The
latest tax kerfuffle got me thinking, always a dangerous thing in any citizen of a supposedly democratic state.
The two big issues of this election, all parties agree, are the state of the economy and the 'public disconnect from politics' (which, roughly translated, means 'people have noticed that national politicians are all as corrupt and sleazy as one another, and given up'). Both of these are, to be fair, to them, real problems.
I'm particularly interested in something the Tories have been batting about (but that isn't, depressingly, in their manifesto) - an attempt to get people involved in local government via greater autonomy and devolution. I heard some ambitious target to get everyone in the country involved in at least one voluntary community activity come out of Cameron's mouth last week.
Whether or not he follows through on it isn't the point, though. The point is, he's talking about reintroducing direct democracy to combat public disinterest.
In other words, he's effectively reaching back 2,500 years to what Solon did for ancient Athens. And I find myself wondering: is there some way we can do the same for the tax problem?
( This is more pie-in-the-sky than blue-sky thinking, but bear with me. )Maybe I'm crazy, but a little bit of direct economy doesn't sound any less plausible to me than a little bit of direct democracy.
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