And this is Listen to the public? Why, no, not at all, written May 27, 2003, and concerning Uncategorized

The Register reports that David Blunkett is introducing "voluntary" ID cards after all. Hang on, though, didn't 5000 responses to the Government's public consultaton get submitted through STAND? Swinging the vote from 2:1 for the proposal to about 5:1 against? Yep, I remember that. Then again, Beverley Hughes, Minister of Truth State for Citizenship, said in Parliament that only 2000 responses had been received, and later on it was theorised that all the 5000 votes relayed through STAND might be being considered to be one big petition, thus counting as one vote.

Do you get the impression that no-one over there in Minitrue cares what the public think? They say they're introducing the cards, we all mail to complain, they decide to not count our votes and do it anyway. And make us pay for the privilege, to boot.

England('s government) prevails.

I am really unhappy about this.

Comments

gilmae

5000 responses out of a population of 59 million? The Government could probably turn around and say 58,995,000 people apparantly don’t care either way. Just playing Devil’s Advocate here.

Jason

How do you reliably know what the public really wants, though?Getting interested parties to write in is flawed for the reasons I’ve already mentioned. There’s a very similar problem with protest marches and the like. Opinion polls aren’t reliable enough because they often represent spur-of-the-moment judgements because some fool just called you and asked you to take part in a poll, or (worse) have subtly biased questions. Referendums are fine, but are expensive and time-consuming, and if you have too many people will get sick of them and turnout will dive even further.So, how do you know what the public want?

Gary F

Yeah, last time I left a comment, I got a timeout despite the comment going through.As for the main topic, this sort of thing is just a PR scam. Get the scheme lots of publicity, get the politicians involved a chance to air their mouths again, make it look like the government actually cares what the public thinks.Now while I agree that the government can’t hold a referendum on every issue, they never seem to really do what the public wants. And it’s usually more complicated than us voting them out at the next election: the alternatives are just as bad. We’ve got 2 pseudo-conservative parties, and some poor alternatives.

Tom

It was a very nice Connection refused page. I won’t do it again…

sil

Damn. Now I have to fix that as well as every other damn thing :-)

Nick

Aha. I think I see the problem now with why we often see multiple comments on days… getting a ‘connection refused’ error from Vellum doesn’t actually mean that your comment hasn’t been accepted…

muff

The point here is that the responses to the consultation were reported as positive, at a 2:1 ratio. Which was false, as it was the other way. Of course it wasn’t a referendum, and of course the government weren’t doing the consultation to see if they should go ahead or not.The point is that our opinions, as irrelevent as they are, were misreported, and misrepresented.

Tom

Representing the people means more than merely bowing to greater numbers or louder voices. There should be some (at least theoretical) wisdom and reasoning involved. I don’t want to live in a world where the News of the World organises lynchings, for example. One generally consults to get advice and ideas.Having said that, in this case the government IS shamefully bowing to popular opinion by seeking to address the concerns of the many Daily Mail readers who are alarmed (by the Daily Mail) about asylum seekers.In any case, roll on ID cards: I have neither a passport nor a driving licence, so it’s free for me! Hurrah!

Tom

Nick

You may not be alone, but you’re wrong. :)We don’t elect a government to do what we want. If we did that, electing a government would be pointless because we’d have to have a referendum on every issue that went through parliament.This is something that none of us would have the time for or inclination to do. Also, on any given issue I would guess that only a small percentage of the electorate are actually knowledgeable enough to have properly informed opinions. Again, this is why we elect MPs and mandate them to form Committees.The government’s job is not to do what we want. The government’s job is to do what it thinks is good for us. If we don’t like it, we vote them out at the next election.I’ve ranted about this before:http://www.frejol.org/archives.live?id=2003032001

Jason

No, you misunderstood my point, I think; they weren’t asking “Do you think this is a good idea?“, they were asking “What should we consider when we’re making this decision?“. The number and proportions of responses are necessarily irrelevant, because it’s not a good measure of public opinion. If 5000 members of the BNP wrote in to say that we should entirely shut our borders to asylum seekers, should the government pay attention to that? Of course not.

sil

So, essentially, the “consultation” period was utterly pointless. Since there’s been a clear opinion expressed by those of the public who contributed, and the government are essentially ignoring that opinion, why have a consultation at all? Oh, right, I forgot, it’s good for PR, just like it would have been good for PR to say “we consulted the public and they agreed about this” if we all hadn’t voted.Am I alone in thinking that the government, of all things, should be doing its job right and representing the people, rather than coming up with its own opinions and then trying to sell them to the people it represents, who pay its wages by the way?

Jason

Well, yes, but; it was a consultation, not a referendum – the point, I think, is to collect reasons for and against, not votes. If you think about it, it would be truly absurd to treat it as some kind of ad hoc referendum, because it would give any lunatic fringe capable of organising a letter-writing campaign far too much power. (not, of course, that you represent a lunatic fringe, but in the general case).