So, maybe UK is first western country that ISN'T democratic? Biggest protests in years come to no a

So, I had a flick through the search box and didn't find anything on this subject per se.

Now, bit of groundwork first. Most of what I'll be saying unless quoted will be my opinion and am looking to find what other people will be thinking of this situation, either side of the pond or seas.

The coalition government has won the vote to raise tuition fees in England to up to £9,000 per year - amid violent protests in Westminster.

Three ministerial aides have resigned over the issue - as the fee rise passed by a majority of 21 votes.

Scotland Yard says eight police officers have been hurt in clashes between police and students.

In angry scenes, protesters are battling with police and attacking buildings, including the Treasury.

Earlier protesters had forced their way into Parliament Square and pushed hard against lines of riot police in front of the Houses of Parliament.

Violent scenes

It will mean fees being almost tripled, as the government saw its majority cut by three-quarters in a backbench rebellion.

There were 21 Lib Dem MPs who voted against the coalition.

Mounted police were used to control crowds, as demonstrators protested outside the Houses of Parliament.

The London Ambulance Service says 19 people have been treated for injuries - six have been taken to hospital.

BBC News:

Now, there's our backstory. So, for the past few weeks there have been protest after protest regarding the Coalition (conservative and Liberal Democrats) government regarding their decision to raise the cost of going to university from an average of £3,000 a year to £9,000.
For weeks, there have been multiple protests from everyone from students, lecturers, professors and even school pupils who will become the students who would have to pay that amount.

These protests went on in all the major university-harbouring cities, across London, outside Westminster, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool.. hundreds of thousands of voices against the one cause. Indeed, many Lib Dem MP's abstained from voting (coward's way out in my opinion) and several contemplating voting against (which some ended up doing).

Now, the public outcry was justified for the simple reason of the bill tripling, but this wasn't the only argument the Students have. For the record, i'm fully employed and any university study I do my job pays for me. I'm angry about all of this for the simple reason is it's completely justified.

Before the General Election, when Labour was in power one of the Lib Dems' promises (bribes to get into power) was to vote AGAINST any and all plans to raise tuition fees. Obviouisly this was completely opposite to what the case is now. What's this? What happened today? They voted FOR!? Well, that's unheard of! Politicians lying? Ludicrous! So, now we understand the anger of the students and their prospective supporters.

I'm really hoping someone can help me here, I heard on Sky News I THINK (i know, i know but hey i'm on Freeview!) that if the government left it to the universities, simply put the cost per student would be around £4,000. In response, a government representative had said that basically 'we're all in this together, students should be pulling their weight in these times' or words to that effect.

Now, correct me if i'm wrong, but if you loan money to someone, it has to come from somewhere initially, which will be the government. Furthermore, these loans don't have to be paid till the student earns X amount of pounds, i think it's £20,000 (sorry for the lack of researched data, i'm rushing to get this done because I'm off to work soon) so for the foreseeable future, whilst the student is in university, looks for a job and works their way up the payscale to over the payment threshold, the government is out of pocket. I ask of someone to please clarify how this will improve the deficit?

You can't pay a debt with a debt - Mr S

This line was drummed into me by a friend of mine, and always stuck with me. How does giving students endebted money to pay £9,000 worth of loans help any situation at all?

Finally, here's the clincherin our little saga in my opinion.

Youtube - MP's expenses example

This isn't the full story, that would take too long but an idea of what it's all about for those unfamiliar.

Through all of this, MP's continue to receive expenses for anything they can think of.

So, there is our backstory. Now, next will be mostly my opinion, so feel free to skip this bit and provide your own.

As far as I was aware, a democracy was an elected group who ran the country based on what the people wanted. The amount of protests, voices against this whole situation have been immense, I personally haven't seen protests like this in my 23 years experience in the UK. The last I heard of anything like what I've seen were largely a lot more violent, ie. the Toxteth Riots, notorious as the most active protest against conservative policies at the time.

Once again, history has repeated itself. Conservatives gain power, singlehandedly destroy the economy, remove hundreds of thousands of jobs and people raise their voices and they don't listen. Oh, and they rope the royal family into all this by having another 'Marriage'.
Does anyone remember what happened in 1981? Exactly. Make of that what you will.

Mass protest, almost national unanimous agreement that these fees are wrong and yet they are still passed. I always thought a democracy was voiced by the people for the people. That seems to be a total opposite of what has happened in England today.

I know that this is only one problem, but I firmly believed this to be a 'test case' of sorts, how the government reacts to what its people are saying. Basically what this message has sent is 'we don't give a S**t what you think, we'll do what we like, so do one. '

Sorry for this essay, but i wanted somewhere to vent this where people were intelligent enough for a viable response.

Does anyone see the signs of V for Vendetta?

I don't know of a single nation on Earth that is democratic. And there are almost no examples of it in history, save a few ancient societies (and we barely have any proof they were actually democratic in the first place).

Technically we are all Republics. Almost every nation on Earth is now.

But a new form of government has usurped that.

We are now Corporate Republics.

We elect people to office and then the corporations buy them off to vote for the corporate interests.
That is how a Corporate Republic works.

Corporate Republics are very close to Fascism, simply because the actual definition of Fascism is that corporations take over the governmental powers for their own goals.

Don't forget , Nazi Germany was a full fledged Republic when the Nazi Party was brought into power.

The relationship between Corporate controlled Republics and Fascism is hard to differentiate.

Also, technically the United Kingdom is a "Constitutional Monarchy". This means that the monarch has full power but elects to uphold a constitution. The monarch has full ability 100% to dissolve Parliament at any time they wish, over any reason they want.

How the hell can you be a "Democracy" when you have a Monarch (King or Queen), that has full power to dissolve elected bodies on a whim?

That is a Constitutional Monarchy. No where close to Democracy.

Like I said before, there are no Democracies. They don't exist. It's a myth, a fairy tale to subdue us.

Also, people call China communists. But guess what?

Their name is the PRC. Peoples Republic of China.

What about North Korea?
DPRK.
Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

Iran?
IRI.
Islamic Republic of Iran.

Remember the USSR?
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Point is, there are no "Democracies" technically.

Living in a democracy would be a nightmare
you seriously don't want the people voting for things...you want them to vote in representitives so they can contemplate and take the necessary time to consider all angles, then vote.

If there was a true democracy. it would end up with whatever was popular sounding at the time being the law

I vote nobody pays any taxes, the government gives everyone a ferrari, and we make the standard minimum wage 3000$ an hour! yay

Democracy = Fail.

clegg also said he was going to completly change the whole politics system, not sure what he wanted to do. its just another case of say what the ppl want to hear but dont deliver when you get in to power. its all lies just to get the votes. this is whats wrong with the system. if a politician says something to get votes he should be made to fullfill them. if he doesn't then he should be kicked out.

Good points. Never thought of it like that, no democracy!

But I thought the ideal of protest was that it was a way of the public voting against this.

The question now is, if we're against a NWO and democracy, what's the happy medium?

Yes in a Democracy, the majority can pass any rules they want and attack the minorities.

This was the primary reason that nations turned to Republicanism. Mob rule is dangerous.

In a Constitutional Republic, originally it was designed so that everyone's Civil Liberties (Natural Rights) are protected by the government.

This was intended to prevent the majority from using the government apparatus to oppress the minorities.

However, the current political atmosphere clearly indicates that even this plan went wrong at some point.

In Corporate Republics, the minority use the government to oppress or control the majority. The tables were turned on the people and the ruling classes found loopholes to exercise far more control than they were ever intended to have. For example under the table bribes, excess campaign contributions, etc.

Corruption can take hold in any form of government.

The will of the people has been ignored, the politicians broke a promise and tripled the tuition costs. I wonder how many of these guys will be reelected? Do they not understand how making university more inaccessible will cause worse issues for their country? Can anyone explain to me the reason for the raise in rates?

reply to post by Longy4eva


Democracy equals socialism

You people where just conned, lol.

The closest we can get to democracy is to vote in the government which broadly represents our views. But in practice governments of all persuasion renege on some promises. As for listening to the voice of the people, let's face it the popular choice would have been not to go into Iraq. Plus we were sold down the river re the EU. We were promised a referendum but it never happened because they know what the result would have been.

My understanding of things is that the Tories decided to raise tuition fees because of a report, sanctioned by the labour party, called the Browne report- see this link for more details:

hereview.independent.gov.uk...

It states that tuition fees do need to be uncapped. However, Labour, being Labour, decided to delay the report, so that the findings would only be revealed after the election- sweeping it under the carpet, as they did repeatedly during their most recent tenure. The Tories made no promises about not raising tuition fees, Lib Dem's did. I think the majority of people will view them as the villains, and their PR will suffer a great deal (although obviously things become much more clouded because of the coalition).

The economy has actually recovered thus far under Conservative. The thing I do not understand is all these people villifying the Tories for making cuts- should we continue in Labour's train of thought? Spend, spend, ignore, ignore. How is that in any way logical? We have to make cuts because our debts are too high- would you rather have income tax greatly increased?

I suppose, though, that the real villains of the whole scenario are the banks. Labour allowed the banks to act the way they did, but the banks have so much power now- though Labour theoretically can stop them, that, is in fact, an illusion.

Disclaimer: I do not vote, seeing as no party is even remotely trustworthy, but I am trying to be impartial.

im a uk voter..... its our own fault...... we have no one to blame but ourselves.
we didnt vote in a single party we had to make do with a so called coalition..... we have rolled over with every single desison made by this bas***isation of government . all because they tell us its in our best intrests we are all in this together!
we never caused the situation we are now in but we have to pay for it.

its time to stand up and be counted. take back our country now or give up the fight forever.



remeber the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
(sorry about the spelling never been my strong point)

im gonna take some flak for this i know but i say bring back toni blair the man done more for the country than any prime minister in my life time. until the whole war thing mite i add. (i certanly didnt and dont support war with any one)

this of course is only my oppinion. as a good friend likes to say oppinions are like a***holes we all have one and they all stink.

The uk gov like all our govs do not take any heed on any of our opinions as we are not classed to have an opinion worthy of them taking notice.

thats what we have to live with and always has been this way.

reply to post by andy1033


Pft, not me I voted labour. They're all crap, but at least they don't squeeze every penny like these shower do!

Originally posted by Longy4eva
Good points. Never thought of it like that, no democracy!

But I thought the ideal of protest was that it was a way of the public voting against this.

The question now is, if we're against a NWO and democracy, what's the happy medium?

In my opinion there are several potential types of Government that we can use to replace our current broken system.

We need something new though, because every type of government attempted so far has become an utter failure and ends up oppressing the very people it was meant to protect.

Just to list a few types of governments to get you started:

Virtual Democracy (or E-Democracy) , where everyone uses advances in communications technology (like the Internet) to vote on everything in real time. This has many pitfalls though, but in many other ways is superior to our current systems. This is closely related to "Open Source Gov't".
Virtual (Or Electronic) Democracy



AI Technocracy, where super advanced Artificial Intelligence computers are used to dictate the rules and enforce them against the citizenry. This is a bad choice though, for obvious reasons. The AI will have no mercy on us, and will probably prove far more oppressive than even Hitler's Nazis. Technology is the means to controlling the populations.
Technocracy (slightly different than a AI controlled Technocracy)
Closely related to Cyberocracy.
Cyberocracy


Ecotopia, where the ultimate goal of government is to protect the environment. Human life is not considered worth saving if it endangers nature. This is a highly authoritarian style of government as well.
Ecotopia

We have Consensus Gov't and Collaboration Gov't.
These are mixes of other forms of government closely related to Republicanism and Democracy, and some examples already exist to be examined.
Collaborative Govt
Consensus Gov't

Ergatocracy
Very similar to Communism.
Ergatocracy

Geniocracy.
Promoted by the Raelian cult.
geniocracy


Isocracy.
Related to forms of Anarchism.
Isocracy

Panarchy.
Basically each citizen gets to choose their own individual form of government without having to move to somewhere else.
Panarchy

Xerocracy.
Basically whoever spreads information the furthest, and has the most followers, rules.
Xerocracy
Closely related to Videocracy. Videocracy


There are tons more to list, and it would take months to go over every form of gov't possible. Some of these are mixes with other forms, or ideologically based.

You can even come up with your own form of Gov't just by thinking outside the box on your own free time.

I am not very fond of many of these forms of Gov't, so I am open to any suggestions that anyone has.

I am bored and wanted to share some of these links just to spur your imagination.

Maybe one of you will come up with a decent form of Gov't one day. Who knows?
I have faith.

I guess in a nutshell it is impossible to please everybody, therefore the ideal form of government doesn't exist. I'd say a government much like the one we have now would probably fare well, if they knew what the term empathetic meant and employed it in their work on a daily basis.

The problem with today's government is even in the house of commons, the benches are comprised of people who have never had to work 9-5, monday to friday just to pay the mortgage, and fund their own transport, and everything else that goes with being working - middle class. They simply don't know how it works, and until somebody who has been in that position gets into the commons and knocks some sense into the rest of them, it'll never happen.

A good example of this is this: I'm from Liverpool, Scouse accent and all the rest. Most people in the UK can spot the accent a mile off. A Scouser can probably sniff another one out from 20 miles, *insert Scousist joke here* Anyway, our "Local" (i use the term loosely) MP was a man who claimed to be from Dovecot, quite a hard up area in Liverpool, not known for its finesse or upper classity. A normal neighbourhood in a big city. Anyway, my point is as it turned out, he had indeed had family in Wavertree. He himself however was from Chester, but spend most of his childhood in some boarding school, then his family paid his university fees to study politics.

Go figure. I firmly believe when a collection of people like those found on ATS, those who are intelligent, yet know how it is to build things from the ground up enter parliament, this country will see itself favour the masses in a much better way.

Possibly. Or we could all go power mad and use expenses to buy an 80m yacht

reply to post by Longy4eva


Democracy only works when the state excepts the peoples wishes.

Take prop 215 in Cali for example. Voted in by the people, excepted by the state of California, but not excepted by the Feds.

So much for democracy huh?

It's just another scam to make people believe they have a choice, when in reality we have NO choice and the capitalist exploitative system will continue making you all wage slaves, and convincing you that you are free.

Governments don't run things, capitalists do. Everyone blames the government when in reality it's the economic system that enslaves you. Government is just a tool that is used by the capitalists to keep you under control, and working for the system that makes a minority ruling class (capitalists class) so wealthy that no law can touch them.
Government is just the representative of the capitalist class, and is required for them to maintain their power and control of the economy. Government does not represent the people, it represents the capitalist class, which is who is really in control.

Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means for producing and distributing goods (the land, factories, technology, transport system etc) are owned by a small minority of people. We refer to this group of people as the capitalist class. The majority of people must sell their ability to work in return for a wage or salary (who we refer to as the working class...
The working class are paid to produce goods and services which are then sold for a profit. The profit is gained by the capitalist class because they can make more money selling what we have produced than we cost to buy on the labour market. In this sense, the working class are exploited by the capitalist class. The capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class whilst reinvesting some of their profits for the further accumulation of wealth.

www.worldsocialism.org...

The UK is no more, or less, democratic than any country. We have a world wide capitalist system, world wide exploitation.

See the way Osborne blatantly refuses to give direct answers to straightforward questions, and seemingly has lied about the UK debt. It's sickening.

www.youtube.com...

Incidentally, Osborne attended the Bilderberg meeting last year.

Originally posted by the cynic jester
The will of the people has been ignored, the politicians broke a promise and tripled the tuition costs. I wonder how many of these guys will be reelected? Do they not understand how making university more inaccessible will cause worse issues for their country? Can anyone explain to me the reason for the raise in rates?

yes, it is quite simple, the more expensive it is to gain education that leads to a highly paid job, the more likely the peasant scum and poor are unable to afford it, it ensures only those with money can ever afford to go for education which leads to highly paid jobs.

it reserves the highly paid jobs for the well off in order to maintain the status quo, and means the poor peasants can only ever take or be qualified enough to do the low paid menial jobs.

we cannot have poor peasants climbing up through the system and working next to mr cameron or lord whatever now can we. we need to widen that gap and keep the poor away from their jobs.

£150 at mcdonalds is enough to live off per week, why are the students moaning? they are ungrateful(sarcasm).

Originally posted by wcitizen
See the way Osborne blatantly refuses to give direct answers to straightforward questions, and seemingly has lied about the UK debt. It's sickening.

www.youtube.com...

Incidentally, Osborne attended the Bilderberg meeting last year.

Also, Osborn is a close friend of Nat Rothschild, heir to the Rothschild banking business
www.dailymail.co.uk...

Now you can understand how he became Chancellor of the Exchequer.