Hello and welcome to the Burning Question Poll blog
I’m using this blog to go into a little more depth about various topical subjects that will end up with a direct ‘question of the day’ on the Burning Question poll site and app. Essentially any question can be answered by either a yes or no and any question can be posed that’s able to be answered by a yes or no. The burning question is simply an immediate poll, instant democracy for all, for any direct question anyone wishes to pose or answer.
The reason I became interested in establishing a polling app was because of three different situations that I felt either demand, or demanded, input from the public. First was when the UK Parliament voted to enter the war against Iraq with the US with a fairly large Parliamentary majority. I was surprised as no one that I was friends with, acquainted with, worked with, related to or randomly asked, was in favour of the war. No one I came across seemed to believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or that he was anything to do with 9/11. Regarding the former, Hans Blix, the UN Weapons Inspector stated that; “There were about 700 inspections, and in no case did we find weapons of mass destruction,” As for the latter, Richard Clarke, the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism in the US, suggested a rather apt and amusing comparison; “Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor”.
It was surprising for there to be such variance between the UK populous and Parliament, and I wondered whether Parliament really knew about the general mood in the country over the issue. I felt that it would be appropriate to have something that could quickly convey people’s feelings on such an important issue, such as a simple yes or no poll. This seemed particularly apposite as Parliament also votes yes or no, albeit more symbolically by going through different doors. The traditional polling companies with their complex questionnaires detected increasing support for war up to the Parliamentary vote but still with a majority against military action. In trying to constantly finesse the results, such polling didn’t really deliver a clear enough message from the public. However, overall it seemed that the public were less convinced than Parliament about the Blair Government’s infamous “Dodgy dossier”. This focused on the immediate threat to British citizens on a Mediterranean island from Iraq’s putative weapons of mass destruction, and was used as an important justification for supporting the US in military action against Saddam Hussein. Perhaps Parliament was protecting itself from potential disrepute by giving the “Dodgy dossier” the dignity of the benefit of any doubt, rather than admit that a British prime minister could be disingenuous in the pursuit of war. This may have been at the heart of the difference between the politicians and a sceptical public in the desire for military action against Iraq.
It could be argued that the fall of Saddam was the most destabilising event contributing to the tumult today in the Middle East and the growth of IS (or whatever the latest acronym is). The wisdom of crowds should therefore have been heeded. It seems that strong dictators are in power for a reason and that reason is generally because their countries have various competing tribal factions. Even before Iraq, we only have to consider the melt-down in the Balkans following the death of Tito. We can only speculate about the lengths he had to go to in order to suppress countless years of historical enmity between the many different groupings, based on religion and ethnicity, that erupted after his death. Perhaps in such regions we have to carefully consider the lesser of evils from the outset, rather than take the moral high ground of selective indignation. The moral high ground can anyway be a difficult climb, as evidenced by Prime Minister Cameron, who advocated air strikes against an evil Syrian dictator and not long afterwards advocated air strikes against an even more evil organisation trying to overthrow the evil Syrian dictator.
The second situation where I felt that polling would be useful was when either the political executive or their civil servants, or appointed representatives, take a particular decision and base it on what they describe as ‘the public interest’. Does the likely out-of-touch executive of a representative democracy, voted in every five years, or their civil servants, have any sort of meaningful insight into what the public thinks is in their interest? At least not without some kind of information regarding how they feel about a particular issue. The declaration that something either is or isn’t in our interest seems to be a leftover from a more deferential age, a judgement exercised by our betters. It could be seen as a pompous way of attempting to justify rather dubious decisions: for example when trying to protect an establishment figure or even the establishment itself. Perhaps a more honest justification would be that it’s not in the government’s or the political class’s interest, particularly as they likely know much more about their own interest than they do about the public’s. Cases in point were the police investigations during the 1980’s where victims of child abuse had alleged the involvement of politicians. We can only assume that someone high up in the government had decided that such investigations were not worth pursuing in the public interest, but forgot to inform the public. A more recent example of this self-serving ‘public interest’ phrase was the decision by the DPP, Alison Saunders, that it was not in the public interest to prosecute Lord Janner over child sex abuse claims because of his dementia. Public pressure has now seen this decision overturned and Lord Janner will indeed be prosecuted. Perhaps knowledge of the depth of feeling by the public before the DPP’s decision not to prosecute could have made a difference. Hopefully, with more information on how the public feel, this disingenuous ‘in the public interest’ phrase could then be abandoned.
As for the third situation, well, it’s more of a fashion these days. Politicians, in order to attempt to ‘connect’ with the public on a difficult issue, use the platitudinous “we need a public debate”. They surely can’t just mean debates between politicians in public because we already have those ad nauseam. They must mean involving the public. However no one’s ever asked me, or indeed anyone I know, to debate any issue. So I wonder just how public the debates really are. However, with specific polling at least there’s the possibility of knowing what many are thinking on specific issues.
