Question Time: I Answer The Questions

 

First of all, bear in mind that I will be continually revisiting this page to add new answers. If you want to submit a question, leave it as a comment on this page.

Question 1

In modern day society, the rise of the quaternary sector is occurring at an exponential level, do you agree that the MEDCs will prevail within this sector, and the production of computer chips such as the Nvidia 8800GS should be kept strictly to countries that have an increasing amount of wealth, such as silicon valley in California?

This is a really good question. I think the rise in the availability of jobs in the sectors concerned are only possible due to a renewed and consistent investment in education in the western world. Without such an investment then the highly-skilled workforce that industries such as technology, research and development need in order to prosper. Intellectual services such as this are becoming a key part of the global economy and the West does have the lead here by being the founders of these industries and also for maintaining them through the use of good quality education. Increasing amounts of jobs available, which herald the rise of technology or other “intellectual” industries into a new age of society need, however, to be brought around the world to make a better difference on a global economy. Growth cannot be contained or held by the West alone as saturation points will be met sooner rather than later.

However, spreading of these industries can only be realistically achieved through the work of organisations such as OLPC which is promoting and encouraging more developing nations to invest in technology in their classrooms. This will hopefully bring the ubiquity we have with technology in Western classrooms to those in African and parts of Asia. If we use the work of the $100 laptop to sow the seed for the new digital age in these areas then the investment now will pay off in twenty years when there is a much wider workforce available to work in these new, highly-skilled and highly-educated industries. Starting with schools, we can move third world nations to get more of their students into universities and from there into jobs with the high-tech firms.

But saying that, we also need to encourage more investment in education in our own country. We can get more young people to have a degree and this can only lead to a higher number of potential properly-qualified workers for these industries and this will help keep the industry growing, which is beneficial not only to the national but also the global economy.

In regards to Nvidia chips, both that company and the new workers in the Third World can be benefited by spreading the availability of both the tools to gain the qualifications and the jobs themselves to other countries because Nvidia will find labour costs significantly lower in places such as Kenya or Nigeria or Thailand, and the populations will benefit also due to the new jobs – most of which would be higher-paid than those available to unskilled workers which would go towards increasing the wealth of those nations.

Question 2

Why do you continue to support democracy as a form of government despite knowing its flaws and ability to be used as a tool to inconvenience the minority?

Democracy is, as Winston Churchill said, “worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” But I support democracy as I believe it allows transparent verdicts on a government, and it allows the public to get rid of a particularly bad government by simply voting otherwise. Surely this is better than under dictatorships where the only way of removing a despot is to pick up a gun and fight?

It is argued, quite fairly, that once a government is in place then it becomes an “elected dictatorship”. This is certainly a valid argument against the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, who had large parliamentary majorities and could push any legislation they liked through. But it is equally important to understand that these governments do not serve forever, as in the UK we have a 5-year limit between general elections that must be honoured, if not then the Queen dissolves the legislature and all law-making power and authority is dispelled. The Queen can also sack a particularly bad Prime Minister and replace them with one of their choosing. And if things get particularly bad and the Government rebels and refuses to go, then the Queen has her army to use to otherwise get rid of the government, although this last scenario is extraordinarily implausible in a stable democracy such as ours.

The electoral system e use does have bias in the fact that winners take all of the available seats, and nationally the system distorts the process to build large majorities to one particular party. The system also placed a greater need on a Conservative candidate to outperform his Labour counterpart to gain the same amount of representation. But the advantages of this are the strong majority governments that are formed, and this goes against having to have weak coalition or minority governments.

In regards to voter minorities, most voters will fall under the ideological characteristics of either Labour, the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats. Real minorities in the UK are extremist parties such as the BNP or RESPECT. The production of strong majorities for the more mainstream parties therefore keeps these bad parties out of power and prevents disastrous changes and swings to and from the left and right, and keeps the country politically stable. The views of these minorities are not ignored as they have just as much right to representation through council or the use of petitions and protest marches as other party activists and supporters.

Question 3

It seems that a lot of the decisions being made in government at the moment are being restricted because of political confrontation and consequences. Decisions which should be primarily economic and take social matters into account are being complicated because politicians have their own political stability (in other words 'popularity') to take into account, so they can help with their re-election.
It seems to me that the only way this problem could be solved is to not have politicians chosen by the people, but then this would obviously have serious consequences. Is there another solution?

It’s true that many decisions made by the government can be seen as more political then actually beneficial to the population. Conservatives such as me would obviously say that the £2.7bn tax rebate by Gordon Brown following the 10p fiasco was not to give back to the lowest-paid what is rightfully theirs, but rather to (unsuccessfully) buy off the population in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

But the question is good, why are decisions seen to be so politicised? There are a lot of upcoming decisions in parliament that will go down the political route, not for popular consensus reasons or anything like that. The 42-day detention bill for terrorism suspects looks like it is going down this path; the Labour Government is panicking to get its MPs on side, not just because they want the bill passed, but to spare a humiliating defeat in the House that will only add further pressure to the Gordon Brown Government. I support my party’s stance that holding people this long without trial is wrong and that we should make the police more efficient then just giving them more time to work inefficiently to do this. This is not a police state, and the government does not have the moral right to imprison people it thinks are terrorists, as that definition is, surprisingly, quite an elastic term.

The fact that decisions come down to be seen as “party-political” is a fact of our political system, where political parties have a very tight rein on their MPs with the party whip system. However, in matters such as the Embryology Bill, MPs can and do get “free votes” on certain parts of the bill which using a party whip is inappropriate. You cannot force people to believe certain things, like the amount of time an abortion should be carried out, especially if Members of Parliament have religious or cultural beliefs.

But we need to remember, parties only usually use the whip to push through legislation they think is beneficial to the country. We place an amount of trust in MPs as our representatives and we need to honour this b letting them get on with the job in hand. Admittedly, allowing more free votes would be a good idea, but for some divided issues we need consensus in the political parties or there is simply no point in having political parties. And I believe political parties are essential as they give the nation as a whole better avenues to find representation then fringe groups – political parties have wide ideologies that appeal to a lot of people; fringe parties are usually dangerously extremist and we need to be careful of this.

Question 4

Little Brook, NV has one barber in the whole town. For some reason, one of the laws in the town is that every man in town must be clean-shaven. Further, every man either must shave himself or be shaven by the barber, and the barber may only shave those that don’t shave themselves. So, the question is: who shaves the barber?

At first I thought this was a bit of a jokey question, but I can provide a serious answer to this. The question at hand is more: “Why doesn’t Little Brook change the law?”

Towns can use local government to challenge and overturn bizarre or antiquated laws. The population could do this by petitioning the town hall or by ordering a judicial review of the situation. At any rate, I think this law would go as far breaching the Human Rights Act by not allowing freedom of expression through facial hair.

We have all seen the Simpsons episode where there is an old prohibition law that is reinforced and then dispensed with. Little Brook should go down this path and allow more serious laws to be enacted, ones that actually benefit the community, like adding more schools or reducing crime, and save the manpower and financial cost of policing this rather ridiculous regulation.

Question 5 - Updated 13 July 2008

To what extent do you believe that David Davis was mad to stand down as an MP to fight a by-election on the issue of 42-day detention?

I think that as Shadow Home Secretary he was in a position to do something when the Conservative Party wins the next election, as he would have then gone to the Home Office and could have easily reversed their policy. It's a missed opportunity but I have firm belief that successor Dominic Grieve is of the same persuasion and will do what Davis would have done.

But I think that David Davis is a rarity in politics - he is truly principled and doesn't sell those principles to the highest bidder. Civil Liberties is something he believes strongly in and he went to a lot of trouble to actually have a sort-of referendum on the issue. However I feel this idea, full of good intentions that is is, was sunk by the lack of a "serious" candidate from the Labour Party. I'm sure the Miss Great Britain Party and the Monster Raving Loonies were great fun to campaign with but it is Labour shying away from it.

I don't want the UK going down the same road as the US with the Patriot Act, which incidentally (and probably illegally) allows the US to demand information on anyone even from companies based in other sovereign states. The lines between America and the Free World are at threat by this astonishingly evil piece of legislation, and I'm a bit embarrassed to know that American conservatives - similar and different to the UK strand - passed this.

Still, back to Davis. Principled man, great to see it being played on and taken up in politics, but maybe a tiny bit "mad" for abandoning the chance to be in the position himself to correct this injustice.