“Just when we need it most, politics in this country is in dire trouble. The expenses issue is in practical terms a complete irrelevency – its the lack of any imaginitive and bold ideas for the future that is the real issue. MPs expenses are only a symptom of the disease.”

Isn’t it really the case that, like many things latched onto by the media, that this is a proxy war over other issues that might suffer from “social acceptability bias”.
I think there are a host of attitudes and “values” advanced by the baby-boomer generation that simply can’t be tackled openly and directly, and so they are manifest in apparent trivia of: “BBC fakery” and “MPs expenses” scandals… they belie more profounder attitudinal, moral, even philosophical conflict deep beneath the surface.

There are many attitudes or policies people will covertly espouse, but would not like to be caught espousing them; and would not vote for them, and yet they smoulder on.
I would expect plenty more piffle being given undue weight by the media, because they can smell dissent, but can’t quite locate it.

That’s why I said that the elected representatives would propose and carry out policy. They could head up ministries just as happens now. The big difference is that Parliament would not be able to actually pass any laws, that would be decided by the people. The only reason for not doing this would be that the people can’t be trusted to make their own decisions. If that’s the case, why even pretend to be a democracy?

Anyway, the forthcoming European and county council elections will be very interesting, both for the level of turnout and how the minor parties perform.

It would have to be the most secure website in the world, perhaps the cost would be worth it.

There does need to be some structure to parliament with ministries needed, and constituencies represented.