Monday 19 June 2023
Clearing House (UK)
Health warning, it's the Grauniad
UK strikes laws must conform with international rules, says UN agency
The International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency, said the UK needed to “ensure that existing and prospective legislation is in conformity” with international rules on freedom of association, and added that the government must seek technical assistance from the agency’s experts.
A description I’ve remembered for decades came from a 1952 science fiction novel, The Space Merchants. Authors Frederik Pohl and Cyril M Kornbluth described government as a "clearing house for pressure groups". The phrase stayed with me because even outside Pohl and Kornbluth’s dystopia, government is just that.
As bureaucracies and pressure groups became larger, more powerful, and more global, the national government stage has been shrinking in proportion. It is already comparable to an amateur performance of Macbeth in the village hall. The national political actors we vote for have become significantly less relevant in only a few decades.
Take Matt Hancock for example. Thrust onto the national pandemic stage he became a lowly actor employed by Clearing House (UK), a nonentity always trying to learn a confusing script handed down from the global pandemic stage.
Or Jeremy Corbyn. As Prime Minister, would the dim ideologue have screwed up anything significant? Probably not. It is likely that Clearing House (UK) was mostly out of his reach already.
Clearing House (UK) conducts its negotiations behind closed doors. It does not require inexperienced poseurs to arbitrate between it and Clearing House (EU), Clearing House (UN) or its global subsidiaries such as the International Labour Organization.
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4 comments:
Governments gave away their powers to get things done because it made things easier for them. Until they want to do something different from the dictates of those to whom they gave the power.
Remember Brexit? Although far from implemented yet, the key point for many people was 'taking back control'. Although the EU had a smattering of democratic features there was no democratic vote over who ran the European Commission itself.
Similarly I cannot vote over who runs the UN, the ILO, the WHO etc. Since there is no democratic control I see any agreement of their creeping authoritarianism to be a Bad Thing. Advice to do with sex and travel I think.
Novel concept.
Sam - and they intend to carry on doing it. The main parties seem to have no intention of taking back any significant powers.
DJ - we can't even vote for taking back powers because parties aren't interested in making it a political issue. Brexit was enough for them.
James - it is, it came from a novel :)
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