Of course the site is going to be politically biased left of

Comment on Election 2010 Conservative Petitions and Banning Fox Hunting by David.

Of course the site is going to be politically biased left of center since that’s where my political beliefs generally reside (not in all areas, but mostly). I’ve never suggested the site was anything but what it is, a privately owned website (blog) that’s for discussing politics.

I’ve had a fair number of right-wing (not center right, you know which party supporters I refer to) that believe this site is run my either the Labour party or by a Lib/Lab/Con pact to keep a particular right-wing party out of power :-) Hence the tag line for the site:

“UK General Election 2010 site is not affiliated with any political party including Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, Greens, BNP”

Which is true, but it doesn’t mean I’m not biased, or course I’m biased, everyone reading this is biased to their own political beliefs. Being biased does not mean you can’t be fair in dealing with political debate though, I don’t pretend to be 100% perfectly fair, but I try. If I were biased in dealing with political debate I’d delete perfectly valid, well thought out arguments that are hard to deal with by debate and I’ve never done that.

I was not using the fox hunting ban as some kind of desperate call to arms, (I had no idea it was such a big issue with voters) it was a clear example of how useless the Conservative policy to listen to petitions will be in practice since if with a clear majority in parliament (which the Conservatives fortunately do not have) they would almost certainly repeal the hunting ban and that would inevitably result in a petition that will gain more than 5% countrywide support and the Tories will be forced to take a second, second look at the hunting ban and if they had repealed it, it’s highly unlikely they’d ban hunting again!

What’s the point in having a petition policy if it won’t result in changes to legislation etc…?

That is what this article was about, not the rights and wrongs of the hunting ban per se. I did not expect this article to generate a debate on hunting ONLY, in hindsight of course it would, but at the time I was looking for discussions on the petition policy.

I think this petition idea would be worth pursuing if it resulted in not just a debate in parliament, but the possibility of referendums that the people could decide on. I think that would be a great idea, though I think we’d need more than 5% support (maybe 10%) via petitions to force a referendum on an issue.

For example I’d have no problem with the Conservatives giving the people a referendum on the hunting ban, (we know what the result would be) but I do have a problem with a pro hunting party pushing through legislation that has no major impact on the country (doesn’t do much to the economy either way for example) when the majority of the electorate do not want hunting as it used to be.

Maybe a risk of a referendum on our membership of Europe would force the government to actually explain to us the pros and cons of being in Europe so we can fully understand why we are currently in Europe etc… I don’t know how I’d vote on such a referendum since I don’t understand the issue enough. I think I’m generally pro Europe, but it’s from a position of ignorance!

David