Friday 11 July 2008

David Davis - Debating Freedom


David Davis recently won his seat after resigning from parliament and triggering a byelection that he hoped would debate British freedoms. He layed out his concerns:
“We will have the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, and a DNA database bigger than that of any dictatorship, with thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it.
“We've witnessed a sustained assault on jury trials, that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state; shortcuts with our justice system that have left it both less firm and less fair -- and the creation of a database state, opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers."
But did the byelection actually debate the point(s)? Or did the electorate vote for David Davis the man with convictions (unopposed by Labour or Lib Dem candidates)?
Peculiarly our whole electoral system has always required a database of voters. It is at the core of every modern democracy. I would rather this was used to facilitate votes (plural) on the points (plural) that he raised using the Interactive Democracy system instead of using the blunt instrument of a by-election.

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