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19,000 Emails Against and 0 In Favor of UK Draft Communications Bill
Qedward writes "Open source writer Glyn Moody discusses the Draft Communications Bill (aka Snooper's Charter) in the UK and how the Joint Parliamentary Committee that had been considering the bill received almost 19,000 emails during its consultation period. He notes: 'Out of 19,000 emails received by the Committee on the subject of the proposed Draft Communications Bill, not a single one was in favor of it, or even agreed with its premise. Has there ever been a bill so universally rejected by the public in a consultation? Clearly, it must be thrown out completely.'"
"When SOPA-PIPA blew up, it was a transformative event," said Dodd. "There were eight million e-mails [to elected representatives] in two days." That caused senators to run away from the legislation. "People were dropping their names as co-sponsors within minutes, not hours," he said.
I'm with Billy Connolly when he said that "the desire to be an MP [modify as appropriate for your jurisdiction] should automatically prevent you from becoming one."
Isn't that more or less a rehash of Douglas Adams? "It is a well known fact, that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves into a position of power should on no account be allowed to do the job."
Clearly, the submitter doesn't understand the purpose of a consulation in the UK if he thinks this will get the bill thrown out.
The purpose of a public consultation is so that Westminster can tick a box saying "we had a public consultation". If the consultation is favourable, they additionally may say that a bill has public support. If a consultation is negative, the consultation is simply ignored. I've responded to a couple of these consultations and I shan't bother again because they were simply ignored despite volumes of correspondence voicing (often constructive) opposition.
Perhaps a consultation won't be ignored if the majority of the comments are from marginal constituencies, but 19,000 voters can safely be totally ignored if not.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Not quite, but not that far off.
The way it works is we all vote for an MP to represent us, then the party with the majority of MPs is (formally speaking) invited by the reigning monarch to form a government. If a majority isn't achieved (and the requirements vary a little depending on how the vote swings), then parties can team up as a coalition.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Both the Conservatives and the Liberals were opposed to this proposal before the election when Labour called it the Interception Modernisation Program, and both campaigned against 'Labour's Surveillance State', yet when they were elected they simply renamed the IMP to CCDP and are now preparing to implement it with almost no changes from the previous governments proposal
e.g. http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2009/09/Reversing_the_rise_of_the_surveillance_state.aspx
If our MPs lie or change their minds they are not representing our views