Comment by alkonaut

"We elect our politicians. …When they have bad ideas about how to do that, we let them know that it's a bad idea. Or we don't elect them again. This works."

Think so? Perhaps on the surface. Think Yes Minister and Sir Humphrey. No matter how well meaning politicians are they'll be screwed rotten by determined public sector employees and then they'll be finished off by powerful corporate interests, citizens haven't a chance.

What's more you the citizen will likely be the last to know about it. Yes, outwardly all will seem normal as that's the plan but it's only a chimera—appearance is everything. Those in control learned that trick from Vespasian, it has a long lineage of working well.

Can't you see the Investigatory Powers Act wasn't dreamt up by politicans but by nameless but very powerful gnomes in GCHQ, MI6, etc., etc? For starters, politicians wouldn't have had the brains to concoct an Orwellian act on a scale like that on their own. (I've spent too long working in government bureaucracies to know how it works.)

Tragically, democracy, these days, is essentially dead. On the surface it appears alive and functioning and the citizenry still thinks it has say, but in reality it's actually like a cockroach that's been parsitized by a wasp—it's 'alive' in appearance only.

And yet you have a lengthy accumulation of the aforementioned bad ideas.

Perhaps because in your FPTP electoral system, you have few avenues to actually "let them know that it's a bad idea". I mean, supposing you don't like this particular law - which party would you vote for to send the signal?

"This works" in a parallel universe.

People vote like their dad or what the paper (Murdoch) tells them. If you are lucky to have a thinking voter they only get to choose 1 or 2 issues. Maybe they want lower income tax more than something something privacy.

People won't vote against their interests? "Latinos for Trump" etc. Says otherwise. Brexit people getting kicked out of Spain etc.

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