Politics: UK Style

Hi all, 

Today is an important day today, when around 48 million British people vote in local elections. The Japanese political system is very very similar to ours: the new constitution of Japan, established 70 something years ago, is based on the UK. So both countries have:

• A monarchy that has no real power any more. Our queen is about a million years old and she wears great hats. 
• A top chamber, but in Britain we don’t vote for them – we call ours the House of Lords.
• A lower chamber made or representatives that we vote for every four years or so. We call ours the House of Commons.
• A Government made of the party that wins in an election in the House of Commons, led by a Prime Minister, who is the politician in charge of the government.

• Newspapers, elite people, ex pop stars, footballers and celebrities who use social media to demand changes to our laws. These are influential because they are rich, good looking or important. We don’t vote for them, but they have a big impact on political opinion in our country because they are popular. Footballers like Marcus Rashford or performers like Stormzy exert enormous influence on the way elected politicians act. Even an 18 year old schoolgirl from Sweden, Greta Thunberg, can change politics very dramatically because of the power of online media.

• A massive civil service who run our country, taking instructions from the government. We don’t vote for them, and like many people in Japan, we think our civil servants, like our politicians are out of touch with the modern world. Civil servants and politicians are people who all went to the same schools and universities: not enough women, minorities or young people, not enough people from different regions. 

• Loads of business organisations that use their power and influence with the government of the day. In Japan, these people and organisations are mostly Japanese. In the UK, being much more globalised, these can be from anywhere in the world, including China and Russia, our current bad boys and public enemies. 

Murderous President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria and his wife Asma meeting our dear old Queen. Bashar was an eye doctor in a hospital in London for many years before he took up the job of bombing and killing thousands of his own people as President after his father died. He didn’t learn much from British political life

local democracy – city, town and parish (village) councils who represent communities they live in. I love local democracy. I know it is boring, but it is a community system that has worked well in England at least for 1,500 years. 

And like Japan, any citizen can access the Prime Minister by speaking to their local politician. We still have that direct democracy. And the salary is so low and the rules so transparent, that like Japan, not many greedy criminals become politicians. So it is quite honest and efficient (although I must say that my description is not very true of recent governments, whom most of us consider dishonest and inefficient). 

My brother was a politician back home in Wales until four years ago. It is hard work and not a great salary. 

Politics in Japan and in UK. Boring, but important. I think the people of Syria would be happy to change the open war between their President and the people for the kind of politics you see in this very boring documentary!

What do you think of politics? Do you think we should give up, and just run the country by using twitter?