The stupidity of crowds isn’t quite what you think, but is a great rant from Jamie Whyte (I recommend A Load of Blair).

Firstly, the government talks about basing decisions on fairness and affordability. Whyte nails the fact that the former is used in contradictory ways by the same politicians, and the latter cannot be used to affect decision-making (there may be a little literal bloody-mindedness here).

Then he wonders why we all fall for this politician-spouted rubbish, and hypothesises (with some evidence) that we feel good about voting, but also know that our individual vote makes no difference. Therefore we don’t do any real work to decide who we should vote for, falling for inconsistencies or outright lies.

The idea of a few randomly-selected jury-sized group of voters being unexpectedly dragged off into a room for a week sounds brilliant. Everyone would be on tenterhooks wondering if it was them.