Listening. #
Posted Thursday 16th October 2008 13:52 GMT
If nothing else the current administration really do push the limits of the adage, "never attribute to malicious intentions that which can be ascribed to mere incompetence."
It's the setting up a site with what does actually genuinely seem to be the belief that people actually want them to do what they're doing, that the public outcry on tracking, filing, databasing and losing the backups to Nigeriam scammers, is some kind of inconvenient vocal minority. (Funnily enough, when a vocal minority says something that agrees with their aims, it's taken to be overriding public opinion.)
Where it falls down, and Ms. Smith is one of the worst culprits, is that they simply don't seem to possess the ability to look at the results, think for a bit, and say, "okay, you don't want us to do that, maybe we'll have a bit of a rethink." Sadly, the way the political system works, unless you're very very lucky your vote is probably completely ineffective compared to a relatively small number of people in swing/marginal constituencies, who are on the receiving end of a combination of election-time bribes and bogeyman stories about how "the other lot" are going to threaten your house price, job, and pension - so you've got no chance of anything ever being fixed.
Problem is, elected representatives might be elected, but most of the time they're hardly acting as representatives. Does the overriding majority of Jacqui Smith's constituency *really* want ID cards?


