And have the peasants being able to see what they were up to?

Not bloody likely, methinks!

Something positive to counter the inordinate sway BB holds over uk.gov.

As well as meaning you can see through it may also mean that you can''t see it at all...

[Thanks to Terry Pratchett for the insight!]

...you could gather all of a ministers internet activity, then pass it on to a tabloid or two, I'm sure there must be company's out there that could see the whole of the internet? There's bound to be the odd 'leak' here and there, after all, no systems infallible!

then we'd have full transparency, perhaps there could be some lobbying arranged??

...oh there already is??

In my opinion lobby groups make a complete farce of the whole democratic process as they seem to hold far more sway on government decision making than the electorate, which is the opposite of what I thought the point of democracy was.

Also if they had nothing to hid in these meetings why make a big deal on privacy. Westerners love to critcise other regimes and hold themselves up as some beacon of freedom and justice but frankly our governments stink.

Many Westerners don't actually stop and think about how far from 'Democracy' we really are now.

In an ideal world, our local representative (in the UK, our MP) would say to 'his' constituency "I am a member of such-and-such a party so will vote the party line on all issues UNLESS you, the electorate, tell me differently."

So if Intolerance Brown says "We are going to make Extreme porn illegal" and three women stand up and say "Yay, way to go big guy" but three million PFYs say "No, hands off our online BDSM stash" then Democracy steps in and the three women get told "Sorry, majority wins in a Democracy.".

Unfortunately what we get is MPs who will almost always vote the Party line regardless of what they tell the electorate, or what the electorate might want (and that is when the beggars even bother going into work - ever seen the House of Commons on a 'business-as-usual' day? Almost empty!) and a bunch of unelected (and unsackable) Eurocrats making decisions based on what they want (and not necessarily what the general populace wants or needs) which the British government then adopts without any consideration as to how the British public feel about it.

The biggest problem at the moment is that any time one of our political parties comes up with an idea, the others all jump on the "Me, too!" bandwagon and so there's bugger-all difference between them (except the Lib Dems who always seem to say they will fix the world's ills by raising taxes... at least, that's what it seems they are saying. If it's not, I suggest they get a new PR company!)

Roll on the Revolution...

So, what happens now?

Meetings which at least has government oversight are replaced with a few people meeting "privately" during which certain views are exchanged with no oversight at all.

*claps*

"then we'd have full transparency, perhaps there could be some lobbying arranged??

...oh there already is??" .... By Alex Posted Friday 2nd May 2008 12:27 GMT

Behave yourself, Alex, of course there is blackmail. How else do you explain the Sub-Prime Ministerial performances of Public Puppets.

Here is a Show where the script was definitely on the wrong song ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwKM46Woh2E

And as for Gordon's new gay script ..."Gordon Brown says he will 'listen and lead'" ...... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7372860.stm , well, we've heard that before from another right dodgy character/spin merchant, his chum, Tony .... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4521627.stm

Is there no foxy babe giving Gordon long massages to release pent up emotions and tensions [Crikey I almost wrote that, penthouse emotions] ... http://tinyurl.com/6krx4n

And the egghead because there are not enough of them.

"A spokesman for BERR said: "We believe that there are circumstances where it is in the public interest to protect the 'thinking space' necessary for good public policy formulation and to enable the Department to have a private discourse with external organisations.""

"If the public knew the shit we got up to when they weren't looking, they'd string up the lot of us!"

Isn't that right, Government?

(More for the horns of the devil than the deadbeat)

I love the way various branches of the government 'rebrand' themselves from time to time to attempt to flee from the scandal and incompetence of their previous incarnation, allowing them to get stuck into some scandal and incompetence of their own.

Politicians have learned so much from big business. No place for democracy, that's for sure.

... has surely outlived its usefulness.

We've PROVED that electing people to make decisions for us doesn't work. They make promises, get elected, and then do what they want instead of what they promised.

Why do we need to elect people to vote on our behalf, when we could just put the motions before the whole electorate on a web site that EVERYBODY could vote on?

We might need bodies of people like the council and like parliament, but acting an an advisory and co-ordinating role -- but we certainly don't need bodies of people making decisions that we can only influence once every five years.

The BERR "believe that there are circumstances where it is in the public interest to protect the 'thinking space' necessary for good public policy formulation and to enable the Department to have a private discourse with external organisations."

It will be interesting to discover, when they come to consider issues related to developments in surveillance technologies, if the BERR also believe that there are circumstances where it is in the public interest to protect the 'thinking space' that requires a modicum of personal privacy and to enable members of the public to have a private discourse without interference from external organisations.