi Hannah G

Soots, can you seriously not see how telling me that voting for anyone is better than voting for no-one seems ridiculous?

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Worse still is when you DO vote for someone, based on their manifesto, and then they do the exact opposite of what they said.

Part of the problem of disengagement is that while we're constantly told politics is to do with 'everything', it actually only seems to be about incredibly boring things, and the politicians themselves are (on the whole) incredibly dull people.

Quote: Aaron @ October 31 2013, 10:44 PM GMT

Except it's the same problem as AngieBaby and Russell Brand are complaining about in national politics: that those who stand for election are increasingly of a certain political class with varying shades of differentiation between them, but no truly huge ideological gulfs.

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But you don't need to raise money to stand as trade union leader, like you do in politics. There is nothing stopping anyone from standing. So why don't they just stand if they don't like it? If they don't get voted in, maybe it's because they have been outvoted?

You only have to glance at the comprehensive polling conducted in recent months by Lord Ashcroft to see that trade union leaders are massively out of line with their hard-on-benefits, Daily Mail-reading membership.

Those people have joined the union for reasons other than politics as they don't appear to be engaging in the far-more-democratic-than-government politics of the union. Trade unions tend to be left-wing (though not all are). For that reason, they tend to have left-wing policies. However, these policies are voted on at Conference every year. The leaders don't just make them up. Members put forth policies and they are voted on. They can be voted out, and some are.

And the people who are reading the Daily Mail are probably part of a trade union because of all the benefits afforded to them for being so - such as free legal protection. They have the right and an institutional procedure in place to oppose the politics of the union if they want.

They also have the right to complain to the Certification Officer about their union. It was recently found that something like 0.001% have bothered.

Quote: roscoff @ October 31 2013, 10:35 PM GMT

And that is the problem with the career politician. They see a way to money and power. I suggest that even those who get into Parliament with the right intentions get wobbly when told to tow the line. Threats like withdrawing the whip, sending shitty letters to your constituency chairman etc. all designed to kill any true independent spirit (unless you're an independent).

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Wholly agree.

It's just a pity that socialism seeks, by its very nature, to entrench that political class and do down the average man and woman, and that traditional Conservative grandees often lust for much the same. That's the despicable, poisonous post-war consensus that Margaret Thatcher smashed, at least in the Conservative party - although one could argue that it's creeping back in with some aspects of the current leadership, but that's a different discussion.

Quote: roscoff @ October 31 2013, 10:35 PM GMT

Even my hero Aneurin Bevan lined his own pockets in the end.

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Some truly are more equal than others.

It's why I love the London Mayoral election, it's actually turned into a massive punch up or custard pie fight, for a collection of increasingly mad and egotistical clowns.

At least there's a bit of vim to it.

Even if Boris Johnson on some level terrifies me.