Guthrum, at looking for a voice, reports on the campaign of LPUK candidate (Cambridgeshire CC) Andrew Hunt, who has been out on the surface of the planet.
The anger on the door step against all three major parties was palpable… The common thread, whether they would vote Libertarian or not, was that there has to be a new Constitutional Settlement to ensure that all parties had a say in Parliament and and end to the two and a half party stitch up.
The LPUK manifesto commits a future LPUK government to
…enact a formal Constitution, and reassert the 1689 Bill of Rights…
However, no draft of the Constitution appears to have been prepared. Given the feedback from the electorate gathered by Mr. Hunt I believe that it now should be.
If this can be completed and agreed before the forthcoming election then the LPUK will be the only party offering to institute a formal Constitution, defining and limiting the powers of government and the freedoms of the people.
I say we ought to get on with it. Doing this is, I believe, more important than pointing out yet again the shortcomings of the present arrangements.
All I am likely to do about this myself today is to open a new post category, ‘constitution’, under which I hope before long to make some contribution to the debate on this critical issue which I trust is already in progress.
My first response is, admittedly, a matter of not intellectual but, rather, /emotional/ perception. Fools will leap to ‘irrational’, but that sort of ad affectum argument is of no use in trying objectively to perceive the operation of the non-rational faculty. That faculty, ever alert to danger, may well be Freedom’s best mastiff guardian at the gates. In fact, I am a traditionalist on this point, and, hence, a bit of an ‘anarchist’ in the end:
Constitutions are jolly things (thesis), but (definition) they are the precious fruit (limiting predicate) of individual soils and gardens.
So it is that (corollary) routine weeding, pruning and, at most, grafting is approached with, if you will, superstitious awe and care by any serious gardener.
It follows (conclusion) that when in England (the ‘UK’ or ‘Britain’, eg) there is an up-welling of calls for ‘constitutional reform’, all involved must at least be very careful.
In gardening (extended metaphor) it often happens that there is an incursion of pests (specific metaphor); and, these often arise because of such factors as ‘climate change’ (more wit) & cet; one is naturally tempted to strong measures, however toxic. Short of chemicals, however, there nonethelss remain a host of traditional remedies that more closely fit with the practise of proper gardening:
For instance, here in the land of a written constitution (reflexive clause required to anchor metaphor), and all the endless stealing and thieving that goes on under /it/, there is a commonn problem with garden slugs. Now, these can be reduced with applications of chlordane powder, bad for birds and everything and everyone else; /or/, the rate payer may depress into the soil at intervals small saucers filled with (cheap) beer in which, nightly, the vermin most obligingly drown themselves in luxury, quite in the manner of messrs Balls, Shahid, Testicles, Nutsack and Bitchgoddess, Smith or Whomever.
In the same way, /additional plantings/, such as of marigolds, discourage some pests; and, so it goes. All very labour intensive, you may be sure of that, rooting out these Labour and Tory, and all half-baked, moles and polecat ferrets — but, it is this that keeps the gardener on the job. And, by analogy (return to topic) the citizen on the qui vive. In your case, in England, I perceive that the hallowed remedy lies in the addition (NB) of yet another document, /this one indeed written down perhaps/, but nonetheless then /added to/ the body of your whole constitutional literature. Otherwise, you will wind up, vernacularly, “as fucked up as these God-damned fools and brain halfwit dumb sonsofbitches over here!”
You have been warned, and I daresay the soupcon of any anarchism in it is that I for one do not think there is some ‘rule’; and, nor that that constitutions may be whacked out as cheap suits once were at the 50 Shilling tailors; it sounds terribly ‘principled’ to say so, of course it does resound on the jaded ear, ‘Identical Duds For All’: and, there you are, mired smack dab in the EU trap, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, ‘to get it all down somehow’ — alas, in vain.
(Finally, the distinction between emotions, as opposed to deepest feeling, is subtile; and it is very real. It is all the difference between rolling around in the random affects like a dog in shit: and, the sure steady devoted watchful guardianship of the old family tyce, over his home and hearth and family. It is all the difference between the affected grimaces and sneers of Labour and other party cunts from on high, jeering at the plundered stupid common ruck and twats; and, the wise sagacious perceptions, of The Wook: his — our! — /sure/ feeling for what is of the deepest importance and value…now — BW)
You should look into the legal aspects of making sure that it cannot be repealed as is the case of the bill of rights 1689 (which means all of those fines not administered within a court are illegal)
BW: in deference to American readers such as yourself I thought better of a paragraph about how we need to make sure that the provisions of the constitution cannot be set aside by politicians merely because of an ‘emergency’ caused by some ‘terrorists’.
CS: agreed; drafting it’s easy, it’s making it stick that’s difficult.