Leading issues
This section provides resources, short presentations and briefs on the issues of fundamental importance in the defence of our freedom1. We maintain a vigilence to ensure that the information presented here is accurate and takes into account the latest known facts on each issue, therefore this section will always be a work in progress.. Readers may well note that the issues addressed, under the weight of the rhetoric of politicians, are often pushed into the background or even dismissed as being of little significance. Often the reason for this is not that these subjects are unimportant but rather that raising their profile to serve the interests of the people of the United Kingdom would risk creating splits and divisions within our main political parties. This causes political parties to avoid providing adequate attention to issues of fundamental importance to the people of the country. Those who are interested in preserving freedom for themselves and their families need to keep their eye on the matters which count with a view to establishing preferences based upon their own needs as well as understanding the means of satisfying preferences. It is important to resist being limited to the options drawn up by political parties on the basis of ideas thought up by a minority of their tiny memberships. All main British political parties together have a total membership of less than 1% of the electorate. Such tiny factions cannot even pretend to identify the personal preferences of the British constituency.
We hope readers find these sections interesting and useful. We welcome suggestions on possible additional themes.
A list of the current themes is shown below. By clicking on a title this dialogue will shift to a short description of the topic, below which a link will provide access to the section of interest. So far the Juries section has been completed and the others are being completed.
As each section is completed we will provide links. In the meantime each of these is described in the "boxes" below.
Juries - the freedom of each to defend the freedom of the other...
The imperative of
impartiality |
Where is the
community conscience?
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Legislative decisions create laws. The application of the law is the responsibity of the judiciary working through a court system. Judges have to take decisions in judging cases and yet much legislation is not well conceived and at law is open to abuse expressed in the form of arbitrary decisions creating unjustified prejudice for innocents. In Britain the jury system embodies an approach to legal decisions which above all is designed to permit freely formed decisions by a group of citizens to defend the freedom of the innocent and prevent arbitrary decisions. This system has had a seminal role in establishing critical human rights now enjoyed by populations throughout the world. And yet political parties have worked over the centuries to get rid of juries. PIP consider this to be a serious mistake. Why not review the reasons why juries need to be preserved and even extended in application by visiting the Leading Issues section on juries by clicking on the title below:
Juries..... the feedom of each to defend the freedom of the other ....
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Constitution
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This House should respond to the will of the people |
Legislative decisions create laws to which society is expected to adhere and yet today the decisions taken in Parliament to create laws are controlled by the governing party which in the former government enjoyed the support of no more than 19% of the electorate and in thje current coalition government no more than 39% of the elctorate. The first-past-the-post electoral system therefore provides a factional minorioty with power to impose legislation on the majority, that is the 61% of the electorate which never voted for the legislation in the first place.
The fact that MPs vote in line with their party dictates and not in line with constituency wishes, as should be the case, undermines legitimacy of their role as well as of government decisions. Thus constitutionally our democracy sustains the "authority" of a Parliament which does not represent the will of the people and, therefore, since sovereignty rests with the people, such authority is a usurpation of power exercised to the benefit of political parties.
The range of constitutional issues associated with the behaviour of political parties will be presetned in the Constitution section of Leading Issues:
Constitution - responding to the will of the people ... |
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High Noon for political parties?
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The end of the party - towards a better politics...
Recent works on constitution have demonstrated that the majority of the constraints upon a better and more open political system emanate from the behaviour of politicians linked to political parties. Far from being at the heart of our democracy, political parties, which today represent in terms of membership no more than a tiny factional minority, have laid waste a wide range of provisions securing the freedom of the individual in the United Kingdom. | 
That everyone should do their duty .. |
This freedom is the very essence of our lives, determining how we develop as children and evolve during our lifetimes so as to enable us to become the people we want to be as individuals. An appropriate freedom to achieve this does not create a race of clones, as the political parties seem to assume, but rather individuals who share common expectations of behaviour of what is normal in society, irrespective of law, directives, regulations and such-like attempts by political parties to regiment the people of this country. Political parties consider civilization to be represented by compliance of all to sets of values which coincide with their collectivist mentalities and the objective of power is invariably to impose these on the majority. True freedom, achieved through a system of politics without parties can help create an enormous diversity of preferences founded, not on racial differences and stereotypes but rather by different family cultures, individual inclinations, distinctions and experiences combined with each person's unique genetic make-up.
A better way to run our politics exists but political parties remain in denial and in control; it remains for the people to reflect on their obligations or duties to future generations and to reject the illicit and collectivist controls manipulated by these factional minorities to seek and remain exercising power over the will of the majority.
The section on the feasible and better options to politics of politics without parties is in preparation:
Constitutuion - towards a better politics without parties ... |
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 Economics
During the last 65 years there have been four economic crises. Two were associated with a switch in emphasis in macroeconomic management to Keynesianisn in the post-war years and then Monetarism in the post 1979 period.
Today we pass through a major financial and economic crisis with neither Keynesianism nor Monetarism having adequate policy instruments to correct the situation without causing externalities and creating, as always, winners and losers as a direct outcome of policy decisions.
What was considered to be a failed past experiment in supply side economics under President Reagan, in fact did not apply supply side economics but the original proposals were corrupted by pork barrel politics of the US Congress. A reasonable sound concept became degraded into what became known as "trickle down economics" or even "Reaganomics".
However, supply side economics did call attention to the gap in theory and practice of Keynesianism in the form of the accommodation of technology, technique and innovation in economic policy and its relationship to economic growth.. Work on the Real Incomes approach, between 1976 to date, also extended this analysis to Monetarism to conclude that Keynesianism and Monetarism are fair theories and policies incapable of securing stability in the face of commodity financial market shocks. This work also later pointed out why supply side economics would fail in practice. More recently this approach has extended its analysis to point out that nominal profit motive and governmental policy preference being serviced by a specific sector, for example banks, caused normal economic motivations to end up with inappropriate behaviour and it is this which became in some part responsible for the current economic crisis.
The current crisis does not meet with the preferences of the vast majority of the constituency and yet it should be the objective of economic policy to satisfy these. Far from being a financial sectoral failure, which it was, the current crisis can be traced to fundamentally inappropriate macroenconomic models, objectives and instruments and in particular the use of extra-constitutional oversight mechanisms run by those being overseen.
The needs for change in economic theory and practice will be posted in the Economics section of Leading Issues:
| Towards a constitutional economics ....
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 Nature
For the last half-century the "Green movement" has arisen with an emphasis on natural resources preservation and sustainable production systems. This involves calls to reduce the tendency towards technologies and techniques of primary and industrial processes to reduce pollution or environmental degradation by other means.
One of the major issues has been a failure of governments to deliver on promises concerning the "environment" which became very evident after the International Rio Earth Summit in 1992 after which deforestation seemed to accelerate and indigenous people had increasing problems securing their own environmental conditions to ensure their sustainability.
The large development banks and corporations who were facing criticism from NGOs for supporting projects that were destroying ecosystems embarked on a strategy to pay NGOs to carry out services. This effectively compromised the NGOs concerned who today survive as a function of the development aid cash flow paid out by the World Bank and other aid agencies and as a result direct criticism of environmental outrages is more muted.
A serious debate has continued since the mid 1960s on the question of population, natural resources and food supplies. This is a contentious subject because those most directly affected by resource and food shortages are often poor populations with higher reproductive rates and political correctness or respect of cultural or religious beliefs prevents a serious objective discussion about this growing crisis.
The Nature section of lLeading Issues is under preparation.
| Preserving nature to sustain society ....
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 The imperative of European emancipation ...
Legislative decisions create laws. The application of the law is the responsibity of the judiciary working through a court system. Judges have to take decisions in judging cases and yet much legislation is not well conceived and in law open to abuse resulting in arbitrary decisions creating unjustified prejudice for innocents. In Britain the jury system has had a seminal role in advancing human rights and it embodies an approach to legal decisions which above all is designed to permit freely formed decisions by a group of citizens to defend the freedom of the innocent and prevent arbitrary decisions. Political parties have worked over the centuries to get rid of juries. The encroachment of codified European Law is today the most significant force in the destruction of juries in Britain. PIP consider this to be a serious mistake which is exacerbated by a lack of interest on the part of all major UK political parties. The justifications for preserving juries in the face of the European legislative onslaught will be posted in the Leading Issues section on juries:
| The imperatives of European emancipation.....
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Devolutionary trade-offs ...
  To date the "debates" and "discussions" concerning devolution have not been productive because of the way social questions have been ignored.
The failures of our political system to reflect the preferences of the electorate affect all people irrespective of where they live within the Union. It is therefore natural that such failures will be interpreted to be insensitivity to local and national issues. The solution to this issue is clearly to make the system of governance more responsive to regional preferences. There is a need to sustain a continuity of purpose by shifting our political evolution to uphold any national objectives through a better reflection of the preferences of all, irrespective of the nation they live in. Such an approach would be a means of perfecting our democracy in the sense of making it more responsive to the will of the people.
The solution should not be a retrograde and counter-evolutionary move of deconstruction reversing family and social history by pushing people back into a historic isolation separating them from the larger family they have come to know. Such a family, like all families is not perfect but is a known entity. Top down impositions of devolution become a sort of collectivist response attempting to unpick the DNA of the people of the Union. After 2000 years of social and political evolution the solution to such a valid need is certainly not to distribute our major political shortcomings, associated with the behaviour of political parties, to different assemblies. This simply isolates the populations concerned from the wider community and it exposes them to the same excesses of politicians and political parties to whom "independence" or "nationalism" are only convenient and emotive identities used in support of their self-interested quest for power.
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  Community development....
The economic development of communities is often considered to be a “third world topic” but the forces that sustain poverty are alive a kicking in the developed Member States of the European Union where ethnic discrimination remains an almost endemic issue amongst many in society and the political parties. This is particularly true in Central Europe. Such communities, as the Roma , have been marginalized for over 700 years and continue to face significant discrimination on the part of mainstream society to the degree of extreme prejudice in shortening life spans and denying educational and economic opportunities.
In the case of third world country communities significant funding now goes into “budgetary support” for governments and this has resulted in increasing corruption and the “development business” where contractors and consultants benefit whereas the local communities will often be left with little to show for such “initiatives”.
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1 Leading Issues is an intiativeof Agence Presse Européenne created in collaboration with Portsea Island Post, Emancipation & Real News Online. |
