Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
I still think the effects of corporations dumping huge amounts of money into lobbyists to drop fully formed legislation into the laps of the chosen representatives (and another key objection is that the chosen in the Greek model are still representatives, especially when faced with events, rather than just choices) are a big problem with the model.

A nice example of just how this kind of legislation would work is in today's column by Simon Hoggart of the Guardian.

However, a bill of this length has one great advantage. It means that anyone can find in it whatever they want to find. This is vital, for the Tories, who decided to vote for it in order to embarrass the prime minister, and for education secretary Ruth Kelly, who can find enough shiny needles in this particular haystack to claim that it is a truly egalitarian, Labour bill.

...

Ruth Kelly, the education secretary, then picked out every leftwing element in the bill and flung to those behind her, "this is a progressive bill, a reforming bill", a peroration that would have been even more resonant if a Lib Dem had not shouted out "and a Tory bill!"

A point proved when Tories lined up to say how much they liked many of its multitudinous clauses.

(There's also the complexity issue, but that deserves a diary if I get time.)

by Metatone (metatone [a|t] gmail (dot) com) on Thu Mar 16th, 2006 at 08:47:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Others have rated this comment as follows:

Display: