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I don't often keep an eye on CommentIsFree - there's just too much "comment" for me to get into. But Tim Worstall today highlighted this little one from Peter Tatchell ahead of today's "Republic Day". With uncharacteristic hubris Tatchell says: "But we democrats celebrate June 2 with a vision of what Britain could be: a democratic republic with an elected head of state, a representative of the nation who is chosen by us, the people."

By happy coincidence this week also sees the annual knees-up of the "G8", an event that supremely highlights the error of the tired republican claims typified by "democrats" like Tatchell above. Here we have three monarchies, none of whose "undemocratic" heads of state attend (it would be difficult for all three to attend of course!). So that leaves five republics, just two of which, Italy and Germany, operate in the way Tatchell seems to think most republicans would like. Just as with the three monarchies, the real power in those states is vested in the Prime Ministers and in both cases they are more democratically elected than ours, whilst their presidents are appointments of the legislatures, more or less. The remaining three republics are executive presidencies - the only ones in which the choice of the people actually represents the country concerned in both flummery and policy (though as Peter has recent experience, one might question just how democratic at least one, and for many people two, of those actually are).

But it's not the type of head of state or the way they are chosen that make them democratic or not. This is illustrated by the power these seven men and one woman meeting this week, all but one of them the purest white, seek to accrete to themselves in terms of controlling influence over the rest of the planet, albeit that they only represent just under thirteen per cent of the world's population, and even then, in the case of the likes of Tony Blair and even George Bush, only a quarter of their own people.

Now, don't take this criticism entirely the wrong way - I agree with the general principle that any office that seeks to have any power over or representative function on behalf of others ought to be elected by positive choice rather than inherited and that anyone should have the opportunity to attain such office. I just don't believe that merely replacing our genetic flunkies with elected flunkies has anything to do with real democracy.

As Peter has no doubt found in the replies to his rather uninspiring restatement of the standard republican mush such proposals as his run straight into what David Hume observed two hundred and fifty years ago now: "An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its being established; the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason, and never attributing authority to any thing that has not the recommendation of antiquity."

But as that enlightened Scot also made clear, this should not prevent people imagining and designing better systems in the hope that one day they might be able to persuade people that the current system is so broken as needs more or less complete replacement. And I believe that we are at such a juncture in the evolution of human society. And so as a "true" democrat I would want to look further, much further, than the tired old argument between monarchy and republic.

Hume, in the "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth" (a word conspicuous by its absence in the supposedly Green Mr Tatchell's piece I notice), seems most concerned to prevent both fracturing into so many interests that nobody can come together to make decisions on the part of the whole and factionalising so that one or two ambitious leaders could corral the whole into decisions that serve minority interests. In today's world I suspect he would also be concerned that representative structures should not be capable of being "bought" by any outside influences. And, given the influence this week's meeting at Heiligendamm will wield in our names, this is an even greater and more immediate concern today. And I don't think he would differentiate between being bought by The Bono and Bob Show or the Halliburton-Murdoch Intergalactic Corporation either!

Hume's prescription is devolving powers to the "counties" in his model such that nobody has enough power to be worth buying, or at least power over a big enough area for long enough to make it worth the price. Our structures of centralised representative government were developed when it took days to get to London and weeks to get news and information around the country, let alone the world. We no longer have these limitations either on the speed or scope of information. One thing The Bono and Bob Show proved was that one can now make a popular case easily with new media and viral marketing (as corporations prove daily with their advertising of course). Why should they also have to make their case to one or two hugely powerful administrators at the centre when the power to act should lie in the (invisible) hands of the people they have persuaded of their case already?

But for the monarchists and traditionalists who have read this far with no doubt growing horror, there is a role for a neutral, apolitical figure in Hume's scheme. And we are familiar with the role in most of our everyday lives. It is as a sort of a Chair of Trustees, a body whose powers are strictly limited, and a role in which the present monarch performs quite well in the context of the Commonwealth of Nations. Eventually one might replace such an hereditary holder of such an office as the monarch with a system of jurors, when the desire for a monarch eventually withers. Or, as the Swiss do, have a rotating chair amongst the senior officers of the elected bodies of the commonwealth.

But for now, "democrats" ought not to concern themselves principally with how our "head of state" comes to be in that office, however superficially attractive the debate about whether heredity or election is more democratic, but about why we seem to need these other super-representatives with so much power and influence over our lives at all and whose position and influence will not be altered one jot by whether we have a president or a monarch.

Spotted this at the Adam Smith Institute blog:

The future of rubbish:

So I was pleased to learn of a new, private collection service called Bin & Gone in Yorkshire, which apparently charges £90 a year to ensure householders get a weekly collection, and has bought its own refuse truck to do so. Meanwhile a friend in Hampshire tells me that a body in Romsey also plans a private alternative to the local authority's service (or lack of it), and are putting out flyers to gauge the market. The service "will be provided at minimal cost and include the supply of free dustbin and peddle bin liners as well as a free bin washing service" - rather better than the council's grudging effort.

Of course, a number of local authorities already contract out their refuse collection to private companies. But under this system, householders pay directly for the service they choose, rather than pay for a service they have no choice about, through local taxes. The new trend might be modest at present: but it does show that one of the local authorities' key services can in fact be done better, and more satisfactorily for customers, by private enterprise. Makes you wonder what we pay Council Tax for.

Keep up! There was a discussion about this way back in August last year after an IPPR report on rubbish. I blogged about it and it even got picked up by the Guardian.

Technorati Tags: taxation, waste wars

Today's Observer highlights a story about the Conservative's upcoming report on "Quality of Life" which includes measures to be outlined to "burnish their green credentials". Amongst the measures highlighted is that a future Tory government will ban the provision of "standby buttons" on things such as TVs:

Ban the standby button, say Tories

Conservatives target plasma TVs in radical report on how to tackle global warming

Nicholas Watt, political editor
Sunday September 9, 2007
The Observer

Television sets and other domestic appliances will be fitted with special devices to switch off standby power as part of a radical plan to cut wasteful use of electricity, a special Conservative report will recommend this week.

Now, I know these policy review groups have been going on since sometime shortly after BC ("Beginning of Cameron") but I thought I had heard something like this previously. So taking a quick look around I found this...

July 12, 2006
TV standby buttons will be outlawed

By Lewis Smith and Mark Henderson

THE Government is to outlaw standby switches on televisions and video and DVD players to cut the amount of electricity wasted in the home. etc, etc...

It's not by any means a record time-lapse between original announcement by someone else and the Tories deciding to brand the policy as their own, but thirteen months is really quite impressive. I know it's difficult keeping an eye on what's going on in the big bad world out there, but if you hope to run the country one day, it's quite an important skill I'd have thought.

While we're in the business of announcing what laws we would shred given half a chance, I want to make a plea for every other Lib Dem shadow cabinet member to take a long hard look at the laws which govern their respective portfolios and choose a few to shred. We could even make it a new "target" - ten pieces of legislation each to be added to the bonfire in the next six months (and so too in the manifesto) could be our spokespeople's primary "Key Performance Indicator".

For me, there would be nowhere better to start than the oxymoronic Department of Communities and Local Government. In fact, for preference I'd like us to propose doing much the same to that as we do the DTI - abolish the thing completely. It's simple, snappy and at a stroke would massively increase the quality of our democracy in the UK. Westminster and Whitehall have, in my opinion, absolutely no business overseeing local government, let alone tying it up in tight knots that our local representatives cannot escape. Why on earth do we have to persuade the member for Bolton West about aspects of running our own localities when we have elected another fifty local people to do just that? If government is by the consent of the people, my consent to be governed on local issues is clearly given to local councillors, not MPs.

If there are things that absolutely every locality in England has to do the same way, then make it a national function - Housing Benefit could be directly administered by the same Department for Work and Pensions systems as other benefits, for example. Though as an aside one might prefer pensions and other benefits to be devolved to local authorities as they were when they ran the poor houses and the parish rate paid for the upkeep of those no longer able to work and when city corporations could borrow to provide affordable housing, all based on local needs and local costs of living.

So, come to think of it, there's an idea for Mr Laws - let's do away with the DWP too - there were a whole raft of local ballot measures passed this week accompanying the US mid-term elections that set state based minimum wage levels. What possible fairness is there in insisting that someone can live on the same level of dole or pension in London as they can in Yeovil, say?

C'mon, if we want to be a liberal party root and branch, let our wonderful local representatives do what we elect them to do. Our democracy would be far saner and far more interesting if we did.