Public to choose policies as coalition gets the X Factor, bellows the Guardian, getting all excited over the fact that the leader of the Commons, Sir George Young, who really should know better, has indicated he wants to press ahead with government by public approbation in the New Year.
In effect that means the government float ideas, the public (yikes!), votes, and the popular items become bills. I wrote this post just over a year ago, when the idea was first mooted by – god help us all – Simon Cowell! It looks no better now. (I had thought the idea was so mind-numbingly stupid, and potentially dangerous, it would sink without trace.)
So, how wonderful is that – the government is totally abrogating its responsibility and passing the buck? Government according to the lowest common denominator and, believe me, that’s pretty damn low.
So, when the lunatics vote for a cull of the sick and disabled (oh, wait – that’s happening), or the removal of the homeless to camps (give ’em time, it’ll come – London 2012 would be my guess), Cameron and his equally twattish mates can just smile smugly and say “Well, it was your idea. . .”
Before embracing this idiocy – and surely nobody with more intelligence than an oyster can think, seriously, that this is a good idea – just take a very close look at the cretins, fruitcakes, Jeremy Kyle fans and assorted dimbulbs who infest the Mail’s, and other tabloid’s, comment threads – the Guardian’s allegedly more upmarket CiF isn’t immune either.
Or, next time you go to the pub – any pub – pay close attention to the intellectual level of discussion and conversation. Assuming you can find enough people not talking about football.
Alternatively, consider the TV programmes that are most popular – trivial pap for the masses, who just hoover it up. Or the fact that people actually, deliberately, and with dumbness aforethought, spend money on celebrity rags like OK its even more downmarket litter-mates. I suspect more people read that shit than actually read the “broadsheets” (though few, if any, of the quality papers actually are broadsheets any longer).
The problem is, the great bulk of the population in Britain, as in many other countries, is not, en masse, overly bright, something which I explored in more detail here. The situation is, in a less extreme form (for now), not too dissimilar from that described in Cyril Kornbluth’s short story, The Marching Morons (Kornbluth spotted the trend – that the population, on the whole, is getting dumber – a couple of generations ago).
By the way, last time I wrote something along those lines, I was accused of being an intellectual. That it was meant as an insult did rather make my point for me.
So I ask, in all seriousness, do you really want to give these people any influence over your future whatsoever?
It won’t, in fact, be a plebiscite – it will be limited to computer users, because you’ll have to vote online (so who’s going to stop kids voting, using their parents’ names, or convicted felons voting for prison closures?). Worryingly, I suspect some people will think, if people can use computers, they must be intelligent, mustn’t they?
Well, no, actually using a computer isn’t that difficult. Hell, 5 or 6 year old kids can use PCs, it’s really not hard. But would you want the kids voting?
If you want to get a feel for the intelligence of the online community, the aforementioned newspaper comment threads are a good place to start. Blogs are good, too.
Many bloggers are excellent – intelligent, well informed, literate and able to communicate their ideas – but there are several hundred million blogs out there – seriously – and they, for the most part, are abysmal.
There are, in all seriousness, bloggers who have the intelligence and literary skills of a whelk (probably the good looks, too!). And they, and others like them, I’m sorry to say are in the majority, and sub-literacy is rampant.
I exclude from any criticism of writing badly those bloggers writing in English as a foreign language, for the same reason I think that those people who find hilarious the quaint signs in English, in foreign countries, are pillocks. How good is your Japanese or Urdu, sunbeam?
Fortunately – or otherwise – you don’t have to take my word for it. Just search Google for blogs in general, or by subject. I guarantee you’ll find more blogs you’ll wish you hadn’t than those you want to bookmark and revisit.
If you want a sampling of seriously good blogs as a basis for comparison (though I’m sure, if you haven’t already posted an abusive comment, you’re more than capable of making your own decisions 
), check out the list in the sidebar. They’re worth a look (and no, there’s nothing in it for me).
But, back to my point, this government wants the sort of people who, in effect, are dumb enough to think Gillian McKeith is a star to help formulate policy – is that, in any conceivable universe, even sane?
The Morons really are on the march, and they’ll be trampling all over your democratic rights some time very soon.
Oh, and anyone who thinks that the government won’t continue on its merry way, doing exactly as it likes, regardless of how you vote, is probably deluding themselves. If they’re not, this is going to be the most godawful fuck-up in British political history.
Have a nice day…
