TheAgitator.com
Nick Clegg’s Remarkable Little Website
Thursday, July 1st, 2010The URL alone is pretty striking: http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/
It’s the pet project of U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who has made civil liberties a priority of Britain’s new coalition government. The site’s langauge is even more remarkable. The first full sentence reads:
The Coalition Government is committed to restoring and defending your freedom – and we’re asking you to participate.
The word “restoring” is rare candor. It acknowledges that the British government has taken a good amount of freedom in the first place, something governments are generally loathe to concede. Here’s more refreshing language, describing what the site is all about:
We’re working to create a more open and less intrusive society through our Programme for Government. We want to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.
This site gives you the chance to submit, comment on, or vote for ideas about how we can do this. Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.
So if there are any laws or regulations you’d like us to do away with, then submit your idea. If you see ideas here already that you like the look of, then rate them and get them moved up the list. And if there’s more you’d like to say, then talk to others in the comments section for each proposal.
It’s time to have your say. After all – it’s your freedom.
I suppose it remains to be seen what sort of actual policy changes the site inspires. But damn. This is certainly a good start. It’s the kind of thing that might—just might—warm even the jaded, liberty loving hearts of Agitator commenters.
I think we in the United States need to agitate for the same sort of thing. It would be a real shame on us if our former colonial overlords beat us at the game of freedom and liberty.
(P.S. If you’re British, take the “colonial overlords” thing with a grain of salt. We don’t get your humor, either!)
I’ll take hope wherever I can find it…desperate? clueless? I’m still there. This (communication and identification of gov legal impropriety) is a necessary step for bloodless recouping of lost liberty, but the vastly important and difficult step of legal implementation is what I’m not holding my breath over.
The more I hear of this guy the more he sounds like an Agitator reader. Do you think he’s the real deal Radley?
NIce…helps soothe my furor in discussing campaign finance laws with a co-worker…ahhhh
Now this is my kind of Liberal Democrat.
I’m too cynical to believe anything along these lines. I remember when Radley was (rightfully) pretty excited about those Day 1 proclamations of the Obama administration and it looked like he was the real deal. Now we see in many ways he’s actually worse than Bush.
Anyone can put together some great ideas on a website. In fact, perhaps one properly cynical approach would be to try and imagine Obama doing exactly the same thing: a website with pretty little platitudes on it. If that sounds reasonably plausible then don’t go believing it.
Talk is cheap. Let’s see what they do, rather than what they say.
Don’t worry, Radley…NOTHING can warm their empty, barely-beating hearts of stone. But I’m with you. :)
It’s probably just another way of giving people the feeling that they actually have a voice in how they’re governed without actually giving them any power. It really sounds a lot like the suggestion box they put down at city hall. I think the janitor empties it every night.
I mean, when you get right down to it, the number one mission of government is self preservation and the number one threat to its self preservation is the population they govern. Keeping them thoroughly steeped in the delusion that they matter is critical.
I know. I’m very depressing. I hope I’m wrong. But, I’m probably not.
I think I missed an opportunity for humor by failing to say I am agnostic on the issue.
How’s this for cynical. The suggestions will largely be suggestions that we destroy liberty. Other people’s of course. The good people of America seem to almost all want everyone else’s liberty curtailed. I doubt the good people of England are any different.
Paging Cynical in CA – Cynical in CA please report to the Agitator comment area. Thank you.
“It’s the kind of thing that might—just might—warm even the jaded, liberty loving hearts of Agitator commenters.”
Damn. As if on cue….
Nope, not buying it, even for a pound.
The catch?
Sovereignty. Sovereignty is always absolute. Unless that sovereign is an individual, there one will find tyranny.
After all, it has been said many, many times — the Constitution is not a suicide pact. The State will continue to defend itself, lest it cease to be a State. Nope, the honorable Mr. Clegg is just another wolf in sheep’s clothing, I estimate.
[...] HT: Radley Balko. [...]
Look, I know it’s a downer to be so damn pessimistic all the time, but I call it like I see it. I really really really really wish I could get all excited about what politicians say, but they’re just snake-oil salesman tuning into what people want to hear. They’re experts at climbing the cutthroat ladder of political coercion, and by definition the ones who make it to the top are extremely skilled and violent individuals who know what they want and know how to get it.
This is why we read an endless string of endorsements of this politician or that who claim to believe in freedom, but when push comes to shove, the institution demands subservience from its members on pain of excommunication or worse. “We won’t get fooled again,” indeed!!! Perhaps the most ironic lyrics ever sung.
Even if politicians were benevolent djinnis who could grant our every wish, is that the sort of existence as a subject one would desire? What does that say about such a person?
I’m not so much pessimistic anymore as exhausted. I’m just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and shun this evil exercise called electoral politics.
If Britain can turn back their police state, than so can we. Who knows, maybe we’ll actually be able to smoke and eat fatty foods again.
And even smoke whatever it is you’ve been smokin’.
hahahaha! Sorry. I couldn’t resist. Sorry, but my pessimism just can’t be reined in anymore. In fact, last time I reined in my pessimism, my cynicism beat the shit out of it.
It really bothers me that the UK had to get as bad as it is now before someone with any authority finally decided to take this freedom and liberty thing serious. I hope we don’t have to get to their level of police statism first…although we might be pretty close already.
Well, the test is going to be whether what are proposed as laws to get rid of are actually the ones that are got rid of.
A Labour MP (and Minister at the time) proposed a similar idea on a radio programme a few years back. Can’t remember what is was the listeners voted for….either the repeal of the no fox hunting or the right to bear arms, sorry, cannot remember…..but because the public voted for something the Minister wasn’t prepared to accept there was, well, harrumph, harrumph really.
A goodly portion of those on the site will be arguing that the 1972 European Communities Act should be repealed. This is what took the UK into the EU. But given that Nick Clegg is one of the most insistent, pro-EU politicians, this will not survive the culling process.
Now, whether taking the UK out of the EU is a good idea or not (I think it is but so what?) the one thing I can guarantee is that even if that idea wins, Nick Clegg ain’t gonna do it.
So it’s not quite as democratic as you might think…..
I’ll believe it when they start jailing constables and other tyrants for using Section 44 against photographers on the street.
I agree with those taking the “wait and see” approach before congratulating the guy but I do think this is at least intended to be more than just platitudes. A few of the things I’ve read are on his list are scrapping Britain’s national ID card scheme and large scale dismantling of their public surveillance cameras.
Cool, let’s see how many flowers bloom.
If it works, great. More freedom! Yay!
If it doesn’t or it is corrupted, great. More cynicism about and less respect for government! Yay!
And while we’re on the subject of Section 44, we need to deal with cops and security that seem to thing Section 44 exists here in the USA.
http://carlosmiller.com/2010/07/01/we-were-permanantly-banned-from-the-miami-dade-metrorail-for-taking-photos/
Um.
The ConDem government is slashing most oversight into their own activities…not to mention:
*Giving prosecution powers back to the police not the CPS, when the powers were handed over in the first place because of rampant abuse and inconsistent charging decisions.
(Croaker – Want to bet that arrests of photographers are going to SOAR once they can actually charge em directly?)
*Introducing American-style hard limits on immigration.
*A “bank tax” which will heavily impact lending to small businesses.
*Considerably extending the currently small “marginal” zone where 90% of what low-waged people earn is taken away in subsidies (removing the incentive to work).
I could go on for ages. But essentially the Conservatives are all about telling you what’s morally acceptable in their eyes, and the LibDems have signed up for the ride.
It’s been done already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_%28Yes_Minister%29
consider my heart warmed. but then again, i had a similar experience when barry o signed the papers to end gitmo, also read about for the first time on this blog.
I think you’re right and it certainly doesn’t do the cause of freedom any good for those of us who promote it most vigorously to cynically laugh off sincere attempts on the part of those in power to advance that cause.
It’s not that I necessarily always assume that the motives of politicians are suspect no matter what they try to do. It’s simply that I have come to believe that democracy, as currently practiced, makes it nearly impossible to roll back governmental encroachment on liberty. While there certainly have been notable exceptions (ie: the civil rights movement), overall, governmental intrusion is always on the rise despite any promises from politicians to the contrary.
The majority of people are afraid of having to make their own decisions (the definition of freedom). And in a democracy, the majority rules.
If they follow through, it will be the first time that a government has voluntarily given up power.
I have no plan to hold my breath. The jaded and cynical part of me says this is simply propaganda.
I understand healthy skepticism here, but consider my cockles right toasted! If you told me that a DPM in the UK would publicly announce such a desire for major policy change a year ago, I would have scoffed. In one year, many more people are becoming citizens and wondering WTF happened to their liberty, and politicians are taking notice. Hooray for the good guys, I say.
deadcenter – That’s the thing. They just want to push “power” to *local* governments. This removes the far easier task of tracking what central government is up to, and means that you need to fight all over the place (and get derided as “not local”) rather than just a central policy.
When I say “power”, I mean they want to force local governments to follow their policies, despite the fact that coalition controls a minority of local governments by number, and a distinct minority by population.
I bet they’re just using it to collect IP addresses. :)
At least, if it were pro wrestling, that’s what would happen.
“Cool, let’s see how many flowers bloom.”
That is exactly what came to mind when I first read Radley’s post.
Change.org was supposed to do the same thing for us in the uSofA, funny thing, the top ideas were always “end the drug war” or some variation on that theme, but Obama (whose idea this site was) barely addressed the idea the first time (and did so in such a way as to denigrate it), and he totally ignored those ideas in subsequent gleanings from the site.
Windy – Actually, that sounds more like the e-Petitions site for the UK, which has existed for some years. (What, you say, this duplicates the function for party political advantage? Oh yea, government)
From a libertarian perspective, the Brits are being governed by the best possible coalition. The free-market-inclined Tories combined with civil-libertarian Liberal Democrats, with a lot of overlap between the two and relatively little of social conservatism on the one hand and economic statism on the other.
There are a lot of things to complain about, including that the Tories are not nearly as hard-line on markets as Thatcher was (though the economic policies get a lot of attention from people lamenting the shift, that’s been paired with the almost complete extinction of hard-line social conservatism, too). And the great legacy of the original Liberal Party remains ensconced in its Social Democratic trappings (the merger of the two produced the modern LibDems), with an unfortunate enthusiasm for the EU in particular.
But in broad terms, it’s exactly the kind of fusion of the free market Old Right and the civil libertarian New Left which libertarian political strategists have been pining for in the US for decades. Given that this replaced government by a Labour party that used to be explicitly socialist and still has a strong socialist wing, and which was pro-war to boot, the 2010 election produced a more positive shift in British politics than anything Americans have seen in the likes of 1980 or 1994.
Craig, back to reality, please? There’s very little sign of any differences between the Social Democrat right of the LibDem’s, who are *firmly* in control, and the Tories.
The Tories are less free-market inclined than Labour, frankly – and are far more interested in dictating morality on an organised level. Also, they’re far more inclined to push things through over major opposition.
Even their office of budgetary fiddling is having to admit they’re cutting too fast, too soon – and they’re cutting critical portions of oversight and many of the *actually effective* organisations.
(Example: BECTA, whose abolishment is likely to cost (yes, including BECTA’s running costs) several hundred million PER YEAR to schools, and lead to fragmentation in education software and hardware platforms. In practice, with the cuts many schools are simply going to see their IT platforms fall badly behind and become far less relevant, because they don’t have the money to hire the people they’d need to replace BECTA’s services…and there is now NO official standards checking bodies for educational software whatsoever, meaning extremely expensive private testing will be required, per school!)
We’ll see how they handle it when the top two suggestions are relaxing gun laws and restoring the right of self-defense. The best headline the last time a British gov’t polled the people – and got a response like this – was, “The People have Spoken, Damn Them.” And there was not one bit of change in laws or prosecutorial policy.
Again, bit of reality?
Drugs, maybe (probably, even), but not guns. Guns are simply not a British concern the way they are American. And the “right to defence” has never gone away…it’s just that *defence* don’t cover chasing them down the street if they leg it, or shooting your shotgun without warning.