If MPs are no longer around then things will have to change – but not too much in reality.

I would formalise the various organisations that currently represent specific groups of people (e.g unions, trade associations, charitable groups etc.). Make rules so that they are democratic and observe a proper process – many do already. These organisations can then propose, campaign for or fight against issues that they feel important to their members. Apart from making it a formal and legal process that is not much different to what is already happening but with MPs in between adding their own agenda.

The proposal should follow an approved standard form including budgetary requirements etc. and justification of why it is proposed – too many new laws are unnecessary and are covered by existing legislation.

I think this would reduce the “noise” that would result if anyone could propose any new legislation and ensure good ideas are not missed.  It would also make it easier for voters to understand what is being presented, why it is presented and what the financial burden on the taxpayer is likely to be.

It is unlikely our honourable MPs will vote to sack themselves to set up a direct democracy system so it is something that will have to be created from within.

The proposal is to create a halfway house – a Direct Democracy Party.  In this party, any elected MPs will pledge to vote dependant on the wishes of their constituents and not on party wishes or personal taste.  The MP would be required to summarise a bill put before parliament and invite votes from his local constituents.  He will then make his parliamentary vote accordingly.

Note that I don’t see this as a final solution because I think it will suffer eventually from the same problems of corruption and voter mistrust – but, with the right, dedicated people, it could work as a way to get things started.

A pre-cursor to this is to sort out a way to reliably and safely take votes.  Any system must be able ensure privacy of voters but also ensure transparency of the voting system.  Not an easy one of course, more of this in later posts…

MPs like people to think they are in touch, we know they aren’t.  Two good subjects are football and mild patriotism – nicely combined here.  What frightens me here is that it is a group of MPs not just one.

Why am I against this?  Firstly, its just plain wrong.  I love football and want to see England do well but I don’t believe government involvement will help.  The reality is that if English players are good enough then top clubs will have English players.  The Premiership is such a successful league that it draws players from all over the world to compete at the highest level.  This can only be a good thing because an English player, like any other player, has to try that much harder to get in the first team.  Perhaps our players are just not good enough?

Secondly, for an MP, this is trivial.  Your job is to run the country – moan about football in your own time like we do.  Please don’t waste parliamentary time and public money on this sort of stuff just to get your face in the papers.

Right now there are many MPs doing what Mr Conway did. Many legitimately I’m sure – it is quite sensible that wives and family members be employed and no different to any small business. But who decides how much a person is worth? Is this corruption or supply and demand? It is something that troubles the tax office when it applies to private businesses and now it is troubling the rest of us with regard to public money.

What is potentially worse than this level of dirty corruption is what will happen next? Spot checks by the National Audit Office mean paperwork for all the MPs = cost. That’s our money again. Financially it would probably be better to ignore the crooks and hope most MPs are honest. Unfortunately that is not really acceptable in a moral sense and so it is almost guaranteed there will be changes, costly changes, thanks to this episode. So our MPs will cost us even more money and, if the House of Commons is similar to the rest of world, the crooks will continue to get away with it in other ways while the honest MPs fill in the forms and do it by the book…

This reminds me of the police service/force. Over the years various officers have made big mistakes – inquiries have been set up and conclusions found. The solution is typically a new procedure using a variety of forms as checks. The end result is a police force with so much paperwork it is driven to the brink of impotency until the government finally starts to decontruct all those things that seemed such a good idea years ago.

The truth is there is a major problem with either the perception of or the actual use of public money for MPs. I can’t see this ever changing. There is also a major problem with the perception of or the reality of party contributions. I see no sensible answer to this until I ask the question – why do we need all this? The answer is of course – we don’t… All MPs do is vote on policies suggested to them – they have proved themselves, and I’m being generous here, to be no better than you or I so why don’t we do it ourselves?

It would mean we would have to put up with the possibly of a bad decision every now again in the interests of practical government. The big difference is that our new democratic system would reduce the manufactured threats created for political means and only involve genuine threats which will need swift and decisive action.

This is always going to be a difficult area for many reasons but in particular for the tendency of that body wanting to extend it’s powers. These would need to be very clearly defined.