Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The rulers and the ruled

Some of my fellow bloggers have been urging their readers to sign the "online petition" at the Downing Street web site. I haven't bothered drawing this to the attention of anyone, because I have no faith in the government. If the government supports a proposal and people sign an online petition in it's favour, the government will claim public support.

If on the other hand they don't support a proposal, then the online petition becomes: "just one contribution to the debate", weasel words from apparatchik and Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander (DA).

Hence my silence on the issue, there's just no point in signing any online petition because no one cares what you or anyone else thinks.

Anyway we have an article in The Times (strangely lacking the full text of the print version) giving the quote, but there's more of interest. DA accuses the campaign [against road charging] of spreading myths and says he welcomes the "opportunity to set some of the facts stright". Aside from a cynic like me asking: "why just some of the facts, why not all of them?" Any actual setting of major facts straight seems missing from the article, so either The Times failed to report it or DA didn't in fact take the opportunity.

There's a good quote showing how the government in general "works": "A Department for Transport official said: “Doing nothing is not an option. We welcome all debate, but it must be based on fact and not fallacy. The first step to achieving this is to demonstrate through local pilot schemes how road pricing can tackle local congestion.”" So you see the debate has to have a pre-determined outcome in favour of road charging, any route that leads to a different outcome will not be countenanced. Then they wonder why people send them bombs.

A final quote from the department: “Public acceptability of such schemes is one of the milestones that has to be achieved. We have always said that we have to see the results of the pilot schemes before we make a decision.” to which I say: "The government should work for the people, if we the people say "Jump!" The government and its departments should respond: "how high?", if there's no public acceptability for a scheme then it must be abandoned, not forced on the people."

It is a major problem with the government systems of this country, it is far too much the rulers and the ruled over. Instead of prattling about tinkering with the House Of Lords, our priority needs to be to get the House Of Commons working properly first.


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