[jambutty]

My response to SPUGGIE J’s post at http://www.accringtonweb.com/forum/f69/intermittent-custodial-sentence-22695-4.html#post288734 would take that thread off topic so as a response is warranted I have started this thread.

SPUGGIE J made the point that MP’s will, as a general rule, follow what the party Whips order yet they are supposed to represent their constituency and not just the people that voted them into office. SPUGGIE J also mentioned that wonderful word ‘independent’.

I have long held the view that party politics has no place in government if we are to have a true representation of the people. Shouldn’t we have 600 odd independent of party MP’s? Of course factions and groups would form but only for the debate in question.

The current system has a political party in power and the rest are in opposition. That implies to me that whatever the party in power proposes the rest will oppose on principle because they are the opposition. Doesn’t that strike people as rather odd?

There are many ways to achieve an objective, a right way, a wrong way and probably other ways that are somewhere in between. Different people have different views on how to reach an objective but surely there can only be one way that would be beneficial to the majority of the populace? You only have to look at some threads on this forum to realise that.

Not every bit of legislation that the party in power puts to the house is done the ‘right’ way so quite rightly the opposition oppose it. But what happens when something has been thought through thoroughly and is presented for debate? The opposition parties oppose it because they are in opposition.

That doesn’t strike me as democracy.

The art of debate is that one person presents his view on a subject and others either agree or not and then present their view. In the ensuing debate points are accepted and conceded as logical argument is put forth. The end result should be the ‘right way’ or as close as argumentative humans can get. Of course there will be some ‘horse trading’ and you will most likely get, “I will accept your point on so and so if you accept my point on this.” That sounds much more like democracy to me.