Voters Should Be the Outside Regulator

WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2009

http://www.order-order.com/

Voters Should Be the Outside Regulator

Not a single voter had the opportunity to mandate Gordon Brown to be Prime Minister - his thugs even scared off any internal party rivals - now the Prime Minister without a mandate wants a quango without a mandate, with placemen appointed by politicians.  Where do the voters and taxpayers come in to this equation?  We have been here before, the Commissioner for Standards was a political appointment to watch over the integrity and honesty of politicians.  When Elizabeth Filkin naively took her job seriously she was hounded out of office.  Not exactly a good precedent for “independent” regulation.

We need reforms that make politicians more directly and immediately accountable to voters.  Douglas Carswell is on the money, we want the power of voter recall for underperforming politicians, we need to be involved in the open selection of candidates before every election.   We need to empower voters, not the party machines.  Too many constituencies are the permanent property of lazy, sleazy politicians.  The worst expenses abusers were in the safest seats.

Hogg Shall Pork No More - BBC
John Being John - Paul Waugh
FoI : Downing Street Gives Me Some Emails - Iain Dale
Expensegate: Naming a Scandal - New York Times
Little People No Longer Look Up to the Big - Rachel Sylvester
Taxodus : Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich - WSJ
Grassroots: Take Whip from Fiddling MPs - LabourHome
In the Name of God… Go, Call Election Now - Sun
Indy Defaults on Bonds, Has Until Late June - Reuters
Hurrah for the Unlovable Free Press - John Lloyd
Five Things Cameron Must Do - ConservativeHome
Public Deserves Purge of the Guilty - Andrew Rawnsley
Five Non-Fiddling Labour MPs - LabourHome
Gordon Brown’s Expenses - City Unslicker
MPs Already in Top 1% of Earners - Chris Dillow
Who Should Be Speaker? - Comment Central