I’m no economist, but was alarmed – once again – at how our parliament is studiously pushing the country over the edge and into the void. I would appreciate it if someone with economic knowledge would educate me about this subject.
Our government is ignorant of the country’s level of inflation; the Minister of Commerce & Industry seems to base his information on numbers released by a commercial bank which pegged it at 5% (double that of the World Bank’s number for Bahrain), rather than the government organs tasked with these critical metrics; specifically the Central Bank, the Ministry of Economy and of course the main statistics body and grandiosely named Central Informatics Organisation which is more concerned with perpetrating sectarian strife than conducting research and provide critical statistical analysis to decision makers in government and business.
In typical fashion, the government is living in confusion.
What is inflation anyway? My basic information about it is that it is a metric used to determine how much prices have risen against the buying power of the individual, and the oversupply of printed money in circulation which lessens the buying power of those notes; ie, the currency gets to be worth less than its previous level because there is nothing backing it up in the treasury, and it becomes regarded literally as “paper” money. Wikipedia of course puts it in a much better way:
In mainstream economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices, as measured against some baseline of purchasing power.
The prevailing view in mainstream economics is that inflation is caused by the interaction of the supply of money with output and interest rates. In general, mainstream economists divide into two camps: those who believe that monetary effects dominate all others in setting the rate of inflation, or broadly speaking, monetarists, and those who believe that the interaction of money, interest and output dominate over other effects, or broadly speaking Keynesians. Other theories, such as those of the Austrian school of economics, believe that an inflation of the general price level and of specific prices is a result from an increase in the supply of money by central banking authorities.
This suggests that the correct way to fix this rise in inflation is to lessen the amount of available money in circulation, so why is our parliament doing the exact opposite? We have our MPs declaring that they want to give every Bahraini BD20 a month extra for 3 months, and yesterday Al-Dhahrani has tabled a motion to reschedule pensioners’ loans and want to instruct the banks to reduce their interest charges on those loans! First, isn’t his motion contradictory? If a loan is rescheduled then interest will increase and it will accumulate, and further, the parliament does not have any power whatsoever on commercial enterprises so what makes him think that he can affect businesses? And what will that do – if successful – to commercial operations in the country as a whole? Unless all of these “suggestions” by parliamentarians are only used as fodder for public consumption and public relations in which case I am happy that the government is not obliged to action any them by force of law and they remain mere suggestions which do nothing but waste the country’s time unnecessarily.
The parliament should hire a few economic and financial consultants to review those suggestions before members are allowed to table them and waste everyone’s time and potentially damage the economy of this country even more than it is at the moment.
All links lead to articles in Arabic.
Comments
While it is true that there is a wide range of rates quoted for Inflation, this is mostly due to the difference in metrics used. Despite being a small economy, the lack of structured information flows make it extremely difficult to actually measure the effects of any policy and this is further fueled by the various liquidity flows around us (I was surprised to find that there is a very actively traded market in GCC currencies).
Increasing the amount of disposable income by BD 20 could arguably dump an additional BD 8-9 million into the economy, and how it would be spent and the effects that would have on the prices in the economy would be an interesting measure to study. As for pensioner loans, they are just trying to ease the burden and maybe even farm it out to the insurance companies…
I have been looking for the CPI basket of goods that would be used to measure the rate of inflation, but can’t seem to find one on the net…It would be interesting to come up with our own list of products that can be used to measure exactly how much prices are rising by…ignoring the staples like bread, rice and meat since the government artificially maintains those prices low through subsidies…cigarettes, bottled water and soda pop come to mind as a few products that have risen markedly in the past few years…and you can call it Mahmood’s Inflationary Index!
Interestingly, the Big Mac Index puts Bahrain at the bottom of the GCC in terms of purchasing power of parity which is to say, we enjoy cheaper burgers relative to our neighbours.
Guess you can’t shut an economist up…
I’m not sure about the MII but if you talk to my wife she probably can list a number of products from biscuits through to tuna and various things in between and not only tell you their prices now, but also what they are sold for at various supermarkets and when and by how much those goods’ prices were increased by and when.
Maybe the index should be called FII!
I understand that the rescheduling of pensioner loans could help and insuring them would give their descendants piece of mind too, but that is like using a bandaid to staunch the flow of blood from an amputated limb.
There needs to be a structural change in the policy of divestiture – if it exists – rather than the continuous ad hoc attempts by parliamentary and government members to temporarily ameliorate the feelings and passions of simple folk.
no one explained the problem better than (MP) Dr Jasim Ali in a report done for Gulf News.
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/01/14/10096606.html
The middle-class is growing thin; a few have the opportunity to move up and join the upper-class but most unfortunately are dragged down with the poor. In other words there is a lot of money in the country available to a certain class and that places pressure and demand on all the resources and goods, thus drastically increases their prices. The result, the poor have the same wages and can buy a lot sell for their money.
oops LESS instead of sell
Some time back the wonderful Chairman of Parliment informed us in the papers of what the actual salary for the PM and DPMs will be and that they should have an annual 3% increase due to inflation.
What about the rest of us? If the PM and DPMs cannot afford to live on their salary and extra monies earned, how do we expect BD 40.000 per month laborers who do not even get salaries on time to exist?
Now the MPs want second diplomatic passports for their second wives, 80% salaries as pension etc etc….
Yep the rest of us are getting poorer. I can feel it. :cwy: :ermm: :angry:
There are only a few economists in the parliament, one of them is Dr. Jassim(My Uncle :biggrin: )
Dude, you’ve got a cool uncle. What he wrote in the article mentioned above has concepts worth some serious consideration.
An excellent website for self education on financial matters is Investopedia Univerity. Here is their article that explains inflation.
http://www.investopedia.com/university/inflation/default.asp
And their university’s home page if you want to learn about other more advanced subjects: http://www.investopedia.com/university/
I discovered these guys when I was trying to understand a “mezzanine financing” scam that was busted locally. Enjoy.
not to take anything away from what Dr Jassim said, but if they mean Jassim Hussein he is not an economist, despite what the media says. he is a “management” person who has taken an active interest in economics and who is also a nice guy.
he does however understand more about economics than all the other MPs. sadly, that is more a reflection on them than on him.
I have said this before, the only people with any economic knowledge IMO are him and Abul, because the voters did not vote with their brains, but according to their instructions. that is why I don’t pin much hope on this bunch of MPs. not so much because of the constitution, but because of the calibre of MPs! you cannot give what you do not have.. maybe next time.. maybe next time.. eenshala (as the brits say)
as for the salaries. personally, i have a problem with an MP (or shura member, or a minister who joins the executive from his own business) receiving a pension, let alone 80%! while the rest of us have been working our slow way up the ladder and paying towards our pension for our whole lives, someone marches in, maybe does f***all for four years and then comes out the other end with a salary pension higher than any he may have ever dreamed of before as a warehouse guard or a technician, at our expense, while our children may end up with no pensions because the funds have been depleted!
I have an even bigger problem with the diplomatic passports. ok, so they want to give the MPs diplomatic passports. there is no reason why they should have one because they represent the people, not the government, and it is outrageous that their families should get one too. and what happens when they are no longer MPs/shura members, etc. every four years, i believe the newspaper said (can’t find it now) that they get to keep it afterwards (somebody correct me if i’m wrong), (even if they don’t, it is a smaller issue but still an issue.) so count how many people get it because of their jobs, multiply that by their families, with some changes every four years. because of the size of the population, this represents a sizeable percentage who own a green passport. it results in the creation of a two-tier society, green and red, socially, as if economically wasn’t enough.
regarding the multiple wives, well i’m too disgusted to even think up something smart to say, AAAAARRRGGGHHH!! I can’t even begin to try to get inside their head. but to me muti-marriage ranks in the same level as paedophilia, so i’m not likely to be sympathetic, let’s be honest!!
isn’t it time we started a SERIOUS family planning campaign in this country? If I read about one more family living on the street for two years with their children which include a 6-month old or squished into one room in somebody else’s house with their seven children or not being able to apply for a home because the first wife and HER twelve children are living in one already, I will throw up!
what will it take? i don’t know how they ever get to make them in the first place!!!
Thank you for the suggestions Larson, and CWT, truer words have not been said! 🙂
Ù‹Just managed to finish through this post and all the links, loads of good information! Thanks everyone including Mahmood for raising such a good topic!
Dear Mahmood,
I believe you are correct in defining what inflation is and in your disgust, if i may say so, towards the shambolic and uneducated nature of discussing an issue of vast significance with regards to the welfare of all those who live in Bahrain, which I share.
I have a few comments that I thought could be of interest.
You said:
“This suggests that the correct way to fix this rise in inflation is to lessen the amount of available money in circulation,”
It is interesting you brought that up, and to have to fully explain the right solution or how you may or may not be wrong I would have to go through a good 100 years of economic revolutions and counter revolutions. But that’s not here nor there. You are true to some extent that inflation can be managed in theory via controling the money supply, but there is more to it in reality, so let us just leave it at that for now.
The essential relevant point could be highlighted by contrasting what you said with the effects of the suggestions given at the parliament, god bless there souls. They said : oh if inflation makes people poorer in real terms, let us counter that by giving these unfortunate consumers more money to spend. The main issue, where is this money going to come from? We do not have an income tax system, so probably borrowing or some additional oil income. Now, in either cases we are going to have transfer payments to all N-consumers by some amount x per head. Now, if we go back to our monetarist treatment of inflation and examine what that entails, you would see that we have increased our “money supply” by xN, for now regardless of the source of funding. This says that we are essentially having an additional amount of xN in notes and coins for the same amount of goods and factors of production as before. Therefore, you tell them that they are a bunch of morons and all they are doing essentially feeds back into inflation, making it even worse, and what next? do we raise wages again? until when?
That’s pretty much the bulk of it, a few other points you may wish to consider is that :
– inflation per se is not that bad, necessarily. High inflation, and deflation are the main enemies. So you find UK,US, US having a target level or a target range for inflation which they aim to maintatin. In UK target is 2% with allowed range of +- 0.5%
– Bahraini dinars are pegged against the dollar, which entails that we cannont control our interest rate, and will have to follow the US levels. Interest rates are essentially the main policy tool that is used to control inflation in developed economies. Discretionary fiscal policy(government spending for macroeconomic purpose) is the main alternative I guess, so long as we wish to have our exchange rate fixed. So, the only available answer to inflation is to cut government spending, not increase it. The further away we are from our target inflation level, the more painful this will be..
Yeh, hope I making sense, feel free to rip what i said apart tho,
It does make sense. Thank you for articulating this point. Inflation is an intangible thing that most people don’t understand, and I am still to get to grips with it. My simplistic understanding of it is as I have explained already, and I thank you for offering one solution out of the problem, one that is not taken very seriously by this spendthrift government, as we have seen in this cabinet, they have increased the government’s size by 2 ministries, thus adding to their spending. Just look at the figures quoted as government costs over the last 20 years and the mind boggles. I understand that even that level of spending is nothing when compared to the national budget, but it still counts as an indicator of their lack of seriousness in tackling this issue.
The head of the EDB is reported to have said in Davos that our growth will reduce this year to around 6%, down from 7.8% two years ago. With the increase in prices and the stationary level of income for the individual, that signals a forthcoming increase in the level of inflation even more than what it is at the moment (5% according to the Bank of Kuwait, 2.7% according to the the government, while the World Bank give is 10.4% in it’s Inflation, GDP deflator (annual %))
another good article by (MP) Dr Jasim Ali
http://www.gulfnews.com/business/Comment_and_Analysis/10099931.html
we are going backwards
isaGP,
you said: “the effects of the suggestions given at the parliament, god bless there souls. They said : oh if inflation makes people poorer in real terms, let us counter that by giving these unfortunate consumers more money to spend. ”
your post was very useful. but this is not a bunch of kids having a waterfight in the garden, this is the people who have elected to manage and steer the future of our country, and whose decisions will affect not only our lives but that of future generations.
Mahmood,
once again, i send a prayer that there will be something left to save by the time voters understand the value and the mechanism of democracy, and that GIGO.
the same thing happenned a couple of years ago when their solution to unemployment was to lower the retirement age in order to clear the way for younger job-seekers.. very short-sighted, very simplistic, very dangerous, with huge ramifications for years to come..
but we are all responsible if this is the cadre of people that we put into power.
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”(Alexander Pope). what we need in legislative power is people with intelligence, specialization and vision. there will always be someone who comes up with an illogical suggestion, not because of their stupidity but because of their lack of expertise in that area. that is normal, and to be expected, because noone can be expert in everything, nor should they be. (they should however be expert in something!) . before ideas are vocalized, MPS need to do their homework and research the subject matter if they plan to open their mouths. and when ludicruous suggestions are made, there should be enough people there who understand the ludicruousness of the ideas and explain why they are so.
which is why ideally the legislative body, IMHO, should consist of a collection of people who are expert in different areas; business, international relations and diplomacy, urban planning, technology, medicine, education, media, law, human rights, religion, finance, branding, environment, sustainability, governance, marketing, HR, history, …………….etc……. and last but certainly not least economics and strategic planning.
p.s. although the list is by no means exhaustive, leaving out both women’s issues and tourism was not an oversight, but intentional.
but, and this a very big BUT, this will never happen if parties are more concerned about optimising the number of seats for their bloc than about optimising the ability of parliament to plan the future of the country. maybe in time…??
Allow me to disagree with you on one point:
This recipe does work for consultative bodies, but not elected ones, as we have amply seen. People will vote for the popular guy/gal or in our circumstances, whoever the clerics tell them to vote for.
I no longer have any problem with the above, this is the democratic way in any case. However, what should be done by default is that the council should have the above experts on-call, or directly employed to be made use of by parliamentarians. This was the case of the original idea behind the Shura council prior to the change of heart and made that council legislative too. Now that we have two legislative councils, the appointed having more power than the elected (by virtue of its chairman chairing joint sessions, and their ability to refuse proposals from the ‘lower house’) the government should provide these experts as staff/on-call to parliamentarians.
Parliamentarians now – as far as I understand – would pay from their own stipend should they elect to put those experts on their personal staff, while in Kuwait for instance, each parliamentarian can hire up to 10 experts completely paid for by the government (within reason, I am sure).
So let us have people in there whose idea to counter importing sheep from Australia because they have “mad sheep disease” (yes, it did happen last week) is to import from the Islamic country of Sudan because their sheep don’t suffer from this. But for God’s sake let them have the staff to tell them to shut up when required!
in other words, your proposal is that any old 40 people from the street with no credential beyond beyond being a nice guy/gal or religion(substitute whatever is the people’s buzz word at the moment, it might be religion today something else two decades from now) get the benefits of sitting on the bench while another bunch (maybe another 40?) of people with expertise, vision and talent do the real work behind the scenes for not much financial retribution and no glory beyond the satisfaction of knowing they have served their country as well as they can (ok, not a problem) and keep their fingers crossed that the elected 40 people driving fancy cars will fully comprehend and appreciate the ramifications of their decisions once their attention has been drawn to them, and that they will eventually make the best decisions for the country’s long term future.
we are talking apples and oranges really, because I am imagining an ideal situation that isn’t and you are trying to make the best of a bad situation that is (damage control). which i totally agree with as way forward out of a mess.
my only question is though, is the bad situation that IS really better than the ideal one that ISN”T?
Mahmood,
continuing from my last post (#17)
My fear with your suggestion is that it wouldn’t work. because subject matter is rarely uni-dimensional and it is necessary to have open debste to reach acceptable consensus that is optimal for the country. therefore the experts behind the scenes would have to themselves have a debate in order to become aware of each other’s arguments.
I do understand your concerns about the representatives being elected, and I have racked my brains.
I have a proposal for you.
first: a short introduction.
part of the problem for me is that the PMs are geographically (fairly or otherwise) elected. while this may be appropriate for geographically large countries, we have the advantege of being a small in size and are not making the most of this advantage. after all, once MPs are in, they no longer represent their constituencies and become reps of the whole country. Since geography is not going to play a part in their job, why should it be a job requirement. what the job actually requires is knowledge (you may disagree?).
I propose that candidates run in category of expertise rather than geography. the first thing would be to determine the skills/expertise required to manage the nation and how many people would be required to have such expertise. I am not sure how this could be determined but i am sure a committee could decide on that and then maybe it could be put to public vote.
once this has been established, candidates would run as economist/urban planner/religious expert, etc. according to their area of expertise and the whole country could vote to fill those 40 positions by choosing the required number from each category. the people with the highest number of votes from each category would be then be the MPs.
that would satisfy your pre-requisite for election (would it?) and my pre-requisite for expertise ( I would be very happy). at least any mistakes could not be attributable to ignorance.
CWT,
Wouldn’t it be much easier, simpler, more effective to put into place basic minimum criteria for Ministers in Cabinet first? Start with a college degree as a basic mnimum, and a maximum term of service. (6 years?)
That should solve at least 60% if the problems that we currently have.
CWT, of course I prefer people of knowledge to be in those positions! I would also prefer them to be non-sectarian, with more than a couple of brain cells and with an IQ they won’t trip on. But the reality of the situation is this:
And I can understand it; in a democratic sense it is undemocratic to demand that those standing for parliamentary elections must have a certain level of education, experience and any other discriminatory instrument!
BUT, you can educate the people enough NOT to elect bozos who have not seen the inside of a classroom and worked most of their lives being porters in the central market (with all due respect to porters of course) or ones whose only qualification is their memorising the Quran or led the people in prayer and have no knowledge nor other interest other than “saving us from ourselves.”
That’s where the media MUST come in and create debates between candidates. This government; however, is not and was not interested in that. What was Bahrain TV and Radio’s coverage in the recent elections? They should be ashamed of themselves that the only real televised debate was done by a Kuwaiti channel (6/6)!
I agree with Jasra completely though, that the selected Shura members as well as the cabinet should most definitely be required minimum educational standards, and even then they should face a select house committee to grill them before they take their positions.
JJ, hi!
that would be great too, but you would still need a parliament and should still be organized. so, my proposal still stands.
in fact, i’ve had an hour or so to mull over my own proposal and i like it (!!?!). it would be good on so many levels.
it would encourage the blocs to come up with viable educated candidates instead of any ol’body for every position which it wants, and reject supporting their own candidates who have nothing to offer, hence improving the menu,
by narrowing the choice down to qualification and forcing people to vote on a candidate in a particular category, they might actually think more about qualification and less about blocs and sects,
 it would discourage candidates from occupying themselves with constituency problems and encourage them to manage the nation, constituency issues are usually municipal issues anyway and are only used by MPs for brownie points,
there would be none of that giving away ACs and haj trips during campaigning, how many are you going to give out?!!
it would help instill the importance of education in the future generation because they would recognize that they can make a bigger difference if they study,
the country would be more educated, as a result,
it would be innovative and different,
it would enhance our image in the global market,
MPs would be more careful and think before they speak,
stupid topics would not make it to the agenda,
it would increase nationalist feelings as you would do away with neighbourhood representation and might even decrease sectarianism in society,
you wouldn’t need a shura council anymore, which would save you tons of money,
and you can still hire expert witnesses as consultants to testify as necessary but you wouldn’t have to keep them on the payroll to counter the incompetence.
I’m on a roll here.. there must be disadvantages, but myopia has taken over my brain!
CWT, I’m sorry for the trouble you had posting, it’s the spam engine that caught your comments as well as one of Dude’s for some reason. That is out of my control – but I have resurrected it as you can see (and Dude’s) so hopefully it won’t happen too often again.
no problem. works ok now.
JJ is talking about setting requirements for ministers of cabinet and Mahmood wants to set requirements for the Shura council members and don’t get me wrong i have no problem with both of the above, while the real problem still would exist.
what is the use of having qualified people to follow orders if many of the ones at the helm are idiots?!! you want to let them through and then hire babysitters to explain why their ideas are stupid. come on.
when you are indisposed, do you trust your office boy and your gardener and your guard to run your business till you come back and depend on your accountants and managers to explain to them and hopefully convince them why something shouldn’t be done?
when you go out for the evening, do you leave your 4 year old son in charge and hope that the babysitter will be able to talk him out of burning the house down if he decides to play with the BBQ?
what qualifies them to run our country!!
there is already age discrimination by saying you have to be over 30, and language discrimination by saying you must be fluent in arabic (whatever fluency means, rather subjective!) the education requirement is only an extension of that and is no less relevant than age. the constitution is not cast in stone and could be ammended.
otherwise why is school compulsory? it is the norm to go to university now. we are an educated country for god’s sake, full of professionals in every area, i can’t seem to find figures on percentages of education level in bahrain (university upwards) but i am sure it is high compared to other countries. (if anyone knows, could they provide a link) . I would bet on it.
why would we waste such a resource?
No, unfortunately in a democracy that will not work.
Let me give you a couple of examples and see how others go about this issue:
Here are the requirements to stand for parliament in the UK:
US candidature requirements (this is for Virginia, other states – I suspect – are virtually the same):
I’m sure we can search and find that the majority of the world would have very similar laws, the only difference I would think that you would notice is the age of eligibility.
The one thing in your proposal that might be constitutional (not yet anyway in Bahrain) is for political parties to only field candidates at a minimum educational level, but that is up to the parties’ bylaws and if those rules do not contravene the constitution.
Even then, as you will see from the Windsor model (which it seems that the majority of the world follows) independents can and do stand without party affiliation.
Essentially; however, and although I held the very same view you have now (I’m sure you can search through the archive to see how my positions have evolved! my life is in open book :blush: ) but after going through conversations both here and in the real world, I have come to realise that in a democracy, you cannot and should not bar anyone from standing, save for reaching the age of majority.
The rest of course is up to the electors themselves, and the various media organisations who can play an important role in educating the people (or interfere with their decisions?)
Mahmood, to get good inflation figures, you may want to contact two entities like the World Bank and your Central Bank, and get from them a document that identifies the CPI basket contents exactly, and what mathematical method they use to obtain the the figures for each one. Also find out what changes they have made in the CPI basket contents if any during some past time period like five years. And most importantly, are they sampling CPI baskets that are realistic for various economic segments of the population, to do a properly proportioned averaging for the country. This methodology is available to the public in writing, with all raw data, which could be interesting to see exactly what they did. If they cannot easily make this info available, then you know what the situation is.
Expect local government sources to publish what makes them look better.
Of course a personal CPI basket would be a very good tool to see which official info source is closest to reality for you. Sounds like Francis could do a good one. She could also look at the government source raw data and see clearly how much of it is BS.
Best regards,
Vic
can we talk : I was being sarcastic. I do realize how serious and potentially catastrohpic consequences that could come about as result of these MPs decisions.
docspencer: as far as my knowledge goes, we haven’t reached that level of transparency yet in bahrain unfortunately.
mahmood & can we talk :
it is not the fault of the uneducated people who ran for parliament, people voted for them, and that is what counts. If people do not know what is best for them what can you do?
I say we need a welfare progressive tax system, with the aim of redistributing wealth. Government budget does not need tax revenue to balance itself, not for the next few years, so I can’t see why a taxation system won’t be ideal. The more progressive the tax system the more likely we are to change the trend of polarization between working class” low income” and upperclass” the wealthy”, and hopefully have a solid middleclass. The existence of a middle class that is a decent proportion of the population is what I think is needed for our lil democratic system to be of any benefit.
Greatphilosopher, that’s really too bad if the transparency is not there yet. Can’t lose anything by asking and probing around a bit. But Mahmood could try if he has time, and I would be really surprised if the World Bank could not supply this kind of info.
Good suggestion in your last paragraph. Somehow an incentive would need to be worked into such a “financial help” program to raise the education level of the poorer people. By education level I mean education that will provide better jobs based on what Bahrain needs. I think this is very important. Could be high school, university, technical school, job training program, and so on.
What do you all think?
Best regards,
Vic
isagreatphilosipher, you’re right that a healthy middle class would more entrench democracy and particularly personal freedoms in a society, and that is one of the main concepts that our government should concentrate on. I am hesitant; however, to accept taxation at the moment, unless, that is, there is direct and full representation for the tax payers in the decision making instruments and full transparency – or at least much better than we currently enjoy – is achieved.
As to the people do not know what is best for them part, what we can do is spread the word through whatever media available the actual performance of their elected parliamentarians or the lack thereof, and maybe show them that it is best to vote for capabilities rather than abrogating that responsibility to clerics to tell them who to vote for.
I am of the belief – at the moment at least – that another way out of this quagmire is to allow political parties and allow them to have their own media outlets because a party has more strength than an individual and can make a difference. At least that’s the theory and I recognise a lot of holes in this approach too, but it seems to me the way forward.
Another reason we shouldn’t tax, right now at least, is that our freedom of taxation is i think one of our main sell points for foreign investors. But then again, if we sorted out our labour market and deregulated to some extent then we can almost definately be more attractive in the future… for now, it’ll be risky.
isaGP
” I was being sarcastic. I do realize how serious and potentially catastrohpic consequences that could come about as result of these MPs decisions.”
i know you were. sorry i sounded rude. it is the frustration of sitting and waiting for the next idiotic water bomb they drop on us, knowing full well it’s gonna be a short wait..
it’s no fun being a guineau pig, is this really what we deserve???
can we talk:
It seems to me that without divine intervention there is no avoiding these “water bombs” as a learning process. I think it is ironic how the structural deficiency of our parliament is what may work as an antivirus firewall. Yes it may prevent any potentially beneficial drastic improvements, but it serves to reduce the nonesensical and naive proposals of our humble parliament members to a mere noise externality, the latter category virtually encompassing the majority of what is going on.
it is a shame about the waste of resources tho.