Power from the people

So the people of Manchester said no. They didn't want the "carrot" of public transport investment, instead they objected to the "stick" of paying congestion charges. (Analogies there from the media, they've used that carrot/stick thing 5769 times today).

The problem there: the people. Why didn't the powers that be in Manchester didn't take the hint from Edinburgh and the other place that's name eludes me? People are NEVER going to vote yes on this. Why waste time doing a referendum? Either just do it, Ken Livingstone stylee, which they are legitimately allowed to do, or accept people won't like it and give up on the idea.

People generally don't know stuff. Even clever people, they know about what they know. Votes don't work for this reason. People are asked to vote: they acquire knowledge. Or they don't, but for now we shall credit Joe Public with an inquisitive and intelligent mind. Where do they get this information from? The media, that's where. So in effect, by asking the "people" to vote, the vote is being given to the media. Who aren't renowned for being unbiased and focussing on the facts. They want sensationalism and "this is a good thing which will benefit the greater good" is not sensationalist. The people vote as they are told to, because they believe they have the facts.

Same thing applies when the public are asked to vote on reality TV programmes. There's a problem there with the sort of person that votes on these programmes. The sort of person that pays money for a mostly irrelevant vote. Irrelevant because anyone can predict the outcome: the judges tell the public categorically who to vote for, and the voters follow suit. It always happens. The popular guy never actually wins, it's the judges' favourite that wins. Or in the case of Big Brother, the editing team at Channel 4 lead the votes by carefully selecting what's broadcast.

HBOS is being taken over by Lloyds TSB. Good. Sorted. But the people, who don't have a scoobie about fiscal policy and banking in general and quite like the big posh building in Edinburgh, would have voted "no!!!!! we want it to go under or something, we don't want a takeover, then it would go to that England place". Which wouldn't have resulted in the correct action being taken.

So the public should never be allowed to vote. They don't get it right.

Except, we live in a supposed democracy. We should have a say. It is wrong to impose things on people without consultation. Everyone should be consulted.

A solution: a two stage voting process. The first stage would open to anyone who felt they would be affected by the outcome. This would consist of a series of questions and in order to progress to the second stage, a person would have to demonstrate an understanding of the situation being voted on. This initial stage would have to be carefully constructed so that the likely vote of the person was not revealed, but that their suitability to pass opinion was. Not an intelligent test, not a lot of trick questions so the Mensa members rule the world, it would be a fair test of unbiasedness and willingness to appreciate the facts, which would be made easily and unbiasedly available to allow as many people to access them as cared to find out. This would open up the vote to anyone, so be democratic and should have a reasonable cross section of society represented, but closed to idiots.

Impossible. And quite probably elitist. But how nice it would be.