Taking the Party out of Politics

The 5 Impossible Puzzles Bonus Season highlights different structural challenges with the way our electoral and political system is supposed to work. The second puzzle is the Impossible Puzzle for Voting . This puzzle comes down to the fact that our First Past the Post voting system means that it is the candidate with most votes who gets elected, not the candidate with a majority of the votes.&nbs...

The 5 Impossible Puzzles Bonus Season highlights different structural challenges with the way our electoral and political system is supposed to work. The first puzzle is the Impossible Puzzle for Voters . This puzzle is the impossible challenge which we are trying to master, by trying to achieve three things with one vote – ·        choose a good local repre...

This is a special bonus episode, providing you with a summary of some of the key ideas we have covered during series one, and focusing on the 5 Impossible Puzzles of our political system.   The Impossible Puzzle for Voters: 3 things, 1 vote, once every 5 years ·        a good local representative, ·        a...

Manifestos are declarations of what a candidate (or party) plans to do, if elected. If we vote for a candidate, and with that vote also vote for a party, then we are also voting to approve that list of promises. After the election, the list of promises in a Manifesto is turned into a plan of action, in the Queen's Speech.  After that, we should expect to see the government put those prom...

Parliament or Government? Many people might think that they are the same thing, but they really aren’t. If we are clear about the differences, we can identify problems with how the system isn’t working in our best interests. Parliament has to look closely at (scrutinise) how the Government is running things, and at what the Government is planning to do, to make sure that decisions are open and tra...

Episode 4 explores the problems with the way we select our democratic representatives, both at a local level (selecting our local representative) and at a national level (selecting the group of representatives who will form our government. The challenges of adequately representing the interests of not only majorities, but also the interests of minorities, too. What it means to get a majority of th...

In this episode, we have a look at some different possible political systems, and use that to explore what we mean by the word ‘Democracy’, along with other ideas, such as consideration for others and respect for minorities.  Then we move from there to understand the particular form of democracy which we use.    Because, though we might blithely use the blanket term ‘Democracy’, we...

An overview of why human beings come together, and why a certain amount of organisation and regulation of our lives (government) is good for getting things sorted out. We are able to live better if we cooperate and obey the laws (we give up a certain amount of freedom to do as we like), rather than to simply take what we want, and to constantly live trying to protect what little we have from someo...

An introduction to the first series of Taking the Party out of Politics, providing an overview of three big problems with the ways in which our political systems are not working as well as they could do:     The Voters.   The Wicked Issues .   Scrutiny.     For each of these big problems, there are possible solutions, which we will explore together...