We the people …

Picking up the thread from my co-editor, it cannot be said enough times that power belongs to the people – not the politicians. It is not theirs to give to us … they hold it trust and exercise it on our behalf.

Developing the theme further, governments by their very nature, will always abuse the power with which they are entrusted. That is an inalienable fact of life. To that extent, governments are not our friends. They are our enemies, more so our own, which has the capability to do infinite damage.

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Stand and deliver

Good work by PoliticsHome tells us the scale of the mountain Mr Cameron has to climb to convince people that he means what he says. From a nationwide poll of 1,178 adults on whether a Cameron as prime minister would be as radical as he is promising on devolution of power, it finds that an overwhelming majority of the public are sceptical, predicting that he would be more cautious in office. In figures, a full 70 percent think Cameron would be more cautious and only 23 percent think he would deliver.

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How can Cameron be serious?
What could he say or do that you would believe? Or trust?

Resorting to ad-hominem insults, such as;

"54 percent of Conservative supporters "think" (if one can use such a word in this context)"

Does you no service. The way to get people on message is to engage with them, not belittle them.

The wriggle room is the problem?

He has not got the message?

A tribal reaction isn't "thinking". It is is precisely what it looks like ... an expression of tribal loyalty - uncritical, unthinking knee-jerk support. On the one hand, we get faux expressions of how the party system is damaging democracy and then, on the other, the "leader" just has to come up with a series of highly implausible proposals, and the cheers go up.

And that is, of course, why we do not get independents in parliament. The quality of debate and the strength of any ideas does not matter. It matters not what is said, but who says it, and the colour of the party label. Thus, the claque belittles itself ... to imply that it does not think is not an insult - it is a statement of fact.

Significantly, the truth has far greater power than any casual insult.

Pedants' corner: That should be ad-homines, unless, of course, there really is only one conservative supporter ?

Certainly we welcome the thoughts of any conservatives here.

Engage with them. I have been against this country's membership of the European thing since the mid 1960's. Other than Enoch Powell and a few others of that era when have they tried to engage with the likes of me? They haven't. they have been duplicitous and ceded our sovereignty to a foreign power contrary to their oaths as privvy counsellors etc.

When politicians give us a choice on our membership I will respect them whatever the outcome of the poll providing it's fair.

Engaging with them is about like trying to convert those who believe in religion to atheism. You cannot reason with them.

We have a written constitution, it is just not codified. Whom do you intend to write this constitution? Whoever does will be given an enormous amount of power to tie the hands of future generations. Not a good idea I think. How too is a codified constitution going to 'free us from reliance on the wishy-washy, easy-to-discard pledges of leaders'? Did that stop all United States Presidents from making easy-to-discard pledges? Even if you did create such a Constitution then how will you prevent it from being reinterpreted by leftist and liberal Judges as happens in the US?

In framing their constitution, the Americans learnt from us, and added their own improvements. Benefitting from their experience, we should be able to frame a constitution which avoids the obvious - and some not so obvious - pitfalls that they have embodied in theirs.

How you create a constitution is a very good question ... the most obvious answer is to form a constitutional convention - wholly independent of government. The next is to produce a draft, which should go out to consultation, for an extended period, with the draft returned for futher examination. The final version should then be ratified by a popular vote (with say 80 percent approval as a bar). Until we have a final draft, any government should be regarded as "provisional" with limited powers and mandate.

Of course a written constitution. The British people have for centuries been fooled by all politicians into believing that an unwritten constitution is so much superior. The foolish acceptance of this rubbish enables politicos to do whatever they like, and the people are powerless to stop them.

The Americans, using the old English democratic customs and a fund of American common sense insisted on writing firm everlasting limits to government power, known as the American Constitution. Despite the ingenuity of the American political class to modify and adulterate it, it remains something we could adopt, modify and enshrine here to limit our ever crooked governing classes. And it should include that clause about the right of British people to bear arms, something the governing class took from us with dreadful results, seen all around every day..

You will of course recognise the tenth amendment. Have a look at the behaviour of the feds, and tell us this written constitution is safe in the hands of successive power grabs. Both parties, no special singling out of recent events.

Constant ebb and flow there ... the centralising tendency is built into the DNA of governments, which will always be seeking more and power power (and money). This supports my contention that all governments will abuse the powers they are given.

One answer to that would be to build in an automatic "sunset clause" into any centralising edit, where central powers have a limited life and have formally to be renewed after a certain period.

Another answer would to to prohibit any central government raising general taxation. What one could consider is (in the UK) that local authorities collected all the taxes for their areas and paid some part of it to central government on a precept basis, which has to be authorised by a specific vote each year - hence a built-in veto. This is only a half-thought-out idea, but it has certain attractions.

Have you been to a Conservative meeting ?

And also get the EU to bill each household directly, not through national governments.
That would be the end of it here.