What would change if EVERYTHING was put to referendum?

britboy4321 said:
The recent thread on 'democracy' got me thinking to what would be the biggest changes in the UK if EVERYTHING was taken to referendum.

So, I reckon the below are the six biggest policy changes if EVERYTHING was left strictly to the public to decide (in short it would be a disaster)...

1) Capital punishment would be back within about 5 minutes.
2) Benefits would be stopped altogether. The social state would cease to exist. If people didn't work or get themselves money in some way, they'd starve to death. Things like job-clubs (that cost the taxpayer money) would be scrapped.
3) There would be many 'super-prisons' built and punishments would be massively increased (four-fold at least). Corporal punishment (Public flogging etc) would be restored. Thieves would have their fingers cut off. Back to the middle ages on crime+punishment basically.
4) Immigration rules would be tightened up to mental levels
5) Bankers (or whoever were the 'baddies' of the day, normally changes about every 8 years) would be stripped of their jobs, homes, assets, and most likely spend a long time in jail - even if they had not broken any laws.
6) We'd withdraw wholly and utterley from the EU




So - what do you reckon would change if we had *perfect* democracy .. everything was decided by the masses ...? Think it would be a disaster, not to bad, or even BETTER than we currently have?

lolbritboy. In first. 'Britboy banned from this forum by referendum'. In first.
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I think if all that happened I would be hot footing out of the country as soon as possible

1. God I hope not, we are not a barbaric country and there is plenty of proof that this does not prevent crime
2. I very much doubt it, as many people, due to unfortunate circumstances, have had to claim benefits. I would hate to think what would have of happened to my uncle when he was claiming disability/incapacity benefit when he was terminally ill and not able to look after himself (let alone work)
3. Half and half on his, while reform does need to take place on the prison sentence I don't think people are going to agree to spend 100s of millions of pounds regarding this. The public flogging, we've moved past that, isn't this the sort of thing that people moan about the barbaric Muslim countries for?
4. I think this probably would happen
5. Nope, stupid
6. I think this probably would happen

Any way if we had to carry out referendums on everything, people would get bored of walking down to the polling station every week to vote and would soon stop.
 
britboy4321 said:
The recent thread on 'democracy' got me thinking to what would be the biggest changes in the UK if EVERYTHING was taken to referendum.

So, I reckon the below are the six biggest policy changes if EVERYTHING was left strictly to the public to decide (in short it would be a disaster)...

1) Capital punishment would be back within about 5 minutes.
2) Benefits would be stopped altogether. The social state would cease to exist. If people didn't work or get themselves money in some way, they'd starve to death. Things like job-clubs (that cost the taxpayer money) would be scrapped.
3) There would be many 'super-prisons' built and punishments would be massively increased (four-fold at least). Corporal punishment (Public flogging etc) would be restored. Thieves would have their fingers cut off. Back to the middle ages on crime+punishment basically.
4) Immigration rules would be tightened up to mental levels
5) Bankers (or whoever were the 'baddies' of the day, normally changes about every 8 years) would be stripped of their jobs, homes, assets, and most likely spend a long time in jail - even if they had not broken any laws.
6) We'd withdraw wholly and utterley from the EU


So - what do you reckon would change if we had *perfect* democracy .. everything was decided by the masses ...? Think it would be a disaster, not to bad, or even BETTER than we currently have?

lolbritboy. In first. 'Britboy banned from this forum by referendum'. In first.
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1. Unlikely, too many liberals around for that to ever happen, and also I think generaly people don't think executing criminals actually works, even a lot of the right thinkiung inclined people.

2. Again unlikely, hard line right talk a good game but even they are not heartless gits who would rather watch people starve to death rather than give them some kind of state handout (even if it was a vry basic / low one)

3. Aspects of this yes, i.e super prisons for keeping the hardened crminal element away from society, maybe even an elemt of corporal punishmnet, but public floggings and finger amputations ..... this isn't the dark ages and people talk a good game again, but when it comes to it even the extreme right wouldn't advocate this

4. Reasonable chance this would pass

5. No chance in hell of this ever getting through a referendum even the most retarded of idiots would see that this will simply lead to anarchy

6. Probably the one that is most likely to happen if a referendum was ever held on it
 
Moses said:
Polls have shown that capital punishment appeals to the majority, in fairness. Obviously this might change when there's an informed debate, and the reality of the situation hits home (rather than it being a theoretical question, after bumping into a pollster).
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Yes, that's what I was trying to get at, We can all be armchair judiciary experts and yell of with his/her head and some of the hardcore offenders, but I feel that when faced with the reality most people are still fairly human and wouldn't actually want to see executions.

Its like Han Solo said, good against remotes is one thing, good against the living..... now that's something else.......................

Polls are statistically flawed, how do you know that the x 1000 people polled weren't already advocates of the death penalty ? polls are easy to load
 
QuickLink said:
So everyone can slate Britboy's thoughts but have no opinion of their own? Standard Britain then.
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There's never any point in coming up with sensible answers to any of Britboy's threads. This has nothing to do with 'standard Britain' and everything to do with the fact that his threads are only started 'for the lolz'.
 
[TW]Fox;20463340 said:
I think the Greeks are doing a fantastic job of supporting my opinion that referendums on complex subjects are a hugely bad idea.
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Everyone in this country thinks they are an expert on anything and everything and always have an opinion on something, more often than not with little/no knowledge to back it up. People don't seem to like admitting when they don't know a lot about a subject and ALWAYS think they know better than the people who deal with this stuff day in, day out.

I saw a comment on a BBC article from a guy saying about how he thought referendums are a bad idea in general, because many people don't actually understand the issue in hand, and will therefore probably vote depending on what they've heard their mates saying or what it says in The Sun.

It was negatively voted like 60 times.
 
Why bother engaging with britboy? He starts a troll thread, normally with bogus situations, and then very rarely responds to them. This like so many is a silly idea with ill thought out arguments.
 
It's true. People always think that they know the facts and swear that they do, as someone from the pub told them that... bla bla bla. Or, I read it on the internet bla bla papers bla

Unless more information is every made accessible and the news was not as slanted as it is, it would be pointless. None of those are going to happen though.

I think the only reason the Greek's put it to referendum is due to the people "in power" being able to, when it all goes wrong, say, "well, it was there idea, they wanted it!"
 
hood1971 said:
Why bother engaging with britboy? He starts a troll thread, normally with bogus situations, and then very rarely responds to them. This like so many is a silly idea with ill thought out arguments.
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My argument was clearly stating that putting everything to referendum was a bad idea.

You say 'this is a silly idea'. Which obviously means 'putting EVERYTHING to referendum is a GOOD idea'.

You're in the minority here fella' !! Please explain your argument. Or (more likely) - leg it! :)
 
Does anyone else not find britboys posting funny?

He is the most intellectual troll I've ever come across, there appears to be a hugely negative stigma following him around though.
 
Why do those with strong opinions (be it liberal, right wing, capitalist or anarchist) have such a low opinion of the uk population?

If mandatory voting every weekend was implemented on important subjects for the week (logistical madness I know) then I would expect very balanced an reasoned outcomes.

It would need to be mandatory though, else 'normal' people wouldn't bother and it would just be the strongly opinionated (stockhausen, britboy, dolph and so on) voting, and that would be a disaster.
 
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