A new progressive movement for the UK

Have you had a campaign for airport expansions as there is a big issue at the moment about this. we have been campaining for some time now and we need as much support as we can get.
would you be willing to work with us. plese reply asap many thanks dot palmer

Have you had a campaign for airport expansions as there is a big issue at the moment about this. we have been campaining for some time now and we need as much support as we can get.
would ypu be willing to work with us. plese reply asap many thanks dot palmer

REFORM THE HOUSE WITH MPs DEVOTED TO SERVICE

It is astonishing that without the freedom of the press the electorate in May 2009 was as ignorant of MPs expenses as the serfs of old. Public disgust has been unprecedented.

The 50 plus MPs who have done good work and deliberately and knowingly complied with the letter and spirit of the expenses system (Ref 1) deserve commendation and full support. What a great example for young and old alike. On the other hand the 450 plus MPs who deliberately and knowingly did not follow the example of the honorable 50 plus do not deserve trust or support and should pay the price for their greed by standing down, deselection or removal from office.

There is no excuse whatsoever for making multiple wrong claims. (Ref 2) One or two possibly yes, more than two wrong claims, no. This could be the criterion for standing down, deselection or removal from office.

No person in their right mind would trust or employ a greedy person known to have deliberately and knowingly ignored either the letter or the spirit of an expenses system. Why should the electorate?

From June 2007 New Labour headed by Gordon Brown has by incompetency been paving its way to loosing the next general election in 2009-2010. However Her Majesty’s Official Opposition led by David Cameron is helping to reverse this process by cronyism and paying lip service to public disgust over MPs expenses.

In 1653 Huntingdon MP Oliver Cromwell dismissed wayward MPs, addressing them thus “You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”

Now as in 1653 the country is in need of dependable Members devoted to service to reform the House, effect good government and advise and help constituents. Current MPs, especially Party Leaders, being part of the problem are not the solution. Mass apologies and paybacks are debasing and no substitute for a record of transparency, honesty and truth.

Fortunately internet technology enables the electorate as a whole to act as a modern day Oliver Cromwell and cleanse parliament without fear or favour.

If you wish to help restore trust in Parliament, no matter which party or individual you support, lobby your local constituency party, family, friends and acquaintances to sponsor and support only candidates who have shown that they are capable, honest and hardworking.

At the General Election vote only for candidates who have shown themselves to be capable, honest and hardworking.

Do not support or vote for MPs who have not abided by the letter and spirit of the MPs expenses system. (Ref 1)

There are many capable people ready willing and able throughout the land who deserve and have earned our trust and vote.

If you agree, be a modern day Oliver Cromwell act and pass this email on to family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances, councillors and local constituency parties.

REFERENCES

(Ref 1) The Green Book – July 2006, Parliamentary Salaries, Allowances and Pensions Use of Parliamentary allowances.
Page 3 reads
“It is your responsibility to satisfy yourself when you submit a claim, or authorise payments from your staffing allowance, that any expenditure claimed from the allowances has been wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred for the purpose of performing your Parliamentary duties.”

(Ref 2)

The House of Commons Members’ Reimbursement.
Form C1 (03/05) INCIDENTAL EXPENSES PROVISION.
An Authorisation and Declaration is to be made by members as follows: “I claim reimbursement of these costs which I incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in the performance of my Parliamentary duties.”

I have campaigned on labour issues. I would like to see an English politician who actually had the ability to speak clearly against corporate world ownership and create freedom of public vote on a regular basis regarding environmental, economical and general social issues where legislation is the final goal.

I congratulate 38 degrees on their formation and hope to participate in depth as future issues become clear.

thank You

lol @dex dexter!

I didn't campaign for Obama but I had a little thought: Encouraging campaigners to cut and paste letters to their PM/MP may not be a good idea. Having worked in a council mailroom, I know that cut n pasted emails go into one pile, personal emails into another.

Identical messages take much less time to deal with. Personal writing will send a more powerful signal to the ruling elite, simply by virtue of costing them more to process.

Oh, and they might actually have to think about what people are saying if it's put to them 5,111 different ways...

heres a tactic..

Would you be prepared to sleepwith a politician to effect change?

Have done.

And would be prepared to do it again.

The very long post by Charles Arkwright is very interesting. He may be right about a lot of things. I'm also pretty disgruntled about the 'state of the nation' in the UK and the fact that to quite some extent we have a 'trash' non-culture (excepting hunting, fish and chips and big brother of course!)

But who exactly would this 'cadre of people with vision, morals, experience and knowledge' be? People who know better than I do? Perhaps I'm (relatively) an 'illiterate with a low horizon'?

The 'cadre' sounds a bit like a self-appointed group of the 'great and good'. A form of political organisation favoured by the Nazis I think. If 'they' want to get together and persuade 'us' by writing and argument - ok perhaps. But George Washington's 'mixed bag' had, and still have, the 'right to bear arms'. Is Arkwright also arguing for the armed revolution?

Obama was and is, through his writing and now very public voice, an inspiration. Let's be inspired but are there any more like him in the UK or Europe? And don't forget the response to Obama of the 'rednecks' in the US - still with that right to bear arms. Obama himself counts Lincoln as one of his heroes - the first Republican.

How to make things better does seem to be a conundrum and although Mr. Arkwright may have some valid criticisms of your current petitions, I feel he overstates his case and that the new 'freedom of the press and people' through electronics and the internet really is something new which can enable a more participatory form of democracy.

I stood yesterday as a candidate for Libertas in the EU elections - with no chance of being personally elected though I hope Libertas may secure some MEP's. Yes we must reform the EU, UK politics and perhaps recover some proper sense of values and proportion but how to achieve this is not at all clear.

Whilst 38 degrees may be independent of any party, it is clearly not apolitical and I trust that making 'party political' points will be OK here.

We should look at who was partly responsible for the decline Arkwright refers to. Who said 'there is no such thing as society' then set about destroying it? Quite - Margaret Thatcher, who has done more damage to Britain than the above mentioned Nazis (including the promotion of greed and our economic meltdown).

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown don't seem to have helped much either. Can we trust the 'nice' Mr. Cameron - very probably our next PM - to be a better bet than Thatcher?
Well, time will tell. It's hardly surprising if in current circumstances the far right should do well (national socialism and all that) and proportional representation might strengthen their hand. So, in some parts of Europe, having been elected, they could seize power like Hitler.

Yes, perhaps we do need the guidance of the 'wise'. Let's listen out for more 'Obamas' and support them. In the meantime, let's use these new electronic methods to promote people power - just ordinary people who are not so 'amorally illiterate' that at least they can be bothered to petition and vote and march and write until the world changes.

Following Obama, 'Yes, we can'. Let's do it!

I have just read your petition for a new law for recalling MPs. While I accept that the idea has much merit, I cannot accept that this petition is the way to introduce the changes we need.
1) First, there are downsides to the proposal that you have not mentioned or dealt with e.g. the power it gives to disruptive elements in a community to divert attention from other issues that an MP may be dealing with quite well. The proposal may also have the unintended outcome of exacerbating petty 'politics' at the expense of social good. You have not discussed the necessary checks and balances that would be needed to make such a proposal work.
2) Second, your petition does not address root causes. Britain lost its moral compass decades ago. MPs are merely reflections of what is going on in all walks of our life. If people are angry at the moment it is mainly because when MPs got caught with their hands in the till, it seemed they were able to cover up and avoid being punished, when the rest of us live in daily awareness of the punishments and humiliations that await us if we are caught dropping litter, exceeding 70 miles and hour on an empty road or stealing from a supermarket. Angry vengeance may feel good but it does little to change underlying behaviours. Britain is still a public trash can compared to many other north European nations and drivers routinely exceed 80 miles an hour when they think they can get away with it.
3) As well as a new moral compass, Britain needs to be governed in a way that respects and creates caring cooperation. To do this, Britain needs a form of government that produces decisions that 'work'. Britain has been in permanent decline since the 19th Centruy. Since that time, Britain has NEVER had a peace time leader who was fit for the job. How did that happen? It is not due to individuals, it is a direct result of the way we select and empower our leaders. Our system of government simply does not work efficiently or effectively.
4) Regardless of that, over 70% of law in Britain is made by unelected officials in other countries. pursuing agendas over which we have no influence. Even if Britain found a better way to select thsoe who make the key decisions in its local and national governments, these people would have no real power, especially if the EU 'constitution' is adopted without a referendum as seems to be the desire of Britain's current leaders. Most people in Britain have not read that constitution and do not have a clue what it says. The reason for that is that the people writing it were not elected, did not have to declare their agenda (the peaceful creation of a superstate lead by politicians for politicians) and they have installed an ultimate court of 'justice' that is not even bound by the rule of law when enforcing their policies. The EU looks increasingly like the Soviet Union, bolstered by its own propaganda but built around centralised power by a self-serving political elite.
5) So lets confront the two real issues. These are the redefining of Britain's values and the re-shaping of its place in the world. This will not be done by the instant reforms currently being proposed by British politicians. These proposals are blatently designed to promote their own short-term advantage. Change needs to be proposed by informed strategists capable of engaging the populations of Britain and its allies in genuine discussions about effective reforms that will work at all levels - protecting us against war, climate change, abuse of energy and fostering cooperation between us that raises standards of life, not in terms of material possessions, but in terms of material health, quality of life, education, leisure and, yes, freedom to dissent.
6) This will require the concerted effort of wise, highly well informed people of the people, acting for the people. We do not need knee-jerk one-issue petitions or knee-jerk politicians 'reforms'. Petitions, like marches and demonstrations are the weapons of the powerless and the neglected. Tinkering reforms are the tools of those wishing to hang onto power. It is that powerlessness and neglect that we need to change. It is that power base we need to chagne. Petitions and quickie reforms are not the way. Wise, strategic action by committed unselfish friends of humanity is what is needed.
7) What is not needed is people with dogmas and agendas from the past. The kind of moral leadership we need now will not be provided by either religion (which ultimately is built on little more than exhortation, hope, lies and socially exclusive bondings) or science (which can only provide tools, not the skill to decide which tools to develop, which to use and how to use them).
8) We need to identify statesmen amongst us who have insight, experience, courage and above all moral visions suited for the 21st and 22nd Century. These statesmen need to act at many levels: internationally, continentally, nationally and locally. In a world that threatens to be dominated by the ambitions of China, religious fundamentalists (Christian and Islamic), unstable, unfit leaders in the Middle East, water and food shortages in Africa and Asia and ever-growing billions of amoral illiterates with low horizons and high mobility, it is wrong to divert our efforts into vindicative petitions, howver justified, when we delegate the real issue of global organisation to self-serving politicians with no capabilty to grasp the scale and nature of either the problems or the solutions.
9) So how about using all our energies to assemble a cadre of people with vision, morals, experience and knowledge: a global version of the Philadephia Convention which brought together under the leadership of the stoic farmer and soldier George Washington, a truly mixed bag of businessmen, scientists, religious skeptics, christians, slaveowners and lawyers, rich and poor, including many who were well versed in British, Roman and Greek political history and theory. The result was a constitution with a few fudges e.g. over slavery, that came back to haunt them. but which has worked fairly successfully in controlling the ambitions and follies of its subsequently elected leaders. Surely we can do much better now? Something much better than the current EU constitution and the unwritten rules of the House of Commons.

Hello - what you are all missing is that the reason MoveOn and MyBarackObama.com did so well is because they were linked to party political candidates, in this case Democrats. You cut out the party political angle of what they did and you are left with nothing more than a glorified version of the e-Petitions bit on the Prime Minister's website.

Please could you also explain what the 'progressive movement' is and what the word 'progressive' means? Even Wikipedia doesn't have a decent explanation.

In the UK it just seems to add possitive connotations to any sort of reform and at present the most common use seems to be in progressive Conservatism.

I like the idea of this site. Just now there seems to be a chance to change our political system to one which avoids electing a 5 year dictatorship and makes our representatives, parliament and government accountable all the time, not just at elections.
I am so sick of having a choice of 3 nearly identical parties who parcel up a few good policies with lots of bad ones and then, once elected by a small proportion of the total population, claim a mandate for them all. I detest governments who treat us all as if we were morons and ignore public opinion. There has to be a better way. Some form of PR perhaps . No doubt your first step of providing a way of recalling bad MPs is a good start.

Rather than having voters sign if they are dissatified with their representitve,encourage people to sign if they are satified,this would go some way to ensuring that MP did what they are there for.

Sir's
Great,really good to see something happening to try and sort out the corrupt politicians.
I'm in Malaysia where the policos treat the country like a "club" for their own benifit,very like South Afica was in those days.

My involvement was minimal - donating, yes. Harassing friends and family, some phone banking from home during the primaries.

I'm a dual national, so I have a bit of experience of UK elections as well. This is going to sound rude - but there is nothing that UK politicians can learn from this campaign unless they 'get' the need for a degree of honesty, and decentralisation. All the internet savvy in the world won't get you elected unless people trust you. The Obama campaign trusted us as individuals to just 'go and do' (I campaigned for Howard Dean, and it was good to see that ethos coming to the fore again), and I think we trusted the campaign not to try to spin it's way out of any difficulties. I'm not stupid - I know that in policy/presentational terms the team positioned our candidate very carefully - but it was done without bending the candidate out of shape.

In short, I believe most of what President Obama says, because I think he believes most of what he says. That's what is important. That's what needs to change in the UK.

1) After several elections where I only made campaign contributions, I volunteered to work on the Obama-Biden campaign. I was impressed by the persistence and good nature of communications from Obama, compared to the earnest and slightly shrill appeals from the Clinton campaign. I wanted to find out more about the Obama tempo, and the way his own personal composure seemed to be reflected in his campaign organisation.
2) I worked through Democrats Abroad, making calls from the Regents Park phone bank. I felt good about the way we were targeting the swing states -- and after the election, I felt we could take some small satisfaction in having focused on Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina. The messages which we got from the campaign HQ were positive, responsive and conveyed quiet confidence. A campaign that felt as composed as the candidate!
3) I enlisted a few others to work for Democrats Abroad and felt some traction in saying to them it's all about change, and that means changing the way we act in campaigns as well. It's not all about money, giving one's time and helping to sustain a volunteer initiative felt increasingly rewarding as the campaign ground on. The debates were picked up as rallying points that made the goal of change even more tangible and believable. When a slogan becomes an agent for change, for motivating people to contribute their time and support, yes we can becomes yes we are ... making change.
4) This was a campaign that walked the walk -- it set out big goals and kept pushing towards them. People were put to work very quickly, no initial lull or waiting period, and they were well scripted to cover most questions and issues. Also, the regional coordinator was almost always at hand to answer questions without delay.
5) Advice is basically to seize the initiative and keep the initiative. Set achievable goals, and with good preparation at the outset and a real commitment from volunteers to work -- it's possible to reach out with a solid drill of collateral, Q&A and phone script materials. Don't be afraid to ask people to help, to put some skin in the game. You might be surprised how much they are willing to contribute.

I've been living n London for about six years now and had been very involved in election campaigns back in the states (Jesse Jackson, Gore and loads of senate and local campaigns) so when the Obama campaign got going, I was just itching to get involved but thought there wouldn't be much I could do from London. Luckily, the people I knew from Democrats Abroad and then the Obama campaign organizers really helped to channel the excitment here and made so much possible. I not only attended events and fundraisers but I was also able to make phone calls to swing states to help get out the vote thanks to the fantastic computer based system set up by the Obama camp. I really felt I was able to contribute to the victory and in my 25+ years of working on campaigns, I have never seen one quite so well organized and efficient as Obama's.

I was a bit involved. I donated some money, and helped with some phonecalls. Just before the election I forwarded emails to my friends like crazy, I particularly loved that one with a spoof news programme where you get Obama losing traced to your friend not voting - that was really clever. I was over here in the UK for most of the election, which I found quite frutrating - I wanted to be back home where the real action was! I'm very interested in what you're planning here, probably will get very involved with that. I'm guessing you'll be more like MoveOn than the Obama campaign - i.e. campaigning on issues rather than campaigning for Gordon Brown (or David Cameron?!)?

Hi Melissa,
Great to hear you're planning to get involved, thanks for sharing your experiences.
To answer your question, 38 Degrees will not be party political. We'll actually probably be less associated with party politics even than MoveOn, who because of the two party nature of US politics are generally on the side of the Democrats more than the Republicans - in the UK things are a bit more jumbled up. We will however definitely get involved in elections, for example helping to remind progressively minded people to vote and identifying which candidates measure up best on the issues we care about. We'll be asking our members' opinions on how we get involved in the General Election, so I hope you've signed up and can be part of that conversation!
There's some more info about 38 degrees here: http://blog.38degrees.org.uk/about-38-degrees/

I'm really excited to read about you guys - wish I had time to write down my thoughts at length. I've signed up for your emails and really look forward to seeing you launch

1) Yes I did - signed on early in the Primary and got more and more involved over time.

2) The experience was extraordinary - I've worked on other US campaigns before, but this one seemed different right from the beginning not only because they reached out very widely to their activists, but also because the top-down guidance was very clear and specific. Although they cared a lot about our views, they also made it clear that they had specific goals that they wanted to achieve and a clear vision of what they thought the race was about. They had virtual phone banks set up so that we could make calls from wherever we were in the country/world, and they created local canvassing opportunities, even for Americans abroad. Eventually, I wound up running a pretty large organisation here with great support from the DC and Chicago people.

3) I also spent a lot of time reaching out to my non-Democrat friends and family, including successfully persuading them to donate money to the campaign.

4) I learned that working incredibly hard can be the most fun thing ever. I also learned that it's important to hive up enough control that the volunteers who want to work with you have a sense of empowerment and of the importance of their own work. I was astonished at how creative, hard working and effective volunteers could be if they felt this way. And finally, I learned never to be afraid to make the big ask - people really can surprise you.

5) Love your volunteers - thank them and praise them and give them lots of training and responsibility. Also, make sure you know exactly what you want to achieve in any given effort - ideally in terms of numbers - how many votes, how many doors knocked, calls made, money raised.

And finally, dont' get too distracted by the technology - make sure you are getting the fundamentals of organising right, even if you are doing it with new tools.

I featured President Obama in my magazine Testimony

www.ourtestimonyonline.com