In Reply to: Fuel Price posted by Nick Dickinson on September 12, 2000 at 12:59:38:
This is not simply an issue about the price of petrol or about public transport.
Nick seems to suggest that the two alternatives are either a dictatorship or government bowing to public pressure.
I hope not.
If today the government bows to lorry drivers holding the country to ransom over fuel - next month it will be mothers blockading fuel depots with rangerovers to demand the castration (or worse) of sex offenders - the month after that - I dread to think.
Democracy relies on governments being voted in on their policies and voted out if they don't deliver, not on policy being determined on the hoof by mob rule, even if it does appear to reflect a consensus.
You would get a consensus in favour of any measure that benefitted the individual's pocket, but such a consensus ignores many other, wider, issues.
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