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I admit.. I'm very impressed with British House of Commons Debates

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TraceOneInfinite:
It easily surpasses anything they do in America, as far as holding the president accountable and demanding answers to questions.  I should hate Tony Blair for killing so many Muslims in Iraq and Afganistan, etc... but I do give him props for the way he responds to tough questions over and over, without more than a moments thought, and he's also very clever and humorous at the same time.  I was very impressed at how organized these proceedings are and they challenge Blair and hold him accountable, and he has to answer them directly, and it's very loud and noisy in the room with many different parties represented but somehow they are able to at the same time organize and manage everything in a very polite way.

Don't know much about it, but I was able to view this on CSpan a few times and I'd probably be right in saying no country has anything that can compare to it.

virtuoso:
It's contrived polite theatre....I don't see where Tony Blair has been held to account at all, in fact if you look at the policies of the respective parties there is nothing that distinguishes one from the other. I posted this on another forum but since you brought up this subject the points are all the more poignant.

Why is everyone obsessed with this need to tribalise, "oh it's the lefts ideas" the "damn right wingers". Each of the major parties is defined along with one of these lines or we have this nonsense of the centrists etc. If this is true then why is it when these parties are in opposition, they attack these policies, yet more often than not when they get into power none of these laws or policies are changed. The status quo is maintained regardless of who is in power.

Examples,
Labour used to attack the conservatives for their stealth taxing and then when labour come to power stealth taxes rise exponentially.

These terror laws are criticised and castigated and yet without the co-operation of the tories these laws would never have come to pass.

For all the criticism, some more scathing than others, when have we heard the tories pledge to scrap these laws?

How many of these laws which reduce civil rights are scrapped?

Labour attack the conservatives for beaurocracy, yet as soon as new labour shoot to prominence, big government becomes ever bigger.

Labour rounds on the conservatives for not preserving the integrity of the english countryside and yet then redefines the green belt to allow the destruction of the green belt to continue.

The conservatives use the Iraq War as a battering ram to weaken and mock the labour party but they voted for the damn war.

Semantical word games are launched which attempt to persuade the potential voter of "prudence" and yet government spending under both parties would remain by and large identical.

Even on the politics show of all places, there is a growing acceptance and admittance that nothig clearly distinguishes one party from the other, it's more about the presentation and the perception of the politicians themselves.

We had the tired fake contrived image that the conservatives were against labour becoming ever more immersed in allow european law to supercede sovereign law, with their slogan "in europe not run by europe" yet they are not offering anything different.

Different faces same management

TraceOneInfinite:


You misunderstand me.  I wasn't talking at all about left, right wingers, or any of that type of stuff.

All I was saying was that the House Of Commons does offer a system of organized, polite, debate, that surpasses anything else I've seen.  I admit I probably used the wrong word when I said "held accountable".

Don Rizzle:
its certainly entertaining stuff when a hot debate is, and you have to be very inteligent and quick on your feet if you have any hope of surviving. The best debates were back in labours first term when william haig was the leader of the opposition

virtuoso:
I understand what you are saying and it can be amusing and heated but the fact is the debates do not have a real effect. Like I said, it is theatre albeit funny theatre at times, it is very easy to be lured into it and engrossed in it but it's a very artificial environment which you are viewing.

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