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Blair Gibbs: The name game politicians ignore
THE English like petitions, even if, historically, our politicians do not.
When the third Chartist petition – advocating voting rights for working men – was handed in to Downing Street in 1848, the disenfranchised working-class were hoping for a better response.
Almost two million signatures in an era before mass electronic communication was not a bad effort.
Unfortunately, MPs refused to hear the petition, a mass protest meeting on Kennington Common became just a nice day out, and no progress was made on extending the franchise for the best part of 20 years.
Even despite the fact that petitions don't have a very successful track record in changing politicians' minds, the biggest petition now doing the rounds via email seems even less likely to succeed, given that it requires politicians actually to stop doing something, rather than to start giving people something that they are owed.
It is the work of Peter Roberts, a member of the Association of British Drivers (ABD) whose petition – which closes next Tuesday – is on the somewhat less fundamental issue of congestion charging, and, in particular, against the introduction of a punitive road-pricing scheme to charge motorists extra for every mile that they drive.
Hosted by the Downing Street website, this attempt at citizen
"e-democracy" has so far (1.2 million votes and counting…) been met with a similar response from modern government; namely amused toleration.
Although it has increased public awareness and may have upset some civil servants, the politicians have made up their mind: big new taxes on motorists now beckon.
This outcome won't surprise the majority of people who are turning off in their millions from mainstream politics. The public simply no longer has faith in the way we do government in Britain.
A recent TaxPayers' Alliance/ ICM poll found that 60 per cent agreed that "politicians have almost no experience of managing the vital things they're in charge of, they aren't in touch or competent, so whichever party wins, nothing will improve".
It isn't just that politicians don't listen; people now accept they can't deliver anything tangible even if they wanted to – unless, of course, it involves a new regulation, tax or other imposition.
The tax burden is the highest for 25 years, council tax has doubled and the average household now pays 600,000 in tax over their lifetime. Yet, despite all this money, in return we get waste, mismanagement and sub-standard public services, all managed by incompetent politicians.
Health spending has doubled in real terms but the NHS has bigger waiting lists than France and Germany combined, more drug rationing, and worse cancer survival rates.
Our education system is a shambles and is leaving us less able to compete with rising powers in Asia. Despite some
of the highest fuel taxes in the world, funding for roads has been slashed and congestion has soared.
We have the highest crime rate in Europe and our criminal justice system has collapsed.
This catalogue of arrogance and incompetence isn't helped by the fact that a political consensus has developed on tax over the past few years.
All main parties support the present level of spending and, by implication, the high tax burden.
To add to all this, they are now colluding over taxpayer-funded political parties.
The MPs who've voted themselves higher allowances, bigger pensions and shorter working hours at our expense are now clubbing together to demand that we bail their parties out of bankruptcy and pay for the professional spin-machines that they employ.
This is all fuelling a growing divide in Britain between a self-satisfied metropolitan political class with too much power, too few good ideas and no real accountability for failure, and the general population who think differently, talk in normal language and work too hard and have too many big bills to worry about melting glaciers.
People increasingly don't vote because this tight elite agree on almost everything and the smug consensus shuts out the public almost entirely.
This means there isn't really anyone speaking up for taxpayers, apart from grassroots groups like the ABD and the TaxPayers' Alliance who are both sponsoring online petitions (for any good they will do).
Most people who sign petitions do so with tongue in cheek. We know it is not going to transform the world because we know that politicians don't listen.
But the greater tendency for individuals to sign petitions proves one point. And it is this. We need government listening more, doing less, and giving back ordinary families more of their own money to spend on their own priorities.
Our politicians have a shameful record when it comes to improving services and spending taxpayers' money wisely. A million-signature petition won't change that.
But after more than a decade of high taxes, the public are beginning to appreciate Ronald Reagan's political maxim: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."
Blair Gibbs, campaign director of The TaxPayers' Alliance, Britain's independent grassroots campaign for lower taxes and less government waste, which is soon launching a regional branch to represent Yorkshire taxpayers – www.taxpayersalliance.com
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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