Artlol

After watching Prime Minister’s Questions for the umpteenth time I realized something.

All my life I have thought the people in the houses of parliament are so unlike people like me, how can they know and fight for what we want. As I got older I began to appreciate more that MPs do represent us to a certain degree. That is providing you can write a good enough letter or email to your local member of parliament putting up a strong idea or opinion on a current issue.

But this is an inefficient way of working in today’s world of increasingly accessible and instant communication.

The Internet allows any person of any status a level and equal opportunity to give their opinion. How many times have you wanted to have your say but are put off by the ‘treacle’ that is the old way of communication?

Instead of formal letters, in-person meetings and phone calls, we now have social networks like: Twitter, Facebook and Youtube which do away with the old formalities and allows for a simple message to come through.

It’s your world

We need a representative to give UK-wide and worldwide Internet users a voice in parliament. I thought we could call it The Internet Party.

The Internet Party – by the people for the people. (beta)

What we want to bring – draft

• Internet connection for every person.
• A computer for every child.
• Help us develop this list

Join us and let your voice be heard in parliament as part of The Internet Party.

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UPDATE 14th February 2009

Thanks to all those with things to say on my wild thought/idea.

It turns out that what I really want and what drove me to write this was a frustration at the way the country is run, specifically at the legal and social status of cannabis.

So, I wrote about this big idea imagining myself seated in parliament, listening to my friends and followers on the internet, and communicating their concerns and ideas.

The thing is, there already IS a pretty good system in place. OK, it is hierarchical, you have to speak to your councillor, who speaks to the MP who then considers the idea and then tries to get a word in edgeways in parliament.

This tree of representatives has existed for a long time and has largely proven itself as the best model.

Now, I study evolution of consciousness, so I cannot but help try and imagine and realize new ways of thinking often communicating them (even if rubbish) in the hope that it may spark some discussion and action in others. This is what happened with this very blog post. I put out what I was thinking at the time with excitement and drive, under the illusion that I’d stumbled upon something new and ground breaking.

This is not to say that there is no room for improvement in the way countries are governed!

The current system is good in that, you can email your local MP and get a letter in return. But because I have recently started using Twitter, all other forms of communication (except voice) are just damned inconvenient!

Parliament, Number 10 and the Mayor of London are already on twitter, but do they really listen? With so many wants and needs of the general public, it seems the only way is to communicate through increasingly stringent stages of idea weed-outs so only the public’s most mentioned or most important ideas/messages get to the policy makers in power.

I hope this clears things up.

Posted in The Internet Party
on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm.