Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices?

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CapitalB
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Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices?

Post by CapitalB »

How long should we hold a political parties mistakes against them?

I ask because I regularly see people holding things against the various governments, federal and provincial, that they did 20+ years ago.

I personally will probably hold Harper against the conservatives for a while, but if their policies come back around to where they started (talking turn of the 20th century here) I would absolutely vote conservative.

I mean people change and I like to imagine our politicians are people so at some point we should stop bringing up stuff from 20+ years ago like it has a bearing on todays actions.

I would personally put a nice round 10 years as the max amount we should be holding mistakes against a party (Short of crimes against humanity), two and a bit elections seems like a nice penalty box time.

Anything over that just sounds like people trying their best to justify irrational hatred based in politics.
So much of the violent push-back on everything progressive and reformist comes down to: I can see the future, and in this future I am not the centre of the universe and master of all that I survey, therefore this future must be resisted at all costs.
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Hassel99
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by Hassel99 »

What are you even talking about?
Legal action or the court of public opinion?


Your thread topic is really bad.
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CapitalB
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by CapitalB »

Hassel99 wrote:What are you even talking about?
Legal action or the court of public opinion?


Your thread topic is really bad.


Public opinion, which I thought the body of my post made clear, especially this part:

I ask because I regularly see people holding things against the various governments, federal and provincial, that they did 20+ years ago.


The title is limited because the the small character count.
So much of the violent push-back on everything progressive and reformist comes down to: I can see the future, and in this future I am not the centre of the universe and master of all that I survey, therefore this future must be resisted at all costs.
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Hassel99
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by Hassel99 »

Your problem is you have used a very specific legal terms for a vague non legal issue. Which is why i asked for clarity.

Why not just say "when should we forgive and forget bad political choices"

My response would be never, we should learn from them all.
Neville Chamberlain is a good example of bad choices we should never forget.
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Bsuds
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by Bsuds »

Maybe when Political parties and Politicians learn from their past mistakes we would forgive them...but they don't!
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rustled
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by rustled »

Part of the problem is the ongoing repercussions. We saw this in BC when the BCTF were in negotiations with the appropriate bargaining agent for the school trustees, and the government of the day intervened and signed a contract highly beneficial to the BCTF and very detrimental to the school districts. There were immediate problems before that government left office, and the subsequent government grappled with the problems and applied a solution that helped alleviate many of the on-the-ground issues (especially in remote areas), but was politically extremely unpopular and legally problematic. The repercussions of the ensuing court battle are reverberating through our public school system now.

I think some of us want very much for this to be a lesson well-learned by all parties: don't overstep, don't pander at our expense, remember you represent all of us. So when some tried to blame just one party, it was tough to sit back silently knowing they were expected to take full responsibility for a serious problem they hadn't created.

"Blame" and acrimony are perpetual problems in partisan politics. There won't be a statute of limitations until all parties choose to work together for the greater good. To get there, we will need a great deal of hope, trust, pixie dust, etc.
There is nothing more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. - Martin Luther King Jr.
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CapitalB
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by CapitalB »

Your comment makes a lot of sense, there are a lot of really long term government actions that affect successive governments to a large degree. It seems like a huge part of taking on a new government is just seeing how they come to terms with the decades of baggage they are handed by the last party. Baggage which seems to go back 30+ years, covering multiple parties, and loads of conflicting interests.

rustled wrote:There won't be a statute of limitations until all parties choose to work together for the greater good. To get there, we will need a great deal of hope, trust, pixie dust, etc.


That about sums up my support for proportional representation. If its significantly harder for a party to get a majority / absolutish power I feel like they would be left little choice but to work together to some degree.
So much of the violent push-back on everything progressive and reformist comes down to: I can see the future, and in this future I am not the centre of the universe and master of all that I survey, therefore this future must be resisted at all costs.
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by rustled »

CapitalB wrote:That about sums up my support for proportional representation. If its significantly harder for a party to get a majority / absolutish power I feel like they would be left little choice but to work together to some degree.

My concern with PR is still related to the size and diversity of some of our districts. I can't imagine achieving proper regional representation without electing a whole swack more MLAs, and that doesn't strike me as being effective. You know how the bigger the committee, the harder it is to get anything accomplished? I think the genuine needs of small areas would be even more drowned out by the crowd that doesn't have any genuine understanding of the very real problems unique to those small areas, and we'd see more confusion and partisan powerplays than we usually have to deal with, to our detriment.

I used to think we'd be better off with an electoral system without parties, with each district electing the best candidate and those candidates choosing from among themselves.

These days, I think the biggest problems with our current FPTP system are apathy, acrimony, and the public's penchant for picking sides over pragmatism (as the Orwell quote in your sig line, which is bang on, BTW). We become more fixated on being "right" and being "on the winning team" than we are on collectively solving problems and making the improvements that would help us all move forward.

I think we all need to look more closely at who and what we're voting for in terms of the greater good, not just what's in it for us personally in the short term, and not just what would make us as a nation feel good in the short term. There are always consequences for too-rosy-to-be-sensible political promises.

A party system should make it easier for people to vote for what they most believe in and then hold their local rep accountable (and I'd like to see some kind of STV for that, although people who do care enough about this often join the party and work to turf bad local reps from within).

I don't think there's a perfect solution, but it does seem to me PR wouldn't solve the accountability problem, and would create fresh ones for us to deal with.
There is nothing more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. - Martin Luther King Jr.
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by Glacier »

Statute of limitations used to last as long as people's memories, but now we have media and social media, so your political opponents will still be using your own words against you 100 years after you're gone.
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CapitalB
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Re: Statute of Limitations for political parties bad choices

Post by CapitalB »

rustled wrote:My concern with PR is still related to the size and diversity of some of our districts. I can't imagine achieving proper regional representation without electing a whole swack more MLAs, and that doesn't strike me as being effective. You know how the bigger the committee, the harder it is to get anything accomplished? I think the genuine needs of small areas would be even more drowned out by the crowd that doesn't have any genuine understanding of the very real problems unique to those small areas, and we'd see more confusion and partisan powerplays than we usually have to deal with, to our detriment.

I used to think we'd be better off with an electoral system without parties, with each district electing the best candidate and those candidates choosing from among themselves.

These days, I think the biggest problems with our current FPTP system are apathy, acrimony, and the public's penchant for picking sides over pragmatism (as the Orwell quote in your sig line, which is bang on, BTW). We become more fixated on being "right" and being "on the winning team" than we are on collectively solving problems and making the improvements that would help us all move forward.

I think we all need to look more closely at who and what we're voting for in terms of the greater good, not just what's in it for us personally in the short term, and not just what would make us as a nation feel good in the short term. There are always consequences for too-rosy-to-be-sensible political promises.

A party system should make it easier for people to vote for what they most believe in and then hold their local rep accountable (and I'd like to see some kind of STV for that, although people who do care enough about this often join the party and work to turf bad local reps from within).

I don't think there's a perfect solution, but it does seem to me PR wouldn't solve the accountability problem, and would create fresh ones for us to deal with.


Yeah having more MPs would definitely just make things into a bit of a mess. To some degree though I think doing it by region at all is a mistake, its an inherently impossible to balance system. We're always going to end up with these lopsided region systems where either cities or rural areas have a disproportionate amount of power. Obviously we can't get rid of regional MP's it would cause more problems without, I guess what I'm saying is we're screwed.

The system I've liked best after reading through a bunch was the one with regional MP's mostly how they are now and a small proportion of floating regionless top up MP's. Theres going to be issues with a system like that as well, like people running on specific regionless issues and trying to cater to a small percentage of people spread far and wide. Things like that would just be part of the process though.

For the accountability thing; Does it actually matter? How are we really holding these people accountable for their bad decisions? Ideally we would but it usually looks like we just get the other parties, the media, and the people that never forget pointing fingers and yelling all the time.
So much of the violent push-back on everything progressive and reformist comes down to: I can see the future, and in this future I am not the centre of the universe and master of all that I survey, therefore this future must be resisted at all costs.
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