4 ms·

It's quite right that petitions are (mostly) ignored in Parliamentary matters, IMHO. MPs are elected to Parliament, they get input from their constituents. Bil

It's quite right that petitions are (mostly) ignored in Parliamentary matters, IMHO. MPs are elected to Parliament, they get input from their constituents. Bills are debated, revised, voted on multiple times. There are consultations and input from a board range of view points. A petition is in effect trying to shout over all that process from the street outside.

Henchman21 1y ago
Is it quite right that the public gets ignored all the time? How do you force your representatives to actually represent their constituents?
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  I have just described how the public drives the democratic process to ensure everyone gets a voice, not just whoever shouts the loudest. That's the opposite of ignoring the public.
  - matt-p 1y ago
    If the public truly drove the democratic process we'd have proportional representation or something other than the current system.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    That's the nice-sounding theory, but I don't see any metrics on how well it works in practice. MPs aren't required to share the input from the public or publish lists of how they voted on every issue prior to elections. Representative democracy really includes very little accountability for the legislators.
    - mytailorisrich 1y ago
      It certainly works better than to govern according to whoever shouts the louder. Petitions have a place, which is to inform of a point of view and of the opinion of a portion of the public. That's a form of lobbying. But that's it, we should certainly not expect that a law be repelled because of a petition, and rightly so.
      - anigbrowl 1y ago
        Incumbents in a bad system always argue that it's better than their worst characterization of the alternative. The reality is that elected officials still have very little accountability. They're only subject to re-election once every few years and it's virtually impossible to get rid of one mid-term unless they get themselves arrested. I get your point about petitions and direct democracy being a form of who shouts louder (in the media, advertising, # of campaign events etc), but this is equally true of regular elections. It's even more so in a first-past-the-post system like the UK, whose two major parties have no interest in shifting to a proportional representation system because it would advantage smaller parties at their expense, even though the result would more closely reflect public preference. In my view, parliamentary systems developed a few centuries ago have their advantages but also come with a great deal of historical baggage (systems that benefit a particular class of candidate and so forth), and they're buckling under the pressures of a real-time information society where people know transparency and timely publication of information are technically possible but such goods are systematically withheld from the public.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
You vote for someone who says "I will create more jobs" They instead propose a bill that will cut jobs There's deliberation, but a lot of other people want to cut jobs Is you shouting "hey, that is not what I voted for!" yelling and disrupting process, or calling out the fact that you were lied to and your representative is in fact not representing you?
michaelt 1y ago
It's a good deal more complicated than that. MPs belong to political parties - consider what happens if an MP's constituents and an MP's party disagree? They might be allowed to vote against the government, if their vote will have no effect on the bill's passage - but if they actually stop the bill's passage? They're kicked out of the party, which will make the next election extremely difficult for them. MPs are elected for reasonably long terms - and that means they regularly do things that weren't in their party manifesto. Nobody running for election in 2024 had a manifesto policy about 2025's strikes on Iran, after all! That flexibility means they can simply omit the unpopular policies during the election campaign. A party could run an election campaign saying they're going to introduce a national ID card, give everyone who drinks alcohol a hard time, cut benefits, raise taxes, raise university tuition, fail to deliver on any major infrastructure projects, have doctors go on strike, and so on. Or they can simply not put those things in their manifesto, then do them anyway. It's 100% legal, the system doing what it does.
pram 1y ago
Yeah who do these peasants think they are?
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
Don't be ridiculous. MPs get their input from their party superiors, and their party superiors get their input from the people who buy them. It's been decades since the UK had any genuine bottom-up policy representation for ordinary people. Petitions are the only mechanism which produces some shadow of a memory of a that.

Henchman21 1y ago

Is it quite right that the public gets ignored all the time? How do you force your representatives to actually represent their constituents?

mytailorisrich 1y ago
I have just described how the public drives the democratic process to ensure everyone gets a voice, not just whoever shouts the loudest. That's the opposite of ignoring the public.
- matt-p 1y ago
  If the public truly drove the democratic process we'd have proportional representation or something other than the current system.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  That's the nice-sounding theory, but I don't see any metrics on how well it works in practice. MPs aren't required to share the input from the public or publish lists of how they voted on every issue prior to elections. Representative democracy really includes very little accountability for the legislators.
  - mytailorisrich 1y ago
    It certainly works better than to govern according to whoever shouts the louder. Petitions have a place, which is to inform of a point of view and of the opinion of a portion of the public. That's a form of lobbying. But that's it, we should certainly not expect that a law be repelled because of a petition, and rightly so.
    - anigbrowl 1y ago
      Incumbents in a bad system always argue that it's better than their worst characterization of the alternative. The reality is that elected officials still have very little accountability. They're only subject to re-election once every few years and it's virtually impossible to get rid of one mid-term unless they get themselves arrested. I get your point about petitions and direct democracy being a form of who shouts louder (in the media, advertising, # of campaign events etc), but this is equally true of regular elections. It's even more so in a first-past-the-post system like the UK, whose two major parties have no interest in shifting to a proportional representation system because it would advantage smaller parties at their expense, even though the result would more closely reflect public preference. In my view, parliamentary systems developed a few centuries ago have their advantages but also come with a great deal of historical baggage (systems that benefit a particular class of candidate and so forth), and they're buckling under the pressures of a real-time information society where people know transparency and timely publication of information are technically possible but such goods are systematically withheld from the public.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

You vote for someone who says "I will create more jobs" They instead propose a bill that will cut jobs There's deliberation, but a lot of other people want to cut jobs Is you shouting "hey, that is not what I voted for!" yelling and disrupting process, or calling out the fact that you were lied to and your representative is in fact not representing you?

michaelt 1y ago

It's a good deal more complicated than that. MPs belong to political parties - consider what happens if an MP's constituents and an MP's party disagree? They might be allowed to vote against the government, if their vote will have no effect on the bill's passage - but if they actually stop the bill's passage? They're kicked out of the party, which will make the next election extremely difficult for them. MPs are elected for reasonably long terms - and that means they regularly do things that weren't in their party manifesto. Nobody running for election in 2024 had a manifesto policy about 2025's strikes on Iran, after all! That flexibility means they can simply omit the unpopular policies during the election campaign. A party could run an election campaign saying they're going to introduce a national ID card, give everyone who drinks alcohol a hard time, cut benefits, raise taxes, raise university tuition, fail to deliver on any major infrastructure projects, have doctors go on strike, and so on. Or they can simply not put those things in their manifesto, then do them anyway. It's 100% legal, the system doing what it does.

pram 1y ago

Yeah who do these peasants think they are?

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago

Don't be ridiculous. MPs get their input from their party superiors, and their party superiors get their input from the people who buy them. It's been decades since the UK had any genuine bottom-up policy representation for ordinary people. Petitions are the only mechanism which produces some shadow of a memory of a that.