A Place to Stand

    A few days ago I was, as one is, involved in a pub discussion over Proportional Representation V the First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system.

So this is a list of the arguments for PR, most of which I never thought of at the time:

1 - Its democratic. We get the results we actually voted for.

2 - PR is far more stable than FPTP since a small change in % voting doesn't mean an utterly opposed party gets a majority.

3 - In economics one of the few things almost all economists agree on is that free competition is better than monopoly for customers and in particular for encouraging innovation. And in turn that maintaining a monopoly requires barriers to entry to the industry. FPTP is a very high barrier
 since, at least in theory UKIP, to take 1 example, could get 25% of the national vote and 0% of representatives (ie 0 MPs).

4 - FPTP artificially enhances differences between different geographical regions. In Scotland FPTP gives us an overwhelming Labour majority on under 40% of the vote. In the south of England there is an overwhelming Tory majority, again on about 42% of the vote. In fact neither are remotely as "leftist" or "rightist" with the majority voting against the ruling "consensus". This has led Scots to actually believe the guff we are told of how we have different political values - leading to the current referendum.

5 - Where a particularist party (ie one which deliberately appeals to an ethnic group or "working class") gets a hold and its supporters live together (thus no feminist party can use this) it will get representation far greater than similar non-particularist parties. Particularism means people not caring for society as a whole which is a bad very thing for society.

6 - MPs in marginal constituencies get changed but those in safe seats have a job for life. In safe ones the only electorate the MP need fear is the tiny number of people in their constituency selection committee.

7 - Where there are several parties, as now, the majority of people in the large majority of constituencies are going to be represented by somebody they didn't want. How "represented" that makes them feel must be questionable.

8 - Thus under FPTP people, correctly, feel their own vote doesn't count.

9 - Indeed parties' political analysts often say the election turns on about 50,000 floating voters in marginal constituencies.

10 - In some areas you get 1 entirely immovable party that has held complete power for generations, which encourages corruption and contempt for the electors (yes I do mean Glasgow Labour).

11 - The US civil war is an example of the breakdown of trust that FPTP can produce. The South's secession was as brought about by Lincoln winning an overwhelming majority of electoral places on 39.7% of the vote. Had there been a run off he would probably have lost.

12 - Because FPTP tends to dragoon politics into a 2 party system it means the nuances of dissent aren't shown.

13 - Theoretically FPTP should produce a 1 party system because a party that gets 60% of vthe vote in every constituency will get 100% of MPs. Normally this doesn't happen because ruling parties turn out uniformly to be so bad that opposition coalesces into an 2nd party - hence 2 party system. The only exception to this is Singapore where 1 party has won since independence, but Singapore has actually had remarkable competent government.

14 - Gerrymandering (setting constituency boundaries in such a way as to ensure voters for those in charge are spread evenly enough for them to win a small majority in some areas while all opposition voters are in one constituency where they get only 1 member) is a constant problem, sometimes more blatantly than others.

15 - Feedback. The great advantage of democracy, or any sort of parliamentary government, over other systems is that when something isn't working society sends a sign. This is known as negative feedback and is a requirement in any complex machinery (the centrifugal governor made the steam age).  The glandular system does the same for the body. I believe such feedback is equally vital to governmental systems. FPTP does allow some feedback but it takes much greater effort and usually limits the signal that can be sent to the official opposition party's.

16 - Because power is in the hands of big parties, the individual MP's fate is very much in the hands of whoever is party leader. When MPs stand in their own name they are almost always squeezed out. Compare this with both Margo MacDonald and Dennis Canavan both of whom refused to accept being fired by their parties.

For PR

1 - It maintains the constituency link - everybody can find out who their representative as (though as #7 shows) the odds are they will not represent their views.

2 - It provides united government able to take action. Thus when Mussolini took power he introduced an FPTP rule applying to the total Parliament - that the largest single party must automatically get 60% of the seats. This system is in some ways better than our sort of PR in that the barrier to entry is only at the government level not at the getting into Parliament level so parties with new ideas are not so wholly excluded. Decisive united government is a bonus, if you are sure it will be decisive in the right direction.

 

  What the Constitution Should Provide

    I wrote recently about the leftist Holyrood consensus for a Scottish constitution designed to lock in the permanent power of the state to dictate to us over global warming, high taxation, foreign "aid", and general busybodying, even if we voted for something different. This is the SNP "aspiration we have for our country". We won't get any referendum to say whether we approve this straitjacket.

    So I am putting in my twoppenceworth. This is my list of things that should be in a Scottish constitution designed to maximise freedom; to encourage economic growth; and to limit the overbearing power of government. This is the true Scottish tradition, going back to the Enlightenment. It may not appeal to our current apparatchiks but David Hume, Adam Smith, Gladstone and Sir John Cowperthwaite (the Scots civil servant revered in Hong Kong for letting them build a wonderfully successful city with no resources - simply by keeping government out of the way).

    I'm assuming we remain part of the UK but quit the EU. Its my party and I set the rules.

    In which case I expect a federal or indeed confederal UK to emerge. That suits me. I believe the separation of powers that such states have restrict arbitrary power and have been consistently the most stable and prosperous of states. As "confederal" means that power rests with the locals who can decide whether to be part of the unit, Britain has already become a confederal state. The very fact of Westminster accepting our right to a referendum confirms this (whereas Spain, Italy and Turkey are unambiguous in saying their citizens have no such right and the USA once fought a war against the principle). Even though it is not in the interests of either side in the current referendum to say so I am quite surprised that the enormous constitutional importance of this event has gone essentially unmentioned.

    The basic mechanism of this constitution will be to limit the power of the state to bully us (rather than increase it as the SNP propose). Freedom and free markets work - this has been demonstrated across the world and throughout history.

   Scotland should have a right to cantonal government. Areas where the locals can decide to suspend Holyrood legislation and costs (but not to institute new ones). Scotland is culturally far more diverse than England and from Orkney to the Borders there are regions which would like to be a little looser. Compare the freedom and success the isle of Man has compared to the culturally similar, marginally larger and historically more important Islay and you will see what opportunities they could have. (My guess would be we would have Glasgow and Edinburgh based cantons in the central belt, perhaps Lanarkshire to, Stirlingshire, Borders, Fife, Aberdeenshire, 2 or 3 Highland ones, Orkney, Shetland and several Islands or collections of Islands.

This recent academic study of the way Switzerland has been able to maintain a multi-ethnic society for 700 years, with a consistently remarkable level of internal peace and economic success (& a lack of empire building) concludes that it is a result of "Good Fences" ie that cantons can live together because they have the maximum level of devolution and were drawn on fair ethnic lines. Scotland has similar geographical divisions - not as clear as between Glasgow and Edinburgh but much clearer between the islands and mainland. In some ways we have less history of unity than Switzerland with only a couple of centuries between Orkney, Shetland and the Lordship of the Isles uniting with Scotland before the Kingdom united with England.

I am also going to suggest that, like Switzerland, we should have a right of referendum at both the Scottish and Cantonal level.

This is how they describe it:

....popular vote called to challenge a piece of legislation already approved by the Federal Assembly. If any person or group opposed to the new law manages to collect 50,000 signatures within 100 days of the official publication of the proposed legislation, the voters as a whole are given the chance to decide.

In most cases, a referendum is only called if those who feel strongly about the issue manage to collect enough signatures.

However, the authorities are obliged to hold a referendum if the legislation involves an amendment to the constitution initiated by the government, or any proposal for Switzerland to sign a major international agreement which cannot be rescinded.

In the case of an initiative or a mandatory referendum, there has to be a "double majority" for it to pass, meaning a majority of the people as a whole, and a majority of the cantons must approve it.

   I'll make no bones of the fact that, as a supporter of small government being more efficient than big, I believe strong cantonal government that cannot be overturned without constitutional change (which would require strong popular support) would mean that much of the country would initially show both market freedom and economic success and thus, in time, all of it would. This is what Switzerland shows.

   Vital to this is that borders of Scots cantons would have to be fair and thus initially approved by plebiscite and a constitution process existing which would allow new cantons to come into existence in future if the desire is there.

I don't propose a 2nd chamber - we have more than enough full time politicians here. I would be happy to see the MSPs and MPs folded into 1, all elected by a PR system. 60 odd people doing both jobs would not have the copious free time to come up with new bans that has been the preeminent feature of Holyrood. Obviously this can only happen when the rest of the UK adopts proportional representation too.

I suggest our Council of Economic Advisers should consist of 5 members appointed not by Holyrood but by the 5 Commonwealth nations that have, over the last 5 years, achieved fastest growth. That would be both independent and guaranteed to provide good advice. Their reports should be public.

Constitutional Limits on the Power of Government

* A rule stopping the state imposing price and wage controls (this is lifted from Milton Friedman in the 1980s and while the argument here has been largely won political fashions do come round again.)

* Citizen juries, chosen in the same way as normal juries to take over some of the job of Holyrood committees, particularly when any constitutional proposals are aired.

* Over regulation - "Holyrood shall make or maintain no law which, under reasonable cost benefit analysis, imposes a cost benefit ratio more than 4 times greater than allowed in a significant & similar situation." It would be nice to be able to apply this to Westminster too. I am assuming we have resolved the EU problem.

* Failure standards - "Any government proposal shall have to contain failure standards including time to achieve, cost, employees required & pre-set performance standards. The right of citizens to see these standards in civil programmes shall not be infringed and in the event of failure the project manager and proposing Minister shall be made ineligible for public employment." This one is lifted from an episode of Yes Minister where it was agreed it would work and thus the civil service would bury it. It has never been heard of since.

* One  of the major problems of government is the way criminal or incompetent governments can not just loot the state of the people's money but heap future governments with a "contractual" liability to pay more to their friends and them. Whether this is PFI or long term contracts for windmill power or indeed nuclear power or fraudulent contracts for aircraft carriers we don't need and haven't aircraft for.

I suggest a constitutional bar on one government contracting liabilities for 2 parliaments ahead in any circumstances and if contracting liabilities during the next parliament must get 2/3rds approval from the current one so that the probable winner of the next election (except in unusual cases like UKIP) would have accepted the liability in advance. That would also have to apply to increases in the national debt.

Wouldn't stop it when both government and opposition were idiots (as with our windmillery and a forth crossing that costs 8 times more than it ought) but should slow it down. Accountants will tell you that, due to compound interest, anything that takes more than 10 years (2 Parliamentary terms) to pay for is going to largely interest payments.

* Initially 10% of all government funding of science and new technology shall be by prizes, with specific winning conditions, available to any citizen rather than grants to approved persons without failure conditions. That if such prizes are independently shown to be more cost effective any increases in spending will go to prizes until they at least equal grants. (This is a simplified requirement for X-Prizes and thus a present to myself.)

* Government expert appointees - any applicants for posts requiring predictive advice must, for 3 years, have made such predictions, publicly reported, and been among the 3 most successful predictors and must continue to do so. So no more Chief Science advisors or economists who always agree with what the politicians want, always get it wrong and thus keep their jobs.

* Wasteful government - Establish two commissions whose job is to recommend practices that ought to be eliminated on the grounds that we can’t afford them, or never needed them in the first place.

1 - The commissioners should not be government employees, and ought to be paid no more than £100 a day consulting fee and £30 a day expenses. Let it be a typical commission, with 2 members appointed by the Prime Minister, 1 each from the 3 most important parliamentary committees, 1 by the house of |Lords and one by the finance minister of the fastest growing Commonwealth country (aka Singapore). The whole thing shouldn’t cost more than $2 million a year. Any federal position that a majority of the commission recommends for elimination is automatically unfunded unless explicitly refunded by Parliament. If Parliament doesn’t restore the position, that position is redundant and that task is no longer performed.
2 - A second Jobsworth Commission. This one is to consist of 100 persons, the first 50 chosen to match the population distribution and other fifty to be selected with no such loading. They are to be selected by lot from a pool of volunteers who have high speed Internet connection. The Commission meets on-line once a week for four hours. Once a year it meets in London, expenses to be reimbursed. Each commissioner gets a laptop computer and conferencing software, and the government pays for high speed Internet connectivity for the year. Same rules: if 51 Commissioners agree that a government regulatory activity is needless, then that activity is defunded, and those who perform that service are declared redundant. (Civil service rules for redundant employees apply.) Parliament can restore any of those activities and positions, but if it does not, it goes.


The Commissions probably won’t do a lot, but they will at least get rid of the ridiculously obvious, and over time the various government activities will be examined and debated.


Because so much of the benefit is over time it must be a permanent feature of our constitution.

*  17 right of referendums at both Scottish and cantonal levels, as discussed above.

*  The right of referendums to include a vote, at each election, to raise or lower by up to 5% the maximum proportion of gdp the Holyrood state is allowed to spend. Currently the entire state is nearly 60% of gdp. If we are really the socialists the political class insist, we would vote to raise it. My guess is that we would vote to lower it until income tax fell to zero.

    Might be difficult to cut it more unless this rule were also adopted at UK government level - but then if this system works as successfully as I think we would be an example to the whole UK (instead of an 'orrible warning as at present). The principle that the most successful cantons would be an example to the rest of Scotland implies a successful Scotland would be an example to the UK.

* No government funding of Sockpuppets - Illegal for government to give any money to any charity that, in the last 5 years, has advertised for more government. That isn't a charity's job and the conflict of interest is clear. Similarly make a legal requirement that any funding from outside the Scotland of any "charity" that has pushed a political opinion be registered and subject to a 50% windfall tax - half of this money to be earmarked for organisations committed to reducing the size of government. In the same way, over the next 5 years, be 10% as much money as our state donated to pro-government charities should be donated to organisations promoting smaller government.

The same ban should apply to any government department, quango or council and they should be limited to spending not more than 1/2% of their budget on PR/press liaison /raising awareness or such activity under other names.

    Government funding of "charities" that lobby and advertise for more money and power for the ministries funding them are one of the great and growing problems of modern society. Unfortunately they bare a problem that the press, who regularly use "news" produced by them, virtually never mention the existence of the problem.

* I would like to see a defence in Scots law to the licence fee for the BBC government broadcasting monopoly. The BBC Charter specifically requires that they be "balanced". The ECHR requires that people not be forced to pay for propaganda they disapprove of. If it can be shown that the BBC is censoring my party (UKIP), censoring and lying to promote the "catastrophic global warming" scare or spinning to promote whatever new pointless war is being pushed then I should, at the very least, not be forced to pay for it.

   There is undisputed academic evidence that the more of a state broadcasting monopoly exists, the more governmental failure, corruption and nepotism is likely to exist, worldwide.

* There is a historic Scots extension of civil law - that a law which has been in abeyance for many
years falls. I approve of anything that reduces the size of our legislation and would like to see that is some form.

* To an extraordinary and almost entirely unreported extent the pressure groups and political "charities" in Britain have been nationalised. ASH is 98% funded by the state. The catastrophic warming supporting Royal Society gets a £50 million bung. Almost every lobbyist that gets airtime on the (state funded) BBC, or most newspapers, turns out to be a government funded "sock puppet".

The Scottish government should be constitutionally forbidden to use our money to fund propaganda campaigns. Further than that - any organisation using money from other governments (for example almost all "environmental" campaigners are 70% funded by the EU) should be legally required to say so in all productions (as Limited companies are currently required to identify themselves) and pay a levy of 10% of what they spend here to be given to private organisations promoting alternative views.

* The Scottish government should fund broadcasting of genuine political debates (ie ones where both sides get to speak and the subjects are chosen by popular demand). To be broadcast weekly in hour long programmes, rather like Question Time but considerably cheaper and not limited to approved speakers. Since the time of ancient Greece, free debate has been a necessary and perhaps even sufficient condition of a free society. Unfortunately the British broadcasting monopoly has left the gatekeepers deciding what opinions may and may not be publicly discussed, to our great detriment.

* A duty on the Holyrood government to ensure any grants or payments to the cantons are  proportionately either within 15% of its proportionate tax contribution or of its population. (The ability to withhold cash by central government, or of the politically connected to lobby for extra has been the bane of local politics.)

* And I would also add these from the original 10 amendments making up the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution, a document signed by a disproportionate number of people of Scots extraction and which reflected the views of the Scottish Enlightenment. Some are no longer relevant (quartering troops) and some I would not defend (arms) but these are necessary:

4  no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause

5  Trials by due process and no double jeopardy

6 the right to a speedy band public trial

7  the right of trial by jury shall be preserved

10 The powers not delegated to the Scottish and UK governments by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the Cantonal law, are reserved to the smaller tier of government respectively, or to the people - and unlike the USA here this right comes from but is constantly ignored, we really mean it.

=======================
   I'm sure others will have other suggestions. My bottom line is that a constitution is there to restrain government power not to give them more, as the SNP's proposals do. I would not pretend that this will create a Utopia. Indeed I'd hate a Utopia (at least anybody else's idea of it as I suspect others would hate mine).

   On the other hand, while we have achieved miracles in the physical sciences over the last couple of centuries, government seems no more competent than then. Indeed it is much more parasitic, spending nearly 50% of gdp now as against under 10%, 150 years ago and regulating out of existence far more of the nation's wealth than is actually left. Clearly the potential for improvement is enormous and a Scotland which achieves even a small part of that potential will be an example to all of Britain, indeed all of the world. Countries which, over the long term, manage to role back the macroparasitism that is big government, while not encouraging the microparasitism that is common banditry, have historically always found the world to be their oyster.

     Orson Welles came up with the single most memorable, wrong, line in movie history:

"In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
                - In fact they are extremely rich with the world's highest per capita rate of scientific citations per capita, matched by only 1 other. They also had peace because they were too tough to mess with.

     Scotland, is the other country matching Switzerland's world's highest, per capita, rate of scientific citations. Potential other nations would kill for. However Switzerland has politicians nobody has ever heard of because their Constitution doesn't  allow them to do anything, whereas Scotland has a surfeit of preening politicians trying to bestride the world stage like midgets. Politicians who think it is their job to dictate every aspect of our nanny state.

      Not coincidentally Switzerland is much richer than us and arguably (I would argue it) freer and more democratic. Lets change that.
 

New ThinkScotland article on the danger of us waking up with a collectivist constitution. Please put any comments there.

This is my Published UKIP Policy Proposal 1
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   I have written on ThinkScotland before about the purpose of constitutions. I incline to the view that a constitution is necessary primarily to say what the limits on government power are.

   As Heinlein put it "Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom - if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting - but I would be frightened if you took less than a year....

But in writing your constitution let me invite attention to the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative" Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do."

   The SNP and the Scottish political establishment seem to consider the opposite. That a constitution should exist to give the power to the state and indeed duty to do ever more, and to remove the possibility of us objecting. This is the precise opposite of the principles on which Anglo-Saxon politics have worked since at least Magna Carta. 

   This is what that SNP's blockbuster promises (Page 353) :

European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), would be embedded in the written constitution.

Beyond those there are certain provisions that the present Scottish Government will propose for consideration by the constitutional convention:

 ■■ equality of opportunity and entitlement to live free  of discrimination and prejudice
 ■■ entitlement to public services and to a standard of living that, as a minimum, secures dignity and self-respect and provides the opportunity for people to realise their full potential both as individuals and as members of wider society
 ■■ protection of the environment and the sustainable use of Scotland’s natural resources to embed Scotland’s commitment to sustainable development and tackling climate change
 ■■ a ban on nuclear weapons being based in Scotland
 ■■ controls on the use of military force and a role for an independent Scottish Parliament in approving and monitoring its use
 ■■ the existence and status of local government
 ■■ rights in relation to healthcare, welfare and pensions
 ■■ children’s rights
 ■■ rights concerning other social and economic matters,  such as the right to education and a Youth Guarantee  on employment, education or training

   Now most of those sound nice, except the ECHR of which we have actual experience and we know how it means enforced votes for prisoners and interpretations of words which are both unusual and have extended government control of ordinary people, usually in the false name of "minority rights".

   Lets look at what they mean, and sometimes what they could well mean if interpreted enthusiastically by a European court that works as it has.

* Equality sounds good but it means the state has a constitutional duty to interfere in our lives any time somebody complains. Does that mean people being sued if results don't produce the "right" number of women or minorities - it does in the USA where their Constitution has been "reinterpreted" to find such a right even though it isn't written.

A few days ago an independent EU candidate was arrested for reading out a Churchill speech about Islam (don't worry you didn't miss it - its only news on the BBC when people get arrested in Russian churches for insulting Christianity - free speech arrests in Britain don't count). However at least in the current Britain this guy will have an opportunity of a trial. Under the SNP's constitution he could make no defence.

* This is even worse. What income, lower than the national average ensures "self-respect"?  In which case this is gives the state a right and duty to ensure absolute income equality - not even Mao managed that.

* This makes the catastrophic global warming lie and the SNP's promise of "100% renewable by 2020" the rigorously enforced, unshakable law. To call this economic suicide is greatly understating.

* I'm a bit agnostic about a separate Scotland having nuclear weapons so not to worried about this "leftist" shibboleth.

* Any independent state has this in some form. This is just a token blow against NATO. A separate Scotland would be silly to go to war with anybody anyway.

* Local government will "exist". what does that mean or guarantee?

* If the Scots £ fails to keep parity with the UK one, these rights would become impossible to maintain at parity with UK values. that would mean Holyrood would have no lawful alternative to increasing taxes or printing money. Both are obviously economic suicide but any lawful alternative is excluded.

* Current practice suggests this means the "every kid has a social worker with power over them" legislation and probably an extension of it. Scotland already has twice as many kids per capita in council "care" - the results of which consistently mean that when they grow up they are at the wrong end of any measure of human failure. "Children's rights" in this instance do not mean any rights for children but merely the right of social workers to build bureaucratic empires on their bodies.

* A catch-all. everything will be forbidden except where it is mandatory and subsidised.

      Elsewhere, just for political correctness, they promise that a requirement to give 0.7% of gdp, rising to a world beating 1% annually, will be another of these constitutional requirements "which alterith not". Though, as I wrote here previously, the evidence is that "aid" money is almost entirely wasted. Another example, like windmillery that the SNP's "nationalist pride" consists of being proud to be able to show eurocrats and the international apparatchiksthey can have the state remove the absolute maximum of wealth from the Scots people and nothing else. This has had virtually no discussion and unless I miss my guess, will be no more popular here than the Godfrey Bloom
incident proved it wasn't down south. But as with the scots media generally, the issue doesn't even get aired.

     I am afraid the statists have stolen a considerable march on this issue. ALL the discussion I have seen of constitutions has been by "leftists" within the political elite. This is a flat repudiation of the entire liberal Enlightenment tradition which was once, correctly, the glory and much of the reason for success of Scotland.

     Even if we vote No we may expect these to be raised as part of the "new powers" that Westminster has shown some inclination to give. That would be new powers purely for those in charge not for us.

     The paper is also imprecise about how this constitution would be set up. "One of the first and most fundamental tasks of the parliament will be to establish the process for preparing Scotland's first written constitution".  Others may be included but, certainly as long as one party has  majority, I assume it will be limited to those and such as those. As a member of UKIP (the street fascist attack on us having been publicly supported by Salmond & having been 100% censored by the BBC state owned  broadcaster from speaking in the referendum "debate") I am not anticipating even being asked what sort of constitution I would like. Even if, as polling on the upcoming EU election suggests possible, we replace the Tories as Scotland's 3rd party this May.

    Presumably between the independence vote and the adoption of the constitution Holyrood would vote through some Articles of Association (as the USA did) which would turn out to reflect what the SNP want anyway. The example there is Blair's evisceration of the Lords on the promise it was only provisional till they worked out how to create an effective second chamber - for which we are still waiting.

   Noticeably absent from the Scotland's Future guide is any mention of us getting a referendum on our constitution. That looks like stitch up. This is the same political class that boasts that the, after our pseudo0independence, Scots people will not be subjected to the worry of a referendum on our membership of the EU as the poor benighted English will.

   Free market proponents of separation generally say that after it happened Scotland would be forced into the real world. The lunacies of our current leaders would not be maintained. That without the safety net of Westminster the Scottish people would vote, sharply, for the sort of traditional liberalism that is working worldwide. The problem is that constitutions are designed to keep particular values in place.

   To remove the duty of ensuring we have the world's most expensive electricity and highest taxes would require junking the brand new document - probably requiring at least a 2/3rds majority and a lot of time. Meanwhile we would be stuck with an economy with all the freedom, charm and success of North Korea.

    Perhaps I should join the "debate" and say what sort of constitution I would go for to maximise freedom and growth. Any bets that I could come up with a constitution limiting government interference and maximising freedom and economic growth that would both represent "traditional Scottish values" (going back to the Enlightenment) rather better than windmill subsidies do, and would, after any genuine uncensored "debate" would get more voting support from the Scottish people than the SNP's selection of collectivist shibboleths would.
   

    Brian Monteith has put this up on ThinkScotland and also, with the speech edited as it uses a shorter format, on the Free Society blog Please put any comments there.


WHEN I AND THE WORLD were much younger than now and both of us thought we were more “leftist” than today I read a book, set on the Moon, about a revolution where the very lowest in society rise up and overthrow the corrupt imperialist running dogs of the ruling class. By throwing rocks at them.

With a fair bit of liberated sex thrown in, which played to one of my interests at the time, and an awful lot of slang dialogue, which was not such an interest, it definitely established itself as hip countercultural stuff.

The book is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (whose picture on the cover astonishingly showed him with a military style crew cut.) It took me some time to realise that the absolute free market regime this underclass live under was not “left wing”. It exists only because the oppressors, an EU style world state, are too lazy to run society and the lack of any popular democracy means people cannot oppress each other in the name of democracy as we do today.

As is normal with Heinlein the social engineering is as well thought out as the traditional sort of engineering. Only years later did I find out that the mentor character, Professor Bernardo de la Paz was closely based on the real life anarchist philosopher Robert LeFevre. There is no shortage of the action needed for an exciting story full of ideas from an intelligent computer to a remarkably simple and genuinely effective ultimate weapon - enough to satisfy anybody looking for such. Also, there are as many ideas per paragraph most writers give per book, but then that applies to most of the Heinlen’s  books.

The philosophical heart of the book is this speech from the professor made to the Lunar Constitutional Convention: 

“Like fire & fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom - if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting - but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.

Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional ...for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.

This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proven innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the _only_ way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation ... or by age ... or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large - and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.

You might even consider installing the candidate who got the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous - think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes worse than overt tyrannies.

But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about 10,000 human beings, perhaps 7,000 of voting age - and some of you were elected by slim majorities  Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by 4,000 citizens. He would then represent these 4,000 affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would be a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with 8,000 supporters might have 2 votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out - many of them! But you could work them out ... and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government; the disgruntled minority which feels - correctly - that it has been disenfranchised.

But whatever you do not let the past be a straitjacket!

I note 1 proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent - the more impediment to legislation the better. But instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let the legislators pass laws only with a 2/3rds majority ... while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere 1/3rd minority. Preposterous? think about it.

If a bill is so poor that it cannot command 2/3rds of your consents is it not likely to make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as 1/3rd is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
But in writing your constitution let me invite attention to the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative. Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies ... no interference, however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation ... no involuntary taxation. Comrades if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your government should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the outcome.

What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government power to do something that appears to need doing. Please remember always that the Lunar Authority was created for the noblest of purposes by just such sober and well-intentioned men, all popularly elected. And with that thought I leave you to your labours."

As a Scot, with our SNP government having made some comments about how, come the day, they will provide us with a constitution that will enshrine all sorts of rights (the second ‘draft’ is now available), not for us to restrain the state but giving the state a duty to restrain us in the name of the "environment", education or what have you, I wish any of them had as much understanding as the Professor's audience.

I don’t want to upset any fans of Ayn Rand, who is a libertarian icon (rather a contradiction in terms) but she isn’t a fraction as good as Heinlein. Possibly her leaden prose and hammering the ideas home makes her better guru material. More likely the fact that Heinlein plays with all sorts of social ideas in different books; bureaucracy Star Beast; military rule Starship Troopers; absolute monarchy Glory Road; constitutional monarchy Double Star; by secret conspiracy Friday; dictatorship Time Enough For Love; theocracy Stranger in a Strange Land and this made him too big and unpredictable to be buttonholed as anybody’s guru.

On the other hand his successful societies have at least as much freedom as we have seen in our lifetimes. What more should you ask for?

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbours than the other sort.”
Robert A. Heinlen 1907-1988

Neil Craig is proprietor of Scotland's largest independent science fiction bookshop http://futureshockbks.blogspot.co.uk/

Brian also found the "Lone Wolf" picture which is rather cool of him

     Limited liability companies are one of the social inventions that made entrepreneurialism possible. By limiting the liability of shareholders to their investment it became practical for large ventures that few individuals were able to afford possible. By comparison in partnerships every partner is liable for all the losses another partner makes. So long as those trading with them knows it is a limited liability company, which is why it is a legal requirement companies use the term "ltd" on correspondence, they know the risk they run.

     However banking is a different matter. Banks have to be big to be stable (though probably not "to big to fail"). However currently banks own your money as an asset & their debt to you is a liability so if they go bust you will, by definition get only so much in the £ back, or would if governments didn't bail them out. Worse than that, because it is limited liability, the managers can walk away or even, as the Fred Goodwin case showed, keep their pensions or assets which have been removed from the bank before it collapsed. This creates what is known as a moral hazard - that there is an incentive to take unjustified risks because the benefits of risks go to the managers, in the form of bonuses and promotions, but the costs are borne by society.

    So I think we should at least roll back the limitations on liability for those looking after people's money.

      Dan Hannan suggests this:

      reform would be the one backed by Steve Baker MP and the Cobden Centre, which is being introduced on Wednesday as a Ten Minute Rule Bill by the leader of Direct Democracy's Westminster wing, Douglas Carswell. Essentially, Douglas wants to amend the law so that depositors remain the owners of the money which they place in bank accounts. Currently, contrary to widespread belief, such assets are legally the property of the bank. Douglas's reform is to be recommended on several grounds: as a consumer protection measure; as a way of removing a peculiar legal exemption enjoyed by banks, but by no other businesses; as a prophylactic against the credit booms that precede recessions.
    
     The major, still current, example of a massive unlimited liability financial organisation is the Lloyds insurance organisation, which did indeed go bust some time ago and a number of Lloyds "names" (people who have guaranteed their assets for a share of the business profits) did indeed lose heavily, but the organisation survived.

      I'm agnostic as to how far we should go in increasing bank liability - having deposited money remain the property of the depositors so that in the event of failure they get it first/ making directors of banks financially liable for losses/ making shareholders (actually partners) liable up to a set value per share/ making them liable to an unlimited extent - but any of these steps would act as a greater or lesser discouragement of the moral hazard of casino banking and encouragement to fiscal conservatism by those responsible for people's deposits.

     In turn this would be negative feedback to the sort of boom and bust cycles we have recently seen.

   This is the 24 point programme I devised some time ago for getting out of recession, which no politician or economist has actually disagreed with, or endorsed:

http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/we-could-get-out-of-recession-in-days.html

I'd like to add this 25th point:

25 - Make it illegal for government to give any money to any charity that, in the last 5 years, has advertised for more government. That isn't a charity's job and the conflict of interest is clear. Similarly make a legal requirement that any funding from outside the country of any "charity" that has pushed a political opinion be registered and subject to a 50% windfall tax - half of this money to be earmarked for organisations committed to reducing the size of government. In the same way, over the next 5 years, be 10% as much money as our state donated to pro-government charities should be donated to organisations promoting smaller government.

The same ban should apply to any government department, quango or council and they should be limited to spending not more than 1/2% of their budget on PR/press liaison /raising awareness or such activity under other names.

According to Chris Snowdens admirable report  on sock puppets"Between 1997 and 2005, the combined income of Britain’s charities nearly doubled, from £19.8 billion to £37.9 billion, with the biggest growth coming in grants and contracts from government departments (Smith and Whittington, 2006, p. 1). According to the Centre for Policy Studies, state funding rose by 38 per cent in the first years of the twenty-first century while private donations rose by just seven per cent".

This suggests donations to fakecharities was at least half of the increase ie £9.05 bn (£37.9-£19.8bn) and that this amounts to 38% of total funding of 138% which would thus be £32,9bn. Assuming only the same is being spent directly by government this comes to over £60 bn spent by government on advertising how much more of it we need. Since that comes to over half the budget deficit it is clearly something we could well manage without.

=======================================

I am also including this under CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS 18 since, by reducing the power of government to frighten us with their "endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary (Mencken) would significantly improve quality of life and reduce the parasitic power of the state.
  

UKIP's 2010 manifesto offered

· Introduce ‘Direct Democracy’ whereby 5% of the national or local electorate can demand a binding referendum on any issue. At national level, people will have to sign up for the referendum within six months, at local level, within three months

 This is pretty much what happens in Switzerland and california among other places.

   It appears to be an overwhelmingly popular issue, indeed I see nobody anywhere, from any party, broadcaster or paper willing to say why they disagree with it. It is also one of the issues which disprove the assertion that UKIP is in any meaningful way simply a "right wing" party.

   In the traditional way of politics the only thing to do with an issue where you are clearly in the wrong is to ignore it - something that works fairly well when the state control the media, but by definition cannot where they don't.

    Clearly if our opponents don't want to discuss it we should.

     However as somebody who puts liberty even ahead of democracy I would like to suggest a slight refinement. Democracy is desirable partly because, usually, people as a whole, value their freedom. However there are circumstances where it is possible to get a majority to say that it is all the fault of some minority (Jews, bankers, socialists, Serbs, Moslems, Christians, the rich, single mothers, youngsters) and to vote for government to have more power in a way that will affect that group particularly.

     For that reason I would suggest that any referendum for some change which will increase state power and which will affect a minority in a strongly disproportionate way, should require not merely a majority of votes cast but a majority of the electorate.

    In an age where government seizes ever more powers but governing parties represent an ever smaller proportion of voters (Tony Blair was elected by barely over 20% of the registered electors and the Pseudo-Liberals won Eastleigh with 17% of the registered vote) it is hardly "democracy" when a democratically elected government legislate. The vast majority of people in Britain clearly have no interest in most parties but if you want government not to take an interest in you, you have to vote for somebody.

 It does not matter if you take an interest in politics, politics will take an interest in you. -Pericles.

     This is a minor refinement which would slightly restrain the ability of politics to take an interest in ordinary people's doings without forcing them to be politically active for purely defensive purposes. Once that is done there is less incentive for them to continue that interest by seeking to do down some minority they are not part of, thuis making everybody more liberal minded

    I would be prepared to lower that to 45% bearing in mind that electoral registers are always out of date and probably 10% wrong.

    The 1979 Scottish Devolution referendum had a 40% rule of this sort and though 51.6% voted for it failed on that basis. Probably correctly because it was to use a first past the post system which would have produced a Scottish Parliament even more incompetent, inbred and corrupt than the current lot. In any case if such a popular referendum system had been in place a better devolution proposal would have quickly been offered and voted through.

    Such a restriction on the popular opinion of the moment would apply producing the smoking ban (which affects smokers) but not its removal; to increasing supertax, but not to increasing income tax generally (since that affects the majority), to any proposal to make burning of witches lawful (since it disproportionately affects witches) but not to increasing the electricity levy to support "renewables" (since everybody uses electricity).

   This is a much more moderate version of a suggestion by Heinlein - "If a bill is so poor that it cannot command 2/3rds of your consents is it not likely to make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as 1/3rd is it not likely that you would be better off without it?" - since in fact it still requires a 50%+1 majority to repeal restrictive legislation imposed by Parliament, it merely makes it more difficult for popular initiatives to roll back liberty.

  "What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government power to do something that appears to need doing."  Heinlein again from the same speech.


   Most constitutions leave it up to a named person, often the Speaker, to determine whether a Bill fits a particular classification (eg whether it is a finance Bill) and they could easily rule on whether a proposal enhances state power over a minority as well.

  Some time ago I had a letter published on Lords reform and said I would get round to suggesting the ideal. John Redwood has asked toe same question so, belatedly, here is my view.

   It is generally accepted that a bicameral legislature provides a separation of powers of government and thus makes unitary dictatorship more difficult. For this reason the vast majority of countries now and at least since the Middle Ages in Europe, have been bicameral.

   The British House of Lords is what remains of Britain's bicameral legislature but in practice, it has little real power and no democratic legitimacy and thus serves more to create the illusion of such separation than the actuality. This is fairly satisfactory to those in the Commons who have all the power which is why, after more than a century of almost everybody agreeing that reform is needed we haven't had it. Indeed the MPs are almost unanimous in fearing that a democratic Lords would be a rival for the Commons.

   What should the purpose of a 2nd chamber. It should be an impediment to useless regulation. It should also assist in making government more competent and less parasitic. If we want a government of liberty and democracy I think it should also be representative of the people (ie democratic). On the other hand if elected in exactly the same way as the Commons & with powers either the same or subset of the Commons powers, it would serve no extra purpose.

   I would therefore not give it the power to introduce new legislation. Nor the power to bring the government down through a vote of no confidence. It therefore could not be the primary chamber or indeed any significant influence on the executive part of government.

   Instead its power should be that of pruning useless bits of government. By having only that power it would concentrate on it. I would give the Lords the power to introduce the repeal of laws (I would not prevent the Commons doing so as well but they rarely do).  The Commons would also have to debate and pass the repeal initially, as now, but if they did not and the Lords reintroduced and passed it again a year later a Commons veto would have to be passed by 60%. This is roughly the reverse of the power the Commons have now to override a Lords veto.

   I am here lifting from Heinlein's Lunar Assembly speech though I am afraid I am not being as radical as he.

1 proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent - the more impediment to legislation the better. But instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let the legislators pass laws only with a 2/3rds majority ... while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere 1/3rd minority. Preposterous? think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command 2/3rds of your consents is it not likely to make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as 1/3rd is it not likely that you would be better off without it?

   I would also add to that the :ords should have power to close down any branch of government found to have lied to enhance its power; produced regulations whose cost/benefit ratio is at least 4 times greater than that of the restrictions applying to a comparable field; or funded a quango/charity which used that money and could reasonably have been expected to use that money, to advertise/"raise awareness" of the need for more government regulation; or which had broken its Charter or articles of association by lying or grossly exaggerating. The Lords would also have the power to permanently exclude anybody involved, or anybody involved in any personal overuse of their powers, from any form of government employment.

   This is again taken from Heinlein

if his intention is to govern as little as possible-as that means he must keep a sharp eye out and his ear tuned for signs that subordinates are doing unnecessary governing. Half my time is used in the negative work of plucking such officious officials and ordering that they never again serve in any public capacity.

    This would mean that the government parasite who assured us “Children just aren't going to know what snow is,” by now because of catastrophic warming would, along with the social workers who kidnap kids for no good reason, the promoters of the evidence free LNT theory and other scares and the BBC, who continuously break their Charter duty of "due balance" would at least have to consider that their jobs could be on the line. Ditto Ed Davy who lied to the Commons that the "experts in the shale gas industry" had told him and Cameron how dodgy their predictions were when in fact it was, quite deliberately, only their competitors he had chosen to speak to.

     To do all that we have to have a chamber with a democratic mandate. I propose that the chamber be made up of 300 Senators. 100 chosen every 5 years at the same time as the general election. The choice proportionately with the entire country serving as 1 constituency, Israeli style. This means that anybody who agree with as much as 1% of the country is going to be represented. I would not go for such a fully representative system for a chamber that was going to form a government, since e it is likely to be so splintered (though it must be admitted that Israel has survived it).

     I don't think it can be seriously denied that this would serve to, with at least some degree of success, prune our government of the parasitic growths which are directly sucking up half the national wealth and destroying at least as much of the potential economy as actually gets produced. There are a previous 15 such controls over government that I have suggested that could also be considered. http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/constitutional%20amendments

     OK now for something a bit controversial. Limiting the franchise.

    On the one hand the argument that democracy cannot long withstand having the free loaders voting themselves "bread and circuses" and that "every election is a sort of advance sale of stolen goods" (Mencken).

    On the other virtually every proposal to limit the franchise and exclude those unworthy tends, coincidentally, to leave those in the group the proposer is in, whether this means limiting it to the intelligent, the educated, the rich, heads of families, people whose grandfathers lived here, Aryans, self styled "technocrats", believers in catastrophic warming, or the urban proletariat.

    So here is something original. Let people sell their votes to the Lords. Let the government offer, say £500 to everybody willing to give up their vote for a 5 year term & sell them on at the same price to anybody who wants to buy, with a minimum of 5 votes per person. Government simply carries out the exchange. Government is instructed to vary the amount annually by 5% (plus growth and inflation) to bring it to a balance of 25% of the population disenfranchising themselves.

   I think it not unreasonable that somebody willing to see their vote is not likely to consider the national interest much when choosing who to vote for. The cynical might think that £500 would have far more than 25% of the population lining up, particularly when it is the 2nd chamber we don't have any say in at the moment. However I am idealistic enough to think the cynical might be in for a surprise. In any case I am quite certain that it would see a higher electoral turnout. People value what they have paid for (Heinlein again) and I doubt if many who had paid that money, or foregone getting it, for their vote, wouldn't use it and use it with some thought.

    Finally, the decision to reform the Lords should be by a multiple choice run off referendum, or more likely 2 rounds of such, with proper broadcast debates on each version. I do suspect that my option would be a bit to much for most people but that is how it goes. Another stitch up where the people are simply bystanders in how our "democracy" is stitched up by those already in power, would not have legitimacy, or deserve to.

 Heinlein once said that the way to be a successful writer was to take ideas from other genres, take them across state lines and file off the numbers (actually his SF could never owe anything important to another genre). In that spirit I am taking an idea straight from Jerry Pournelle and translating it into British:

Establish two commissions whose job is to recommend practices that ought to be eliminated on the grounds that we can’t afford them, or never needed them in the first place.

1 - The commissioners should not be government employees, and ought to be paid no more than £100 a day consulting fee and £30 a day expenses. Let it be a typical commission, with 2 members appointed by the Prime Minister, 1 each from the 3 most important parliamentary committees, 1 by the house of |Lords and one by the finance minister of the fastest growing Commonwealth country (aka Singapore). The whole thing shouldn’t cost more than $2 million a year. Any federal position that a majority of the commission recommends for elimination is automatically unfunded unless explicitly refunded by Parliament. If Parliament doesn’t restore the position, that position is redundant and that task is no longer performed.
2 - A second Jobsworth Commission. This one is to consist of 100 persons, the first 50 chosen to match the population distribution and other fifty to be selected with no such loading. They are to be selected by lot from a pool of volunteers who have high speed Internet connection. The Commission meets on-line once a week for four hours. Once a year it meets in London, expenses to be reimbursed. Each commissioner gets a laptop computer and conferencing software, and the government pays for high speed Internet connectivity for the year. Same rules: if 51 Commissioners agree that a government regulatory activity is needless, then that activity is defunded, and those who perform that service are declared redundant. (Civil service rules for redundant employees apply.) Parliament can restore any of those activities and positions, but if it does not, it goes.


The Commissions probably won’t do a lot, but they will at least get rid of the ridiculously obvious, and over time the various government activities will be examined and debated.


Because so much of the benefit is over time it must be a permanent feature of our constitution.


------------------------------

  In the same post Jerry also suggested this.

change all the rules for small business exemptions from regulations by doubling the maximum number of employees you can have for the exemption. There are a number of regulations that apply only to businesses with fewer than 10 employees; make that number 20. There are other regulations that apply only to this with more than 50 employees. Make that 100. Etc. The first time I proposed this I got mail saying it was useless because there aren’t any successful small businesses willing to expand but prevented by the threat of regulation. I have considerable evidence to the contrary; and besides, if there are no such businesses, then there won’t be any consequences of adopting this. In fact, though, I am quite sure there are many businesses successful enough to expand that would do so if the regulations weren’t so onerous.

  I did enthusiastically agree with this, which quite obviously would be simple; probably very effective; and even if it wasn't, have no economic downside (like X-Prizes). It was gently explained to me that this would be entirely impossible because most of these are required or supported by the EU and they wouldn't allow it.

   I accept the logic of that and consider it further proof we would be better off out.

PS When I started this series it was aimed at the US Constitution. However our political system only diverged from their's in 1776 and it fits well here and over time the focus has shifted to what we shoukld be doing. This makes the title outdated but so what.

   In my last article on a new Scottish free market party I suggested "an online, members only policy discussion board" which would be a fairly simple thing to operate. There are many such discussion boards and at the simplest would involve only ensuring that everybody allowed membership has to be a party member. That was pretty much what I was suggesting.

   Also that all policies to be proposed at the party conference should first be put up for discussion online. I would prefer a moderator on the site - this may seem anomalous when I have run afoul of moderators in the past but the job of a moderator, when properly done, is to prevent a discussion running off topic; long repetitive posts, usually asserting without evidence; short "Yes it is/no it isn't" stuff; and personal invective. All of which clutters up genuine debate.

  Other questions:

 1 - should it be open to public view - I think it should. Seeing open sensible debate would be a refreshing  change in British politics and bypass the political "pundits" who, particularly at the BBC, are likely to be an unreliable channel. It also has the very great advantage that seeing what is going on is the best possible advertising and anybody seriously interested is likely to stump up for membership.

2 - should people use their real names - I am agnostic on this. I almost always use a variant of my name online and think it adds credibility. Would you be more likely to believe the assurances of John Brown or Truthteller? However I would not lightly refuse to hear the latter and understand people can have real reasons not to be too public.

  However I am inspired to take it further by Joseph Friedlander who commented

Indeed, if you could provide live nominating and voting processes and evolved not merely the constitution but the party platform and agenda online you might energize the party to a great degree because they would be fighting for what they had asked for, and come to agree with, not that which was pushed down their throats by indefatigable activists. Love to see you detail something like that in another post.

I would love to see that sort of thing spread to the US.

    I do not have the technical expertise to pontificate here but it is clear that it would not be technically difficult to arrange to register a single vote - 1 per member. Pretty much a combination of a well moderated discussion board and the government E-Petition site. At least for the present Such votes could be non-binding or subject to ratification by the party conference. Leadership does sometimes mean making decisions not just following a headcount. However when the leadership or Conference overruled the online opinion it would feel it necessary to give very good reasons why and would be held accountable as events either justified the decision or otherwise.

   Alternately there could be a right for the party execuctive to use a block vote of 4% of the membership total either for any vote or merely for a vote against change. This would allow a truly popular opinion to outvote the leadership but not a small but active special interest.

   In the longer term we may well see internet "town hall meetings" dominating government everywhere. On the other hand we may not. Right now I suggest first steps rather than the final destination.

   Going back to the subject of a moderator - imagine a formal parliamentary debate without the Speaker. It would be bound to degenerate into chaos. The net is less subject to that because it is impossible to literally shout down the opposition. Nonetheless comments, particularly on politically correct sites do range from a long trail of answers answering nothing, to personal vituperation and obscenity.

    I suspect both a light handed moderator and limitation to party members, required to maintain basic manners, would provide a much more reasoned debate than we see in normal discussion groups, or indeed Parliament or BBC TV "debates".

   I have also previously proposed broadcast debates on subjects of interest. This is something a medium sized party could do and put online even though our government funded "due balance" broadcasters resolutely refuse to broadcast such balanced debates. If they proved popular some extraterrestrial broadcaster might take them.

    Also a new party should keep in touch with its members with an, I suggest fortnightly, email to all members giving inside recent news. Any party that can do a quarterly magazine can easily do that.*


    All of these are directed at reestablishing mass membership parties. I regard the hollowing out of parties and their declining membership, over nearly the last 50 years, as a very serious threat to democracy.  I suggest there are 2 main reasons for this, reinforcing each other
- firstly that campaigns became ever more a matter of TV soundbites in which ordinary members served no useful purpose and even big donors a limited one as "contacts" in the TV industry became the route to power.

    Secondly that when nobody matters except at the very top and no ordinary member can expect to have any role in deciding what the party is supposed to stand for this week why would anybody want to be a member. I remember hearing somebody on the radio saying that anybody who chooses to be a member is "personally ambitious, mad or has a family history of membership" (I was the latter in the case of the LDs).  Supreme executive power should derive from a mandate from the people not some farcical TV "debate" ceremony.

    The net  give an option of rebuilding the sort of mass parties that used to exist. Fifty years abo the Unionist party had a membership well over 200,000. Now it is 8,500

  Obviously all this also applies to UKIP in either the UK as a whole or for the Scottish Parliament.

*I did suggest this to the LDs for Scotland shortly before they expelled me but I assume nothing came of it.

Convicted London rioters should loose all benefits. View 219,765 09/02/2012

Full disclosure of all government documents relating to 1989 Hillsborough disaster View 132,408 09/08/2012


Petition to retain the ban on Capital Punishment View 25,350 04/02/2012
Public & Private Pension Increases - change from RPI to CPI View 22,773 08/05/2012


Keep Formula 1 Free To Air in the UK View 21,969 04/08/2012


Increase policing DONT CUT IT View 10,667 09/02/2012

all rioters convicted should lose their benefits, and if not a british citizen, be deported View 9,522 10/02/2012

Petition In Support of Public Libraries View 7,136 05/02/2012


Teach evolution, not creationism View 6,224 12/08/2012

Put Babar Ahmad on trial in the UK View 6,000 10/11/2011

Cashless Scrap Metal Trade - Amendment to Scrap Metal Merchants Act 1964 View 5,924 08/08/2012

Thameslink Protest View 5,123 04/08/2012

The Government should ban the EDL View 5,100 08/11/2011

Remove the ban on gay blood donation View 4,922 04/08/2012

Absolute right to self-defence within ones home View 4,850 04/02/2012

petition against EU Anti-tampering proposed legislation for motorcycles View 4,691 08/11/2011


Hold a referendum on withdrawing from the EU View 4,443 04/08/2012


Restore a rolling 30 year-old exemption to VED, for classic vehicles View 4,177 05/08/2012


Ban the introduction of Sharia Law in the United Kingdom View 4,032 04/02/2012

Bring back the death penalty View 3,714 04/11/2011

Do NOT remove all the benefits of convicted London rioters. View 3,507 09/02/2012

Don't let disabled children pay the price for welfare reform: reverse unfair plans to cut support by up to £27 per week for 100,000 disabled children View 3,218 05/08/2012

Return of Hanging for Serious Crimes View 2,884 04/08/2012

Re Nationalise Railways View 2,855 04/08/2012

Stop HS2 View 2,746 04/08/2012

Creation of an English Parliament View 2,657 04/08/2012

Support an Independent Kurdish State View 2,365 04/08/2012

Stop giving aid to India View 2,123 05/08/2012

Proscribe the English Defence League (EDL) View 2,122 09/08/2012

Leave the European Union View 2,087 05/08/2012

Save OUR Maternity Services at Fairfield General Hospital, Bury View 1,995 10/11/2011

Legalise Gay Marriage View 1,973 05/08/2012

Recruit 5000 more NHS midwives in England View 1,927 22/08/2012

 

  This is from an idea I suggested on Douglas Carswell's blog. The major reform Labour and Gordon Brown in particular achieved was that when they got in they made the Monetary Policy Committee "independent" with the job of setting interest rates and thus keeping inflation within 1 degree of the official inflation target. The official target was set at 2%.

   In fact this is all smoke and mirrors. Inflation is now at 4.5% and though the MPC's weapon to keep inflation low is setting interest rates they keep official interest rates at 0.5% which everybody knows is never going to bring inflation down. So have all the MPC been replaced? Of course not. Whatever the official rules they are government appointees and are going to do whatever government really wants (as opposed to officially wants) which in this case is to keep credit cheap (though the market is increasingly not fooled) and pretend government policies are getting us out of recession, or will real soon now. Despite the nominal reform the MPC is less independent than a left sock.

  This is a common problem with all government appointed "independent" experts. People get appointed not because they have a record of being right but because they have a record of saying whatever the government of the day want to hear.

   So here is my proposal:

All appointees to senior bodies or positions described as independent and involving future policy must have a record of accuracy. Anybody wishing to be considered for such appointments must first be listed over a 5 year period where annually they answer 2 or more predictive questions. Appointments may only be drawn from those in the most accurate 1% or from the top 3 individuals for every post available. In the event of the person twice making a prediction or decision that proves to be wrong their position shall be terminated.

 This would apply to things like the monetary policy committee, chief science advisor, immigration advisers, policing advisers, Met Office chair etc. So if the met office predicted a "barbecue summer" followed by the recent "mild winter" it would have a new chair and if the MPC consistently failed to get inflation close to 2% all those who voted for the chosen policy of keeping interest rates at a historic low would be replaced by people with a history of getting it right.

  This is not a particularly high standard of accuracy to require. It would not require 2 bridges to fall down before the engineer who designed them was out of a job - one would do and he would probably get sued or charged with manslaughter as well.

The difference between economics & political "science" and the hard sciences is that in the latter answers are a matter of fact which you have to get right whereas in the political "sciences" (including global warming) the answers that get you promoted are the ones the politicians want. If appointment to the MPC were by proven competence the economy would be much better run.
                                         would you buy a used economy from these people

     Jerry Pournelle has said on occasion that what America needs is passing the equal protection section of the 14th Amendment again, exactly as it was written, but adding the words "And this time we mean it!"  and has said similar about the Xth Amendment whuich reads

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"

    This appears to quite unambiguously limit the power of the Federal government but current Supreme Court interpretations have claimed to find the Constitution to be a "living document" containing all sorts of powers (from the ability to control of drugs to the enforcement of environmental, state decisions onn same sex marriage and, of course medical care) which the founders never wrote into it.

       Part of this is popular acceptance of a growth in government power which cannot & arguably should not be ignored. But part of it is that there is no negative feedback system above the Supreme Court pressing it not to extend these powers. I propose a "Enforcement of Amendment X Amendment.

At the petition of the legislatures of 15% of states or of 15% of electors, but not more than once in a calendar year, that a Supreme Court decision has wrongly claimed to find a power for the Federal government not authorised under Amendment X the Electoral College shall be convened. If they confirm this opinion they shall remove the longest serving member of the court who supported this judgement.

Note that the power given here is very limited. It does not authorise the college to overturn the Court but merely to remove 1 member. If the court, with a new member are of the same opinion the law will not be changed. This is deliberate because the purpose of a Constitution is not to be revolutionary but to provide stability & some pressure in defence of freedoms. All that will happen is that the judges will not lightly extend government power & feel some encouragement to reduce it. It would likely take decades before a major change of direction was visible but it would be all the more secure for that.

Giving this power to the Electoral College may seem strange. It is because this means not giving it to the Congress or President. An example of separation of powers. I could have proposed a new body but that would have meant even more government. The founders did intend the Electoral College to be a significant organ of government but it has withered to a vestigial remnant as Presidential elections have become fully democratic. This would breathe some life into it