"La, la, la, not listening..."Democracy is all about listening to other people's opinions, right? Respecting them even if we disagree and all that, ye? Getting a vote and a say in things.
If the above is true then democratic governments need to be open to criticism if nothing else. Not necessarily my kind of criticism agreed, but you would at least expect them to be able to take some pointers from a guy who ran a government watchdog for ten years? Wouldn't you?
Apparently not.
Sir Jonathon Porritt gave the government a well-deserved kicking as he left office. He ran the Sustainable Development Commission so has, I suspect, a pretty good idea of parliament machinations and departmental in-fighting.
The main thrust of his attack was, unsurprisingly, that this government has put consumer-driven economic growth before all else and has utterly failed to meet many of it's own targets, particularly on child poverty and fuel poverty, while wasting billions in Iraq and Afghanistan. While none of this is breaking news the fact that this guy said it is. It required a response.
And what did it get?
The usual blah, blah, blah quoting percentages and targets and figures from some Energy Department flunky. It is always the same: deflect the criticism with statistics. Divert attention away from the 'bad things' by quoting some chart which shows some 'good things' (the old adage about "lies, damned lies and stastistics" notwithstanding).
And here's my point.
Time and again various government 'watchdogs' (sheesh) advise them on policy and time and again the government steamrollers them with numbers or just plain ignores them. Surely when a government ceases to listen even to it's own appointed critics, never mind the voting populace, then it can hardly be called a 'democracy'?
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