Why I signed "Fellow Citizens"
June 29, 2007 by Jake Anders · Leave a Comment
There is a problem with British democracy. It began before 1997 but from the way the Iraq War was executed, to cash for peerages, to the far-reaching but insufficient constitutional reforms which Labour has introduced, there is a growing sense of a failure of government and a deepening public distrust in politics.
Read, and if you wish sign, the rest of the petition here.
As I have touched upon previously, disengagement with the political process is at a terrible high. This is something that worries me as a young person who believes that politics, while not something large numbers of the member of the public will find exciting or interesting, is very important.
However, I can see why. People believe that once a government has been elected they are accountable to no one. They not have unprecedented powers to take many decisions without any recourse to parliament, like going to war with Iraq without need for a vote in parliament and the new extradition treaty with the USA. That is why I am calling on Gordon Brown to change the constitutional processes.
We need to know exactly where we stand as citizens on the relationship between ourselves and the government, in terms of parliamentary process, civil liberties and the power of the executive.
Although I bring to this my own personal preferences for constitutional reform, this petition is not about that. Rather, it is to call for an open debate on how best we can strengthen this country’s democracy and reengage the public with running the country.
Independent NHS: a step forward?
June 24, 2007 by Jake Anders · Leave a Comment
Having finally finished my exams I am now in the position to return to blogging at last.
The Conservatives finally unveiled a policy last week. They plan to hand over day to day control of running the NHS to an independent board. The suggestion appears to have widespread backing with a poll suggesting 70% of the public want such a board to remove political meddling from the NHS. There would also be the advantage of the potential for more local accountability and the potential for direct representation of patient’s interests.
While this seems a sensible idea, taking the politics out of running the NHS and ending the “targets culture”, it seems odd that this comes from the party who have spent much of the last ten years criticising New Labour’s obsession with quangos. Some steps towards a similar idea have already been taken in fact. Take for example, NICE, which is a panel of experts that decides whether certain drugs should be offered on the NHS. It’s decisions have often been unpopular, as they have decided many drugs are not value for money, despite loud calls from them to be provided.
The Liberal Democrats are attacking the plans on the grounds that they are over-centralisation, while Labour is comparing it to a return to nationalised industries such as British Leyland. Both interesting reversals of the traditional expectations.
We’re also told that this would be modelled on the way that British Rail used to be run. So could this be a clever plan to prepare us for its privitisation? Probably not, but conspiracy theories are always more fun, and even if it’s not the intention then if it is unsuccessful then that could be when suggestions of privitisation as a way out of the inefficient and underfunded mess it could become.
