The Irish have, at the second time of asking, voted Yes to the Lisbon Treaty. One must ask, however, why shouldn’t there be a third referendum and “best of three” rule applied?
A referendum is supposed to be a one-off event – you ask the question, people vote, and the answer comes back in which should then be accepted by all, no matter which side of the debate they sat on or voted for. But the EU don’t like that – they will only accept one answer, the “right” answer, the …

Although my immediate reaction to the concept of BNP leader Nick Griffin being invited on to Question Time was “WTF?!”, as soon as I got over that immediate shock, my view is simple.
Let them on.
Let the BNP come on to Question Time. Let them speak their piece. And then shoot down their absurd, racist policies and views.
The only way to defeat the BNP is to allow them to air their views and then poke holes in everything they say. If we ban them, we give them legitimacy through being seen …

Unlike a lot of Tory bloggers – and apparently Tory members – I think that it is a bad thing that Nigel Farage has chosen to challenge Speaker John Bercow at the general election. If he wanted an election fight, he should have picked a constituency where all the parties could campaign and try and win a real victory, rather than a fight where there is only one other contender, who doesn’t have the campaigning support of a party.
This is a bad move for Farage, especially since he has also …

Jack Straw’s new proposals for continuing to reform of the House of Lords (just a decade after starting it!) bear an extremely marked similarity to those I have made on this very blog – as far back as 2006!
The difference is that I am far more certain of what we actually need to do. We must rescue British democracy, and the best way to do that is to reform the Lords to make it democratic and effective – rather than neither, as it is now.
 
Elected Lords
We should, as Straw says, …

We live in a democracy – or at least we’re supposed to. So why is a man being sacked from his job for participating in it? Mark France, a civil servant in DWP (more accurately, an admin officer in a job center) was fired for “gross misconduct” for breaking its code of conduct by

speaking about politics on live national television, campaigning for signatures, making statements to the media, standing as an independent candidate in local elections without permission, and making comments on a politics website.

WTF? He may work for the …

Some people seem to have a massive over-estimation of the reach of social media and its effect(s) on democracy around the world. Twitter, Facebook et al are merely tools that can be used to spread democracy and to facilitate participation – it can’t overturn election results!
Its power lies purely in the ability to stir people up and to encorage them to take action – as an electronic format, it has absolutely no power in and of itself. Nothing more than be done. Joining a Facebook group, tweeting or blogging about …

The most important document in history, the document that first gave anyone but the King any rights and guaranteed liberties, has been granted World Heritage status by the UN and admitted to the “Memory of the World” register.
It is about time. It really should be more recognised for what it is – the foundation of modern democracy, the document without which we would not have the right to live our lives.
Of course, Tim Worstall has a point when he says:

When they start putting things in museums you know that the …

Yesterday I posted about the Commons authorities banning Cub Scouts from protesting in the House of Commons – simply because they’re not old enough to vote. And I said

If John Bercow does not overturn this ban, he will have failed his first real test as Speaker. And he will have encouraged the demise of democracy in this country.

But Bercow must have read my post – because he has overturned this ban. The Cubs may not be able to vote now, but they will do in the future. If they have …

Cub Scouts, 8-10 year olds, have been banned from protesting in the House of Commons – because they aren’t old enough to vote. The Cubs (and the rest of the Scout Movement) want to protest against the rain tax which threatens to severely curtail the activities of many groups as it cripples them financially.
Which annoys me is the fact that MPs are always saying how they want to listen to the “yoofs” – but whenever they have the chance, they never do so. Martin Slater hit the nail on …

John Bercow is considering ending the rules that mean that MPs must refer to each other as “honourable” or “the right honourable” (in the case of Privy Councillors) members in the Commons Chamber. The reason for the change being to make Parliamentary debates more intelligble to the public – so rather than referring to an MP as “the honourable member for X”, they use their name. As, after all, even most political anoraks couldn’t identify every MP by the name of their constituency!
This is a very good move. Though Bercow …